Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

by Ronald J. Deibert, Katie Hafner

   One of the world's leading internet experts takes readers into the shadowy realm of cyberspace and cybersecurity, revealing how it has transformed our world and the new rules we will need to adopt in order to survive.

In the twenty-first century, most of us experience a highly dynamic and interactive communications ecosystem that only two decades ago would have been the stuff of science fiction. It is difficult to imagine a world without instant access and 24/7 connectivity. We have reengineered our business, governance, and social relations around a planetary network unlike any that has come before. And, as with any social transformation, there have been unintended consequences.
     In Black Code, Ron Deibert examines the profound effect that cyberspace is having on the relationship between citizens and states, on the private and public spheres, and on domestic and international affairs. Cyberspace has brought us a world of do-it-yourself signals intelligence, he argues, and WikiLeaks is only a symptom of a much larger phenomenon to which governments, businesses, and individuals will have to get accustomed. Our lives have been turned inside out by a digital world of our own spinning.
     Fast-paced, revealing, and sometimes terrifying, Black Code takes readers into the shadowy realm of cybersecurity, offering insight into the very future of cyberspace and revealing what new rules and norms we will need to adopt in order to survive in this new environment.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Politics, Science, Internet, History, Computer Science

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 4, 2011

About the author

Ronald J. Deibert is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Citizen Lab and Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.

Reviews

[John Weeks · Rating 5 out of 5]

It starts with the Dalai Lama's computers, and hackers who are siphoning off data. It leads to revelations that nation-states are engaged in illegal hacking at an unprecedented scale.An excellent 'paper chase' (code chase) across the internet.

What does the 'Citizen Lab' recommend? That we apply the same civic principles of accountability and democracy to cyberspace. Easy to say, but harder to do. We need to work as a community to rein in the amazing and frightening scope of digital surveillance.

It's a little technical at times, but well worth reading. It will challenge your thinking of how the entire internet functions.

[James Creechan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very important book, and it is very timely given Edward Snowden's leaking of the details of cyber-surveillance details used by the NSA.
Deibert is the director of the citizen lab at the University of Toronto's Munk Centre and has been writing about the abuse of cyberspace for a number of years. The Citizen lab is probably most widely known for its reporting of the Chinese government monitoring system (Ghostnet) tracking every move of the Dalai Lama (...and others).
This book covers a lot of territory and makes it clear that Snowden's accusations are only the tip of the iceberg. Governments of all political stripes are involved in monitoring their own citizens, but as Diebert points out most citizens have abrogated rights to privacy and willingly allowed this to happen.
He covers some cases that are well-known (Stuxnet), but also documents emerging threats to privacy that are part of what he calls the cyber-military-complex.
He has an interesting, and frightening, chapter examining the different strategies used by totalitarian regimes in reaction to the use of social media. The most terrifying reaction is perhaps that of Syria which allows and encourages the use of social media in order to track down dissidents.
Some of the interventions and monitoring is described in detail that borders on "nerd-read"— but the details of this dark side of the social media and how it has left all of us vulnerable makes it a must read.

[Saleem Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review appeared in the National Post Books section on June 8, 2013.

Black Code
By Ronald J. Deibert
Signal/McClelland & Stewart
312 pp; $32.99

In the late 1980s to mid-1990s, there was a triumphal spirit among the Internet’s denizens, who widely believed technology would enable free knowledge sharing that would spark an age of enlightenment, empowerment and freedom.

This is not that story.

Black Code is terrifying. It effortlessly chronicles threats ranging from individual privacy to national security, whose perpetrators span crime syndicates to authoritarian states, and security firms to Western democracies. Black Code highlights the shadowy, lucrative war online, behind closed doors and in halls of power, which threatens to control, censor, and spy on us, or worse.

“We are actively discouraged, by law and the companies involved, from developing a curiosity and knowledge of the inner workings of cyberspace. The extraordinary applications that we now use to communicate may feel like tools of liberation, but the devil is in the details,” Ronald Deibert writes.

This is not fear-mongering hyperbole: Deibert leads Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs, a pioneering group that exposed historic intrusions such as GhostNet (likely by China) which infiltrated computers of the Dalai Lama, governments, corporations and organizations worldwide.

Today, instead of being concerned about data collection and exposure, we collude in it. We give away detailed personal information, often in real-time. Companies like Facebook monitor every interaction and track non-users on other Web sites.

