Underground
By Suelette Dreyfus
Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier is a 1997 book by Suelette Dreyfus, researched by Julian Assange. It describes the exploits of Australian, American, and British black hat hackers during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Assange himself. The book also mentions other hackers who had contact with the protagonists, including Erik Bloodaxe of the Legion of Doom and Corrupt of the Masters of Deception.
The first chapter of Underground relates the diffusion and reactions of the computer security community to the WANK worm that attacked DEC VMS computers over the DECnet in 1989 and was purportedly coded by a Melbourne hacker. As of 2010, the book has sold 10,000 copies. The author made the electronic edition of the book freely available in 2001; when it was announced on Slashdot, the server housing the book crashed due to the demand for the book. It reached 400,000 downloads within two years. The 2002 documentary In the Realm of the Hackers, directed by Kevin Anderson and centred on Phoenix and Electron, was inspired by this book.
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Suelette Dreyfus
Suelette Dreyfus is a technology researcher, journalist, and lecturer in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne. She is also the principal researcher on the impact of digital technologies on whistleblowing as a form of freedom of expression.
Biography
Her research includes information systems, digital security, privacy, and the impact of technology on whistleblowing, health informatics, and e-education. Dreyfus’ work in e-health has focused on the patient information experience in the health system and the role of technology in error incident reporting in hospital settings. She has co-invented prototypes in information design for pathology reports to allow doctors to improve communication with patients and families regarding the status of their diseases in progressive and chronic illnesses such as diabetes. Her education research has focused on using social media to teach foreign languages to English-speaking primary school students, particularly for complex languages that require more hours of practice, such as Asian languages.
Dreyfus has written about the importance of protecting Freedom of Information Access (FOI), the problems of information asymmetry and “tool asymmetry” between the individual citizen and the state, and the trend of “security clearance creep”. She was a member of the WikiLeaks advisory board. Her essays have also appeared in The Conversation, discussing the importance of protecting public access to strong encryption, the need for legal protections for whistleblowers, and the security paradox of legislation enforcing metadata retention for two years for everyone in Australia.
Suelette Dreyfus
