Worm

The First Digital World War

By: Mark Bowden

Narrated by: Christopher Lane

Worm: The First Digital World War tells the story of the Conficker worm, a potentially devastating piece of malware that has baffled experts and infected more than twelve million computers worldwide. When Conficker was unleashed in November 2008, cybersecurity experts did not know what to make of it. Exploiting security flaws in Microsoft Windows, it grew at an astonishingly rapid rate, infecting millions of computers around the world within weeks. Once the worm infiltrated one system it was able to link it with others to form a single network under illicit outside control known as a “botnet.” This botnet was soon capable of overpowering any of the vital computer networks that control banking, telephones, energy flow, air traffic, health-care information — even the Internet itself. Was it a platform for criminal profit or a weapon controlled by a foreign power or dissident organization?

Surprisingly, the U.S. government was only vaguely aware of the threat that Conficker posed, and the task of mounting resistance to the worm fell to a disparate but gifted group of geeks, Internet entrepreneurs, and computer programmers. But when Conficker’s controllers became aware that their creation was encountering resistance, they began refining the worm’s code to make it more difficult to trace and more powerful, testing the Cabal lock’s unity and resolve. Will the Cabal lock down the worm before it is too late? Game on.

©2011 Mark Bowden (P)2011 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Not bad

This book was alright. It kept my attention but I think that may only be because I'm a security nerd. The narration was good. I would be selective about who I recommend it to.

Step by step development of Conficker

Where does Worm rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Good book. Not great but still glade I listened to it. If you are interested in worms and other internet malware, well worth the listen.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Worm?

In general the step by step / day by day development of the Conficker wrom.

Odd

I really thought this was a novel, but it was more of a narrative historical documentary. Non-fiction.

great history

This is a great high level review of the malware history leading up to konfiker worm and the sorry and drama around trying to shut it down. It contains enough technical details to convince IT and security savvy readers, while staying hi level enough not to lose anyone with some interest in this story.

Important Insight into the Next 10 Years

I’m often amazed at how surprised others seem to be by big events. Seriously. The rise of the internet was not surprising to most computer scientists. 9-11 was not surprising to a large number of terrorism experts. That the iPhone or more precisely something like it would explode into the mainstream was predicted by a plethora of prognosticators for very long time.

So this book is your change to able to say, “Oh, yea I’ve known about that for a couple of years”, while too many of your friends are reeling in shock … although in my personal experience saying this wish such lack of tact is less than ideal for your friendships {wink} …

Sometime in the next 5 to 15 years (let’s call it 10 years) there will be an act of cyber-war or cyber-terrorism that will shock much of the western world. But really the shocking thing would be if such an event doesn’t occur.

This book is the story of the creation of a formidable new weapon in the “cold” cyber-war, which seems to have been escalating for about 5 years, by none other than the former Soviet Union. It is told from the perspective of rag tag band of American intellectuals who fought intently to prevent its creation. It is a very good story, but more importantly knowing this story will elucidate future world events. In the end there is just enough

The story is one that most computer security experts don’t know, or only vaguely know. In this regard this is a must read for mainstream computer scientists. But the author goes to great lengths to explain concepts to non-programmers. For example he explains in surprising detail the, somewhat rudimentary, buffer overflow attack at the heart of the sorry through an extended analogy to a cook following a recipe a bit too slavishly while a miscreant tricks the cook into inserting ruinous items into his own recipe. Often this sort of thing is tedious for the expert listener, but somehow it wasn’t in this case.