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
, 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:
