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Kingdom of Lies: Unnerving Adventures in the World of Cybercrime
"Kingdom of Lies is a brilliant and bold debut, as full of suspense as the best crime thrillers." --Linda Fairstein, New York Times bestselling author of Blood Oath
In the tradition of Michael Lewis and Tom Wolfe, a fascinating and frightening behind-the-scenes look at the interconnected cultures of hackers, security specialists, and law enforcement
A 19-year-old Romanian student stumbles into a criminal ransomware ring in her village. Soon she is extorting Silicon Valley billionaires for millions--without knowing the first thing about computers.
A veteran cybersecurity specialist has built a deep network of top notch hackers in one of the world's largest banks. But then the bank brings in a cadre of ex-military personnel to "help."
A cynical Russian only leaves his tiny New Jersey apartment to hack sports cars at a high performance shop in Newark. But he opens his door to a consultant who needs his help.
A hotel doorman in China once served in the People's Army, stealing intellectual property from American companies. Now he uses his skills to build up a private side-business selling the data he takes from travelers to Shanghai's commercial center.
Kingdom of Lies follows the intertwined stories of cybercriminals and ethical hackers as they jump from criminal trend to criminal trend, crisis to crisis. A cybersecurity professional turned journalist, Kate Fazzini illuminates the many lies companies and governments tell us about our security, the lies criminals tell to get ahead, and the lies security leaders tell to make us think they are better at their jobs than they are.
Like Traffic set in the cybercrime world, Kingdom of Lies is as entertaining as it is eye opening.
In the tradition of Michael Lewis and Tom Wolfe, a fascinating and frightening behind-the-scenes look at the interconnected cultures of hackers, security specialists, and law enforcement
A 19-year-old Romanian student stumbles into a criminal ransomware ring in her village. Soon she is extorting Silicon Valley billionaires for millions--without knowing the first thing about computers.
A veteran cybersecurity specialist has built a deep network of top notch hackers in one of the world's largest banks. But then the bank brings in a cadre of ex-military personnel to "help."
A cynical Russian only leaves his tiny New Jersey apartment to hack sports cars at a high performance shop in Newark. But he opens his door to a consultant who needs his help.
A hotel doorman in China once served in the People's Army, stealing intellectual property from American companies. Now he uses his skills to build up a private side-business selling the data he takes from travelers to Shanghai's commercial center.
Kingdom of Lies follows the intertwined stories of cybercriminals and ethical hackers as they jump from criminal trend to criminal trend, crisis to crisis. A cybersecurity professional turned journalist, Kate Fazzini illuminates the many lies companies and governments tell us about our security, the lies criminals tell to get ahead, and the lies security leaders tell to make us think they are better at their jobs than they are.
Like Traffic set in the cybercrime world, Kingdom of Lies is as entertaining as it is eye opening.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published June 11, 2019
79 people are currently reading
754 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
June 4, 2019
2.5 stars, rounded up
I’m not a big fan of nonfiction, but the world of hackers is so much in the news nowadays, I was intrigued. The city of Baltimore’s computer system is being held for ransom as I write this.
I can’t say I cared for Fazzini’s writing style. There’s a lot of jumping around, which makes it hard to keep up, especially at the beginning when a lot of individuals are being introduced.
Individual stories should be used to explore bigger issues. But here, I really didn’t feel I learned anything meaningful. Senior officials of a company not understanding the issues the workers are facing goes without saying. That they have a propensity to hire too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Duh. Yes, there are nuggets of important info here, but I felt like I had to sift through minutiae to get to them. One of the important points that I wish Fazzini had spent more time exploring is the love/hate relationship between business and government.
Also, so much has been fictionalized that I didn’t know what to believe. Made up companies really irritated me. She says she wants people to feel empowered by reading this book. But she doesn’t really give us the means to do so.
In short, too much fluff and not enough meat to this book to allow me to give it many stars.
My thanks to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this book.
I’m not a big fan of nonfiction, but the world of hackers is so much in the news nowadays, I was intrigued. The city of Baltimore’s computer system is being held for ransom as I write this.
I can’t say I cared for Fazzini’s writing style. There’s a lot of jumping around, which makes it hard to keep up, especially at the beginning when a lot of individuals are being introduced.
Individual stories should be used to explore bigger issues. But here, I really didn’t feel I learned anything meaningful. Senior officials of a company not understanding the issues the workers are facing goes without saying. That they have a propensity to hire too many chiefs and not enough Indians. Duh. Yes, there are nuggets of important info here, but I felt like I had to sift through minutiae to get to them. One of the important points that I wish Fazzini had spent more time exploring is the love/hate relationship between business and government.
Also, so much has been fictionalized that I didn’t know what to believe. Made up companies really irritated me. She says she wants people to feel empowered by reading this book. But she doesn’t really give us the means to do so.
In short, too much fluff and not enough meat to this book to allow me to give it many stars.
My thanks to netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advance copy of this book.
May 26, 2019
Kingdom of Lies is an unfinished proposal of a book. Kate Fazzini has fashioned her digging into the world of hacking into a story that is at once fascinating and rich, and also disjointed and pointless.
Fazzini has molded numerous stereotypes into real characters, leading real lives and suffering real frustrations and setbacks. They may even be real people; readers don’t know. She draws her characters really well, so that readers are right there with them. She keeps adding new characters as she goes, right up to the end. It becomes difficult to keep track of them all, and guessing how they fit into the overall scheme of things turns out to be a futile task. Because suddenly and without warning, the book ends. There is no scheme of things. No conflicts get resolved. The good guys don’t catch up to the bad guys, or even give chase. No one suffers any kind of direct penalty because of their hacking actions. The stories don’t ever merge or even connect. Anything or anyone. There are single, isolated characters who don’t connect to anyone at all. They just pop up from times to time. Perhaps the message is that hacking is a disjointed, decentralized enterprise, for both the white hats and the black hats. But we knew that.
