Removing Azure Enterprise app consented permissions

After installing the appropriate PowerShell modules you can connect to the Microsoft Graph with PowerShell using the command:

connect-graph

as shown above. First thing to remember is that this process can’t be completed in the Power ISE, you’ll need to do it elsewhere (here, using Windows terminal). The second thing to note is that you can specific the scope with which you to connect. Thus, in this case, the scope will be Files.ReadWrite.All and Sites.Readwrite.all. The scope is in effect the permissions the current user will be given when they connect to the Microsoft Graph. This allows you to only provide permissions for exactly what you need.

During the connection process you’ll be asked to consent to the permissions just requested, as shown above. If you simply select Accept here, you are just consenting for the current user. However, if you check the Consent in behalf of your organization option you’ll be providing these permissions to ALL users in your tenant! For now, only consent will be granted for the current user. However, be very, very careful consenting for the whole organization as I will illustrate.

You can now happily go off and perform whatever actions you need to using PowerShell for the Microsoft Graph.

With security in mind, I went to have a look at where these permissions just consented to actually appear. You’ll find them by opening the Azure Portal and navigating to Azure Active Directory as shown above. From here, select Enterprise applications from the menu on the left.

From the screen that appears ensure All applications is select from the menu on the left. Then on the right, locate and select Microsoft Graph PowerShell as shown.

From the screen that now appears, select Permissions from the menu on the left as shown. On the right you’ll then be able to select either Admin consent or User consent.

Because the permissions assigned were only for a single user, the User consent item will show these to us as shown above. This list of permissions matches those consented to when connecting to the Microsoft Graph.

The right hand most column in this display, Grant by, has a hyperlink to show the number of users with this assigned permission.

If you select any of these hyperlinks, you’ll see a list of users, on the right, that have been assigned this permission appear on the right as shown above.

Can you see the problem yet? No? Well…….how do you REMOVE or revoke a permission here?

From what I can determine, you can’t remove the permissions via the portal. If you select Review permissions menu option you’ll see a item displayed from the right as shown above. If you select the option This application has more permissions that I want and basically told to use PowerShell to revoke all permissions for this application as well as being provided with the code to do so.

The issue is that even after you disconnect from the Microsoft Graph, having completed any scripting, those consented permissions remain in place i.e. they are NOT rescinded. This means that if the user account with these permissions to the Graph is compromised then that attacker has access to the Microsoft Graph and potentially lots of sensitive areas in a tenant, especially if the permissions have been added to over time. Imagine how much WORSE it gets if permissions were consented tenant wide, rather than to an individual user?

Selecting that little check box in the above Permissions requested dialog, which I see MANY people do without thinking, can really give you a security headache by opening up your Microsoft Graph permissions for EVERY user in the tenant!

Thus, best security practice is going to be to remove these permissions when they are no longer required as well as limiting who has them initially. Personally, I’d remove them after each interaction so I don’t forget and leave a potential attack vector.

To make doing all that a little easier, I have gone out and created a script that you’ll find in my Github repo:

https://github.com/directorcia/Office365/blob/master/graph-adappperm-del.ps1

If you run the script, it will first check whether the Azure AD PowerShell module is loaded. If it is, it will then ask you to login to your tenant. Then it will display a list of all the Azure AD applications in your tenant and allow you to select the ones you want to change (yes, you can select multiple Azure AD apps if you want) as shown above.

In this case, Microsoft Graph PowerShell application is selected.

You’ll then be prompted to select whether you wish to select Admin consent and/or User Consent permissions. You can select both here if you wish by using the CTRL and/or SHIFT key when making selections (i.e. just like when you use Windows Explorer).

If you selected User consent, you’ll then be prompted to select the users you want. Again, multiple selections are available if offered.

You’ll now be prompted to confirm you wish to delete these permissions for these users.

Those permissions will be removed and the script will continue to work through the rest of your selections.

In this case, because there were no Admin consented permissions for this application we receive a notification line as shown in above output.

If you now return and have a look at the permissions for that app in the portal, you should see they have all been removed as shown above.

Leaving users with standing permissions to something as powerful as the Microsoft Graph is not best security practice. It is therefore important to regularly review these and remove what is not required. If you need those permissions again in eth future, after they have been removed, you can always re-consent to them when you next connect to the Microsoft Graph.