It took humans from the beginning of history until 2003 to create five exabytes (5 billion gigabytes) of information, IBM vice-president of exascale computing Dave Turek says. He projects we will generate as much every 10 minutes this year. This so-called big data has sparked a cascade of companies gleaning insights about us and our behaviour. Deibert wonders: How is that data used, and why are Gmail, Skype and other services free?

At Google’s I/O conference in May, Vic Gundotra, senior vice-president of engineering, said: “We recognize who’s important to you, who’s in your family,” and feature them in your photo albums. Minutes later, senior vice-president Amit Singhal announced Chrome browser’s conversational search that understands natural speech via an always-on microphone.

Similarly, Microsoft’s upcoming Internet-connected, voice-controlled Xbox One video game console has an always-on microphone they claim is sensitive enough to recognize individual voices in loud environments and hear your heartbeat, and a high-definition camera that sees in the dark.

Both companies secretly involved the U.S. National Security Agency in developing their products in 2009. Last year, a U.S. federal appeals court rejected the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s freedom of information request about Google’s secret NSA deal, saying the NSA need not “confirm nor deny.”

Deibert: “The world’s largest data collection company secretly partnered up with the world’s most powerful spy agency, and no one outside of either institution knows the full details? It would be hard to conjure up a more frightening scenario.”

It may be upon us. This week, documents revealed the NSA has been indiscriminately monitoring millions of Americans’ telephone activity. In U.S. President Barack Obama’s May security policy speech at National Defense University, he favoured “reviewing the authorities of law enforcement, so we can intercept new types of communication.” He likely meant the so-called CALEA II plan to force companies to put back doors in communication technology — jeopardizing security and privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation says.

Last week, U.S. federal district court judge Susan Illston, who earlier ruled National Security Letters unconstitutional, ordered Google to comply and surrender private user data to the FBI. The demand letters must be kept secret by recipients, a tactic of democratic and dictatorial governments alike.

Canada’s BlackBerry, formerly Research In Motion (RIM), famously worked with the NSA to secure Obama’s device, amid demands by governments in the Middle East, India, Indonesia and elsewhere to spy on users. “RIM says ‘customers of the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution can maintain confidence in the integrity of the security architecture without fear of compromise.’ Does this mean its much more widely distributed consumer-level product, the basic BlackBerry, is less secure and easily monitored?” Deibert asks.

He cites Rebecca MacKinnon’s 2012 book Consent of the Networked : “Discourse in the U.S. and in many other democracies now depends increasingly on privately owned and operated digital intermediaries. Whether unpopular, controversial and contested speech has the right to exist on these platforms is left up to unelected corporate executives, who are under no legal obligation to justify their decisions.”

Among Black Code’s most alarming accounts is Stuxnet, history’s first known weapons-grade virus, whose authorship is all but claimed by the United States and Israel. Aimed at Iran, it jumped online in 2010 after a code error — making it available to all.

“Stuxnet revealed numerous clever solutions that are now part of a standard playbook. A Stuxnet-like attack can now be replicated by merely competent programmers, instead of requiring innovative hacker elites. … Cyberspace is becoming a dangerously weaponized and insecure environment.

“Since 9/11, and with unrelenting momentum, liberal democracies have moved towards the normalization of… ‘the national surveillance state…’ a dark world largely free from public accountability and independent oversight,” as the public ignores or is ignorant of “growing influence of national security agencies, and the expanding network of contractors and companies with whom they work.”

Black Code reads like a set of nightmares, yet Deibert is hopeful in a prescriptive final chapter that broadly outlines a balanced approach to security and a call to action.

“The social forces leading us down the path of control and surveillance are formidable, even sometimes appear to be inevitable. But nothing is ever inevitable. The future has yet to be written.”

Our future is our choice. We would be wise to write it.

Saleem Khan has reported on digital and national security, privacy and freedom since the 1990s, for The New York Times, Globe and Mail, CBC, and others.

