Kingpin
Former hacker Kevin Poulsen has, over the past decade, built a reputation as one of the top investigative reporters on the cybercrime beat. In Kingpin, he pours his unmatched access and expertise into book form for the first time, delivering a gripping cat-and-mouse narrative -- and an unprecedented view into the twenty-first century's signature form of organized crime. The word spread through the hacking underground like some unstoppable new virus: Someone -- some brilliant, audacious crook -- had just staged a hostile takeover of an online criminal network that siphoned billions of dollars from the US economy. The FBI rushed to launch an ambitious undercover operation aimed at tracking down this new kingpin; other agencies around the world deployed dozens of moles and double agents. Together, the cybercops lured numerous unsuspecting hackers into their clutches. Yet at every turn, their main quarry displayed an uncanny ability to sniff out their snitches and see through their plots. The culprit they sought was the most unlikely of criminals: a brilliant programmer with a hippie ethic and a supervillain's double identity. As prominent "white-hat" hacker Max "Vision" Butler, he was a celebrity throughout the programming world, even serving as a consultant to the FBI. But as the black-hat "Iceman," he found in the world of data theft an irresistible opportunity to test his outsized abilities.
Stats for nerds
13recommend
22mentions
19people
2012–2025years
68% recommend32% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- That’s not a new problem with selling info on dark web marketplaces. if you're interested in learning more, here are a couple of books you might enjoy:
"The Dark Net” – Jamie Bartlett “We Are Anonymous” – Parmy Olson “Future Crimes” – Marc Goodman “Kingpin” – Kevin Poulsen
- There's a good book by Kevin Poulsen called "The Kingpin: How one Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground" that is a bit out of date at this point (2011), but it goes into great length on all of the dynamics of the early forums where all of carding/spam/botnet operators did business.
In a forum/marketplace like this, your reputation is worth a lot of money. And if you scam someone and get banned, sure, you can just join again under a new identity, but building your reputation up again means you will lose out on a lot of potential sales.
- This reminds me of a very entertaining book - Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen. It vividly described aspects of that world, albeit from 10-15+ years ago and through the lens of a smaller more specific variety of real life characters.
The level specialization only seems to have risen since. When you have that, you get so many aspects that just look like legitimate office or tech work. Amazing considering that all those layers of abstraction must make it difficult to even comprehend. There must be smart people out there who really get it though, and they must occupy particularly safe niches in that ecosystem.
- The story of e-gold, how novative it was, and how it collided with the golden age of e-crime and carding truly is fascinating.
BTW could someone of you recommend me the best books about that era of internet crime around 2005-2012 (or larger) ?
I read Poulsen's Kingpin with a rare delight and would love to get more of that.
- The following is a list of my favorite books on software engineering, cyber-security, and the history of IT business development.
Bowden, Mark (2011) Worm: The First Digital World War
Brooks, Frederick (1995) Mythical Man-Month, 2nd ed.
Christensen, Clayton (1997) Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon (1996) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: Origins of the Internet
Hunt, Andrew and David Thomas (1999) Pragmatic Programmer
MacCormick, John (2012) Nine Algorithms that Changed the Future
McConnell, Steve (2004) Code Complete, 2nd ed.
Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception
Poulsen, Kevin (2011) Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cyber-Crime Underworld
Raymond, Eric (2003) Art of Unix Programming
Stone, Brad (2013) The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Torvalds, Linus and David Diamond (2001) Just for Fun: Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
Wallace, James and Jim Erickson (1992) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and Making of the Microsoft Empire
Williams, Sam (2002) Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software
Wilson, Mike (1996) The Difference between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corp
- I think you will enjoy Kingpin by Kevin Poulsen.
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