Frustrations of using the Microsoft Graph with PowerShell

I’ve spent the past few day wrestling with the using Microsoft Graph with PowerShell, and it hasn’t been fun. Let me explain.

The first issue is that you can’t use the connect-graph command in the PowerShell ISE in Windows 10. if you do, you just get a flashing cursor as shown above that eventually times out.

If you repeat the same process in wither Windows terminal (above) or the PowerShell command you are taken through the standard device login browser process as expected.

After that, if you return to the ISE (above) and repeat the command connect-graph, you receive a message telling you that you are connected by virtue of the token from the previous Windows Terminal session.

If you run the preferred Graph command get-mguser (above) you see that the AssignedLicenses and AssignedPlans attributes are blank.

If you now run my script:

https://github.com/directorcia/Office365/blob/master/Intune-connect.ps1

You also get connected to the Microsoft Graph as I highlighted here, but specifically to the Intune portion of the Graph:

New Intune connection PowerShell script

Typically, this type of connection is also designed for device management with PowerShell and work very well. However, because device management also requires access to users, we can also get access to user data via the Graph.

You achieve this by running the following script after connecting to Intune Graph:

$uri = “https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/users”
$users = (Invoke-MSGraphRequest -Url $uri -HttpMethod GET).Value
$users

which you see above gives you similar to the user options before but with far more detail as demonstrated by the assignedLicenses and assignedPlans highlighted previously highlight above.

Just to prove there is no smoke and mirrors here, above the output of the command get-mguser used after the connect-graph command (i.e. the non-Intune connection method).

Clearly, the data is in the Graph, but the command get-mguser does not yet seem to support pulling all this down from what I see. I hope someone can point out the error of my ways here but to create the reporting and automation I REALLY want looks like I’m to either have to use the PowerShell Intune module or revert to using the full web based invoke-request to get what I’m after.

What kind of worries me a little is that Intune PowerShell project seen above and at:

https://github.com/microsoft/Intune-PowerShell-SDK

that works REALLY well, hasn’t seen any updates in 2 years! There are 57 outstanding issues at the time of writing this blog, including two from me because not all the native wrapper commands work as expected. Are they being attended to at all I wonder?

In summary then, I’m in somewhat of quandary about using PowerShell with the Microsoft Graph. Specific stuff like the Intune SDK works well using the invoke-msgraphrequest command. It is easy to setup and manage the permissions for. On the other hand, the more general Graph commands like get-mguser don’t as yet seem to return as much information as they could. As well as the Intune SDK works I’m kind of afraid that it will not see future development.

So where should I invest my time to continue automating Microsoft 365 administration? Suggestion anyone?

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365–Part 6

This is part of a series of articles about email security in Microsoft 365. Please check out previous articles here:

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 1

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 2

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 3

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 4

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 5

These articles are based on a model I have previously created, which you can read about here:

CIAOPS Cyber protection model

designed to help better explain expansive security included with Microsoft 365.

Email reporting and auditing

It’s now time to look at all the logging that occurs during even the simply process of receiving and viewing an email. For starters there is:

Message tracing

and

Message trace in the modern Exchange admin center

Message trace in the Security & Compliance Center follows email messages as they travel through your Exchange Online organization. You can determine if a message was received, rejected, deferred, or delivered by the service. It also shows what actions were taken on the message before it reached its final status.

There is also reporting options like:

Mail flow insights in the Security & Compliance Center

and

Mail flow reports in the Reports dashboard in Security & Compliance Center

as well as:

Microsoft 365 Reports in the admin center – Email activity

If you want to specifically look at email security there is:

Email security reports in the Security & Compliance Center

as well as:

Defender for Office 365 reports in the Reports dashboard in the Security & Compliance Center

and

Reports for data loss prevention (DLP)

I have also spoken about the importance of the Unified Audit Logs (UAL) in Microsoft 365:

Enable activity auditing in Office 365

Unified Audit Logs in Microsoft 365

and you need to ensure that these have been enabled so that you can:

View mailbox auditing

Starting in January 2019, Microsoft is turning on mailbox audit logging by default for all organizations. This means that certain actions performed by mailbox owners, delegates, and admins are automatically logged, and the corresponding mailbox audit records will be available when you search for them in the mailbox audit log.

