eriksmartt.com>Selected Archives

How to Own a Continent

I just finished reading "Stealing the Network: How to Own a Continent" and was pleasantly surprised to find the book more enjoyable then I had expected. "How to Own a Continent" is the second book in the "Stealing the Network" series, which are a unique genre of cyber-thriller. The books are fictional stories about computer hacking that use real technology in the exploits. Some of them are a bit of a stretch, but the general idea is that even though the stories are fiction, there's no reason they couldn't actually happen. Interestingly, the books are written by actual hackers and security experts, and some of the stories require following snippets of source code and packet logs. It's great fun if you're willing to put aside the sometimes simple story lines and just enjoy the technology behind them.

The first in the series, "Stealing the Network: How to Own the Box", is a collection of short stories written in this style. It's a good introduction to the genre. The second, "How to Own a Continent", takes a different approach by telling a single large story, in chapters written by different authors. Each chapter tells a different piece of the collective hack.