Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
24th out of 196 books
—
132 voters
Worm: The First Digital World War
by
Mark Bowden
From the author of Black Hawk Down comes the story of the battle between those determined to exploit the internet and those committed to protect it—the ongoing war taking place literally beneath our fingertips.
The Conficker worm infected its first computer in November 2008 and within a month had infiltrated 1.5 million computers in 195 countries. Banks, telecommunications...more
The Conficker worm infected its first computer in November 2008 and within a month had infiltrated 1.5 million computers in 195 countries. Banks, telecommunications...more
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published
September 27th 2011
by Atlantic Monthly Press
(first published January 1st 2011)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,346)
Conficker is the "first Digital World War?!" Get the f*** out of here. Ugh, I knew I remembered Mark Bowden from somewhere. He wrote Black Hawk Down. Not a bad book but you can't shoehorn every damn phenomenon into the category of "war"! As the saying goes, when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
This book is an utter waste of time. If you're interested in the subject you already know everything in it. Do we really need yet another recounting of the internet's origins, ARPANET etc?...more
This book is an utter waste of time. If you're interested in the subject you already know everything in it. Do we really need yet another recounting of the internet's origins, ARPANET etc?...more
A readable/reasonably entertaining overview of the "Cabal," a group which coalesced in response to the Conficker worm & botnet threat. Bowden organizes history and the sometimes jargon-addled world of digital history clearly. I knew just a little of this, and so--like other great longform journalism--the book fleshed out a context and chain of events that ought to be better known.
But Bowden also skimps on depth; this reader got excited for a more complex overview of the kinds of threats we'v...more
But Bowden also skimps on depth; this reader got excited for a more complex overview of the kinds of threats we'v...more
9 likes · like · see review
This was an eye opening book. Not for the fact that the worms exist, but about the way in which the conficker worm was actually dealt with by officialdom. Bowden's story is one of how the noble hackers almost saved the world where bureaucratic ineptitude failed. Bowden's use of the X-Men analogy seems to refer as much to these guys willingness to help a government that shuns them to an extent, as it relates to the fact that they are "more a Marvel crowd." (96)
If you forget about the technical as...more
If you forget about the technical as...more
Fun (wow, that's nerdy), easy read. I do have a bone to pick, though. The author makes a point of the fact that many in the world ultimately looked at the big fizzle on the botnet's supposed "wake-up date" as yet another chicken little story from the cyber nerds. Cybageddon they called it. Bowden rightly points out that the trumped up shouts of cybageddon ultimately undermined what is a very real threat. It would be more appropriate to look at the worm, and the botnet it created, with a cautious...more
The story of a hunt for a malevolent hacker is a well-worn genre. The first and best book of this sort was Clifford Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" which came out in the early 1990s. Clifford Stoll was the man who discovered and tracked down one of the first cyber-espionage attacks on the US; his book was fast-paced, well-written, and incredibly well informed about the inner workings of then-novel network called the Internet.
Mark Bowden is not a computer professional and it shows. He writes fluidly a...more
Mark Bowden is not a computer professional and it shows. He writes fluidly a...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This is an excellent book. It is a riveting account of the Conficker worm...and everyone should read it. If you are like me, and think you have a basic conception of the nature of computer malware (worms, trojans, and viruses), you will find this an absolutely eye-opening account of the way theses things actually work, and the even more astounding collection of characters, organizations, and collaborative efforts trying to address these threats. I admit to completely being unaware of the level o...more
WORM: The First Digital World War. (2011). Mark Bowden. ***.