Here are some benefits of mailbox auditing on by default:

Auditing is automatically enabled when you create a new mailbox. You don’t need to manually enable it for new users.
You don’t need to manage the mailbox actions that are audited. A predefined set of mailbox actions are audited by default for each logon type (Admin, Delegate, and Owner).
When Microsoft releases a new mailbox action, the action might be automatically added to the list of mailbox actions that are audited by default (subject to the user having the appropriate license). This means you don’t need to monitor add new actions on mailboxes.
You have a consistent mailbox auditing policy across your organization (because you’re auditing the same actions for all mailboxes).

With this auditing enabled you can do things like:

Reporting mailbox logins

and

Search the Office 365 activity log for failed logins

as well as

Audit Office 365 user logins via PowerShell

Many of the reports that you find in the Microsoft 365 Admin area can be scheduled to be sent via email per:

Scheduling compliance reports

Apart from auditing and security you can also do more typical things like:

Viewing mailbox usage

Viewing Email apps usage

The availability of all this data is covered here:

Reporting and message trace data availability and latency

typically being 90 days.

User reporting and auditing

For information more specifically about user logins into the service and the Identity container, the best place to look is in Azure Active Directory (AD).

What are Azure Active Directory reports?

Find activity reports in the Azure portal

Azure Active Directory sign-in activity reports – preview

Audit activity reports in the Azure Active Directory portal

and if you want use PowerShell

Azure AD PowerShell cmdlets for reporting

Device reporting and auditing

There are lots of options when it comes to monitoring and reporting on devices. Apart from what is offered locally you also have:

Intune report

Create diagnostic settings to send platform logs and metrics to different destinations

Manage devices with endpoint security in Microsoft Intune

You can even get telemetry data and analytics reports from your desktop applications via:

Windows Desktop Application Program

Aggregated data reporting and monitoring

As you can see with all the options above, it is easy to get to information overload trying to keep up with all those signals. Luckily Microsoft provides a range of services to aggregate all this for you to make monitoring and report easier.

The first is Microsoft Cloud App Security services:

Cloud App Discovery/Security

Microsoft Cloud App Security overview

Microsoft Cloud App Security data security and privacy

There are plenty of reasons why you really should have Microsoft Cloud App Security in your environment:

A great security add on for Microsoft 365

Office 365 Cloud App Discovery

Next, is Microsoft Defender for Endpoint that will aggregate security and threat information for devices in your environment and make it available in a single console.

Overview of Microsoft Defender Security Center

Microsoft Defender Security Center portal overview

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint evaluation lab

Finally for me, there is Azure Sentinel, which I see as really the ultimate hub for event reporting, monitoring and alrtign across the whole service.

Another great security add on for Microsoft 365

Introduction to Azure Sentinel

Azure Sentinel is a service that growing in features rapidly:

A couple of new additions to Azure Sentinel

Stay ahead of threats with new innovations from Azure Sentinel

Summary

Hopefully, all this gives you some insight into all the auditing and usage data that Microsoft 365 captures during any interaction within the service. One of the biggest benefits is also how this information is integrated between services, especially those that aggregate information lime Microsoft Cloud App Security and Azure Sentinel. This means you don’t have to crawl through individual log entries, you can use a dashboard and drill down from there. I also like the fact that all of these services and data are accessible using a scripting tool like PowerShell if you want to automate this further.

Remember, throughout this six part series I’ve just looked at what happens when a single email is delivered and view with Microsoft 365. If you expand that out to all the services and capabilities that Microsoft 365 provides you can hopefully get a better appreciate of the protection it provides in place for your data on many different levels.

The call to action for readers is to go away and implement all the security features that Microsoft 365 provides. This may of course vary by the license that you have. You should then consider what additional security offerings the Microsoft cloud stack can offer that makes sense for your business, then implement those. Remember, security is not a destination, it is journey.

Get Intune and Endpoint policies using PowerShell

Recently, I wrote an article about how to use PowerShell to connect to Intune and Microsoft Endpoint Manager. You’ll find it here:

Intune connection PowerShell script

Having a script that just connects to Intune doesn’t achieve a whole lot now does it? It’s now time to put that connection script to good use.

