Tangled Web: Tales of Digital Crime from the Sadows of Cyberspace.

• Author: Christy, Jim
• Position: Review

Tangled Web: Tales of Digital Crime From the Shadows of Cyberspace, Richard Power, Que, 2000, 450 pages.

Richard Power's Tangled Web: Tales of Digital Crime From the Shadows of Cyberspace presents one of the most comprehensive computer crime accounts available. The book unveils and explores in meticulous detail the present nature and scope of computer crime, and--more importantly--the tremendous potential that common criminals, terrorists, and nation-states now have at their fingertips.

Tangled Web offers a detailed account of the Citibank caper--a landmark case widely regarded as the most important computer crime ever committed--in which hackers from St. Petersburg, Russia, electronically hijacked $10,000,000.(1) The case was the first and only time a bank has admitted to an electronic hacking and resulting theft of money. Power's definitive investigative summary follows the crime in detail, from its accidental discovery by a South American Citibank customer to the identification and arrest of the perpetrators. Many questions have never been answered, however, and several unsolved mysteries still revolve around this case.

Power is the first to appropriately credit retired Senator Sam Nunn as the person responsible for drawing the attention of both the government and the private sector to this critical security issue. Senator Nunn chaired the 1996 "Security in Cyberspace" hearings before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations--the impetus for the tremendous amount of positive change in the legislation of digital crime in the last four years.

The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was the first congressional committee to hold hearings that outlined the threat to national security from cyberspace. Computers and networks control critical elements of society's infrastructure, like telecommunications, electrical power, gas and oil production and distribution, water, banking and finance, and emergency services--illustrating the tremendous importance of maintaining a secure cyberspace. These hearings were the first to describe the vulnerability of the most powerful nation in the world, not only to nation-states and terrorists, but even to "ankle biters."(2) Our dependence on the very technology that created the recent boom in our economy now constitutes our nation's Achilles heel.

President Clinton selected the "Security in Cyberspace" hearings as the forum to announce this nation's first policy initiative to protect our...