Worm: The First Digital World War Paperback – October 16, 2012

Target just got attacked and that one smart-hack utterly compromised the lives and financial security of millions of people who just went to buy a gallon of milk. One store, one attack. Not the first, won't be the last attack of its kind. The fallout damage may drive a giant global food chain out of business. Target's recent invasion is NOT in this book, it is JUST a current example of a malicious, exploitive digital attack.What if an attack took down all the grocery stores, planes, banks, power grids and reactors all at once? I recommend this book. I enjoyed reading this book. I learned of people who are real world warriors fighting for me, and I didn't really understand the war or know of these warriors before reading this book.And if you are reading my comment at Amazon's website via some device hooked to the Internet, then you should also like to read this book. It is a true story of the vulnerable world we live in, and a nearly silent battle raging, that if lost, could be ruinous.I appreciate Mr. Bowden bringing the Invasion of the Conficker Worm before us in its particulars and broader context, in a well written, sometimes humorous way, with great analogies along the read that enhanced my understanding of some extremely important subject matter.And I extend my heartfelt appreciation to the real people in the trenches doing their utmost to protect us. It's not just some digital arena they protect. Our world is so hand and glove digital now, it is real life they guard and protect.The internet has become so vital that it is breathtaking to contemplate a catastrophic failure. If we pause a moment to acknowledge, the changes the Internet has made throughout the world are gigantic, so pervasive and thus so CRITICAL.... It follows that overwhelming attacks on the Internet causing it to falter or fail would cause broad, extreme damage. Business failures. Power failures. Food shortages. All possible. And Serious, serious, the unrelenting attacks and threats crafted by real, very savvy, well funded, ill-intentioned predators who's burning desire is to exploit our lives or even destroy us.Who guards against the threat? Who guards this vital world wide Internet? Who stands the watch and stands our ground against the destructive swarms of crime-lords, thieves and invaders? This book brings one war-story to us from the small group of dedicated volunteers in the trenches who guard and fight for the world day and night against malicious attackers. These X-Men are best of the best and they are all heroes and they are fighting the good fight, light against the dark. And this is not fiction.It Is an overwhelming matter of destruction when considered, thank you Mr. Bowden for bringing these heroes into my purview.Thank you so much real X-Men for your diligence, your brilliance and hard-won expertise, and for your unselfishness in being there. For standing the watch. For your efforts to guard and protect us all..

We have been one command away from catastrophe for a long time now ~ Paul Vixie as quoted in the book.A worm is a small packet of information, rather like a virus in a human although not like a virus as we use that term in computers, that borrows deep inside your Windows operating system and waits for instructions from somewhere outside of your computer. It isn't there in particular to take out your computer, although it can, but to unite with others to act together to do something like take down the electric grid in the USA or even the internet if that is the intention. You don't have to open an email or go to some website to get it. If you are on the internet, and use Windows, it can find you. Oh yes, it can come through your USB port. It is a bit more complicated than that but that's the basics.Worm tells the story of the Conficker Worm From the time it first showed its face in what is known as a honeynet through its updating and where it stands today. A honeynet looks like a bunch of computers on the internet but is really just one computer that is watching what is picked up. If you have lots of computers, you are more likely to pick up a virus, worm or trojan. There are people out there who are monitering the internet, some of whom are even being paid to do it. (I have to admit that my cynicism took a bit of a blow learning that there are people out there protecting the internet for free)What makes this interesting to me, is that it introduces us to the "good" guys in this war. The old idea of a young male hacking into computers for fun? Well, some of those guys grew up to be the White Hats as they refer to themselves. And they do all seem to be men. They find some of the same challenge that had them breaking into computers in pitting their intelligence against the Black Hats who are every bit as intelligent as themselves.Someone in a review complained that the ending is anticlimatic. Well yes, the worm is still out there. It hasn't done anything except send out spam for a very short time for a fake antivirus program, perhaps to show what it could do if it wanted to. But I think it is a glimpse into the near future. Maybe this worm is so well watched that it will never really do anything but what about other worms? Recently a worm disrupted uranium production in Iran. There are countries that would prefer that Iran not have the bomb. Using the word 'war' in the title probably doesn't help either. Sadly, a war without bombs and dust and places that can be watched on TV doesn't hold many people's attention.Another reviewer complained about the extensive explainations. I'm a woman in her 60s, about as far away from what people think of when they hear geek. I understood this book. (disclosure: I read Martin Gardner so there is some geek in me)I found the book interesting. I recommend it.

Another great story well told by Bowden, and a challenging one in that there was no action, everything of importance happened in cyberspace and even the white hats who were trying to save the world mostly communicated by internet chats and emails, and when absolutely necessary a phone call. For those of us non-geeks who needed to first be educated on the basics of how the internet works and the difference between a virus and a worm, Bowden does a good job without bogging down the book. I was surprised how much I was drawn into the drama and to just keep reading.

