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APPROACHING ZERO

Less than fifteen years ago, ‘data crime’ – the subversion of computer systems for information or gain – existed largely in the realms of science fiction. Now the industrialized world's dependence on computer systems has spawned an extraordinary underworld of hackers, phreakers, virus writers and keyboard criminals.

Data crime is the technological source of the 1990’s: twelve million of the world’s seventy million PCs will be infected with computer viruses within the next two years; teenage hackers using home computers have already broken into the ‘secure’ computer systems at the Pentagon, NASA and NATO; computer fraud is estimated to cost US and UK banks and companies £2 billion every year – and 85 per cent of computer fraud isn't ever reported.

In Approaching Zero computer expert Bryan Clough and journalist Paul Mungo reveal the fascinating secrets of the international computer subculture. Writing in a lively and anecdotal style, they uncover a shadowy group of programmers and technobrats who have infiltrated the world’s computer systems with viruses, logic bombs and high-tech vandalism.

Bryan Clough is an accountant with wide experience in supplying and maintaining computerized systems. A respected authority on computer security, he is a member of the National Computer Virus Strategy Group, which is coordinated by New Scotland Yard. He lives in Sussex with his wife and two children.

Paul Mungo is a journalist, the former editor of Screen International, and currently a feature writer for GQ and other publications.

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