Breaking and Entering, Jeremy N. Smith
Breaking and Entering, Jeremy N. Smith
List: $25.99 | Sale: $18.20
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Breaking and Entering
The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien"

Author: Jeremy N. Smith

Narrator: Jonathan Todd Ross

Unabridged: 12 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/08/2019

Synopsis

This taut, true thriller takes a deep dive into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker - a woman known only as Alien. When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien wanted to study aerospace engineering, but she was soon drawn to the school's venerable tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original "hacking." Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead, two others were on trial, and two had been institutionalized. And Alien's adventures were only just beginning. After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her large cache of virtual weapons-and the trespassing and social engineering talents she first developed while "hacking" at MIT. The company tested its clients' security by every means possible-not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. (She once got into the vault of a major bank by posing as its auditor.) Alien now runs her own boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world's biggest and most vulnerable institutions-banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, pacey treatment it deserves.

About Jeremy N. Smith

Jeremy N. Smith has written for the Atlantic, Discover, and the New York Times, among many other publications, and has been featured by CNN, NPR, and Wired. His first book, Growing a Garden City, was one of Booklist’s top ten books on the environment for 2011. Born and raised in Evanston, Illinois, he is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Montana. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife and daughter.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Chris on February 01, 2019

Hard to really distinguish if this is actually nonfiction. It read like fiction but is so lacking in substance and follow through that I found my way more than 75% of the way through, wondering where this story was going? I often thought “am I just reading through someone’s perfectly normal career p......more

Goodreads review by Lojicholia on March 06, 2019

Nothing in the book is outside the realm of the possible if you’ve worked in physical, network, or app penetration testing. Likewise, nothing is really that extraordinary either. I really struggled writing this review; if this was billed as a novel with great resourcing, it would have been a solid 3......more

Goodreads review by Allison on June 18, 2019

Just couldn't get over the novelistic writing style and the focus on Alien's boyfriends and clothing choices over her actual hacking work. Too much detail had to have been invented, and it was often painfully obvious that this was written by a dude. 2.5/5......more

Goodreads review by John on February 06, 2019

This is a good story, and is easily and quickly read. The presumably true story is of a female MIT student who participates in the hacker culture of MIT, then over considerable time develops into a business woman whose specialty is hacking as a white hat for hire. The first half of the book is the m......more

Goodreads review by Melissa on April 18, 2020

What really sucks about this read is that I loooooove the subject and the fact that this centers on a female hacker is so cool. So yay! But so much of the story conveyed was sooooo boring. I wanted some of her background. But I didn't need to spelunk with her through MIT for as long as we did. I want......more

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