The two longest, deepest stories run separately and never cross. One is the cybersecurity unit of an international bank. It is plagued not merely by hackers, but by internal politics and bureaucracy where no good deed goes unpunished, and a loyal cohesive team disintegrates because of a narcissistic celebrity ex-military who is parachuted in to lead it. The other is a tiny Romanian ransomware shop, which runs its course, makes its millions and disintegrates. No one is ever in any danger. Risks are minimal. The ransomware operation and its players are never connected to the bank.
Hackers are loners who don’t do well playing with others. This career choice gives them satisfaction and a living. As long as no one trusts anyone else and covers themselves from potential outcomes, everyone gets away with everything. So lies prevail, both as told to others and to themselves.
Fazzini says she hopes readers will take away a better appreciation of privacy. But the book as a book is at best unsatisfying. Maybe it’s a koan and readers should just let it flow over them and not analyze it. Because trying to put it together as a single book with a story, a backbone, a conclusion and/or a message did not work.
David Wineberg
Fazzini has molded numerous stereotypes into real characters, leading real lives and suffering real frustrations and setbacks. They may even be real people; readers don’t know. She draws her characters really well, so that readers are right there with them. She keeps adding new characters as she goes, right up to the end. It becomes difficult to keep track of them all, and guessing how they fit into the overall scheme of things turns out to be a futile task. Because suddenly and without warning, the book ends. There is no scheme of things. No conflicts get resolved. The good guys don’t catch up to the bad guys, or even give chase. No one suffers any kind of direct penalty because of their hacking actions. The stories don’t ever merge or even connect. Anything or anyone. There are single, isolated characters who don’t connect to anyone at all. They just pop up from times to time. Perhaps the message is that hacking is a disjointed, decentralized enterprise, for both the white hats and the black hats. But we knew that.
The two longest, deepest stories run separately and never cross. One is the cybersecurity unit of an international bank. It is plagued not merely by hackers, but by internal politics and bureaucracy where no good deed goes unpunished, and a loyal cohesive team disintegrates because of a narcissistic celebrity ex-military who is parachuted in to lead it. The other is a tiny Romanian ransomware shop, which runs its course, makes its millions and disintegrates. No one is ever in any danger. Risks are minimal. The ransomware operation and its players are never connected to the bank.
Hackers are loners who don’t do well playing with others. This career choice gives them satisfaction and a living. As long as no one trusts anyone else and covers themselves from potential outcomes, everyone gets away with everything. So lies prevail, both as told to others and to themselves.
Fazzini says she hopes readers will take away a better appreciation of privacy. But the book as a book is at best unsatisfying. Maybe it’s a koan and readers should just let it flow over them and not analyze it. Because trying to put it together as a single book with a story, a backbone, a conclusion and/or a message did not work.
David Wineberg
April 28, 2019
This book is an interesting read from the perspective that I learned a few things, but it is more of an overview of the subject and does not get down into the more detailed aspects of cybercrime that I was expecting from the description. That said, I found this book a quick and enjoyable read.
Some of the things I learned were that hackers not consider or refer to themselves as hackers; different countries use different methods to obtain information; some black hats eventually become white hats; you don't necessarily need to be a code nerd to be successful in the business and there are a wide variety of reasons why groups and countries do it.
Overall, this book is for someone who is not necessarily looking for a great amount of detail on the subject.
I received a free advance readers' edition of this book courtesy the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook and Twitter pages.
Some of the things I learned were that hackers not consider or refer to themselves as hackers; different countries use different methods to obtain information; some black hats eventually become white hats; you don't necessarily need to be a code nerd to be successful in the business and there are a wide variety of reasons why groups and countries do it.
Overall, this book is for someone who is not necessarily looking for a great amount of detail on the subject.
I received a free advance readers' edition of this book courtesy the publisher with the understanding that I would post a review on Goodreads, Amazon and my nonfiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook and Twitter pages.
May 25, 2019
From the outset Fazzini tells us these are stories, but the way they overlapped gave me false hope that all would merge and culminate in a comprehensive ending to all the various cybershenanigans: Party Girl Renè Kreutz in Romania evolves into a hacker involved quite heroically with dastardly Sigmar "Sig" Himelman who is practically related to Cybercrime Researcher Dieter in Helsinki and then there is hacker Bolin Chou in China, and another female heroine Caroline Chan at targeted NOW Bank, Russian hacker Valery Romanov, etc etc.
The structure of this book unnerved me rather more than the subject matter, to be honest. I'm not sure if it's accurate to tag this Historical Fiction or True Crime or something altogether different, but the characters and the subject matter are compelling as all get-out! I may have been confused by the Prologue followed by the Forward, or being told that I know more about cybersecurity than I think I do, but everything in Kingdom of Lies made for great reading. I love the feminist point of view, pointing out the tremendous value women bring to key roles whether in cyber security or cyber crime. And all the details around election interference and various conspiracy theories. I hope there is a sequel.
The structure of this book unnerved me rather more than the subject matter, to be honest. I'm not sure if it's accurate to tag this Historical Fiction or True Crime or something altogether different, but the characters and the subject matter are compelling as all get-out! I may have been confused by the Prologue followed by the Forward, or being told that I know more about cybersecurity than I think I do, but everything in Kingdom of Lies made for great reading. I love the feminist point of view, pointing out the tremendous value women bring to key roles whether in cyber security or cyber crime. And all the details around election interference and various conspiracy theories. I hope there is a sequel.
