This taut, true thriller dives into a dark world that touches us all, as seen through the brilliant, breakneck career of an extraordinary hacker-a woman known only as Alien.

When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien was quickly drawn to the school's tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original "hacking." Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead and two others were arraigned. Alien's adventures were only just beginning.

After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top cybersecurity firm where she deployed her cache of virtual weapons-and the trespassing and social engineering talents she had developed while "hacking" at MIT. The company tested its clients' security by every means possible-not just coding, but donning disguises and sneaking past guards and secretaries into the C-suite.

Alien now runs a boutique hacking outfit that caters to some of the world's biggest and most vulnerable institutions-banks, retailers, government agencies. Her work combines devilish charm, old-school deception, and next generation spycraft. In Breaking and Entering, cybersecurity finally gets the rich, character-driven, fast-paced treatment it deserves.