Category: Education

Latest Read: Hackers

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 24, 2023

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. The former chief technology correspondent for Newsweek, today Steven is an editor at Wired and author of eight books including Crypto, which won the Frankfurt ebook award for best non-fiction book of 2001.

So, the best way to introduce this release from 1984 is to simply define the term Hacker as ‘a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means.’

How times have certainly changed. Today popular culture has certainly morphed this term into someone who is able to subvert computer security for malicious purposes. This person should be more accurate defined as a cyber criminal. Needless to say there is a big difference since it will surprise many to discover the first computer game was written in 1961.

In fact, Steve provides a historical view of hackers dating back to 1946. At MIT, an on-camps model railroad club, the Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) was the first hacker club in America.

Indeed, a model railroad club on campus allowed talented introverts access to a locked room to construct HO scale railroad layouts. This makes the model railroading of my childhood seem like Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz.

Tags Hackers, Steven Levy

Education Reading

Latest Read: No Place to Hide

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 17, 2023

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald. Glenn is an American journalist, author, and former lawyer with a J.D. from New York University School of Law.

Glenn initially founded a law firm concentrating on First Amendment litigation. He later began writing for Salon and then for The Guardian. He contributed to their 2014 Pulitzer Prize. Glenn was also one of three reporters who won the 2013 George Polk Award.

In 2014, he cofounded The Intercept until his resignation in October 2020. He has since began self-publishing on Substack. Glenn’s book is a focus to the request made by Edward Snowden to contact Glenn in 2013 regarding US surveillance.

So Glenn documents how was initially contacted and actually did not respond thinking the outreach was a fake attempt. Edward only allowed himself to be an anonymous source with evidence of US government spying.

In fact, after Snowden reached out repeatedly through encrypted channels, Glenn did agree to travel to Hong Kong. This turned out to be the digital version of The Pentagon Papers leak by Daniel Ellsberg.

Tags Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide, surveillance

Education Reading

Latest Read: Dark Territory

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 10, 2023

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan. Fred is an American author and journalist currently writing at Slate and previously at The Boston Globe and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Scientific American.

He received a 1982 Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to the Boston Globe Magazine’s “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age” regarding he Soviet arms race. He holds both a Master of Science and Ph.D. in political science from MIT. His weekly “War Stories” column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign policy.

Fred shares that in June 1983, then President Reagan watched the movie War Games. A kid (actor Matthew Broderick) unknowingly playing with his home computer dialed into the Pentagon and controlled military computers. Reagan, a former actor requested from his military Joint Chiefs if this could actually happened. The generals confirmed it was indeed possible. And this may have started the first White House action to protect Hilary computers.

Yet it would be President George H.W. Bush who first leveraged American cyber attacks during the 1991 Gulf War invasion to shut down all military communications used by Saddam Hussein. This is the foundation Fred establishes for all future cyber wars fought by America.

Tags cyber war, Dark Territory, Fred Kaplan

Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest Read: Fire in the Lake

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 3, 2023

Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald. Published in 1972, Fire in the Lake was the first history of Vietnam written by an American. A journalist and historian Frances won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award as result of her reporting in Vietnam in 1966.

This is certainly a very worthy book to continue my education of the American war that lasted a generation. Approaching this book, 50 years after initial publication may appear ‘ancient’ by today’s internet-connected world. I can even recall assigned chapter readings of this book in college along with Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War and Michael Herr’s Dispatches among other powerful writers.

Frances has simply written her outstanding analysis in two parts. First, addressing Vietnam, the Vietnamese people, and their long history of foreign oppression. This includes a Chinese occupation which lasted over 1,000 years and concludes with the era of French colonization of Indochina.

The second part of this book is addressing the American War effort which began during World War II and expanded under French rule until the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. At the time of publication, President Nixon was ramping up strategic bombing while withdrawing American troops. The American effort would end three years after publication in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.

Tags Fire in the Lake, Frances FitzGerald, Vietnam War

Blockchain Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Tracers in the Dark

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 27, 2023

Tracers in the D ark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg. Andy a senior technology writer at Wired. He previously worked as a staff writer at Forbes magazine and as a contributor to their online website.

Indeed, with every great advancement or popular service, criminals manage to insert themselves to commit new types of crime. Cryptocurrency (aka Bitcoin) is the latest example of a digital advancement under exploitation, creating black markets that hide financial transactions.

Yet this powerful technology allows criminals to actually conduct business right out in the open instead of hiding drug transactions, money laundering, and human trafficking in the analog world. In fact, during the pandemic, crypto’s value simply exploded but the damage had already been done.

Internet culture quickly baked the idea on social media sites and technology blogs, especially on the digital underground (Dark web) that this technology was in fact a digital, anonymous, private money source. And more importantly to criminals it was untraceable.

This is attributed to blockchain ledgers which are deployed anonymously. Andy reveals how digital criminal empires are built on crypto. Yet we also learn of their simple mistakes resulting in their takedown. Well….kinda of a takedown.

Tags Andy Greenberg, Crypto, Cryptocurrency, Tracers in the Dark