[Travis Lupick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a review but is based on an interview I had with the author. It was originally published in the Georgia Straight newspaper.
There are few civilians in Canada that know as much about the Internet and government surveillance as Ron Deibert, but even he was surprised by some of the information that former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden leaked in 2013.
“It was the audacity of some of it that caught me by surprise,” Deibert told the Straight in a telephone interview. “I knew about far-reaching surveillance programs, I strongly suspected that most major telecommunications companies were coopted under national security laws to share information, and I was certainly aware of the tapping of fibre optic cables—backdoors—into software and other infrastructure. But the sheer audacity of it….It’s the scale of it that is quite remarkable.”
Deibert is the director of the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs. His latest book, Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet, is a bestseller that was long-listed for the 2014 B.C. National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. His work with Citizen Lab and other research groups is credited with revealing cyberespionage networks that infected computers in more than 100 countries.
On January 23, Deibert is scheduled to speak at the University of British Columbia at an event titled “Cyber Swarming: distributed counter intelligence and surveillance as global civil security”.
On the phone from Toronto, Deibert questioned why people aren’t more alarmed about the extent of domestic spying that is happening in Canada today.
He explained that there are two key differences between American and Canadian spying. The first is that the public actually knows a lot more about the Obama administration’s surveillance programs than it does about those of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The second is that while the American intelligence apparatus has largely sidestepped its checks and balances, the NSA is still on a shorter leash than Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), an agency that many Canadians have never even heard of.
“We have very little oversight—any meaningful oversight, really—here in this country relative to that which exists in the United States,” Deibert said. “No oversight to speak of, a confusing and contradictory mandate for an organization that operates in the shadows, and what little we know that has come to light suggests that they actually are spying on Canadians.”
Deibert said that he’s puzzled as to why Canadians have expressed alarm about spying activities south of the border while remaining relatively quiet about those programs’ counterparts in Canada, where the situation is in many ways worse.
“There has really been no public discussion,” he said. “Unless there is going to be some kind of huge revelation that is going to emerge, we’ll probably just keep muddling along like this, which is quite sad. I think it will be to our ruin, in the long run.”
Taking a step back, Deibert described how the rapid growth of online services has occurred alongside the expansion of government monitoring capabilities to allow powerful actors to subvert the intended nature of the Internet and turn it into a tool for mass surveillance.
“Social media, cloud computing, and mobile connectivity. Those three together are fundamentally transformative in one very important respect: that is, the amount of data that used to be stored in our desktops, our filing cabinets, and inside our heads, to some degree, is now shared with third parties. This is fundamentally transformative in terms of, not just privacy, but social relations in general and the relations between citizens and the state," Deibert said.
“You have this huge ether of personal data—an ecosystem—that exists separate from us, that is highly revealing about our preferences, our social networks, our habits, our relationships, our movements,” he continued. “And this is happening at the very same time that some of the world’s most secretive agencies—agencies that are appendages of the state—are being empowered to secure this domain.”
Deibert argued that we are already seeing the “symptoms” of a lack of ethical leadership in cyberspace. He pointed to Canadian companies profiting from government oppression.
In Pakistan, for example, software provided by a Canadian company called Netsweeper is used to block YouTube and filter news and information about such topics as gay rights and LGBT issues, Deibert said. He also expressed concern for Canadian software called Sandvine that Moscow may be using to monitor dissent in Russia.
“Those are the type of things that will emerge in the absence of leadership, and I think that needs to change,” he said. “We should be making this argument forcefully, that we will not tolerate the carving up of cyberspace into national domains of censorship and surveillance.”
Deibert dismissed defences of state surveillance that rely on the argument that people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear.
“This is about what will happen if somebody in a position of power has no limitation with what they can do with the data they collect on citizens,” he said. “It’s possible the machinery of government could be usurped, perverted, and subverted for partial ends, and that is what we have to worry about.”

[M]

