Space Rogue

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I was somewhat familiar with much of the history and many of the players after thirty years of speaking at hacker and security conferences and writing think pieces about the same, so the trip for me through these pages was also a delight on that score alone. But you did not have to be there then to love this book-- How the Hackers Known as the L0pht Changed the World enables you to be there now. - Richard Thieme Author and DEFCON speaker Cris Thomas has done a great service to history with his clear-eyed autobiography covering the rise and legacy of the Boston-based hacker collective, the L0pht. This readable portrait of the American 1990s hacker scene covers a turbulent and exciting period when many hackers not only clamored for security but demonstrated how to achieve it. This book-complementary and corrective to existing accounts-is essential reading for those who care about the history of hacking and computer security. - Gabriella Coleman Author Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous Space Rogue: How the Hackers Known as L0pht Changed The World is a behind the scenes expose of how a group of Boston hackers came together in the 1990s as a team to bring the underground hacker ethos of information wants to be free and adversarial thinking to the nascent field of cybersecurity. Their hacker conference presentations, vulnerability reports, hacker tools, U.S. Senate testimony, and founding of an influential information security consultancy in 2000 shaped the practice of cybersecurity as we know it today. - Chris Wysopal (Weld Pond) Co-founder & CTO Veracode SPACE ROGUE is a nostalgic inside look at one of the cybersecurity world's most storied hacker groups. L0pht's warnings about the security of the early-modern internet were a prescient voice of reason on many of the same cybersecurity concerns we're still sadly facing over two decades later. As a bonus, Cris Thomas' engaging storytelling provides an intimate reminder of what many of us still consider the 'hacker mentality' and something that's not easily taught -- namely, figuring things out (and doing) for yourself, thinking innovatively, acting creatively, and having an internal passion to constantly learn new things. -Dr. Richard Forno Cybersecurity professor and longtime industry veteran