Breaking and Entering

The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien"

By: Jeremy N. Smith

Narrated by: Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins

Publisher's summary

This taut, true thriller takes a deep dive into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker - a woman known only as Alien.

When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien wanted to study aerospace engineering, but she was soon drawn to the school’s venerable tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original “hacking”. Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead, two others were on trial, and two had been institutionalized. Alien’s adventures were only just beginning.

After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her large cache of virtual weapons - and the trespassing and social engineering talents she first developed while “hacking” at MIT. The company tested its clients’ security by every means possible - not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. (She once got into the vault of a major bank by posing as its auditor.)

Alien now runs her own boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world’s biggest and most vulnerable institutions - banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft.

In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, pacey treatment it deserves.

©2019 Jeremy N. Smith (P)2019 Recorded Books

Very inspirational

The story of Elizabeth Tessman is fascinating and inspiring and the narrator did an excellent job in performing the hacker's tales. I highly recommend this book!

A good read

A fun and accurate guide to the lives of the unstoppably curious nerds in our midst.

Great story of information security

Oh. My! This story appealed to me because my daughter went to MIT, and some of the “hacking” antics described by the main character, my daughter experienced and shared with me.
The bonus was the story of how information hacking developed, how sophisticated it is, who it affects and where it’s going.
If this doesn’t inspire you to get serious about password security and guarding all you personal data like your life depended on it, I don’t know what will.

An important lesson for all of us in a digital world

Not at all what I expected. A thoughtful “history” of the dangerous side of hacking from the perspective of those “white hats” hired to look for weaknesses in data security. It reveals how vulnerable we all are and how the black hats can take advantage of our gullibility and casualness to steal our data, identity and security. The story is told from the POV of a fascinating character, “Alien” an MIT student who got thrills in college breaking and entering into physical locations.
My first audio book and I really enjoyed it. Can’t wait to start my next audible book.

Slow and interesting

Narrator was good, but read extremely slow. Interesting story and perspective of a woman hacker.

Poorly read but vaguely entertaining

Terrible reading.

MIT exceptionalism. You know, you’re actually not all that.

Otherwise I found it quite uplifting to hear about a woman’s success in this overwhelmingly male world.

Essential reading for Internet security

I didn't understand the technical aspect of this but it is not essential to grasp the overall reach of internet security problems and the "Black Hats" who cause the problems. the author keeps the story moving by relating it through the tale of the development of a hacker.

A riveting, eye-opening , informative "read"!

I am no doubt biased, being in the Information Security arena 24/7, but this book was a riveting, informative "take a walk with me" adventure from start to finish! I hope I will have the opportunity to high-five "Alien" one day!

Could have been so much better

Good book for the hackers among us but way too wordy. Needed to concentrate on the different hacks and not all the auxiliary life situations (what they had to eat, what they were wearing, the romances, etc)

Coming of age as a hacker

Based on the review in the NY Times, I thought that this would be a techno-thriller like The Cuckoo's Egg which outlines the story of spy vs. spy in the high-stakes espionage of computer hackery. But this was not the case at all. This is more of a literary memoir of a young woman coming of age in the world of computer security. From the youthful indiscretions of a drug-fueled counter-culture of a clique of hackers at MIT to a small businesswoman in Colorado worried about meeting the next payroll.

The technical part of the memoir outlines some of the techniques of "Pen-Testing" -- trying to penetrate computer systems using both technical and social engineering methods. These were interesting to me although I do not think that there was much to learn about how this is done for someone even modestly acquainted with computer security. But, the author does make it seem exciting to deploy a large-scale "phishing" scam and waiting expectantly for the "phishs" to bite -- followed up by a social engineering phone-call. "You won an Ipod. Just download this file for your free gift card."

Along the way, the story is also one of a woman coming of age in a male-dominated field. The heroine recapitulates some of the characteristics of Ellsbeth Salander in Woman with the Dragon Tattoo -- Goth clothing, leather mini-skirts, roller-blades and motor-cycles. By the conclusion, it all ends with business suits, play-dates, day-care centers, and a Subaru Outback. There is also enough sex interwoven with the hacking to keep the reader's attention.

The narration is excellent. Solid and well-paced. I found the first chapters of the book a little slow, but the last two-thirds were captivating driveway listening.