When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien wanted to study aerospace engineering, but she was soon drawn to the school's venerable tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original 'hacking.' Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead, two others were on trial, and two had been institutionalized. And Alien's adventures were only just beginning. After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her large cache of virtual weapons-and the trespassing and social engineering talents she first developed while 'hacking' at MIT. The company tested its clients' security by every means possible-not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. (She once got into the vault of a major bank by posing as its auditor.) Alien now runs her own boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world's biggest and most vulnerable institutions-banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, pacey treatment it deserves.
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