Future Crimes is a very detailed book, looking at all various ways that technology can be exploited for nefarious purposes. It’s a really good read, though it leaves you with a lingering paranoia about every device in your home. After the chapter on IoT (internet of things) devices, I googled whether our robot vacuum had a vulnerability (it did).

I already knew about many of themes in the book, such as the scale and types of attack around fraud and identity. But it was still a good read for really driving home the point, with lots of different examples to illustrate the scale of the problem.

In some ways it was oddly hilarious, with criminal enterprises adopting many of the tools and techniques of the general software industry, such as feature requests for different types of crimeware (criminal software).

I think my only critique would be that there’s so little (in comparison) about what can be done and what normal people can do to protect themselves. I think an interesting companion piece would be to highlight all the ways these types of crimes can be combatted. There is a little index at the back, but I feel like having some things interwoven throughout the narrative would have provided a bit more perspective on what has been successful in countering some of these threats. Though he mentioned my favourite piece of regulation (GDPR) in a positive light, so to there’s that.

Anyway, it’s a great read, especially for the person who has weak passwords and doesn’t lock their phones (apparently 40% of people don’t??) As always, the weakest link in a security chain is a person.