A few of the main ideas: To start with, code is law. As Marshall McLUhan postulated that the medium is the message and Harold Innis showed the bias of communications, we must understand that instructions encoded in software regulate what we can do. Second, a recent change is the movement away from searching the WWW to a push notifications environment where „information is delivered to us” through apps. Third, while in the beginning the internet seemed lika a free place, hard to regulate, right now, many countries use censorship and block Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. Internet censorship went from being regulated – like usual things – through law, to being regulated through code and software, and responsibility is put directly on the service providers. For example, China has a particular way of doing this: it sends back to the user an error message, as if the content itself doesn’t exist (Google found a way around this, suggesting users alternate spellings). We must begin to understand and connect the dots, as users and as citizens: the internet is international, but its cables are everywhere, its central nodes are everywhere – but mostly around the US – and the devices we use are from specific nations – bending to specific national laws. From a lawless place, it has became a place of many, many laws. Fourth, the future is at least partly out of the West’s hands. The growing populations of the rest of the world will have access to the net, along with living in increasing inequality due to climate change and capitalism’s mechanism, so the question Deibert asks is, what kind of web will they craft? As the author shows, in some countries governments outsource to extra-legal intervention groups to deal with unrurly citizens. Coming back to corporations, Google has started issuing transparency reports, showing the number of requests it has received from governments to censor or remove content, and highlighting those it complied with or turned down (most requests are „other requests”, not issued through a court order). Most companies don’t tell users if their data is asked for by the government. In 2002 and 2004, Chinese government requested information on two dissidents from Yahoo!, who complied. When being sued by the families in the US, the company testified that it was following local law. Skype, as well, uses content filtering for China, and can be intercepted, although it promises end to end encryption. After 9/11, a key point in the cybersurveillance debate, governments felt entitled to more and more of citizen’s information, creating the false tradeoff: privacy vs security. Human Rights Watch found that the UN passed several resolutions urging member states to pass laws that expand government powers to „investigate, arrest, detain, and prosecute individuals at the expense of due process”. With enough data, a Minority Report future isn’t just dystopian fiction anymore – politically inclined individuals can be monitored before they do anything. Researcher Chris Soghoian pointed out that some companies even charge fees for „lawful access”, with automated process.

Cybercrime is real, and just like most crime, its structure is knotted in complicated patterns and networks – many „cyberweapons” (spying software, malware for breaking in, or just hiring a black hat to hack someone) are cheap and easy to buy on the internet, and, as Deibert puts it, how can the West condemn the Syrian Electronic Army when it openly markets computer network attack products at trade shows? Besides, when cyberweapons are perceived as clean, there might be „strong pressures to adopt military over diplomatic solutions”. Technology is multi-puroposed, and the same is used for surveillance of dangerous targets or of peace activists.

Hacking used to have a more positive value – „of experimentation and exploration of limits and possibilities”. Technology can be seen not as a thing, but as a craft, inherently political. In the context of our constant connectedness, the increasing restrictions on cyberspace „are alarming”. The closing off of hardware and software and putting on copyright or other laws to diminish access to them are not only barriers to our freedoms, but ultimately to our security as well. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has found laws (in debate – Article 3 of DAAIS in Europe) that limit the publishing of research on security flaws. The denial of access to knowledge is increasing, together with the tools to dismantle it. One solution could take the form of a distributed model: mixture of multiple actors with governance roles, division of control with cooperation and consent, and restraint. Without humans „cyberspace would not exist”. Deibert pushes for a position of joint custodianship: we either degrade cyberspace, or we extend it. The responsibility is intergenerational.

[Aron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Once again, an author's description of something mildly interesting he was involved in is presented as somehow representing a global phenomenon. Niche experience does /not/ qualify as good analysis!

[Jina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very eye-opening to something I use literally every single day. While I’ve been aware of a couple past attempts that have been made to put regulations on the Internet, I never realized the driving force behind it all and what it would really mean for me, as a user. The power to filter content has already been so easily abused in other countries, why would we be safe from such regulations being taken to an extreme? I also have a better understanding of what Big Data is and why Internet giants play a huge role in the shape of cyberspace today and how it is evolving. It’s a bit scary to think about how much we are playing with fire by using technology on a citizen level. Ronald also take a chapter to talk about the entity known as “Anonymous,” a group of hackers that also “watch the watchers” as well as anything else that catches their eye, They act when they see fit - typically releasing otherwise secret data to the public. No one knows who they are or who they really defend with their attacks as they have done some highly controversial things. Ultimately, I don’t see Ronald’s proposed solution to cyberspace regulations happening. People are greedy, what profit is there in working together rather than against each other? War is a big business.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fascinating look at the increasing government control of the Internet. The hook that got me was the discovery of worms and RAT's that were being used to siphon sensitive data by foreign governments.

It then goes into how governments are increasing surveillance and control over what their citizens see and interact with.

I really recommend this book for people interested in how our lives are being controlled by corporations and government.

[Mariah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ronald J. Deibert’s book “Black Code” begins at a cyber security conference called “Nobody Knows Anything” in Calgary, Alberta, on May 24th, 2012. Coincidentally, on the same day I was also in Calgary, Alberta. Unlike Deibert, I was not at a security conference. In 2012, I just got an iPod Touch 2nd generation and my first cell phone (no touch screen or internet usage). This was also the year that I actively began using Facebook. Little did I realize that “once on the internet, always on the internet” is more than a cliché. It was fascinating learning about how recognizable companies, and governments, take our data. After reading “Black Code” I now recognize myself in the conference name.