March 31, 2019
I think my expectations were raised a little by the blurb likening Fazzini to “the Michael Lewis of cybercrime”, and the story never really flows or seems as well-drawn as Mr. Lewis is capable of. But that’s obviously a really unfair bar to compare against. For such a difficult subject matter to report on, the glimpses we do get are illuminating and the essential argument Fazzini is making is compelling. I’m just not sure it adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
September 2, 2019
Absolutely atrocious writing, with the only redeeming quality being the interesting subject matter. Fazzini tries to take us into the minds of the many characters, but noone is sufficiently fleshed out enough to be a mere caricature of a person. The writing style, which progresses chronologically but geographically schiznophrenic, is incredibly hard to trace any kind of narrative throughout.
July 3, 2019
Somewhat interesting, but very scattered. It felt disjointed; there was no clear connection between all of the various players, and it felt like characters and stories just ended without any real resolution. Read more like a collection of notes about various people than a book.
July 4, 2019
The author of this book is my husband’s niece, Kate Fazzini. Kingdom of Lies opened up the world of hackers, both good and bad, for me. It shows how multi-leveled they are and working independently. Don’t forget to read The Author’s Note in the end.
January 19, 2020
We hear a lot about cybercrime, but very little about the shadowy figures behind it. Who are these people who are lurking in cyberspace, flooding it with malware, crippling websites, holding our data for ransom, taking down giant corporations? Apart from a certain amount of noise about Russian hackers, there's not a lot of information out there.
Kate Fazzini worked in cybersecurity and now writes about it. The principal lie referred to in her title, she says, is "...that cybersecurity is hard. ... Certainly too difficult for someone who lacks years and years of deep technical training." Her point is that good security starts with common sense and an understanding of people. "...if you know how to deal with people, you can handle internet security." Other lies she cites include the idea that there is a "hacker community", that hackers are "shadowy puppet masters" or that they are all "either crusaders for good or practitioners of evil".
In other words, Fazzini wants us to understand that there's a vast diversity and range of skills and motives among cyber criminals and the people who hunt them down. She introduces us to a few.
There's the small-town Romanian girl who was recruited to do customer service for a ransomware outfit and was so good at it she brought in millions for her gang. There's the ex-military officer who was brought in to beef up cybersecurity at a New York bank and made it worse by not respecting the expertise of the people under him. There's the Chinese hacker who parlayed his skills into a straight job in cybersecurity in Singapore.
And more. It's an interesting look at both sides in the continuing tug of war between crooks and watchmen in cyberspace.
Kate Fazzini worked in cybersecurity and now writes about it. The principal lie referred to in her title, she says, is "...that cybersecurity is hard. ... Certainly too difficult for someone who lacks years and years of deep technical training." Her point is that good security starts with common sense and an understanding of people. "...if you know how to deal with people, you can handle internet security." Other lies she cites include the idea that there is a "hacker community", that hackers are "shadowy puppet masters" or that they are all "either crusaders for good or practitioners of evil".
In other words, Fazzini wants us to understand that there's a vast diversity and range of skills and motives among cyber criminals and the people who hunt them down. She introduces us to a few.
There's the small-town Romanian girl who was recruited to do customer service for a ransomware outfit and was so good at it she brought in millions for her gang. There's the ex-military officer who was brought in to beef up cybersecurity at a New York bank and made it worse by not respecting the expertise of the people under him. There's the Chinese hacker who parlayed his skills into a straight job in cybersecurity in Singapore.
And more. It's an interesting look at both sides in the continuing tug of war between crooks and watchmen in cyberspace.
April 21, 2019
Kate Fazzini takes the reader into the shadowy world of white hat and black hat hackers as she looks at the people who work at bank and those who try to hack the banks and precipitates other cyber frauds. The names, locations and companies are changed to protect those who give information which always leads to a little inflation of the story as the author acknowledges. The people she covers are very interesting and you get attached to each group however as some others have acknowledged when you get to the end nothing really comes together and you are left wondering what the point was. There is lots of good information in this book and interesting people but they just never tie together and you are left unsatisfied at the end.
December 31, 2022
An interesting idea, but this reads like a first draft, not a finished product. I didn't care for the writing style, which meanders and doesn't connect anything or reach any resolutions. She also has a bad habit of introducing people with a weird attempt at suspense--he works at the bank but he doesn't know in a year he won't be there anymore! It gets repetitive and irritating. In the end the characters and stories she's telling don't conclude as much as it seems like it was deemed the book had enough pages, so it ended. This book needed more polish before published
August 28, 2022
Niestety 2 punkty za bzdury typu, że Linus Torwald opracował Python i SQL injection służy do niszczenia baz - wygląda jakby tylko do tego służyl, a to nie jest prawda. Ogólnie to taka historia kryminalna, czasami i trzyma w napięciu. Sądzę, że dużo jest faktów koloryzowanych, niedopowiedzianych.
May 21, 2023
Good storytelling but I don’t feel I learned much.
December 2, 2023
Interesting look into the lives of individuals in the book, and their motivations. Felt we could have learned more about the hacking techniques and maybe less about the lives of certain characters who were indirectly involved with the cybercrime.
April 24, 2021
It is so bad that I don't know where to start. First the writing is so poor, like some non-fiction story aimed at the millennials - breathless, flashy, aimless and utterly pointless. It is surprising to know that the author is a journalist with WSJ and a professor at University of Maryland. This only goes to show the state and the quality of journalism and academia.
