Saturday, August 1, 2020

Not my kind of hacking story: Breaking and Entering by Jeremy N.Smith

I love a good hacking story, because our life depends so much nowadays on computers that it´s inevitable not to deal at least once in a while with it. Either we buy online or we use email for work or for personal communication or we just use the Internet, the e-crimes and their perpetrator are always there. Understaing their way of thinking and their techniques may be sometimes a matter of personal survival therefore either for someone with a basic Internet knowledge - not me - especially nonfiction books about hackers and their lives are useful.
Breaking and Entering by Jeremy N. Smith is based on the true story of ´Alien´ a woman hacker that from her very early years at MIT was selected to be part of a very selective group of gifted students involved in various forms of hacking. ´Alien´ was not her real name, but was inspired by her admission essay where she was describing how she was kidnapped by aliens. She wanted to be first an aerospace engineer but her plans changed and the book is aimed to trace her history while describing what does it mean to be a woman in such a male-dominated industry. 
Nowadays, she is working as a consultant in the field of Internet security.
Good premises but not an impressive results. The book - which I had in audio format - tells a lot about the character´s adventures in sex and drugs and drinking. Too much college romance, in a story that was supposed for an adult, serious audience, maybe curious like me to learn a little bit more about how hacking operates and how does it feel to be a woman in such a world where supposedly what that matter is the intelligence to be virtually against the system, any system.
This book is an example of a good story, lazily told and I was very disappointed about the experience.

Rating: 2 stars


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