The Hacker Crackdown or Network Maturity Model

The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier

Author: Bruce Sterling

The AT&T long-distance network crashes, and millions of calls go unanswered. A computer hacker reprograms a switching station, and calls to a Florida probation office are shunted to a New York phone-sex hotline. An underground computer bulletin board publishes a pilfered BellSouth document on the 911 emergency system, making it available to anyone who dials up. How did so much illicit power reach the hands of an undisciplined few - and what should be done about it? You are about to descend into a strange netherworld - one that sprang into existence when computers were first connected to telephones. This place has no physical location; it exists only in the networks that bind together its population. Like any frontier, it is home to a wide range of personalities, from legitimate computer professionals to those known only by their noms de net; denizens like Knight Lightning, Leftist, Compu-Phreak, Major Havoc, and Silver Spy; groups like the Lords of Chaos, Phantom Access Associates, Shadow Brotherhood, and the Coalition of Hi-Tech Pirates. This is not normal space, but "cyberspace." And if you use a computer, cyberspace is moving inexorably closer to you with each passing day. Your guide on this journey is bestselling science fiction author and longtime computer user Bruce Sterling, who was galvanized into action following the massive "hacker crackdowns" of 1990, in which law enforcement officers executed search warrants across the country against lawbreakers - and suspected lawbreakers - in the computer underground. In The Hacker Crackdown, Sterling - respected by hackers, law officers, and civil libertarians alike - uses his unique reportorial access and his considerable powers as a novelist to weave a startling narrative that informs, compels, and appalls. Sterling has researched all corners of this challenging and controversial new world for this book. In it we meet outlaws and cops, bureaucrats and rebels, geniuses and grifters: all denizens of a dazzling e

Publishers Weekly

Cyberpunk novelist Sterling (Involution Ocean) has produced by far the most stylish report from the computer outlaw culture since Steven Levy's Hackers. In jazzy New Journalism proE;e, sounding like Tom Wolfe reporting on a gunfight at the Cybernetic Corral, Sterling makes readers feel at home with the hackers, marshals, rebels and bureaucrats of the electronic frontier. He opens with a social history of the telephone in order to explain how the Jan. 15, 1990, crash of AT&T's long-distance switching system led to a crackdown on high-tech outlaws suspected of using their knowledge of eyberspace to invade the phone company's and other corporations' supposedly secure networks. After explaining the nature of eyberspace forms like electronic bulletin boards in detail, Sterling makes the hackers-who live in the ether between terminals under noms de nets such as VaxCat-as vivid as Wyatt Earp and Doe Holliday. His book goes a long way towards explaining the emerging digital world and its ethos. (Oct.)

Library Journal

This well-written history of ``cyberspace'' and computer hackers begins with the failure of AT&T's long-distance telephone switching system in January 1990 (the subject of Leonard Lee's The Day the Phones Stopped , LJ 7/91). Subsequently, a number of hackers were accused of being responsible, although AT&T formally acknowledged otherwise. In detailing various formal efforts to prosecute the ``phone phreaks'' and hackers, cyberpunk sf author Sterling ( Islands in the Net , LJ 6/15/88) avoids attributing the near-mystical genius qualities that too many authors have bestowed upon the computer and telephone ``outlaws.'' Instead, he realistically describes their biases and philosophical shortcomings. Sterling's concern for the Steve Jackson Games prosecution, which occurred erroneously in conjunction with several legitimate raids in Austin, leads him to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and he concludes with a well-balanced look at this new group of civil libertarians. Written with humor and intelligence, this book is highly recommended. See also Katie Hafner and John Markoff's Cyperpunk , LJ 6/1/91.--Ed.-- Hilary D. Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Livermore, Cal.

BookList

Sterling collaborated with William Gibson on "The Difference Engine" (BKL D 1 90), about what might have resulted had Charles Babbage's 1842 prototype of the computer succeeded. That novel seems to have impelled Sterling toward the present effort, a feisty survey of the dilemmas electronic technologies present for software firms, law enforcement agencies, hackers, and civil libertarians. He begins with a colorful portrait of Alexander Graham Bell and the Bell System, since Bell's divestiture in 1982 heralded much of the contemporary confusion, and it was with the telephone that cyberspace, that place somewhere between speakers, became "real." He discusses the Computer Fraud and Abuse and the Electronic Communications and Privacy acts of 1986. But his attentions center on the AT&T long-distance crash of 1990 and subsequent federal raids on hackers such as NuPrometheus, which once stole a jealousy guarded piece of Apple software, and Knight Lightning, actually tried for software piracy. Nineteen ninety was a year of raids, arrests, and trials, the upshot of which is that a host of groups have dug in on the battle for the free flow of electronic information. At the same time, electronic crimes are likely to become more sophisticated and international. Sterling relates all this with an insider's grasp of detail, and with irreverent humor. Offbeat and brilliant.

Booknews

Father of "cyberpunk" science fiction and techno-journalist, Sterling writes in his popular style for this nonfiction book that looks at computer hacking from both sides of the law. He interviews outlaw hackers and phone phreaks, law enforcement personnel, and civil libertarians, and presents a look at the people involved in the world of cyberspace and the politics of the new technological world. No references. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

New interesting textbook: Collège Estimant 1-13

Network Maturity Model

Author: William J Baumann

The Network Maturity Model (NMM) addresses the need for a process-based approach to ensuring network quality. Application of the model to enterprise networks provides gains in terms of over all quality, process reliability and positive impacts on customers.

The extensive background in academia and real-world industry of the engineer authors has produced a work which synergistically integrates a myriad of disciplines and experience relevant to an effective network quality system. For example, within the model the authors have crafted network activities related to Enterprise business models, and integrated Enterprise Management with Network Engineering and Network Operations.

The Network Maturity Model (NMM) provides a process model for a network management system. Compliance to the NMM ensures that processes are defined, established and continuously improved to support the development of quality networks in a repeatable manner. Unique to the NMM is it provides a strong focus on stakeholder satisfaction, and the integration of network management, development and operations processes to provide higher quality networks. Another unique feature of the NMM is its components which address the security, acquisition, hardware, customer, and other activities unique to networks.

The model describes a comprehensive quality and process capability across all aspects of computer networks. It is designed as a stand-alone model which provides quality system elements for network management, engineering, and operational components. It encompasses a multi-discipline approach which integrates elements of quality standards including ISO 9000, TL 9000 and Baldrige. Use of the modelprovides network quality managers and professionals with a single integrated maturity model, eliminating the need to use separate models for different network activities such as the software CMM for network software development.