Fancy Bear Goes Phishing

The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks

By: Scott J. Shapiro

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 15 hrs and 9 mins

Publisher's summary

Long-listed, Amazon.com Best Books of the Year, 2023

"Unsettling, absolutely riveting, and—for better or worse—necessary reading."—Brian Christian, author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem

An entertaining account of the philosophy and technology of hacking—and why we all need to understand it.

It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital age. With lucidity and wit, he establishes that cybercrime has less to do with defective programming than with the faulty wiring of our psyches and society. And because hacking is a human-interest story, he tells the fascinating tales of perpetrators, including Robert Morris Jr., the graduate student who accidentally crashed the internet in the 1980s, and the Bulgarian “Dark Avenger,” who invented the first mutating computer-virus engine. We also meet a sixteen-year-old from South Boston who took control of Paris Hilton’s cell phone, the Russian intelligence officers who sought to take control of a US election, and others.

In telling their stories, Shapiro exposes the hackers’ tool kits and gives fresh answers to vital questions: Why is the internet so vulnerable? What can we do in response? Combining the philosophical adventure of Gödel, Escher, Bach with dramatic true-crime narrative, the result is a lively and original account of the future of hacking, espionage, and war, and of how to live in an era of cybercrime.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

©2023 Scott J. Shapiro (P)2023 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"Ingenious coding, buggy software, and gullibility take the spotlight in this colorful retrospective of hacking . . . Shapiro’s snappy prose manages the extraordinary feat of describing hackers’ intricate coding tactics and the flaws they exploit in a way that is accessible and captivating even to readers who don’t know Python from JavaScript. The result is a fascinating look at the anarchic side of cyberspace."—Publishers Weekly

“This is an engrossing read . . . An authoritative, disturbing examination of hacking, cybercrime and techno-espionage.”—Kirkus Reviews

"The question of trust is increasingly central to computing, and in turn to our world at large. Fancy Bear Goes Phishing offers a whirlwind history of cybersecurity and its many open problems that makes for unsettling, absolutely riveting, and—for better or worse—necessary reading."—Brian Christian, author of Algorithms to Live By and The Alignment Problem

Familiar stories with new twists

Although I've heard some of these stories a hundred times, I still learned new things. The angle he took to describe everything is very accessible and I encourage anyone from beginner to advanced to check out this book. The narrator's voice was great and he only fumbled a couple times over some of the IT terms. I visited the author's social media and was not disappointed. I'd definitely take any course he decided to teach.

Exceptional exploration of modern day hams and their perpetrators

It is rare to find a book written by a university law professor that is both engaging and informative. This one is exceptionally clear and deals with the number of complex issues, as well as their real world reflections in popular society. It is definitely recommended reading for anyone interested in cyber security and modern day technological evolution on social media. The discussion of the difference between upcode and down code is also very elucidating. The clear distinction made between hacking and cyber warfare is also very helpful to an understanding of of why interference in a state’s politics is not an act of war. Enjoy!

interesting

Myself not having a background in cyber security, found the information and explanations easily processed.

Great combination of history and current events

Really enjoyed the in depth stories about the origins of our operating systems, early hackers, and the premise and motives behind hacking events. I appreciate the author’s research and ability to share their personal knowledge and experience in a way that makes the book compelling to the reader.

Long

The story is too long and wandering. It could be more concise. I’m sure it’s very informative for some.

Not a very complete sotry

impossibly high level overview of cybersecurity with brief discussion of recent events and hacks.

Self-aggrandizing author

Did I lean something? Definitely. Many interesting tidbits and a solid narrator. I was super interested to read another viewpoint on some of the early hacking communities and malware as I’ve read a few books in this area.

However, the author attempts to educate the audience in a variety of ways that are self-aggrandizing of his expertise in an area where he clearly is not. I understand the need to break down complexities for an audience but wow this was painful at times. This includes a seemingly simple description of Middle Eastern geopolitical conflicts as something he has the authority to speak on as well as make matter of fact statements on how entire countries will react to situations.

I found the opening background of his education and how he came back to this topic over the top, but there are so many worse examples throughout the book. Do yourself a favor and learn about malware from someone in the field that wants to tell you about their field. Not someone that passes opinion along as smoothly as fact.

Fancy Bear was largely ignored for most

While i applaud the author trying to explain IT/InfoSec terms in ways that non techies would understand as well as background the author spends too much time attempting to do this. Given the title i expected the majority of the book dealing with Ru FSB/GRU cyber ops departments. I'm several hours into the audio book, about half way through the book, and I'm struggling to find a reason not to turn this off. I've heard more about Robert Morris, the tortoise/hare, Achilles, etc than anything else. I'm sorry but i can't finish this.

I can't seem to like this book...

First of all: the core of this book and its topics are very relevant and interesting to me and there are parts of the book that I absolutely like.
I understand that the author tried to make this book understandable to people not coming from a technical background and for me that's where it goes wrong.
I can see the analogies he's making and I can understand the context but they're so tedious and convoluted it just really bores the hell out of me. I just think they could've cut the explanations in half and people would still understand it. Other books have done it before and way better.

If you are somewhat security minded and technical, you will probably get bored out of your mind and if you're not... well I guess i don't understand who this book is for. I've read many other titles that do vastly better than having first doing a 20 minute (or sometimes longer) setup to deliver just a part of the explanation.

Then there's just parts of the book where it seems like entire pages are narrated out of order because of seemingly not connected parts.

It just really feels like Christmas dinner where an elderly family member has a very interesting story to tell, but insists to first derail the story with something absolutely mundane and trivial like going to the shop and go into detail on why they bought every item on their shopping list.

They could've cut at least 1/3rd of this book in my opinion and it would be for the better.

Also, next time when converting a book to audio. Please don't actually make the narrator slowly and painfully speak out code or full URL's. Yes there's a difference between a bitly url-shortener and the actual full url hiding behind it but when he started to spell out every character of that URL i was ready to drive my car into a wall....