Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Worm - The Story of the First Digital World War - Mark Bowden

A gripping account of the ongoing and largely unreported digital war taking place literally beneath our fingertips, from the bestselling author of Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo.
Worm: The Story of the First Digital World War is about the next frontier in terrorism; a dramatic cybercrime story that explores the Conficker computer worm, a potentially devastating computer virus that has baffled experts and infected as many as twelve million computers to date.
When the Conficker worm was unleashed on the world in November 2008, cyber security experts didn’t know what to make of it. The worm, exploiting the security flaws in Microsoft Windows, grew at an astonishingly rapid rate, infecting millions of computer around the world within weeks.
Once the worm infiltrated one system it was able to link that system with others to form a single network under illicit outside control, capable of overpowering any of the vital computer networks that today control banking, telephone service, energy flow, air traffic, health-care information – even the Internet itself.
Was it a platform for criminal profit, or a weapon? Security experts weren’t sure what its purpose was, or even where it came from.
Travelling from the Ukraine to the United States (and all parts in between) Mark Bowden, one of the world’s bestselling authors of narrative non-fiction, has created a captivating tale of a group of hackers, researchers, millionaire Internet entrepreneurs and computer security experts who united to defend the Internet from the worm.
It is a fascinating look at the battle between those determined to exploit the Internet and those determined to protect it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Bowden is the author of seven books, including Black Hawk Down and Killing Pablo. He was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty years and now writes for Vanity Fair, The Atlantic and other magazines.
Atlantic Books - Non-Fiction - NZRRP:  $39.99

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