The author is a “science” writer, and attempts to let his reader in on the secrets of the computer threat called the “worm.” During his explanations, he describes the “glaze” that often appears on the faces of the non-computer student when a computer techie tries to explain how things inside a computer work. After about fifty pages of this book, I had acquired the “glaze” to such an extent that I had to go wash my face. I got a kick ou...more
The author is a “science” writer, and attempts to let his reader in on the secrets of the computer threat called the “worm.” During his explanations, he describes the “glaze” that often appears on the faces of the non-computer student when a computer techie tries to explain how things inside a computer work. After about fifty pages of this book, I had acquired the “glaze” to such an extent that I had to go wash my face. I got a kick ou...more
This book was Ok. I decided to read it after hearing him speak on Fresh Air. I felt like he did an Ok job of conveying technical information to a presumably non-technical audience. The author will be the first to admit that he's not a technical person, and unfortunately, I do think this comes across in his writing - you can tell that he spent some time coming to understand the various complicated issues involved, but I think that an author who has a more technical background would be able to use...more
The book was okay. It brought out the Computer Security professional's dilemma - when the good guys win, nothing happens. This is the story of the Conficker worm, which was probably the most publicized malicious software in history. It was a very complex piece of software, and it brought together some of the elite of the profession to analyze and try and come up with a way to kill it or contain it before a deadline of April 1, 2009. Every time they got close to solving it, a new variant would co...more
The True Story of How Hackers Almost Brought Down the Internet -- and Still Could
It’s out there. Waiting. Chances are, you’ve never heard of it. Nobody knows who controls it, or why. No one knows what it will do. But its destructive capacity is terrifying.
Welcome to the world of cyberwar! And, no, this is NOT science fiction.
“It” is the Conficker Worm, an arcane name (an insider’s joke) for the most powerful “malware” — malicious software — yet encountered on the Internet. First detected in Nove...more
It’s out there. Waiting. Chances are, you’ve never heard of it. Nobody knows who controls it, or why. No one knows what it will do. But its destructive capacity is terrifying.
Welcome to the world of cyberwar! And, no, this is NOT science fiction.
“It” is the Conficker Worm, an arcane name (an insider’s joke) for the most powerful “malware” — malicious software — yet encountered on the Internet. First detected in Nove...more
A fascinating look at the Conficker worm that was a much bigger deal than I was aware of. I remember implementing rules on the firewall where I work to block the Conficker worm which I then Googled and got a brief overview of what it was. I had no idea it had millions of zombies machines and had three different flavors, A, B, and C, each upping the ante by an order of magnitude. Meanwhile, a group of private individuals calling itself the Cabal assembled to combat the worm with no government ass...more
There is a war being waged in the world today. Not one of the many you read about in newspapers (or newsfeeds) or the ones you see on your televisions and computer screens. This war is going on while we sleep, eat our breakfasts and go about our business, in our cities and suburbs, in the homes of our major industries, in our home computers. Forget the annoying daily viruses that attack, primarily, Windows systems, spewing unwanted spam; forget the unwanted pop-ups that emanate from the same sou...more
4 likes · like · see review
So much potential, so captivating! But ultimately, so disappointing. After hearing the author on NPR, I added this book to my queue because the behind-scenes story of Conficker is fascinating... But alas no.
The book painted the real life worm combatents as cartoon characters. The X-Men analogy is excessively referenced as if these individuals are simply too boring to warrant their own story.
What is the most distracting about this book is the lack of editing. In the "Principal Characters" synops...more
The book painted the real life worm combatents as cartoon characters. The X-Men analogy is excessively referenced as if these individuals are simply too boring to warrant their own story.
What is the most distracting about this book is the lack of editing. In the "Principal Characters" synops...more
Tells the story of the Conficker worm from a few years ago and the "cabal" that undid it. Not a bad book, but not a very good one either. From the author's explanations of things like DLLs, you feel that he's way over his head technically. He was also not helped by his editors -- page 4 contains two egregious errors that undercut your feeling for the author's accuracy through the rest of the book. (For one thing, no NASA satellites have attained the most distant reaches of the galaxy, for the ot...more
This book is made better by Mark Bowden's writing style. Author of Blackhawk Down he keeps the binary code and TCP/IP, etc. to understandable amounts to avoid that glassy stare...still, this is a book about Nerds and geeks, even super-smart geeks. And be glad we have them. This book details their fight against one of the worst computer viruses to date, the Conflicker Worm. I won't ruin the story for you by telling you how it ends but computers worldwide are still infected and could still be take...more
The author does a good job of making a “geek” tale readable and interesting. Some humor and drama kept me involved in the story. Generally, the techy aspects are handled with enough detail to challenge the reader without creating the "glaze".
