This was really interesting and informative! Outside of my normal reading genre but I wanted to give it a shot and I loved it! Recommend

Gripping, eye-opening, and at times deeply unsettling but absolutely necessary.

As a cybersecurity specialist, I found this book to be not only engaging but also incredibly well-structured and thoughtfully researched. It covers real-world cyber incidents like hacking, swatting, extortion, and data theft with both technical accuracy and emotional depth a rare and commendable balance.

What I appreciated the most was how it humanizes both sides: the victims who suffered real psychological and financial harm, and the young hackers who, often out of loneliness or curiosity, took their first steps into the dark side of the internet through gaming exploits or online mischief.

The language is accessible, making complex cyber topics digestible for a wide audience, yet it never feels oversimplified. It reads more like a compelling true crime story than a technical manual, which makes it perfect for both professionals and general readers.

This book is a powerful reminder of how easy it is to cross the line online and how important it is to guide young people toward becoming ethical hackers rather than digital threats.

Highly recommended to anyone interested in hacker culture, cybersecurity, and the human side of cybercrime.

Publishing date: 05.06.2025 (DD/MM/YYYY)
Thank you to NetGalley and Elliott & Thompson for the ARC. My opinions are my own.

Great read. Easy language, written in a way that makes it more like a story instead of a direct essay.

Thorough exploration of the crimes, perpetrators, how it affected the victims, and how normal people can fall into bad crowds and end up a perpetrator.

I learned so much from reading this and highly recommend it to anyone interested in hackers, hacker culture, and specifically the Vastaamo incident.

Giving this 5 stars

This was an excellent book. It was well-written. I would highly recommend this book. It's very easy to read.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Fascinating and tragic, but hopeful as well.

• Hacking
• Cyber Attacks
• Gaming
• Swatting
• Bitcoin
• Data Theft
• Extortion

It's terrifying to think that most hackers make their debut as young, lonely teens, causing mischief in online games like COD.

I have personally had experience dealing with this mischief. Everyone knows about them, everyone can spot them, everyone knows what they're doing, but no one can stop them.

I also remember the gaming hack of Christmas 2014 (spoken about in this book), and I have of course been victim to data theft.

It's horrifying to know this is only their beginning, their first taste of hacking, and the first steps towards what they will become.

These experiences are just small things in comparison to the victims within these pages.

Fantastically researched and written. This book had my full engagement from beginning to end. I share the hope that the young people of today will choose the role of heros over villains.

Alt + Ctrl + Chaos is the story of modern cybercrime. It is also the story of internet radicalisation, of disenfranchised teens, and of a Finnish child with the ability to shift the landscape of governmental process. It is a lot, but it never feels crammed, in fact there are unexplored avenues that seem utterly fascinating and that it’s a shame we never get to follow. No, the issue is not the density of the book but rather the structure, the way the narrative reads like a recount of several years work, a list of events, groups, and individuals. It feels like a refresher rather than an exploration.

However, this is not to diminish the genuinely impressive work on display here. For starters, Joe Tidy is a very sturdy writer, grounding the reader in a world they, presumably, have little if not no contact with but holding back on the swathes of technical information that could easily plague such a niche field and turn readers off. After all, he is a journalist. That is Tidy’s job, and it is evident here. His prose is clean, sharp, definitive, and workmanlike. At times, this befits a narrative of evasion and capture across decades and continents, but often it gives the writing a lack of actual thrills or deep dives into grander ideas.

These ideas are mentioned briefly (manosphere influence, national security concerns, a prevelance of neurodiverse hackers) but it is clear Tidy is interested in the what rather than the why. And he does tremendous work establishing a narrative, drawing lines between groups and ideas, but this just isn’t enough to truly engross.

Check it out if this is an area you hold any interest in.

For a debut, Tidy has done a great job of making this book accessible to people who aren't as familiar with the internet/hacking culture without it being jarring or annoying to those of us who are. The average person isn't going to know what a skiddie is, and I'm not going to know what the Finnish equivalent of 4chan is. The book is really well balanced in this regard.
I also find that the blend of discussing the overall culture of teen hackers while also interweaving the story of one of the single most prominent ones of the 2010s was an excellent approach. You get to engage with the life and thought process of Kivimäki while also exploring the underworld that he inhabited.
The book did have a bit of an awkward finish, but it's hard to bring it to a tight close when the whole hacking world that we get to see blossom in this book had started to change at the end away from the flashy attacks by teens trying to outdo one another.
Another part that Tidy started to explore but didn't get into in depth was the overlap of the teen male hacker culture and the right. I was thinking how when Tidy describes boys getting into the hacking scene by being drawn in while playing multiplayer games online is really similar to how white supremacists recruit young men from the same place.
There were also some small things that I think could have been touched up a bit - Jabber is referred to as a messaging service, but it'd be more accurate to call it a protocol, for example.
On the whole, though, the pacing is good and it was an extremely enjoyable read. I'd recommend for those who liked Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever and Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency.

CTRL + ALT + CHAOS shed light to teenage hacking behaviours and the parties affected; the whys, hows and the aftermath of hacking.
- Some of the teenagers behind the hacks have severe autism.
- Some of the authority/law/order figures give nuanced insights.
- There is no win-win was one of my takes from this book, and it reopened some wider discussions around internet usage, data security, disabilities and how the societies and the state approach them.

CTRL + ALT + Chaos tracks Julius Kivimäki, a teenage hacker who progressed from breaching PlayStation and Sony to leaking therapy records from Vastaamo, all while anonymously extorting victims through Bitcoin.
I started this book knowing little about hacking and finished it deeply unsettled by how exposed our systems are and convinced that stronger laws are needed to stop something like this happening again.