Although no longer the most up-to-date internet security, surveillance, and privacy guide I would still recommend “Black Code.” I believe it is especially relevant to those in North America who are seeking to develop an understanding of how we got to where we are. I found it surprising that “by 2012, two-thirds of all Internet users were located outside of North America and Europe, and over one-quarter were in China” (Deibert, p.101). I imagine that the Internet user base has shifted dramatically since 2012 to be predominantly Asian and South American. The appearance of Tiktok, a Chinese based global social media platform, makes sense in this context. After Deibert’s illustrations of Chinese cyber espionage and censorship in chapter 4 (p. 69) I am as skeptical as ever about the platform. I feel disappointment about the amount of times I have mindlessly pressed “accept all cookies,” but I feel proud of the fact that I haven’t downloaded Tiktok. Deibert’s writing has illuminated the significance of digital privacy for me, but it has also allowed me to see that for myself it is a lost battle. Already, I have left thousands of digital footprints on a beach with no tide. Moving forward I hope to tread a bit softer.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent

This was an extremely strong hacking book and technology read.

I had some really interesting realizations while reading this book!

A lot of good policies for computing and what governments can do to secure themselves.

An important read in this day-and-age with companies like Huawei.
For more information on that, I recommend reading Wireless Wars: China's Dangerous Domination of 5G and How We're Fighting Back.

Recommended!

4.5/5

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting, fascinating and ultimately very depressing. We have lost the internet to organized crime, despotic regimes and soulless mega corporations. We're living in a giant house of cards that could all fall apart, taking all our wealth, jobs and even the delivery of our food.

Your opinions are all digitized and analyzed. In the future, you will have to keep you nose clean, and avoid anything more controversial than what you ate for breakfast.

The author tries to off a solution in the final chapters, but they are vague and futile.

[Cold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its an interesting moment in time. The Citizen lab were just gaining traction and the world was starting to become aware of "black code". Deibert discusses emerging issues that are now very real, present and widespread. In some ways its remarkably prescient, and in others its a conceptual mess. Funny to think this was written before the Snowden Disclosures when everyone suspected but no-one knew. There's also many allusions to Syria and the horrors that would unfold.

Still I wouldn't recommend reading it in 2022. The field has moved on, found better terminology, concepts and data etc.

[Arjun · Rating 4 out of 5]

A convoluted endeavor masquerading as a scholarly discourse, attempts to dissect the intricate web of our digital realm. I must reluctantly concede that Deibert's work possesses certain redeeming qualities. His fervor to expose the nefarious machinations of those lurking in cyberspace is commendable, shedding light on the dark underbelly of our interconnected world. However, the book's labyrinthine structure and ponderous prose leave one grappling for clarity. While Deibert's intentions are noble, his execution fails to reach the heights one might have hoped for.

[Stefan Persson · Rating 1 out of 5]

good god...where is the minus 5 button...this guy jumps from completetly unrelated issues and topics....with absolutely not even an attempt at trying to tie things together....

what the heck do you want to say...what's your bottom line.....well i can answer it for you....you got nothing to say....you have just come a cross a vast number of random IT events and unfortunately someone completely clueless allowed this guy to publish the garbage.

[Patuleia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is good, it would be a 5 star review if I was in 2013, but it didn't age well, it's 2021 and I didn't learn anything new from this audiobook.

[Jay Red · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little too dated. It's such a fast-moving subject that it really does not hold up over time.

[Anna Mackay]

Read for work

[Chad Kohalyk · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my full review chadkohalyk.com/blog/2013/11/16/tour-of-duty/:

Professor Deibert has been able to bring some of the deep academic work they have been doing at the Citizen Lab to a wider audience. The book is very accessible, and easy to recommend to your non-cypherpunk friends. Moreover, at least in my case, it should pique interest in reading more Citizen Lab publications for those interested in diving deeper.

. . .