The characters are very well developed and the reader can relate to their motives and commitment. Even given that there is some exaggeration, the electronic society is fortunate indeed that these men exist. If you are not already diligent about maintaining a...more
The characters are very well developed and the reader can relate to their motives and commitment. Even given that there is some exaggeration, the electronic society is fortunate indeed that these men exist. If you are not already diligent about maintaining a...more
Bowden's new book focuses on a group of computer experts who try to defeat the Conficker worm, it's creators, and a botnet estimated at 8 million infected computers. The book had me reminiscing about my youth, when I used my Kaypro 8088 to telnet into local university MUDs. If you understood anything in the last sentence you'll probably enjoy reading Worm. If your knowledge of computers is lacking you may want to stay away, you'll become paranoid when the book reiterates what you should already...more
This review brought to you courtesy of Goodreads First Reads.
To be honest, I was disappointed with this book. It reads like Mark Bowden tried to write a historical documentation of the events surrounding Conficker, while simultaneously trying to write a "popular" book; I unfortunately think he fails at both. If he had tried to focus on one or the other, then I think the book would have been a marvelous success. The lack of real endnotes, the lack of a timeline, and some (apparent) internal discr...more
To be honest, I was disappointed with this book. It reads like Mark Bowden tried to write a historical documentation of the events surrounding Conficker, while simultaneously trying to write a "popular" book; I unfortunately think he fails at both. If he had tried to focus on one or the other, then I think the book would have been a marvelous success. The lack of real endnotes, the lack of a timeline, and some (apparent) internal discr...more
I'm a pretty technical guy, having been in the IT industry for a couple decades, so I was expecting that this book would talk down to me a bit. I get it, it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and in this case, it is the literate-but-not-computer-expert crowd. It turns out it was written for my mom. Okay, not my actual mother, but the kind of person that is literate but has no more than a vague concept of how computers work, and that there's a difference between a computer, a network...more
A thriller describing the discovery and battle against the Conficker Internet worm, by a team of volunteers from SRI, Georgia Tech, ICANN, Microsoft, Neustar, VeriSign, and other private organizations.
The book is quite gripping. Alarmingly, the creators of this worm are still unknown, and thousands of computers worldwide are still infected, their botnets quietly awaiting instructions (who knows when?). The sophistication of its creators is scary: up to date on the latest encryption techniques, a...more
The book is quite gripping. Alarmingly, the creators of this worm are still unknown, and thousands of computers worldwide are still infected, their botnets quietly awaiting instructions (who knows when?). The sophistication of its creators is scary: up to date on the latest encryption techniques, a...more
As a book which covers the extent to which the Conficker worm was contained/battled/confronted, it does a good job. There are brief biographies of the people who comprised the core of "The Cabal" or "The X-Men", setting up their credentials as experts in their respective fields.
This isn't a thriller novel, so there isn't much in the way of dialogue or snappy action scenes. There is, however, a growing sense of just how bad things could get, and the efforts undertaken to make sure Conficker didn'...more
This isn't a thriller novel, so there isn't much in the way of dialogue or snappy action scenes. There is, however, a growing sense of just how bad things could get, and the efforts undertaken to make sure Conficker didn'...more
Interesting book, but over-blown in some areas. I especially hated all of the extracted emails, way, way too much of that. Reading petulant cybermachos going on about what ticks them off ... phuleeeeeeeeeze. I honestly felt Bowden was getting lazy, just lift some of the emails that these guys are ranting in and put them in the book.
