Book Review: The Electronic Criminals by Robert Farr (1975)

What can a fifty-year-old book teach us about cybersecurity? Written just as computing was beginning to enter the mainstream, The Electronic Criminals takes us into a terrifying new world of crime!

Fraud over Telex! Ransomware of physical tapes! Stealing passwords and hacking into mainframes!

The books has a strong start, but gently runs out of steam because there simply weren't many electronic criminals in the mid-1970s! Instead, the book is over-stuffed with "Catch Me If You Can" tales of chequebook fraud, stolen aeroplane tickets, and regular blackmail and bribery. It isn't quite a how-to guide for the budding fraudster, but it isn't too far off.

Nevertheless, there are some amazing and mind-boggling computer crimes described:

Computer print-outs concealed the massive fraud and fakery. Tapes were programmed so that computers would reject incriminating data and accept and produce only what would support the conspiracy. Computers were also used in playing hide-and-seek with investigators by switching data damaging to the swindlers from one code to another, just a step ahead of the authorities.

One common refrain is that the law of 1975 hadn't caught up with the reality of modern crime. In the above case, the…

… investors decided to sue IBM for $4 billion, claiming that the company’s inability to manufacture a swindle-proof computer had contributed to their loss. Despite the fact that IBM had claimed their computers are virtually tamper proof, the case was thrown out of court. Obviously no one can be expected to be perfect, not even an IBM computer.

And in another:

In a recent case in France the accused was charged with sabotage. He had intentionally erased valuable information recorded on a magnetic tape by passing it through a strong magnetic field. However, since the tape itself was undamaged the court ruled that no offense had been committed. The jury was directed to issue a verdict of “not guilty.”

Many of the "electronic" crimes are able to be facilitated by poor physical processes:

Computer center near London, England: Unguarded side door hooked open to allow employees to step out for fresh air. Top secret military and industrial information was stored in the center’s files.

Anyone who has done an ISO 27001 audit knows that pain!

It isn't just computers and data-tapes that are discussed. There's rather a large section on phone-tapping and eavesdropping bugs. Rather terrifyingly, there's also a section on what we might now call "Deep Fakes":

On tape recordings, words can be rearranged and new words can be built up from an assortment of syllables. The process is somewhat like fitting together bits of a jigsaw puzzle. Simply by inserting or deleting “nots” in a taped voice recording, affirmatives can be changed to negatives and negatives to affirmatives. Words can be borrowed from one part of a tape and fitted into another so the entire meaning is changed. By the same techniques, inflections of words can be altered.

Oh, and drone warfare!

Today there are infrared cameras that can indeed see you in the dark, even portable TV cameras that can record pictures by moonlight, and radio-controlled miniature aircraft (some that can hover like helicopters) to carry these cameras to subjects that someone wants to photograph.

As with any good book on the subject, it spends plenty of time talking about how to defend oneself from these attacks and the downside of protection:

Another scheme, called “hand-shaking,” requires the inquirer seeking information from the computer to correctly answer a personal question, something known only to him, before he can find out what he wants to know. This slows down the running of a business. I remember sitting in the office of a man who has a computer terminal on his desk. In the middle of our conversation a question came up and he said: “Wait a minute. I'll get the answer from our computer.” He put the question in by typing on the keyboard. The terminal’s screen lit up and displayed another question: “In what month was your mother-in-law born?”

It also predicts the rise of music and film piracy; albeit by analogue means.

Rather pleasingly, it doesn't just limit itself to crimes committed in the USA. It acknowledges the pervasive nature of criminality and goes into some detail about cases in the UK, France, Germany, and Italy.

It is always fascinating to look back on our industry's history. Much like 1999's Information Warfare and Security by Dorothy E. Denning, we have to constantly go back to see what assumptions we have baked in to our processes.

I'll leave you with this rather chilling excerpt from the prologue:

Our world is still a fine place in which to live—a better one perhaps than any previous generation has enjoyed. But some of the people in it are causing serious problems. In 1974 many people experienced diminishing respect for persons in high places who acted as if they were above the law, and this led to a loss of respect for the concept of leadership itself. We should not confuse diminishing respect for a president with respect for the presidency, for example. Our society needs people in high places. It cannot function without leadership at every level, from the head of a household to the manager of a business to a chief of state.

What is missing in our society today is the necessary preparation and training for the responsibilities of authority in high places. If parents in the home and people in business and government never learned the lessons of fair play when they were growing up, we cannot expect them to know how to play fair when they reach high places. Consequently we all suffer every time “the boss” makes expedient judgments rather than proper moral decisions.

If coming generations are to be spared the tragic consequences of even more widespread corruption, the teaching of morality in the family and in the school ought to be as important to us as curbing inflation and other socioeconomic problems. Our children should be taught how to deal with everyday actions fairly and ethically. They should be exposed to those philosophical and ethical concepts, with practical examples that illustrate the alternatives of right and wrong so that they are better able to cope.