Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker as a Young Man

In 2000, an unknown attacker brought down the websites of Amazon, CNN, Dell, E-TRADE, eBay, and Yahoo!, inciting panic from Silicon Valley to the White House. The FBI, police, and independent security experts launched a manhunt as President Clinton convened a cyber security summit to discuss how best to protect America’s information infrastructure from future attacks. Then, after hundreds of hours of wiretapping, law enforcement officials executed a late-night raid and came face-to-face with the most wanted man in cyberspace: a fifteen-year-old whose username was “Mafiaboy.” Despite requests from every major media outlet, that young man, Michael Calce, has never spoken publicly about his crimes—until now.

Equal parts true-crime thriller and exposé,Mafiaboy will take you on an electrifying tour of the fast-evolving twenty-first-century world of hacking—from disruptions caused by teens like Calce to organized crime and other efforts with potentially catastrophic results. It also includes a guide to protecting yourself online.