Books

World-renowned hacker Kevin Mitnick wrote The Art of Invisibility to teach the layman not only about the current state of internet surveillance, but also how to fight against it.

If you've ever been interested in what it "means" to have a presence on the internet, you need to read this book. You probably already know this, but everything you do, say, write, buy, sell, search or find on the internet is traceable...back to you. Fair warning, this book can make you feel a little sad as Mitnick speaks the cold hard truth about how privacy is a fleeting human right and how the internet (and the people who know how to use it for the wrong reasons) is essentially the microscope with eyes on every cellular thread of your life.

Despair not, however. Mitnick teaches his readers and fans what can be done to stay hidden in a room full of lights. Some of his tactics are far-fetched and unrealistic for most of us, but they show us with enough gumption, we can chose to not play the game. All in all, who better to trust than the grandfather of evasion?

Anyone interested in the history of hacking, cybersecurity, the beginning of Big Tech, or Beto O'Rourke, I would suggest taking a look at Joseph Menn's Cult of the Dead Cow. Cult of the Dead Cow (here forth referred to as CDC) are the original thought-fathers (and mothers) of ethical hacking and advocacy for responsible technology development.

Starting as a group of rag-tag kids who never found their place, CDC grew into the most influential cybersecurity think-tank to exist. What began as a group of delinquents conversing over dial-up message boards blossomed into a network of security savants who would go on to assist the likes of Google, Apple, Facebook and even our own government agencies to help make the internet a safer place.

CDC is a coming of age story but also a precautionary tale about doing what's right, specifically when it comes to putting very powerful technologies and toolsets into the hands of people who have the potential to make a difference, good or bad.

I only found Catherine Collin's Fallout: The True Story of the CIA's Secret War on Nuclear Trafficking, through a reference in Hadnagy's Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking, and boy was I satisfied with this purchase.

Collins and Frantz sink their claws into the history of the CIA and American clandestine operations throughout the world toward the end of the 20th century. This story pays very close attention to Pakistan, Libya, Iran and other middle-eastern nations who stuck their hands in the nuclear technologies cookie jar. The amount of detail in their accounts paints a nearly infallible timeline of nuclear proliferation in the middle east and Asia within the last 50-60 years. Without directly saying it, the authors point a devastatingly disapproving finger at the CIA, which had essentially mapped out the entire black market network, players and buyers, suppliers and manufacturers, payroll and projects, but decided to do very little to intervene until it was too late.

I won't say more than that. Highly recommend.

If you're at all interested in social psychology and want to understand why people say, think, and do the things they do, I highly recommend Christopher Hadnagy's Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking.

This read perfectly summarizes the science behind social interaction, and how to exploit the social pressures and instinctual behaviors we all succumb to. Hadnagy is primarily writing for security professionals, defensive and offensive, hoping to learn more about how to read and interpret human beings. However, I think this is a great read for anyone interested in the science of human interaction.

Hadnagy outlines how to collect information about people, how to pretext and prepare for communication with a person, how to exert influence and navigate the "vulnerabilities" that our brain, despite its complexity and processing power, inevitably experience when a relationship is perfectly cultivated. I highly recommend this book to those curious about the inner, untalked-about sanctums of human psychology and communication.