I’ve created another script, that once connected to Intune will allow you to display all the policy names you have configure in both Intune and Endpoint Manager as shown above. You can find that script here:

https://github.com/directorcia/Office365/blob/master/intune-policy-get.ps1

You’ll need to use my script to connect to Intune first. Once you have you can run the second script.

Although these scripts don’t do a huge amount, they will help you hopefully more easily connect to Intune with PowerShell and understand how you can also use PowerShell to work with information in both Intune and Endpoint Manager.

I’ll work on more advanced scripts for Intune and Endpoint that I’ll share in the future. However, this should hopefully get you up and running with automating device management in Microsoft 365.

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365–Part 5

This is part of a series of articles about email security in Microsoft 365. Please check out previous articles here:

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 1

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 2

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 3

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365 – Part 4

These articles are based on a model I have previously created, which you can read about here:

CIAOPS Cyber protection model

designed to help better explain expansive security included with Microsoft 365.

In the previous part we had arrived at the stage where the user had successfully logged into a Windows 10 device.

At this point, the user is most likely to launch Outlook to read their emails. Visually the process is going to look like:

The email has been delivered from outside the Microsoft 365 Service to the Data container. The User has authenticated themselves via various methods to the Device container. An App on the device will now apply the User authentication to allow the App access to Data container to retrieve the email so it can be displayed to the User.

The focus for this articles will be the access of the App (Outlook) to the email Data as mentioned.

When it comes to the security of this interaction the place to start is to ensure that the App (Outlook) is supported and up to date. The first thing to check is:

What version of Outlook do I have?

and make sure that it is supported by the Service:

Office versions and connectivity to Office 365 services

Given that most Microsoft 365 plans come with a subscription to Office on the desktop, the assumption here is that it is fact supported. There are various ways to:

Download and install or reinstall Microsoft 365 or Office 2019 on a PC or Mac

but for simplicity the assumption will be that it is installed and maintained using:

Deploy Microsoft 365 Apps with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager

It is obviously very important to ensure that all applications that access secure data are updated regularly.

Choose how to manage updates to Microsoft 365 Apps

How to install the latest applicable updates for Microsoft Outlook (US English only)

The assumption will be that, via whatever method, the Microsoft Office desktop application are indeed up to date.

When the Outlook app runs, it will do so on the device, which will be typically connected to the public Internet. this means it is going to need top copy data from the secure Data container in the above model to the secure Device container which lives in another location.

Transferring secure data across an insecure medium like the Internet involves a lot of technology. A lot of them you can read here:

Exchange-Outlook Protocols Documentation

however the most relevant is probably:

How Exchange Online uses TLS to secure email connections

Microsoft 365 is also moving to TLS 1.2 in Office 365 for further security.

Once the email data has traversed from the Data container in Microsoft 365 to Outlook on the user Device is typically stored in an OST file on the local machine.

Introduction to Outlook Data Files (.pst and .ost)

This OST data file is not itself encrypted but the location in which it resides on the device is encrypted using BitLocker.

Outlook incorporates a number of in-built security features including:

Outlook blocked access to the following potentially unsafe attachments

Security Behavior of the Outlook Object Model

Protected Properties and Methods

New feature in Office 2016 can block macros and help prevent infection

Plan security settings for VBA macros in Office 2016

Enable or disable macros in Office files

Overview of the Junk Email Filter

Emails in Outlook will also be protected by Defender for Office 365:

Zero-hour auto purge (ZAP) in Exchange Online

Safe Links in Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Safe Attachments in Microsoft Defender for Office 365

Yet another layer of protection will be:

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

including technologies like Attack Surface Reduction (ASR) which I have detailed previously:

Attack surface reduction for Windows 10

Further data protection can then be provided by Windows Information Protection (WIP) per:

Protect your enterprise data using Windows Information Protection (WIP)

“Windows Information Protection (WIP), previously known as enterprise data protection (EDP), helps to protect against this potential data leakage without otherwise interfering with the employee experience. WIP also helps to protect enterprise apps and data against accidental data leak on enterprise-owned devices and personal devices that employees bring to work without requiring changes to your environment or other apps.”

For example, if WIP was implemented, it would prevent user saving corporate attachment to non-compliant devices. Perhaps like a USB key.

