Worm: The First Digital World War (Unabridged)
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4.3 • 9 Ratings
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- $21.99
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- $21.99
Publisher Description
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.
Customer Reviews
Interesting, but sadly not resolved.
This is a story of the discovery and hemming in of a potentially lethal Internet-corrupting worm. I'm glad to know that there are people out there standing guard for us all. This is their story; but as the author notes, as with all modern wars, there is no clean end or clear winner. These worms are still out there, sill poised to strike. The more time that passes, the more "black hats" who learn the technology or just "rent" the existing threat. So the ax can still drop at any time. The author does a great job describing how oblivious the Obama Administration is to the whole thing. Well, that gives him more time to follow basketball labor negotiations. Thank goodness for the private sector. The only curious part was the author's ebullient love for Bill Gates and his Microsoft buddies. Even as the heroes of the book point out that the whole problem with Worms, in the first place, comes from Microsoft errors, oversights, indifference, and appalling cheapness, yet the author continues his praise. In fact, the history recited of Microsoft's benevolent and wholly independent rise and development, suggest that parts of this book may already be infested and corrupted by a demented bot. I doubt if people from Digital Research, VisiCalc, Netscape, or the makers of WordStar would recognize this version of Bill's success. Oh well, it is a story about international pariahs, criminals, despots after all. The book provides a scary look into vulnerability and will be referenced sadly in the years or weeks or days from now, when these worms are eventually activated.