Even though he describes the internet as a “totally immersive environment”, entwined in everyone’s lives whether they want it or not, he maintains that the solution is to depend on a priesthood of “stewards” representing citizens at multi-actor talk shops. This may seem a lukewarm solution to the empowered activists in the room, wanting to inflame and empower the “people” to rise up (cue the cypherpunk call to arms “freedom through encryption”). However, in light of the complacency we have seen over the past six months (and more!) it might just be the most realistic chance we have on the road from information serfdom.

As much as Edward Snowden could be considered a latter day Paul Revere, and the people should heed his warnings, we have seen a terrible lack of anger sweep our nations. It is up to us to not only protect ourselves through our technological prowess, but also to engage with other power actors to ensure encrypted, distributed and ultimately safe infrastructure for ourselves and the general populace in the global north and beyond. It is a tour of duty. Black Code is a book that illustrates it well, and hopefully will empower more to join our cause. Spread it around.

[Doug Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're at all concerned about or interested in the Edward Snowden issue with the NSA, this book will give all the background you need to understand the complex issues and problems involved. R.J. Diebert, a Professor at the University of Toronto has been intensively working in this area for over a decade and chronicles the how, what and who of various incursions and issues in our wired world. He also writes in a way the average non-computer person can understand, which is enough by itself to recommend a book by a university prof.

Diebert is the chronicler of our Net times and lays out the issues in plain language that should be required reading in every senior high school or university history/civics course.

[Smilingplatypus · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you spend any time on the Internet (and I know you do), you should read this book. Deibert's look into the secretive workings of the Internet are especially relevant given the recent leaks about NSA/CSEC/etc. surveillance, but even without the topic being in the news this is a fascinating read. Covering everything from data mining and changing Internet demographics, to hackers and government censorship, to cyber-espionage and free speech, it's an eye-opening account of what goes on every time someone up a browser, with an emphasis on the need to keep the Internet from becoming autocratically controlled.

If you're not a computer engineer (I'm not either), have no fear: the book is readable and accessible even to the non-technies among us.

[Robert Chapman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a real eye opener for me, which was a surprise as I keep up to date on this sort of thing.

Being able to download and use simple tools to perform DDOS attacks and the like is not news to me, however, the depth and complexity of the latest monitoring software was. The explanation of what these monitoring tools are, how they work, and who is using them was he most interesting aspect of the book and the most disturbing.

I highly recommend this book for everyone, after all, we all use the internet.

[Annabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved the book.Really could not put it down.The author explained everything taking place in this dark space . I found a great deal quite shocking.If your into getting real details of cyberspace this book should be the book to read. For one who has been deep in this area for more than fourteen years I found the facts very revealing of what is going on. Highly recommend the book to others who want the truth on what is actually taking place.

[Jeffrey Hart · Rating 5 out of 5]

First rate book about the darker corners of the Internet. Diebert surveys the territory in a way that combines sound scholarship with the perspective of a participant observer. Along the way, he provides useful information about Chinese hacking of the Dalai Lama's accounts, deep-packet inspection, distributed denial of service attacks, Anonymous, Stuxnet, and a variety of other topics. He concludes with some sensible recommendations about how to prevent the Internet from becoming even darker.

[Jefferson F · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great read, if you are into tech and the currant state of world wide computer security, this is a book you need to read. I couldn't put it down, Deibert paints such a clear picture of a world rot with with governments and private corporations over stepping their rights and leading the blind masses towards a world where privacy is challenged from every direction. An absolute must read I haven't enjoyed a book this much in a very long time, totally engrossing.

[Todd Dow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great summary of the current security challenges online and how they impact global conflict. Well researched and endnotes, with numerous jumping off points for further research. Academically written, yet easily digestible as a casual read. This is one of the better infosec books I've read lately.

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out about this book from a review on Boing Boing. This book highlights current research into surveillance. It is interesting to read the examples provided. It encourages one to be alert, cautious, but not totally paranoid (mostly).

[Harold · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting and disturbing book. It opened my eyes to the globalization of the digital revolution and its implications. Wish some oft he points were developed a bit more thoroughly and the book is sometimes a little bit too self-congratulatory.

[Ronan O'Driscoll · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good description of the dirty deeds that go on in cyberspace, not just by criminal organizations but also governments worldwide. The "weaponizing" of the internet is scary and Deibert's book details recent events well.

[Oliver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well written book about cyber warfare. Especially the examples from the last 5 years show that this is not a furure threat but its allready happening.

[Herman Slatman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book; neatly explains Deibert's view. Great start to dive into laws and technology in cyberspace