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Black Hat
Biggs is a technical journalist with more than seven years of real-world IT experience (programming and management), and he handles complex topics on the page in a fun, easy to understand manner. The book begins with the tale of a hapless spam victim in Germany, and moves on to introduce us to Alan Ralsky, the "spam king of Detroit."
Ralsky describes himself as an honorable marketing professional, but a Detroit Free Press article in November of 2002 pointed out that his computers vomit out more than 650,000 emails each hour. While his label of spammer or marketer may be debatable, there's no question about his efficiency. From the interview with Ralsky, Biggs moves into telling the story of his own struggle with spam. The discussion then turns to various relevant legal and social issues, and this shift is a hallmark of the book's positive qualities.
Black Hat effortlessly moves from straightforward factual reporting to first-person narratives to social and political commentary. The factual sections are just-the-facts-ma'am-reporting that would seem at home in any newspaper or technical journal. The first-person narrative sections are funny and reassuring. For leery technophobes like me, it's nice to know the experts struggle with many of the same computer bugaboos that plague me. The political and social commentary sections succinctly explain legal and cultural influences that shape the world of the internet today.
A good example of the political commentary is the chapter entitled "Upload or Perish: Pirates." As an aspiring author myself, I've always found myself believing that "sharing" intellectual property was inherently wrong. So I chose not to use Napster or Kazaa or the other options and totally agreed with efforts to prosecute active Napster users. But in this chapter, Biggs points out the misguided attempts of the industry by targeting the wrong people in their fight against sharing and piracy. In Eastern Europe and China, there are CD-pressing factories spewing out thousands of copies, complete with jewel case, printed insert, and full-color printing that are almost impossible to distinguish from the real product.
Biggs writes: "BMG Music representative Rob Anderson told me that many of the pirates have better CD and DVD reproducing equipment than even the large, official distributors." The discussion of industry actions targeting the wrong people continues with "Record companies can sue as many 12-year-olds as they want...but the equation will always be the same: piracy cannot be stopped." Detailed explanations of key landmark piracy lawsuits follow and the chapter ends with Biggs providing some suggestions for how the industry can help themselves in more effective ways, rather than attacking kids with home computers and a Jones for Metallica. Quite simply, he states the industry should use the technology to effectively deliver their product, at a reasonable cost, to the consumer. If listeners are going to share files, then the industry should harness the technology instead of stomping their feet and demanding that teenagers continue to trek down to the local mall and spend twenty dollars on a CD that may only have one or two good songs.
Personally, I'm still not sure that I believe in file sharing. Just because something isn't tangible (it's music or it's words or it's code) doesn't mean someone didn't work hard for it and invest in it. But Biggs' illuminating discussion certainly made me see how the industry has mismanaged their very lifeblood. I may not be file sharing anytime soon, but I won't be part of the angry mob hunting down file sharers any longer.
In Black Hat, Biggs manages to clearly explain certain technical aspects of spam, viruses, and other internet parasites. For instance, we've all seen that pile of gibberish at beginning of spam e-mails and Biggs explicates that mess in a way that anyone can understand. Like those rare moments in high-school English class when the teacher explains a poem that you always thought was unintelligible garbage, and the light goes on, and suddenly that long-haired Brit makes sense -- after reading Black Hat, I now understand much of what was to me only gibberish before.
In the chapter entitled "Shockwave: Worms and Viruses," Biggs dissects a simple, working worm. The worm was written by 16-year-old in Austria named Second Part to Hell with a taste for programming to White Zombie. Biggs interviews the worm writer and delves into the world of programmers he likens to sword makers, steeped in art and tradition. They do not include any dangerous payloads in their worms, but the possibility that someone could use the worm for malevolence isn't their concern, any more than the sword maker worries about how the weapon is being used. The dissection of Second Part to Hell's worm begins by actually showing the PHP web-programming code. Biggs then walks through each section, explaining how the worm selects which files to infect, creates a copy of itself, and processes its code to spread, and finally appends itself to the top of each file so it can seek out new victims.
The book goes on to discuss Nigerian 419 scammers, malicious virus writers, hacking legends like Lord Digital, spyware, and ultimately what a user can do to protect their computer and data. Entertaining and educational, Black Hat was a valuable read to a non-technical person like me. Best of all, John Biggs' suggestions for protecting my computer against the frightening aspects of the internet have made my cyber activities more comfortable and secure.
You can purchase Black Hat: Misfits, Criminals, and Scammers in the Internet Age from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews. To see your own review here, carefully read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
read it and it's not quite "for dummies." good in-depth look at a number of topics and its great for folks who may not think before they click.
If you're interested in that stuff, I guess it might be worth checking out.
Work / Personal only HUMANS get this.
This works quite well, right up until one of these humans who doesn't know what they're doing gets infected with one of those viruses and starts spamming everyone with your address in the from field.
Anyway, it's meant as a joke.
It is what is called "irony." Saying the opposite of what you mean. The joke is that the books are for those intelligent people who feel like dummies because they have been reading people who actually are and thus "don't get" what are actually simple concepts if simply, and intellegently, explained.
Andre LaMothe's Windows Game Programming for Dummies, for instance, gives the most concise and intelligently understandable introduction to the Windows SDK and Direct X I have ever seen.
And Windows game programming is not a subject for actual dummies.
KFG