Secondly the narrative rambles on and on about several individuals and their day to day lives, obviously heavily added with fictional details to make it more interesting (in the author's limited mind). Rather than focusing on people who carry out the actual hacking or cyber security operations, she focuses on some Romanian teen who worked in the customer service and on the some recruiter who hires the cyber security people for a bank.
Thirdly, the story itself will fit a newspaper article and in the end, it is incomplete and ended suddenly. like a discarded, unfinished manuscript. There is no description of the actual attack and how it unfolded. The author only focuses on the peripheral actions that have nothing to do with the attack. Probably because she has no access to the real Cybersecurity folks. One gets the feeling that the author over-relies on the account of "Caroline" without double and triple checking the her story. Personally I am very doubtful of the story being told by Caroline. Even if her account is true, why want to focus on her when she plays no role in the actual cyber security operations?
The story itself won't offer any new insights into the world of cyber security and the way the book is written will induce headache to many. I feel very sympathetic to the students of Ms Fazzini at the University of Maryland, for they they have to put up with a crappy and uninformed professor of cyber security.
If you want to know about the real world of cyber security, there are far better books around. I highly recommend Kim Zetter's Countdown to Zero Day, Dark Territory (Kaplan), Sandworm (Greenberg), The Perfect Weapon (PW Sanger), Cyberspies (Corera), etc.
Secondly the narrative rambles on and on about several individuals and their day to day lives, obviously heavily added with fictional details to make it more interesting (in the author's limited mind). Rather than focusing on people who carry out the actual hacking or cyber security operations, she focuses on some Romanian teen who worked in the customer service and on the some recruiter who hires the cyber security people for a bank.
Thirdly, the story itself will fit a newspaper article and in the end, it is incomplete and ended suddenly. like a discarded, unfinished manuscript. There is no description of the actual attack and how it unfolded. The author only focuses on the peripheral actions that have nothing to do with the attack. Probably because she has no access to the real Cybersecurity folks. One gets the feeling that the author over-relies on the account of "Caroline" without double and triple checking the her story. Personally I am very doubtful of the story being told by Caroline. Even if her account is true, why want to focus on her when she plays no role in the actual cyber security operations?
The story itself won't offer any new insights into the world of cyber security and the way the book is written will induce headache to many. I feel very sympathetic to the students of Ms Fazzini at the University of Maryland, for they they have to put up with a crappy and uninformed professor of cyber security.
If you want to know about the real world of cyber security, there are far better books around. I highly recommend Kim Zetter's Countdown to Zero Day, Dark Territory (Kaplan), Sandworm (Greenberg), The Perfect Weapon (PW Sanger), Cyberspies (Corera), etc.
August 28, 2019
Cybercrime is something that sounds foreign, and yet it affects us every day. When you have to go get your credit card to type in the security code from the back, when you have to enter your zip code at the gas pump, or when you have to remember any of your seventy-thousand increasingly-bizarre passwords, you are attempting to thwart cybercrime. Every time you chuckle over a spam email, roll your eyes over a phishing email, or scream in frustration when your third attempt to log in to your Target account results in being locked out, do you ever wonder how we got here? And who is behind it?
Kate Fazzini used to work in the world of anti-cybercrime for a major bank. Now she is a reporter in the field, and so she is perfectly poised to take you through the terrifying new world of cybercrime. We're introduced to a few individual players as examples of the larger crime scene, including a young Romanian woman who starts off in customer service of a crime ring (yes, they have customer service reps!) and soon rises to the number two position thanks to her deft hand in expanding their randsomware reach. Along with a Russian man in New Jersey, a Chinese man, and a couple of others, Ms. Fazzini shows us how this world functions, through these examples, and it's pretty terrifying, while at the same time being reassuringly boring, in how like the real above-board world most of these organizations are.
A fast read for fans of Michael Lewis, that will make you want to lock down all your accounts and finally sign up for that password manager you've been meaning to get around to.
Kate Fazzini used to work in the world of anti-cybercrime for a major bank. Now she is a reporter in the field, and so she is perfectly poised to take you through the terrifying new world of cybercrime. We're introduced to a few individual players as examples of the larger crime scene, including a young Romanian woman who starts off in customer service of a crime ring (yes, they have customer service reps!) and soon rises to the number two position thanks to her deft hand in expanding their randsomware reach. Along with a Russian man in New Jersey, a Chinese man, and a couple of others, Ms. Fazzini shows us how this world functions, through these examples, and it's pretty terrifying, while at the same time being reassuringly boring, in how like the real above-board world most of these organizations are.
A fast read for fans of Michael Lewis, that will make you want to lock down all your accounts and finally sign up for that password manager you've been meaning to get around to.
June 27, 2019
Worth read alone for Russian car hacker's advice to his son: avoid high-value-target locations, don't trust anyone asking you for money or tells you a sob story too soon after meeting you, never share personal information until you've known someone well over a year, if someone tells you they're not a good guy believe them the first time, never download an app on your phone, never allow some company to track your location.
February 17, 2020
Writing is horrible. Get on with the story already instead of endless descriptions of people and what they buy at the grocery store or how they like their coffee. Descriptions just go on and on. I wanted to learn about hacking stories and ended up giving up. Should be consolidated into a magazine article.
July 29, 2019
If this is actually a book I'm the queen of St. Martin's Press. Guys, did you actually fact-checked? Minimally? Style is absent and the content is about as true as "spring" meaning, in Romanian, "arc". Hint: it doesn't. But what's to be expected when the she-superhacker was produced by a father "long-retired when she was born". What age Ms. Fazzini believes that people retire in Romania?
