// Comparison

La face cachée d'internet vs Tribe of Hackers: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Culture, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Beginner

4/52017

Hackers, dark net, Tor, Anonymous, WikiLeaks, Bitcoin

Rayna Stamboliyska

A lively, expert tour of the Internet's hidden layers — hackers, the dark web, Tor, Anonymous, WikiLeaks, Bitcoin — that demystifies the jargon without dumbing it down.

Beginner

3/52019

Tribe of Hackers

Cybersecurity Advice from the Best Hackers in the World

Marcus J. Carey, Jennifer Jin

An interview anthology of practitioners answering the same set of career and craft questions, useful as a wide-angle view of how working security people actually think about the field.

Read this if

Curious general readers who want an accurate, engaging map of hacker culture, the dark web, cryptocurrency and online anonymity, from someone who actually knows the field.

Newcomers and career-shifters who want a wide-angle view of how working security people actually think. The interview format pulls signal across roles (red team, blue team, IR, AppSec, leadership) without committing to any single voice.

Skip this if

Practitioners wanting technical depth; it's high-quality vulgarisation, not a manual. Some specifics (tools, services) have moved on since 2017.

Experienced practitioners. The interviews are short and the same questions repeat; you've heard much of it at conferences. Specialists looking for technical depth should pick books in their lane instead.

Key takeaways

An accurate, accessible French explainer of the topics most media get wrong — dark web, Tor, Anonymous, Bitcoin.
Stamboliyska is a genuine expert, so the demystification is correct, not sensationalist.
A great gateway for non-technical readers curious about the net's underside.

The book's structure (same questions to many voices) is unusually useful for spotting consensus and disagreement; what most respondents agree on tends to be true.
Career advice in security is unusually consistent across the field: communicate, document, ship, mentor, repeat. The book makes this visible.
Diversity of voice across the panel (junior to CISO, offensive to defensive) is the value; pick interviews to match your current question, not read straight through.

How they compare

We rate La face cachée d'internet higher (4/5 against 3/5 for Tribe of Hackers). For most readers, that means La face cachée d'internet is the primary pick and Tribe of Hackers is a useful follow-up.

Both books target beginner-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

La face cachée d'internet and Tribe of Hackers both cover Culture, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

La face cachée d'internet

→ Alternatives to La face cachée d'internet → What to read after La face cachée d'internet