Frauds, Spies, and Lies and how to defeat them - takes a humorous and very timely approach to a serious subject. It describes hundreds of techniques used by fraudsters with examples from corporate frauds, personal frauds, Internet frauds, and intelligence operations along with specific examples from the author's personal experience. It then delves into how and why these frauds work and the mechanisms of frauds and intelligence operations. Next, it describes how counterintelligence operations work, how operations security is used to protect operations, and how everybody can protect themselves against frauds of all sorts. It includes humorous cartoons that give examples of fraud attempts and how to defeat them, many stories that have never before been told, and provides insight into people, their weaknesses, and how to overcome them.
Dr. Fred Cohen uses his years of experience in corporate and government security work to describe hundreds of different frauds, scams, and tricks of the trade, and then puts it all into perspective by analyzing the techniques of deception that they have in common. Then he breaks down the techniques and explains how to stop from being victimized, whether you are in business, government, or just an every day victim. The stories alone are worth the cost of the book.
This book was originally based on Dr. Cohen's graduate course in deception, propaganda, frauds, and what to do about them. He consolidated most of the reading material, organized it all, and started off to write his own book to cover the field. What resulted was a book that is as useful for every day people as it is for security experts. It covers topics ranging from magic tricks and street scams to intelligence tactics used by governments. and gives advice on how to defend against all of them, whether you are a major corporation, a federal government worker, or just trying to keep from getting sucked into the next Internet fraud.
According to Cohen, "I put in some of the stories I have encountered in my years of looking into security at corporations as well. It's just amazing what people will try to get away with and how they succeed at it." But not all of the scam artists get away with it. Dr. Cohen has caught some of them in the act, and some of the examples he gives are just amazing. Like the time he figured out how to take a billion (with a B) dollars from a big company. "I read about these crimes where people steal a few million dollars by risking their lives with a team of specialists, and it's almost comical. I find ways to do billions of dollars of damage or move a few hundred million dollars and some of the companies don't even bother to fix them."
But this isn't just a book of stories about rip offs. It's a story about how bad people can be to each other and how you can be good to others while still not getting robbed blind. If you want to learn to think like a thief to catch a thief, this is the book for you.
The detailed table of contents provides a more complete description of the content. For single copies, you can buy here. For classroom use and in quantity, discounts are available. Please contact fca at all.net for additional details.
