The Future of Hacking: The Rise of Cybercrime and the Fight to Keep Us Safe

Product designer Scherling (Digital Transformation in Design) delivers a jumbled overview of the current state of cybersecurity. Pushing back against the notion that hackers are antisocial “maniacal geniuses,” Scherling cites studies that found they aren’t necessarily tech-savvy, with many sourcing malicious code from digital black markets for as little as $50. She surveys major hacks from the past decade, describing how a 2017 Equifax breach exposed the Social Security numbers of over 150 million people and how a software engineer extracted data on 100 million people from Capital One in 2019. However, Scherling draws from these incidents only the superficial observation that businesses and individuals should “become more cyber aware and resilient.” This lack of perspective gives the volume a listless feel, as when she extols Denmark and South Korea for their data privacy policies and online security infrastructure, but provides few details on how they work or what other countries might learn from them. While tangents on “ethical hackers” who work with businesses to identify security vulnerabilities and online scam centers in the global south that operate like sweatshops are stimulating enough, Scherling fails to integrate them into a coherent argument. Lacking a clear point or perspective, this doesn’t make much of an impact. (July)