[ book tip by Isidore Voight ] Data Hammer is the first publication by young Chinese writer Kim Xupei, who is a trained computer programmer and involved in the cyber-arts collective N3krozoft Ltd. In this autobiographical novel, Xupei recollects his memories as a informatics student at Hong Kong polytechnic university, where he was learning the basics of computer programming by day, while cracking corporate networks for the Hong Kong crime lords by night.

Filled with a dry sense of humour and full of anecdotes, the book never becomes too technical, and offers a breathtaking journey through the dawn of the Internet era in South-Eastern Asia. Playing a permanent cat-and-mouse game with Chinese cybercrime units, we follow the protagonist through countless exploits ranging from intrusions into the higly secured Singaporean data centers to stealth attacks on the optic fiber tunnels of the Asian Internet backbone, before jumping into the shady corridors of a North Korean hacker academy.

[ book info ] Xupei, Kim: Data Hammer. (Book language: English) Greyscale Editions, Luxembourg, 2008 .