Further still there is:

Azure Information Protection

which protects information no matter where it travels.

So even when a copy of the email is sitting in Outlook on the desktop it is and can be protected by a wide variety of technologies in Microsoft 365.

If we now take a step back and have a look at a summary of many of the protections we have been talking about so far we would see something like shown above. Remember here that all we have focused so far on is email! Many of these protections will in fact protect information as well as the protection it provides for email. The take away is, in a nutshell, there is a lot of stuff protecting user data provided by Microsoft 365.

Although there is a lot of protection capabilities in Microsoft 365, many of the protection services are either not enabled by default, require unique policies or have generic policies. It is important for each organisation to evaluate what their security requirements are (i.e. what they want to protect) and then implement the services available to them in Microsoft 365 to meet these requirements. The take away is, if you want all the protection features available in you need to configure them, they don’t all magically work to your requirements out of the box!

Also, simply enabling or configuring all these services is something that will need to be continually reviewed and adjusted over time. We’ll also cover that topic in some details in upcoming articles.

Now you can enable all these services and make everything super secure but doesn’t provide absolute security, because that simply doesn’t exist. It will certainly mitigate the majority of threats out there but it still means that the whole environment needs to be monitored constantly to ensure nothing is getting through. Remember, every time we cross a container boundary above, logs are generated. Where and how to use these logs will be the subject of the next part in this series, so stay tuned.

End to End email protection with Microsoft 365–Part 6

My podcasts – 2021

desk-music-headphones-earphones

You can find the previous year’s selection here:

My podcasts 2020

I do spend a lot of time listening to podcasts, generally in between things, like travelling. However, there is a limit to how many you can consume in a week and that’s why I need to be very discerning about what I listen to.

Regulars

These podcasts are ones that I generally won’t miss an episode of.

Windows Weekly

The latest Microsoft news with some fun and entertainment along the way. Paul Thurrott’s musing make this podcast alone something worth listening to.

The Tim Ferriss Show

Some really great advice, business insights and strategy. Also lots of life lessons that I have found work really well for me. A weekly must listen for me.

Hardcore History

These tend to be quite long, like reading a book, but a very good and very interesting. Luckily, they are not that frequent, so it can make a nice change from all the tech stuff

The Intrazone

All the latest news and information about SharePoint, OneDrive for Business, Teams and more directly from Microsoft.

Sync Up

A podcast focused on the Microsoft files experience around OneDrive from Microsoft.

MJF Chat

Mary Joe Foley interviewing someone in the technology field. What I really like about these are they are short and to the point. Makes it much easier to listen to on a regular basis.

Darknet Diaries

Really well produced cybersecurity focused podcast. Has a nice variety of topics and the content is good and well researched. If you enjoy the security side of IT you’ll love these episodes.

Currently evaluating

These podcasts I listen to frequently, but maybe not every episode. Some of these may eventually get cut from the roster. Anything here has to provide real business value for it to remain long term.

Security Unlocked

Still findings its feet but with the growing need focus on security I think this will provide some valuable information from Microsoft.

Windows Insider podcast

Always interesting to hear what’s the latest and greatest with Windows from Microsoft.

Microsoft Cloud Show

Tends to be somewhat developer focused but there is handy information here, once you get past some of the other stuff, although I must admit this is becoming less and less the case. In short, podcast is starting to become a little off topic and may need to make room for something else.

Cyber

A podcast focused on cybersecurity. Fairly broad and somewhat more laid back and less technical (from what I’ve listened to so far) when it comes to content. Will need to listen to more episodes before deciding if this podcast makes the cut.

#Shifthappens

A podcast focused on digital transformation, typically in the enterprise and government space. Not too long which is good.

If I have time

There are simply not enough hours in a day to get through everything. These are great podcasts but I simply don’t have the time to listen to them regularly unfortunately.

Jocko Podcast

Probably too hard core for most. For me it is a great mix of military history and business mindset training. If you have a ‘fanatical’ tendency then give this one a listen.

The Kevin Rose Show

A bit like the Tim Ferriss podcast. Plenty of interesting and different stuff that always makes you think. Somewhat irregular episodes but I am still enjoying what I’m hearing.

Business wars

Interesting to get the story behind major business rivalries. More a ‘stage production’ than a podcast. Very enjoyable if you have the time.

