Book Review:
Special Section on
Computer Security and Privacy

By NANCY ALLISON
Boston Chapter

Tangled Web: Tales of Digital Crime from the Shadows of Cyberspace,
by Richard Power

Que, 2000

Entertaining and informative, a journalistic narrative reviewing the history of security attacks.

Written in a journalistic style, Tangled Web is an entertaining examination of "the shadow side of cyberspace." The author, Richard Power, is the editorial director at the Computer Security Institute in San Francisco.

Cybercriminals -- people who subvert legal, legitimate computer functions for their own illegal purposes -- range from bored teenagers to sophisticated crime rings to spies and saboteurs hired by competing corporations and foreign governments.

Powers first provides a broad overview of the scope of cybercrime and its poorly recognized cost to business. The bulk of the book reviews the activities of these cybercriminals:

• Hackers, crackers, and virus writers
• Spies and saboteurs
• Muggers (practitioners of identity theft) and molesters (child pornographers).

The final chapter examines various defense measures practiced by Fortune 500 companies, global law enforcement agencies, and the United States Federal Government.

The book provides many recent examples to illustrate its points. Powers also provides practical advice throughout, and appendixes provide follow-up information including many web sites.