Längen aber trotzdem lesbar und interessant, wie das ist doch auch die Überschrift? So ging es mir an manchen Stellen im Buch auch: das wiederholt sich irgendwie...oder?Es hat mich aber fasziniert, da alle (naja fast) Aspekte des Angriffs durch Viren/Trojaner&Co gezeigt werden anhand des Falles, den manche noch in Erinnerung haben werden.Empfehlung

This book caught my eye recently on Kindle Daily Deal. As someone probably considered very computer illiterate (as opposed to slightly computer illiterate) I decided it was time I improved my knowledge of the internet and how it works.After reading the synopsis and another good review I thought this book, which indeed reads like a novel, though of course is based on fact, would be a good place to start. I wasn't disappointed. It kept me hooked from day one, a real page turner. Not a particularly long book, but it did take me a few days to finish, as at first, I went back over passages/events that weren't familiar or clear to me. I do stress that this was purely down to my lack of computer knowledge. I soon decided to just read, and this proved more enjoyable. Having now finished though, and having enjoyed the book so much, I do intend to go back and read it again just to cement some of the knowledge.The synopsis is a good description, this is my experience and enjoyment of the book. The Internet, and how it links into our every day lives through business, commerce, socialising and other applications, something most of us use everyday and take for granted. Never again!, read the book and decide if you will. Highly, recommended.

Having lost 3 or 4 weeks of my life to Conficker outbreaks on corporate and government sites (no I can't say where) it was inevitable that I was going to by this book when I saw it on the Kindle for today only page.It's not a bad book and for non technical folks it's a decent read, the aspirations to geek chic with the X Men references could have been skipped though.It also does show how unprepared government and corporate IT depts where that this worm hit so hard.One aspect which was totally ignored was that products from major antivirus vendors simply did not recognise the original Conficker as late as Febuary 2009. This required a new antivirus solution to be rolled out for many customers, then again I guess these companies would have suedAnyway this book shows the lessons that need to be learned by government, large corporations and companys of all sizes

This is a behind-the-scenes account of a dramatic race to beat a vicious and global "worm", or particularly nasty type of computer virus. The writer is primarily a journalist, not a scientist or "computer geek", and he has succeeded brilliantly in grasping and then clarifying the issues, and a minimum of the jargon, without "writing down" to his readers. The book is in the style of a popular American novel or crime story (easy reading, and UK readers will readily acclimatise if necessary) and manages to capture some of the urgency and human drama at the cutting edge of a highly specialized world. As it is an account of real events it occasionally lacks some elements of the suspense and drive one would expect in a fictional drama, but the immediacy of the importance that internet crime has to all of us makes up for that. I would recommend this to anyone who has the slightest interest in how the internet works or in the rarified world of the "geek" as well as to those who can already empathize with the people involved - I found the story a real page-turner, and learnt quite a bit about paying attention to what my computer is up to along the way.

I picked this book up on the Kindle daily deal because a) I am a bit geeky and b) it sounded like an interesting foray into the world of cyber crime.As the blurb went "This dramatic cybercrime story travels from the Ukraine to the United States (and all parts in between) to explore the next frontier in terrorism"Well, it doesn't really travel anywhere except a few office blocks in IT companies in the US but Ukranian keyboards do get a mention and a virtual finger is pointed now and then to foreign powers.It's not a bad book - but I'm not sure what it's meant to be.It reads more like a very staid journalist reporting on fairly esoteric events in the online world. As a geek myself I found a lot of the technical explanations unnecessary and taking up far too much of the book. On the flip side I'm not sure if for the non-technical they were equally superfluous (but for a different reason).The story of the Conficker worm is interesting but could be told in half the time. Maybe even a quarter.The characters are so thinly drawn that I could never recall who was who, let alone picture them in my mind, but in many ways the cast list were just "cardboard programmers" there to bounce the technical details off.The constant reference to X-Men was grating and, to me, belittled the individuals involved.A bunch of highly technical people, trying to fight back against a very real online threat, really deserved a bit more respect than being drawn as puerile comic book heroes. It's the very perception of nerdiness that meant nobody listened to them in the first place.Despite all of this, the book has some fascinating moments - particularly in relation to the reactions of the US authorities.I'm not referring to the rather clumsy pot shots at the Federal bodies but the moment when one of the 'Cabal' accurately explains the Government view of the risk. It's a moment of clarity when the reader is suddenly taken out of the technical circle and is invited to see the events from a different perspective. As a section it stands in contrast to the rest of the novels slavish belief in the rightness of the 'white hats' (the good guys).