DarkMarket

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 3/10/2011

Investigative reporter Glenny (McMafia) takes readers into the seedy underworld of cybercrime, where nothing is as it seems and whose inhabitants are best known to peers and law enforcement agencies by their aliases: Matrix001, Iceman, Dron, Cha0, JiLsi, and Lord Cyric. With global roots that can be traced to Turkey, Sri Lanka, England, and the Ukraine, among other countries, digital lawlessness perpetrated by an ever-evolving, often-invisible new breed of criminal costs governments and businesses billions every year. But don't go looking for advice on how to protect yourself here. Rather, taking its name from the online forum for cyber criminals that was shut down in 2008 after an FBI agent infiltrated it using an alias, the book explores the rise of three fundamental threats facing computer users in the digital era: cybercrime, cyber industrial espionage, and cyber warfare. Glenny accomplishes the herculean task of converting cryptic and tangled information into short, gripping chapters that often read like a high-tech thriller (complete with a surprise ending). But the alternate universe he uncovers via 200 hours of interviews with the world's military and intelligence communities, police, politicians, lawyers, and the hackers themselves reveals a frightening, all-too-real network of geeky thieves possessing both superiority complexes and inferior consciences.