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We tend to think of hackers as misanthrope teenagers locked in the back bedroom. In fact hacking, or at least the modern variant of it, is part of a sophisticated international crime network, that stretches from the Bay Area to the furthest reaches of the world. Fueled by the easy and international movement of money in a globalized economy, stolen data is turned into billions of illegal dollars.
Kevin Poulsen, once a hacker himself, now the senior editor of Wired.com, in his book
Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_utQHO0NW-NNueTbqqjGstfAFbOrJC9Xed7uHXwemyZPdy9KaUnkq23i6wLtyc48RBvMBsRbN-LkLk-3il9rMfNNk0JZTwuMNH01ekZ_D1WsJXf3oyCOseq7G8s02jY-XNIZgbv0eDyFwWplBKo=s0-d)
, takes us through the story of Max Butler, a hacker extraordinaire who would ultimately receive the longest prison sentence ever handed out to a hacker.
My conversation with Kevin Poulsen: