Preview
  • A Vulnerable System

  • The History of Information Security in the Computer Age
  • By: Andrew J. Stewart
  • Narrated by: Rick Adamson
  • Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (31 ratings)

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A Vulnerable System

By: Andrew J. Stewart
Narrated by: Rick Adamson
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Publisher's summary

Andrew J. Stewart convincingly shows that emergency software patches and new security products cannot provide the solution to threats such as computer hacking, viruses, software vulnerabilities, and electronic spying. Profound underlying structural problems must first be understood, confronted, and then addressed.

A Vulnerable System delivers a long view of the history of information security, beginning with the creation of the first digital computers during the Cold War. From the key institutions of the so-called military industrial complex in the 1950s to Silicon Valley start-ups in the 2020s, the relentless pursuit of new technologies has come at great cost. The absence of knowledge regarding the history of information security has caused the lessons of the past to be forsaken for the novelty of the present, and has led us to be collectively unable to meet the needs of the current day. From the very beginning of the information age, claims of secure systems have been crushed by practical reality.

The myriad risks to technology, Stewart reveals, cannot be addressed without first understanding how we arrived at this moment. A Vulnerable System is an enlightening and sobering history of a topic that affects crucial aspects of our lives.

©2021 Cornell University (P)2021 Tantor
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Interesting overview but incredulous adoption of U.S. official propaganda

It’s not technical so quite accessible for non technically knowledgeable readers (like myself). For technical experts (like my kids), it provides an overall historical narrative that can be interesting. One reproach is the adoption without any qualifications of the official US security State propaganda about current events (framing and allegations regarding Wikileaks, Snowden, the supposed hack by Russia of the Clinton campaign in 2016…). If you believe everything printed in the Washington Post about US national security, you will swallow everything in this book without difficulty.

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