Behind the Tech

Hosted by Microsoft’s Chief Technology Officer, Kevin Scott, it has lots of interesting guests and topics.

Once off podcasts

Think of these more of a book you’d read or a TV show you’d watch.

13 minutes to the moon

If you love space, you’ll love this ‘podumentary’ on the moon land. The production quality is simply first class, which you would expect from the BBC. Make sure you listen to both seasons so far!

The Bomb

Another amazing BBC production focused on the Atom bombs. If you are a history buff, I’ll bet you’ll love this one as well.

I churn through these mostly at 2x speed to allow me to get through as much content as possible. I do have a few other podcasts on my current podcasting app. I am always on the lookout for good podcasts business, technology, history, whatever. So if you can recommend something you like, I’m all ears.

Finally, of course, there is my own podcasting effort:

Need to Know podcast

which covers the Microsoft Cloud (typically Microsoft 365 and Azure) as well as business topics. I encourage you to have a listen and me know what you think. 2021 will be the eleventh year that it has been available.

Hopefully, there is something of interest to you in what I listen to. Feel free to let me know as well as any recommendations you may have, as I said, I’m all ears!

My tech videos – 2021

My list for last year:

My tech videos – 2020

Documentaries

The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin

Movies

My Tech Books – 2021

Tech is as much a lifestyle choice these days as it is a career. The geeks and nerds have risen to rule the world. Don’t believe me? Ask Bill Gates! Sometimes it is good to step back and take a wide look at how technology has changed the world we live in – for better and worse. My selection below I have found to be enjoyable and thought provoking in many different ways and I recommend them to everyone who is interested in tech.

There hasn’t been an change to this since last year. Good tech books are hard to come by it seems!

You can follow all the books, tech, business, non-fiction I read and want to read over at Goodreads where I have an account. You can also view my activity via:

https://www.goodreads.com/director_cia

1. Daemon – Daniel Suarez [Fiction]

A glimpse into the future of where drones and augmented reality may take us. That may not necessarily be a good place either.

2. Freedom TM – Daniel Suarez [Fiction]

A follow up to Daemon. What happens when technology dominates the world? Who benefits?

3. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline [Fiction]

Much like the Matrix. What is life like if you live inside the machine? You can be just about anyone you choose. I also love this book for all the retro technology that was part of my life. TRS-80 anyone? This book has become so popular that there is now a movie. Believe me, the book is better.

4. Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers – Andy Greenberg [Non-Fiction]

This is a great book if you are interested in IT security. It is also a very current book which makes it even more engrossing. It is easy to read and quite comprehensive in its approach, not only dealing with the technology of security attack but also the geopolitical reasons and consequences.

It reveals that shadow world of nation state cyber attacks and illustrates how they are happening today and likely to increase in the future. The connected world of the Internet has brought us many benefits but it is now increasing risks as our dependencies increase to the point that there are few manual backups that don’t depend on technology.

I think this book is a real glimpse into the future and what we may be in store for in the even of rising global conflicts. If you like tech, you’ll love this!

5. Future Crimes: Inside the Digital Underground and the Battle for our Connected World – Marc Goodman [Non-fiction]

Technology will ultimately doom us all I believe because we are building our world on stuff that unfortunately places a low regard for security and privacy. This book will show you why that is a road to ruination.

6. Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon – Kim Zetter [Non-Fiction]

If you don’t believe cyber warfare is real then read this book to understand how software is now a weapon as potentially devastating as any nuclear device.

7. Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World – Bruce Schneier [Non-Fiction]

Security is important but it is important in context. We need to be rational when we consider our security not emotional. A great level headed approach to how we need to be secure.

8. American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt or the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road – Nick Bilton [Non-Fiction]

An amazingly detailed book on the rise and fall of Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road web site. In here are asked to think about whether technology plays something more than a neutral role in today’s world.

9. The Cuckoos Egg – Clifford Stoll [Non-Fiction]

Before the Internet was in the public sphere it existed in the world of academia. This is the story of how one man’s search for the source of an accounting error uncovered something are more sinister.

10. Takedown – John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura [Non-Fiction]

The pursuit and eventual capture of notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick makes for great reading. Is somewhat dated now but still a great read.