Mafiaboy: A Portrait of the Hacker As a Young Man

In 2000 someone caused the Web sites of Amazon, CNN, Dell, E*Trade, eBay, and Yahoo! to crash, stirring panic from Silicon Valley to the White House. The FBI, police, and independent security experts launched a manhunt as President Clinton convened a cyber security summit with the leading technology experts to discuss how best to protect the nation's information infrastructure from future attacks. After two months and hundreds of hours of wiretapping, law enforcement officials executed a late-night raid and came face-to-face with the most wanted man in cyberspace: a 15-year-old kid whose username was "Mafiaboy." Despite requests from every major media outlet, that kid, Michael Calce, has never spoken publicly about his crimes--until now. Part thriller, part exposé, Calce's cautionary tale will take you on a tour of hacking and show how its rapid evolution is making the Internet the new frontier for crime in the 21st century.