Joseph Menn is an investigative technology reporter at Reuters, having previously worked for the Financial Times and Los Angeles Times. He wrote the influential 2010 bestseller "Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords who are Bringing Down the Internet," a real-life thriller that brought the modern face of cybercrime to a mainstream audience. It was placed on the official reading list of the U.S. Strategic Command and named one of the ten best nonfiction works of the year by Hudson Booksellers. He also wrote "All the Rave: The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning's Napster," the definitive inside account named one of the three best books of the year by Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc. His next book will be out in early 2019.
Menn won the 2017 prize for breaking news from the Society of American Business Editors & Writers for revealing that Yahoo had secretly scanned all user mail for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In 2006, he was a finalist for best technology coverage for stories that included Microsoft's decision not to warn Hotmail users including minorities, journalists and human rights lawyers that its investigators believed their emails had been captured by the Chinese government. Also at Reuters, he reported that security icon RSA accepted $10 million to include an NSA-crafted pseudo random number generator as the default in a software security kit and that internal Kaspersky Lab emails bolstered claims by former employees that it had tricked rival security competitors into recording false positives on customer machines.
Menn has spoken at conferences including Def Con, Black Hat DC and RSA.
