// What to read next
What to read after American Kingpin
Where to go after American Kingpin, picked from our catalog. The next step up from beginner level, weighted toward the topics this book covers.
01 · 2011
Kingpin
Kevin Poulsen's reconstruction of Max Butler's career — from white-hat consultant to running CardersMarket, the carding forum that consolidated the early-2000s underground — and the FBI investigation that finally took him down.
Beginner5/5Kevin Poulsen02 · 2022
Tracers in the Dark
Andy Greenberg's investigative narrative of how Bitcoin's allegedly-anonymous public ledger became, in the hands of researchers and federal investigators, the most powerful OSINT tool of the last decade.
Beginner5/5Andy Greenberg03 · 2014
Spam Nation
Brian Krebs's investigative deep-dive into the Russian-speaking pharma-spam economy of the late 2000s — the affiliate networks, the rivalries, and the people who ran them.
Beginner4/5Brian Krebs04 · 2022
The Ransomware Hunting Team
Investigative journalism on the volunteers who quietly cracked ransomware to free victims for free, while the FBI mostly watched. A people-first look at the early ransomware economy.
Beginner4/5Renee Dudley, Daniel Golden05 · 2024
OSINT Techniques
Michael Bazzell's relentlessly updated technical manual for finding people, accounts, breach data, geolocation evidence, and online identifiers — the de facto reference of the modern OSINT field.
Intermediate5/5Michael Bazzell06 · 2011
A Bug Hunter's Diary
Tobias Klein walks through seven real vulnerabilities he found and exploited, in the form of personal lab notes, what he tried, what failed, and what eventually shipped to vendors.
Intermediate4/5Tobias Klein07 · 2018
Open Source Intelligence Techniques and Tools
Hassan and Hijazi's pedagogical introduction to OSINT framed inside the broader intelligence cycle (collection → processing → analysis → dissemination) rather than around a specific toolchain.
Beginner3/5Nihad A. Hassan, Rami Hijazi08 · 2019
Sandworm
Long-form journalism on the GRU's hacking operations, the best non-technical book on what state-level cyber actually looks like.
Beginner5/5Andy Greenberg