The desire to get the word out there so that people took this stuff more seriously is legitimate and worthwhile, we still take too much of this stuff for granted and...more
The desire to get the word out there so that people took this stuff more seriously is legitimate and worthwhile, we still take too much of this stuff for granted and...more
Although I suspect he's best known as the author of Black Hawk Down, Bowden does an apt job in translating events transpiring over the past few years most folks just aren't aware of other than the occasional big news story about an email virus or something. What he's writing about here while it can propagated that way is more properly focused on the specific of the computer worm as opposed to virus. Malware so to speak. It's gotten to be such a common term thanks to advertising from security fir...more
Who could have imagined that the entire Internet almost went poof and no one really knew or cared about it? But it did, and the fact remains that it could still happen today, or tomorrow, or in 100 years from now. This book details the effort to stop and contain the biggest and most potentially destructive computer worm ever to hit the Internet. Dubbed Conficker the worm has infected millions of computers around the world, and it was being fought by a small group of computer programmers who coul...more
I was very excited to get this book as a First Reads from Goodreads. I've read some of the author's previous books and enjoyed them. This book did not disappoint.
A lot of us take the Internet for granted and are not really aware of how vulnerable it is to attack--or what the results might be of a full-scale attack on it. This book tells the story of the Conficker worm, which is one of the first such attacks.
The subject matter is extremely complex, and I thought Bowden did a very good job of maki...more
A lot of us take the Internet for granted and are not really aware of how vulnerable it is to attack--or what the results might be of a full-scale attack on it. This book tells the story of the Conficker worm, which is one of the first such attacks.
The subject matter is extremely complex, and I thought Bowden did a very good job of maki...more
Mark Bowden's book about a small group of techies battling against the Conficker Computer Worm in 2009 was more educational than thrilling to me. While the true life cyber battle is the focus of the book it suffers the messiness of real life. But I found his explanations of how the internet works very enlightening (if not a bit too technical.) He uses a very tiresome device of associating the team with the X-men and I was tempted to remove a star just because of it. If you are not interested in...more
Fascinating and scary account of the rise of the Conficker worm in 2008-2009 and of the people fighting to stop it. I had no idea that Conficker is so powerful and dangerous! That's probably because the media (except for Ars Technica) did such a poor job of taking it seriously. The government was also pretty slow to react. My only complaints about the book concern the silly X-Men references and the relatively weak ending. The ending is not really Bowden's fault, as the real-world story hasn't co...more
After reading this book, you may unplug your computer from the internet. Bowden gives an excellent inside look at the battle between the black hats (hackers with evil intentions) and white hats (hackers who work for the good of everyone). He describes events with enough technical detail and description so that even the non-technical person can follow the story. Bowden provides biographical detail about the key white hat players making the story about the human struggle against a worm (Conficker)...more
computer geek mutants, microsoft packet, 13 internet servers, shadow server-watch for house in danger of catching fire, honey pots, conficker, malware, Cabal were x-men, 100% cleanse required, 250 domain names all must clear, initial hole in MS OS, some people plain evil per Rodney, world dangerous frail independent, after A and B and before C govt woke up, members work out with cold hard data, sink hole a threat, pissing on another’s shoes, potential threat to April fools, modern wars peter out...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Mark Robert Bowden (born July 17, 1951) is an American writer who is currently a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, and a 1973 graduate of Loyola College in Maryland, Bowden was a staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer from 1979-2003, and has won numerous awards. He has written for Men's Journal, The Atlantic Monthly, Sports Illustrated, and Rolling Stone over the...more
More about Mark Bowden...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“These problems have been here so long that the only way I’ve been able to function at all is by learning to ignore them. Else I would be in a constant state of panic, unable to think or act constructively.”
—
7 people liked it
More quotes…
Jun 14, 2012 09:07am
Dec 04, 2012 09:29am