Save your time and $, reader. It's all about overselling and underdelivering.
Save your time and $, reader. It's all about overselling and underdelivering.
June 15, 2019
The author's writing style jumps all over the place, so I didn't enjoy this as much as I could have. However, I found the information presented about hacking to be timely and very relevant.
January 1, 2020
This book's an absolute stand-out for me in an otherwise very parched landscape of infosec offerings because of Fazzini's masterful and enthralling character studies of the good guys and bad guys. For that alone, Fazzini's dramatic writing and her understanding of people and their motives was worth the price of admission.
Fazzini promoted the book via LinkedIn, and it's marketed with a completely unsupported claim that although there'd been many egregious security breaches in recent years, the ones Fazzini recounts in the book mattered most, and the other colossal breaches didn't matter or didn't amount to anything important. I view that claim as marketing manure. But I *almost* don't care about that because I expect marketing manure. I do see it as a hack move that she'd let her spinmeisters talk her into marketing bullshit because that attitude ignores the fact that the infosec world has changed massively as a result of massive, repetitive, destructive thefts of data which were not specific to only the instances she dramatizes in her beautifully written book.
Having myself been the big fish in the small but mighty pond in which I built and ran an especially unique past company's entire computer network, including its firewalls -- *every* thing -- I know from first-hand experience that our brilliant but sloppy species regularly does the astounding but criminal shenigans of the sorts described in this book. In point of fact, the owner of that company was a retired clandestine services spook. Feature this... that same owner, a retired, middle-aged Jew who respected and admired my technological skills once called me a, "good German", because he could count on me to do more than my share of expert work, and to not complain. We used to joke that his office desk was a landfill, and that anything sitting atop it would never be found again. No shit ;-)
One of the owner's best friends also characterized my personality as that of a rhino. I was immensely fond of this metaphor. The owner's own quietly-cultivated nefarious style eventually landed him in a longstanding lawsuit when one of his employees sold a hard copy of our client list to a competitor. Our computers ('my' computers) by comparison, were never hacked. Although people were surreptiously hired to see if our (my) network was secure. How did I know that? Social engineering. Fazzini's character in this book, Caroline Chu, reminds me of me. A CA Superior Court judge also subpoenaed my network records during the trial over the theft and sale of our company's customer list. In court, during the trial, my network passed her review without incident.
Did Fazzini actually report true events? Although I don't know I do know that I loved her character studies because her dramatic style shows all the marks of someone who knows what they're talking about. For that it inclines me to consider inviting her to be a guest in my next new talk show.
Fazzini promoted the book via LinkedIn, and it's marketed with a completely unsupported claim that although there'd been many egregious security breaches in recent years, the ones Fazzini recounts in the book mattered most, and the other colossal breaches didn't matter or didn't amount to anything important. I view that claim as marketing manure. But I *almost* don't care about that because I expect marketing manure. I do see it as a hack move that she'd let her spinmeisters talk her into marketing bullshit because that attitude ignores the fact that the infosec world has changed massively as a result of massive, repetitive, destructive thefts of data which were not specific to only the instances she dramatizes in her beautifully written book.
Having myself been the big fish in the small but mighty pond in which I built and ran an especially unique past company's entire computer network, including its firewalls -- *every* thing -- I know from first-hand experience that our brilliant but sloppy species regularly does the astounding but criminal shenigans of the sorts described in this book. In point of fact, the owner of that company was a retired clandestine services spook. Feature this... that same owner, a retired, middle-aged Jew who respected and admired my technological skills once called me a, "good German", because he could count on me to do more than my share of expert work, and to not complain. We used to joke that his office desk was a landfill, and that anything sitting atop it would never be found again. No shit ;-)
One of the owner's best friends also characterized my personality as that of a rhino. I was immensely fond of this metaphor. The owner's own quietly-cultivated nefarious style eventually landed him in a longstanding lawsuit when one of his employees sold a hard copy of our client list to a competitor. Our computers ('my' computers) by comparison, were never hacked. Although people were surreptiously hired to see if our (my) network was secure. How did I know that? Social engineering. Fazzini's character in this book, Caroline Chu, reminds me of me. A CA Superior Court judge also subpoenaed my network records during the trial over the theft and sale of our company's customer list. In court, during the trial, my network passed her review without incident.
Did Fazzini actually report true events? Although I don't know I do know that I loved her character studies because her dramatic style shows all the marks of someone who knows what they're talking about. For that it inclines me to consider inviting her to be a guest in my next new talk show.
May 27, 2019
Former cybersecurity executive and journalist Kate Fazzini is sharing in the Kingdom of Lies everyday stories from the dark world of cybercrime. The complexity of human beings and the ambiguity of human nature offer both a simple explanation for the latest dramatic development in the field of e-crimes.
Random people from the remotest areas of the world - from Romania to Siberia, Hong Kong and USA - are entering this world with the boldness and organisation of a business person. There is a plan and a financial target as well as a serious lack of ethics.
Writing with the simplicity of the journalistic reporting and using a relatively simple vocabulary, Fazzini introduces this world to the reader in the most natural way. The perpetrators of such crimes could be anyone, you can be anytime the victim. The moment you are signing in for opening an email account, you are becoming part of a vast network that at the same time includes the legal and illicit trade.
The author's experience is an important asset in introducing this world to the reader, from the intricacies of the corporate world to the simplicity of the daily hacker, looking for some opportunity to get some money or just explore some loopholes in the system.
