Book Review

Hallam-Baker, P. (2008). The dotCrime Manifesto: How to Stop Internet Crime. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison-Wesley. 415 + xxix pages,
ISBN: 0-321-50358-9, US$29.99

Reviewed by Gary C. Kessler
Champlain College
Burlington, VT 05401
gary.kessler@champlain.edu
 

(first four paragraphs of review)

At the beginning of each fall semester, an e-mail routinely circulates around university campuses recounting those technologies that this year's incoming class grew up with and, therefore, for which they have no memory of a time before those technologies existed -- such as a ubiquitously available Internet, GPS satellite technology, CallerID, and karaoke. Most of today's freshmen (in fact, most of today's user community) mistake their familiarity with using a technology as actually understanding how that technology works; not only do most users not really understand the workings, they also don't know the history, background, and evolution of these technologies. Nevertheless, many of our incoming students consider themselves experts.

I took my first computer programming class as a college sophomore in 1973, early in the Information Age. Even as a 19 year old, I realized that if we were really in an Information Age, then information should have value, we should take steps to protect that information, and, perhaps, violating the integrity of information systems should have consequences. (Yes, even then I complained to my college registrar about social security numbers being used as student identification numbers.)

Phillip Hallam-Baker's The dotCrime Manifesto is a wake-up call for all of those who do not yet recognize the threat of crime in cyberspace and how our own actions and lack of understanding enables such an environment. The book describes the problem of criminal activity in cyberspace by providing a historical context with a particular emphasis on the evolution of the security mechanisms employed by Internet protocols and Web applications. This approach is sorely needed. There are many excellent texts describing how to build secure applications, systems, and networks -- often by building from the ground up. There are few treatises, however, on how to secure an existing global network -- sort of akin to repairing an airplane while in-flight. Since we cannot rebuild the Internet, we need to find strategies to strengthen it. But such a fix is not merely technical in nature; the Internet is also largely a social phenomenon (as Licklider predicted more than 45 years ago).

This book has 19 chapters plus an appendix, divided into four sections. Section one is titled "People Not Bits" and is composed of five chapters that provide the background and historical context necessary so that the reader can understand Hallam-Baker's perspective of the problem. More importantly, this history lesson helps the reader appreciate why known e-crime problems on the 'Net continue to persist despite the many solutions that have been proposed, ranging from the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to the latest privacy-enhanced version of Internet Explorer. E-crime as a social issue is the main theme here. Technology, Hallam-Baker argues, is not the sole avenue to eliminating cybercrime because technology is not the root cause; the motive is money and the perpetrators are people.
 

(continued)