This taut, true thriller dives into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker―a woman known only as Alien. When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien was quickly drawn to the school’s tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original “hacking.” Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead and two others were arraigned. Alien’s adventures were only just beginning. After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her cache of virtual weapons―and the trespassing and social engineering talents she had developed while “hacking” at MIT. The company tested its clients’ security by every means possible―not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. Alien now runs a boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world’s biggest and most vulnerable institutions―banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, fast-paced treatment it deserves. This gripping true story of a master hacker reveals: Social Engineering: How devilish charm and old-school deception allow a hacker to sneak past guards and secretaries into the C-suite. - MIT Hacking Culture: A deep dive into the world of high-risk physical trespassing—the original “hacking”—from exploring steam tunnels to climbing the Great Dome. - Digital Forensics: A look inside the secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory and top-tier cybersecurity firms where virtual weapons are deployed against the world’s biggest institutions. - A Woman in a Man's World: The character-driven true story of Alien, an extraordinary woman who built a brilliant, breakneck career in the male-dominated fields of technology and spycraft. An Amazon Best Book of January 2019: We often hear about the exploits of some of the most infamous cybercriminals--but who are the hackers working against them? In Breaking and Entering we follow the career of one of the good guys, a woman who calls herself “Alien”—a moniker she adopted on her first day at MIT—who now runs her own cybersecurity firm. A risk taker by nature, Alien was drawn to hacking. At MIT, she excelled at tests of physical hacking and became part of a network of young people who wanted to look around corners and invent new methods. Her career path includes work at a top secret facility at Los Alamos, and at cybersecurity firms where she honed her skills at manipulating people as well as code. Through Alien’s eyes, we see how everyday activities, such as visiting a bank, are rife with opportunity for cybercriminals, and how white hat hackers like herself test protocols and find security loopholes before systems can be breached. Alien’s life and experiences have often been dangerous and extreme, making it easy to forget at times that this is a work of nonfiction. Breaking and Entering is an exciting and absorbing read that puts a new face on the secretive world behind our keyboards. --Seira Wilson, Amazon Book Review A Bookish Must Read for 2019 An Amazon Best Book of the Month Featured on NBC's TODAY and Nightly News   “Smith’s writing style…is crisp as he charts the course of Alien’s life in a series of vignettes from uncertain undergraduate to successful business owner. The structure works because Smith is a lively storyteller.” — The New York Times Book Review "Amusing and cautionary tale."—WORLD Magazine “A fascinating look at hacking and the cybersecurity industry that has evolved. Alien is one bad-ass woman!” — The Missoulian “A book that reads like a fictional thriller while remaining solidly grounded in fact...effortless to read, Breaking and Entering is an engaging cautionary tale of security vulnerabilities and the constant threat of cyber attacks that businesses and institutions face on a daily basis. Knowing that our own personal security hangs in the balance, we can’t help but feel glad that “white hat hackers” such as Alien are out there doing their best to stem the tide."— New York Journal of Books “A novelistic tech tale that puts readers on the front lines of cybersecurity. For all whose lives and connections depend on the internet—nearly everyone—this biography of the pseudonymous ‘Alien’ provides a fast-paced cautionary tale. Jeremy Smith has enough experience as a computer programmer to understand the technicalities of this world, but his storytelling makes it intelligible to general readers; indeed, the narrative is more character-driven than technology-driven.... Smith goes into great detail to demonstrate how Alien could penetrate the security of whomever was employing her, showing how a real criminal would do it, and makes fearfully clear that there is ‘no such thing as absolute security in this world, or any definitive and fin