Ask HN: Books Like “Stealing the Network” or “Jeff Aiken Novels” | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Books Like “Stealing the Network” or “Jeff Aiken Novels”

4 pointsomnibrain6 comments

I'm looking for more books like the "Stealing the Network" series or the Jeff Aiken novels by Mark Russinovich. Books telling fictional stories about IT security and hacking using contemporary (or near-near future) believable (if not accurate) technology. It may sound harsh, but if you don't know the Stealing the Network books you may probably not know what I mean. They are to "hacking" novels like the movie Gravity is to Sci-Fi movies. Or to stay in movie terms: more "Sneakers" than "Password: Swordfish". ;)

I'm just interested in fictional "hacking" books, that don't make you cringe all the time if you know a thing or two about the subject.

I also read the Daniel Suarez books.

The stealing the network series is awesome. I just read "The Director" which was decent.

There are a lot of non-fiction books that read the same as a fiction though; Ghost in the Wires, The Art of Intrusion (really fun read), Fatal System Error, and of course if you haven't read Cuckoo's Egg, you should.

Reamde by Neal Stephenson is also good.

Reamde is good, but far too long. It should have been two thirds.

How about the Defcon reading list, https://www.defcon.org/html/links/book-list.html?

Thanks, I did not know this list. But it looks like as other than (older) "higher fiction" cyberpunk literature it either contains technology books or non-fiction books.

I'm looking for contemporary (or near-near future), non-cringy (or less-cringy) tech-heavy technothrillers.

You're asking for fiction that is constrained to be non-fictional for technology :) That could be dramatizations of historical events, autobiography, research or alternate history.

Charles Stross Laundry Files series may qualify, it mixes computer science, occult and espionage themes.

Invisible armies and swarm by Jon Evans looks like a good match for what you seek. The authors page about the first book: http://www.rezendi.com/invisibleArmies.htm

Reply on news.ycombinator.com