// Prerequisites
What to read before American Kingpin
If American Kingpin feels too steep at beginner level, here is what to read first. Lighter books in the same topics that build the prerequisites this one assumes.
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 · 2022
Cyberattaques
A clear, journalistic decoding of the cyberattack ecosystem — ransomware gangs, state actors, and the economics and geopolitics behind the headlines — by one of France's best-known cyber experts.
Beginner4/5Gérôme Billois, Nicolas Cougot04 · 2024
Dark Wire
Journalist Joseph Cox's account of Anom, the encrypted phone company secretly run by the FBI from 2018 to 2021, and of the global wave of arrests that followed Operation Trojan Shield.
Beginner4/5Joseph Cox05 · 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 Krebs06 · 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 Golden07 · 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