At the end of the reading day - the books reads easily in a sitting - you can be either afraid and paranoically skeptical about the human nature (but for that you don't need necessarily a book, just some basic everydaylife observation) and the Internet in general, or just rationally aware about the risks of the cyber world and consequently the criminal implications.
Although from the technical point of view, the book is documented and has a pertaining speciality background, I've found some local descriptions and details not necessarily accurate. For instance, it's doubtful there is an Arnika Valley village in Romania, 200-km away from Bucharest where you can have Starbucks and pay with Bitcoins (it's highly doubtful that you can pay with such currency at all in this country). Also, arc doesn't mean spring in Romania. (The book is expected to be published in June and I've been offered a complimentary ARC, therefore it might be time to make corrections if necessary).
If you are looking for getting some basic knowledge about cybercrime Kingdom of Lies is the recommended lecture but if you are looking for some sophisticated revelations about the complexity of the underground criminal network operating on the Internet, maybe you should search for another reference.
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Random people from the remotest areas of the world - from Romania to Siberia, Hong Kong and USA - are entering this world with the boldness and organisation of a business person. There is a plan and a financial target as well as a serious lack of ethics.
Writing with the simplicity of the journalistic reporting and using a relatively simple vocabulary, Fazzini introduces this world to the reader in the most natural way. The perpetrators of such crimes could be anyone, you can be anytime the victim. The moment you are signing in for opening an email account, you are becoming part of a vast network that at the same time includes the legal and illicit trade.
The author's experience is an important asset in introducing this world to the reader, from the intricacies of the corporate world to the simplicity of the daily hacker, looking for some opportunity to get some money or just explore some loopholes in the system.
At the end of the reading day - the books reads easily in a sitting - you can be either afraid and paranoically skeptical about the human nature (but for that you don't need necessarily a book, just some basic everydaylife observation) and the Internet in general, or just rationally aware about the risks of the cyber world and consequently the criminal implications.
Although from the technical point of view, the book is documented and has a pertaining speciality background, I've found some local descriptions and details not necessarily accurate. For instance, it's doubtful there is an Arnika Valley village in Romania, 200-km away from Bucharest where you can have Starbucks and pay with Bitcoins (it's highly doubtful that you can pay with such currency at all in this country). Also, arc doesn't mean spring in Romania. (The book is expected to be published in June and I've been offered a complimentary ARC, therefore it might be time to make corrections if necessary).
If you are looking for getting some basic knowledge about cybercrime Kingdom of Lies is the recommended lecture but if you are looking for some sophisticated revelations about the complexity of the underground criminal network operating on the Internet, maybe you should search for another reference.
Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review
March 10, 2021
This book is sold well, no doubt about that. It helped that the premise is something I find interesting to begin with, although not something I know very well. Touted on the cover as "the Michael Lewis of cybercrime" also gave good vibes, as I've read two Michael Lewis books on topics I knew almost nothing about beforehand and thought he writes in a very beginner-friendly manner and was hoping for the same with this one.
It starts off well with the blurb giving an overview of what happens, and gives the reader an outline of the wide geographical scope that is to be covered. All well. I still had high hopes at this stage: The writing was very accessible in theprologue, partly because much of the narrative was people-centric and not really technical. It then goes a bit awry as more and more and more and more people get introduced, and (as mentioned very early on in the book, for the purposes of protecting her source) the reader is only given incomplete bits and pieces of information which are great for hiding her source, not so great for actually conveying anything.
I fully understand the need for Fazzini (or writers in general) to protect and respect her sources, but I thought a similar sentiment needed to be extended to readers as well, and there was little sign of that. It got properly irritating at one point, when I got very fed up with this I-will-tell-you-but-I-won't "style" of so-called storytelling, as a result after the first couple of chapters this book started taking a lot of effort to read (as Fazzini tried to compensate for the lack of information by introducing yet more, equally ambiguous characters), and I took forever to finish. Which actually made matters worse, since there seems to be an inherent expectation that the reader keeps many things in their head while reading. I only finished reading because I acknowledge it did start very well, and I was hoping that at least if it came a full circle I could actually take something away from this one, but it was unfortunately not to be. 2 stars.
It starts off well with the blurb giving an overview of what happens, and gives the reader an outline of the wide geographical scope that is to be covered. All well. I still had high hopes at this stage: The writing was very accessible in theprologue, partly because much of the narrative was people-centric and not really technical. It then goes a bit awry as more and more and more and more people get introduced, and (as mentioned very early on in the book, for the purposes of protecting her source) the reader is only given incomplete bits and pieces of information which are great for hiding her source, not so great for actually conveying anything.
I fully understand the need for Fazzini (or writers in general) to protect and respect her sources, but I thought a similar sentiment needed to be extended to readers as well, and there was little sign of that. It got properly irritating at one point, when I got very fed up with this I-will-tell-you-but-I-won't "style" of so-called storytelling, as a result after the first couple of chapters this book started taking a lot of effort to read (as Fazzini tried to compensate for the lack of information by introducing yet more, equally ambiguous characters), and I took forever to finish. Which actually made matters worse, since there seems to be an inherent expectation that the reader keeps many things in their head while reading. I only finished reading because I acknowledge it did start very well, and I was hoping that at least if it came a full circle I could actually take something away from this one, but it was unfortunately not to be. 2 stars.
July 25, 2019
I've been interested in cybersecurity since my very first run-in with malware in 2009. It was one of those drive-by downloads that cluttered my screen with fear-mongering notifications until I figured out how to uninstall the program, and the stress of that encounter fed a lasting preoccupation with cybersecurity and malware. Picking up this book, I assumed I'd find technical information, some timelines perhaps, but I wasn't prepared for Kate's deep dive into the lives of the humans behind the cyberattacks.
When I've been the victim of a malware attack--far too often for comfort, honestly--I've spared little thought for the people orchestrating it, beyond wishing they'd find a different activity to fill their time. "Kingdom of Lies" introduced me to colourful and, much as I resisted it, relatable people whose motivations are morally grey but undeniably sensible. Like me, they want to make a living, use their innate talents, and challenge themselves with new projects. Unlike me, many of them have limited access to "legitimate" opportunities, pursuing cybercrime as a different means to the very same end.
Cybercriminals have families, hopes, dreams, goals, and empathy. Some are malicious, but many are just doing what they need to do to get by. And, really: is it so hard to imagine why a millionaire CEO or multinational corporation would seem like an acceptable victim? Who tosses and turns at night because they took a fraction of the world's wealth for themselves? These attacks are by no means victimless, but I can understand how they'd seem low-stakes to someone on the other end.
I'm no proponent of cybercrime, and I'm still as passionate about cybersecurity as ever, but Kate's book made me re-evaluate my assumptions about the sorts of people who populate this shadowy underworld. It's given me a lot to think about, not to mention an irresistible story to entertain me, and I suspect it'll give you the same gifts.
When I've been the victim of a malware attack--far too often for comfort, honestly--I've spared little thought for the people orchestrating it, beyond wishing they'd find a different activity to fill their time. "Kingdom of Lies" introduced me to colourful and, much as I resisted it, relatable people whose motivations are morally grey but undeniably sensible. Like me, they want to make a living, use their innate talents, and challenge themselves with new projects. Unlike me, many of them have limited access to "legitimate" opportunities, pursuing cybercrime as a different means to the very same end.
Cybercriminals have families, hopes, dreams, goals, and empathy. Some are malicious, but many are just doing what they need to do to get by. And, really: is it so hard to imagine why a millionaire CEO or multinational corporation would seem like an acceptable victim? Who tosses and turns at night because they took a fraction of the world's wealth for themselves? These attacks are by no means victimless, but I can understand how they'd seem low-stakes to someone on the other end.
I'm no proponent of cybercrime, and I'm still as passionate about cybersecurity as ever, but Kate's book made me re-evaluate my assumptions about the sorts of people who populate this shadowy underworld. It's given me a lot to think about, not to mention an irresistible story to entertain me, and I suspect it'll give you the same gifts.
June 7, 2019
KINGDOM OF LIES, by Kate Fazzini, jumps deep into the world of cybersecurity. Fazzini follows characters not just on the lawful side and the unlawful side, but many who allegiance to right and/or wrong is irrelevant; people who are most concerned with what project stimulates them and pays them enough to life the life they want (which is often far from extravagant).
Many people whose careers circle around cybercrime are not clearly defined on the good side or the bad side and Fazzini writes this book with that in mind. The design of the book not only constantly bounces between solving cybercrime and committing cybercrime, but Fazzini at times even turns the table and has the reader pulling for the criminals and condemning the victims, as if they deserve it. Fazzini keeps allegiances spins around to keep the book entertaining, but also to mirror how people in the cybersecurity/cybercrime business feel everyday. Fazzini introduces several different groups of people and slowly brings all of there stories together into a climax and resolution that is both complete and satisfying. Fazzini even makes the cybercrime world seem sexy and inviting; making this reader look into taking a cybersecurity class in the future.
Entertaining and immensely educational, KINGDOM OF LIES is an eye opener to the industry that is constantly growing and evolving. By creating fascinating individuals and multiple compelling events layered on top of each other, Fazzini's book kept me engaged from beginning to end.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Kate Fazzini, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
Many people whose careers circle around cybercrime are not clearly defined on the good side or the bad side and Fazzini writes this book with that in mind. The design of the book not only constantly bounces between solving cybercrime and committing cybercrime, but Fazzini at times even turns the table and has the reader pulling for the criminals and condemning the victims, as if they deserve it. Fazzini keeps allegiances spins around to keep the book entertaining, but also to mirror how people in the cybersecurity/cybercrime business feel everyday. Fazzini introduces several different groups of people and slowly brings all of there stories together into a climax and resolution that is both complete and satisfying. Fazzini even makes the cybercrime world seem sexy and inviting; making this reader look into taking a cybersecurity class in the future.
Entertaining and immensely educational, KINGDOM OF LIES is an eye opener to the industry that is constantly growing and evolving. By creating fascinating individuals and multiple compelling events layered on top of each other, Fazzini's book kept me engaged from beginning to end.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Kate Fazzini, and Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
June 17, 2019
Kingdom of Lies is an eye-opening look into the shadowy world of cyber hacking. However, much of the story has already been told by other media.
Individual stories of hacking make for compelling reading. The stories are told from both the criminal and victim’s point-of-view. However, they never lead into a real conclusion. Also, while labeled as true stories, so many details were changed that is impossible to know what is true and what is fiction.
I was so excited to read this book. I love reading about both black and white hat hackers. Perhaps that is the reason this book didn’t work for me. This book didn’t go into enough detail for me. Each of the stories could have been expanded into their own full-blown books with beginnings, middles, and endings. Instead the stories within Kingdom of Lies, and even the entire book, just stopped with no conclusions drawn.
I realize the author is a journalist and so used to the inverted pyramid of most important to least important fact. However, none of the stories were related to some overall lesson or plot point. I read a lot of non-fiction and that is the point of most of it. Kingdom of Lies is just a slice of individual or company’s life. Also, there are many television shows and online articles that would be a better way to get the same information that can be gleaned from this book. Overall, I can’t give Kingdom of Lies more than 2.5 stars rounded up.
Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for granting my wish for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
Individual stories of hacking make for compelling reading. The stories are told from both the criminal and victim’s point-of-view. However, they never lead into a real conclusion. Also, while labeled as true stories, so many details were changed that is impossible to know what is true and what is fiction.
I was so excited to read this book. I love reading about both black and white hat hackers. Perhaps that is the reason this book didn’t work for me. This book didn’t go into enough detail for me. Each of the stories could have been expanded into their own full-blown books with beginnings, middles, and endings. Instead the stories within Kingdom of Lies, and even the entire book, just stopped with no conclusions drawn.
I realize the author is a journalist and so used to the inverted pyramid of most important to least important fact. However, none of the stories were related to some overall lesson or plot point. I read a lot of non-fiction and that is the point of most of it. Kingdom of Lies is just a slice of individual or company’s life. Also, there are many television shows and online articles that would be a better way to get the same information that can be gleaned from this book. Overall, I can’t give Kingdom of Lies more than 2.5 stars rounded up.
Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for granting my wish for a copy in exchange for my honest review.
March 30, 2023
I read this book yesterday because I find the subject matter fascinating, but this book managed to be both frantic and incredibly boring. Nothing truly happens and while it documents a period of time, there is so much fiction scattered throughout the book in the form of personal day-to-day histories it cannot be seen as anything other than a fictional recording of real events. The author proposes thoughts and day-by-day practices for the each of the people introduced that the could not possibly know.
I have seen this described as a book about cyber security in the style of Michael Lewis. While I can see the comparison, it is an amaturish attempt at Lewis's written style of gonzo storytelling. The characters go no where, there is very little resolution, the actual stories at pointless, and the amount of speculative fiction the author prescribes to the characters takes you completely out of the narrative.
I do not recommend. I consider Sandworm, This is how they tell me the world ends, and even The art of invisibility, as better examples of recorded history for this subject matter.
I have seen this described as a book about cyber security in the style of Michael Lewis. While I can see the comparison, it is an amaturish attempt at Lewis's written style of gonzo storytelling. The characters go no where, there is very little resolution, the actual stories at pointless, and the amount of speculative fiction the author prescribes to the characters takes you completely out of the narrative.
I do not recommend. I consider Sandworm, This is how they tell me the world ends, and even The art of invisibility, as better examples of recorded history for this subject matter.
August 24, 2023
I know nothing about hacking, but this was enough to pique my interest and inspire me to read/listen to other books on the subject.
I was surprised by the gratuitous profanity. I can appreciate a well-placed four letter word, but these were not. And there were a lot of them.
All of the complaints on here about this book are valid, though there may have been slightly more resolution to story lines than some let on. The individual stories just did not ever really intersect, so there wasn’t much point to jumping around between them. It may have been easier for the reader to focus on each story in its entirety at once.
Given the multiple allegations of Russian interference in getting Donald Trump elected, I realized I had to take everything the author said with a grain of salt. Whether any of this in the book was factual, I will never know.
I did enjoy the reader’s voice on the audiobook though.
I was surprised by the gratuitous profanity. I can appreciate a well-placed four letter word, but these were not. And there were a lot of them.
All of the complaints on here about this book are valid, though there may have been slightly more resolution to story lines than some let on. The individual stories just did not ever really intersect, so there wasn’t much point to jumping around between them. It may have been easier for the reader to focus on each story in its entirety at once.
Given the multiple allegations of Russian interference in getting Donald Trump elected, I realized I had to take everything the author said with a grain of salt. Whether any of this in the book was factual, I will never know.
I did enjoy the reader’s voice on the audiobook though.
January 16, 2021
Agree with others who've given 3 stars:
Writing is well, but sadly let down by the execution of its structure. It could have been a great book if approached well.
The writing is too journalistic and narrative driven to have any coherent analysis or value to offer, which sucks the substance and life out of the book.
Would have liked to seen more tdetail of the everyday lives of those involved in the CyberCrime world by exploring the nitty gritty of what they do, how they do it, and how this will impact the future of CyberCrime.
Would recommend others to check out other related books like: Ghost in wires / Coders / Future Crime
This is not a book I'd have a pleasure to have on my bookshelf. Because its one of them books that you have to sift through a lot of content just to find a few punchlines or nuggets that are worth the book
Yet it is worth having a 1 day deep read of it!!
Writing is well, but sadly let down by the execution of its structure. It could have been a great book if approached well.
The writing is too journalistic and narrative driven to have any coherent analysis or value to offer, which sucks the substance and life out of the book.
Would have liked to seen more tdetail of the everyday lives of those involved in the CyberCrime world by exploring the nitty gritty of what they do, how they do it, and how this will impact the future of CyberCrime.
Would recommend others to check out other related books like: Ghost in wires / Coders / Future Crime
This is not a book I'd have a pleasure to have on my bookshelf. Because its one of them books that you have to sift through a lot of content just to find a few punchlines or nuggets that are worth the book
Yet it is worth having a 1 day deep read of it!!
March 26, 2019
I received an Advanced Readers Copy of this book and immediately put it in my 'to read next' pile. Once I picked it up, I could not put it down. It truly is an adventure and was massively interesting to read about how different factors in the cyber world work their scams, their people, what companies do to prevent this, mistakes that companies make with the kind of people they hire to do cybersercurity, the different kinds of things that can potentially be hacked, history about election influencers and more. Kate Fazzini writes well with the amount of detail necessary to keep a good story going and to keep your attention. This book comes out in June and is one you'll want to put on your 'to read next' pile for sure.
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