{"product_id":"rough-consensus-how-engineers-hackers-and-spies-built-the-internet-paperback","title":"Rough Consensus: How Engineers, Hackers, and Spies Built the Internet - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eMichael Bommarito\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe internet was designed for a world that no longer exists. It works in the world that does.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 1969, a handful of graduate students wired four computers together and wrote the rules as they went. They knew each other by first name, so they built protocols that simply \u003ci\u003ebelieved\u003c\/i\u003e whatever they were told: that a sender was who they claimed to be, that an address was honest, that the packet arriving now came from a friend. For a network you could fit in one room, it was a reasonable bet. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFive billion strangers later, those same protocols are still running. And still trusting. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eRough Consensus\u003c\/i\u003e takes twenty-three of them-one per chapter-and traces each from the idea that made it to the breach that broke it. A 75-cent accounting error that uncovers a KGB spy. A misconfigured router in Pakistan that erases YouTube from the internet for two hours. A forged Google certificate, signed by a quietly hacked Dutch company, turning up on the connections of hundreds of thousands of Iranians. One tampered software update that walks into the Treasury, the Pentagon, and Microsoft at once. And a plain text file the entire web honored for twenty-eight years, until the AI companies came. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe thread connecting them is the uncomfortable one: almost nothing here was \u003ci\u003ebroken into.\u003c\/i\u003e The attackers used the protocols exactly as designed. The openness that let four nodes become five billion users is the same openness that lets anyone lie. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eClear enough for readers who have never touched a command line, precise enough for the engineers who run these systems, \u003ci\u003eRough Consensus\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of how the internet actually works, why it keeps getting hacked, and why-against every reasonable expectation-it keeps working anyway.\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 408\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.84 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e July 26, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67530448142585,"sku":"9798994746004","price":24.28,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/e6WtNruoEK9798994746004.webp?v=1793278310","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/rough-consensus-how-engineers-hackers-and-spies-built-the-internet-paperback","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}