Underground

Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier

Julian Assange & Suelette Dreyfus

Underground by Julian Assange, Suelette Dreyfus (Paperback ISBN 9780857862594) book cover

Available as Paperback

‘Gripping … A highly intense and enjoyable read.’ Rolling Stone

Suelette Dreyfus and her co-author, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, tell the extraordinary true story of the computer underground, and the bizarre lives and crimes of an elite ring of international hackers who took on the establishment.

Spanning three continents and a decade of high level infiltration, they created chaos amongst some of the world’s biggest and most powerful organisations, including NASA and the US military. Brilliant and obsessed, many of them found themselves addicted to hacking and phreaking. Some descended into drugs and madness, others ended up in jail.

As riveting as the finest detective novel and meticulously researched, Underground follows the hackers through their crimes, their betrayals, the hunt, raids and investigations. It is a gripping tale of the digital underground.


“An astonishing book.”
sydney Morning Herald

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“I couldn’t put Underground down during a long flight last week… [the Author’s] frank and unabashed account of an eclectic mix of home-grown hackers and their overseas counterparts makes compelling reading for those of us who want more than just salacious and hyped snippets.”
the Australian

“It reads like a thriller, but the story is based on fact and begins when NASA officials arrive one Monday morning to discover something is not quite right …”
the Age

“Gripping, eminently readable.. Dreyfus has uncovered one of this country’s best kept secrets and in doing so has created a highly intense and enjoyable read.”
rolling Stone


Julian Assange & Suelette Dreyfus

Dr Suelette Dreyfus is an award-winning writer and journalist. In addition to writing the first major book about computer hacking in Australia, Underground, she was the Associate Producer of a documentary about hackers. Her articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers such as The Independent, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. She begain work on Underground while completing her PhD. She is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, where she runs several major research projects in information systems.

Julian Assange is an internet activist, journalist and publisher. Born and raised in Australia, Julian is the founder, spokesperson and editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website that started in 2006. In 2010, WikiLeaks begans to publish hundreds of thousands of classified details about American involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which created a media storm. At the end of 2010, the site published a series of classified US diplomatic cables, now known as Cablegate.