
CRACK99
The Takedown of a $100 Million Chinese Software Pirate
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Narrated by:
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Mark Peckham
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By:
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David Locke Hall
About this listen
The utterly gripping story of the most outrageous case of cyber piracy prosecuted by the US Department of Justice.
A former US Navy intelligence officer, David Locke Hall was a federal prosecutor when a bizarre-sounding website, CRACK99, came to his attention. It looked like Craigslist on acid, but what it sold was anything but amateurish: thousands of high-tech software products used largely by the military, and for mere pennies on the dollar. Want to purchase satellite tracking software? No problem. Aerospace and aviation simulations? No problem. Communications systems designs? No problem. Software for Marine One, the presidential helicopter? No problem. With delivery times and customer service to rival the world's most successful online retailers, anybody, anywhere - including rogue regimes, terrorists, and countries forbidden from doing business with the United States - had access to these goods for any purpose whatsoever. But who was behind CRACK99, and where were they?
The Justice Department discouraged potentially costly, risky cases like this, preferring the low-hanging fruit that scored points from politicians and the public. But Hall and his colleagues were determined to find the culprit. They bought CRACK99's products for delivery in the United States, buying more and more to appeal to the budding entrepreneur in the man they identified as Xiang Li. After winning his confidence, they lured him to Saipan - a US commonwealth territory where Hall's own father had stormed the beaches with the marines during World War II. There, they set up an audacious sting that culminated in Xiang Li's capture and imprisonment. The value of the goods offered by CRACK99? A cool $100 million.
An eye-opening look at cybercrime and its chilling consequences for national security, CRACK99 is like a caper that resonates with every amazing detail.
©2015 David Locke Hall (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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sad story of power gone awry
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interesting listen
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Volume is too low
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Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
No, it was not like the story I was expecting at all. Maybe it was my fault for not looking in to it enough.Was CRACK99 worth the listening time?
I thought books like @WAR, Data and Goliath where way better. So no it was not worth my time.Not what I thought it was going to be.
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Great Story - everyone should listen
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Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?
Yes and no ... I loved the subject and facts about the tremendous amount of stealing by china's government sponsors crackers and cyber thieves.Have you listened to any of Mark Peckham’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
First listen by this narrator but liked his voice acting.Could you see CRACK99 being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?
YES!Any additional comments?
The story's subject was very interesting as it has become a very hot topic in the computer security community and is right in line with many articles explicitly detailing the amount of financial/economic destruction being done by foreign governments stealing America's corporate and government intellectual property.While the story but good, the author's writing style was ... shall I say ... wordy?! No, it was extremely wordy, over-cooked, redundant and repetitive to an extreme. Reminded me of a Baptist preacher. Anyone could start reading/listening just about anywhere in the book and understand the whole story because of how much he constantly repeated himself, as if he was talking to 2nd graders. I almost stopped listening to the story because of this, but I found that I could play it at double speed and even then skip several minutes/chapters and not miss anything important to the story.
Excellent subject matter and revealing facts
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Decent potential, but strays off topic constantly
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Extremely well-told story and gives a lot of insight into what it is like to be a federal prosecutor
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Important story that needed to be told
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self aggrandizing leo puffery....
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