Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

We published a reading list of our favorite cyber and cyber-adjacent books.

We're keeping it relatively broad. Books about privacy and surveillance are and will be a part of this.

This is meant to be a post to be updated regularly. If you have suggestions on what we should read next, please share!

https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/19/these-are-our-favorite-cyber-books-on-hacking-espionage-crypto-surveillance-and-more/

These are our favorite cyber books on hacking, espionage, crypto, surveillance, and more | TechCrunch

These are our favorite cybersecurity books, both by fiction authors, as well as journalists and researchers. 

TechCrunch
Jul 21, 2025 at 2:59pmWeb
Show threadAdam Shostack  Jul 21, 2025

@lorenzofb I don't have strong opinions on popular books, but I'd encourage you to explicitly filter out those that are sensationalistic or have enough factual errors that experts roll their eyes.

My favorite tell for sensationalism is that they treat claims that cybercrime is a trillion dollar problem (that is, bigger than most economies in the world) as if they're so credible as to not require discussion.

My second favorite tell is that they quote breach costs in dollars per record.

Show threadLoren KohnfelderJul 21, 2025
@adamshostack This morning the NYT quoted US State Dept: "the average annual cost of cybercrime worldwide is expected to soar from $8.4 trillion in 2022 to more than 23 trillion in 2027."
https://2021-2025.state.gov/digital-press-briefing-with-anne-neuberger-deputy-national-security-advisor-for-cyber-and-emerging-technologies/ Do they call confirming that yes they said "trillion" fact checking?
Naturally, the article quotes this in context of coming AI-driven cybercrime apocolypse.
Technical Difficulties

Show threadAdam Shostack  Jul 21, 2025

@lmk What does this even mean:

"the average annual cost of cybercrime worldwide is expected to soar from $8.4 trillion in 2022 to more than 23 trillion in 2027. "

What's being averaged?

(I assume the state dept corrects the transcripts to reflect intended text, but I can't make sense of the word average in that quote, never mind the numbers.)

Show threadLoren KohnfelderJul 21, 2025
@adamshostack I had the same question myself. A cynical explanation occurs to me now: it's the average of a bunch of wildly different estimates the found in web search results - one mistook billions as trillions, and that dominated the computation of the average. State Dept is quoting FBI and IMF; the FBI reports I found are low two digit billions.
Show threadPaperpadJul 21, 2025
@lorenzofb I read The Cuckoo’s Egg, Cliff Stoll last year and very much enjoyed it
Show threadLorenzo Franceschi-BicchieraiJul 21, 2025
@paperpad It's amazing how relevant it still is