Ian Van Wye, assistant editor extraordinaire, just informed me that the book is at the publishing equivalent of “Disk Full” and I only have three pages for the acknowledgments. I will, therefore, be concise. My deepest thanks to:
Dean Heather Gerken for her unconditional support, no matter how crazy the request; my colleagues at Yale Law School, before whom I presented four chapters of a very early draft, for being constant sources of inspiration and instruction; Oona Hathaway, with whom I wrote my previous book and intended to write this one but who had different intentions, for the countless conversations about “cyber” over the years that have profoundly shaped my thinking; Gideon Yaffe, my brilliant colleague and friend, who is always available for the emergency phone call, for helping me think through everything always; and Bruce Ackerman, for being Bruce Ackerman.
Sean O’Brien for teaching me how to hack and then teaching others with me about how to hack; and Laurin Weissinger, former cyberfellow and member of our hacking course triumvirate, for teaching me cybersecurity, for providing penetrating comments on an earlier draft that saved me much embarrassment, and for coming to Las Vegas in August several years running just to explain UEFI to me for the umpteenth time.
Cohosts of In Lieu of Fun—Ben Wittes, Kate Klonick, and Genevieve Della Fara—and the Greek Chorus for breaking through the gloom at 5:00 p.m. each day and keeping me going during the pandemic; Ben and Kate also went through the manuscript and gave me excellent notes (Kate even color-coded hers).
Blaise Fangman, Paul Zebb, Neil Sarin, Ivy Rogers, and Miriam Khanukaev for excellent research assistance at early stages in the project; Lauren Delwiche, first-year undergraduate but seasoned hacker, for teaching me how email servers really work and reading through the text, offering suggestions and corrections; Daniel Urke, for helping me learn to fuzz, decipher worm.c, and build an IoT botnet; Kelly Zhou, code Olympian and visual artist, for designing the gorgeous diagrams in the book; and Evan Gorelick, for turning copyediting into an art form.
Lisa Page for teaching me national security law while we taught Cybersecurity and Policy together at Yale; Jonathan Lusthaus for sharing his fascinating research on Eastern European cybercrime; Ruzica Piskac for teaching me about Herbrand models and the joys of predicate abstraction; the formal methods group at Yale—Ruzica, Timos Antronopoulous, and Samuel Judson—for being such excellent collaborators; and Sam Judson, who went over the manuscript and saved me from more than one embarrassment.
Vesselin Bontchev, Katrin Totcheva, Sarah Gordon, and Cameron LaCroix for their time and candor—endnotes indicate those places where I relied on these interviews; Brian Krebs, for a long telephone conversation about cybercrime that greatly affected my thinking; and Elliott Peterson, for several conversations about how the FBI investigates cybercrimes and for arranging for the Mirai group—Paras Jha, Josiah White, and Dalton Norman—to speak to my Cybersecurity class (via Zoom and off the record).
Rivi Weill, for organizing one of the most exciting and scariest nights of my life, when I talked about the book for almost five hours with Iftach Ian Amit, Amit Ashkenazi, Anat Bremler-Barr, Moti Geva, Amit Sheniak, Yahli Shereshevsky, and Tal Zarsky.
Fiona Furnari, the best research assistant in history, who helped me bang the manuscript into shape. She did more than anyone to improve this book. If you laugh, or enjoy a turn of phrase, it is probably Fiona’s contribution.
Stuart Proffitt, the legendary editor at Allen Lane, not only for his characteristically penetrating notes on previous versions of the book, but also for advising me years ago to “write the book that you’ll be proud to have written in thirty years.”
Alex Star, my editor at FSG, who lived up to his sterling reputation as the platonic form of editor.
Elyse Cheney, my literary agent, who was supportive of this project from the start but suggested that twenty-five hacks was perhaps too much, better to start with five. Elyse never misses.
My kids, Liza and Drin, for being great company and extremely funny, though I would probably still love them even if they weren’t.
Alison, my secret agent. Nothing is possible without you.
Finally, to Elaine Shapiro, the Perfect Jewish Mother. Love you, Mom. Zel.