Worm: The First Digital World War

I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. It was very clearly written with plenty of background on the technical side of computer viruses and worms to make the story clear and easy to follow. The Conficker worm turns out to be rather mysterious, and I appreciated that mystery element. For the most part, Bowden keeps himself out of the story - another plus. Recommended for those who like Hackers, The Cuckoo's Egg, and stories about computer history.

I’m often amazed at how surprised others seem to be by big events. Seriously. The rise of the internet was not surprising to most computer scientists. 9-11 was not surprising to a large number of terrorism experts. That the iPhone or more precisely something like it would explode into the mainstream was predicted by a plethora of prognosticators for very long time.

So this book is your change to able to say, “Oh, yea I’ve known about that for a couple of years”, while too many of your friends are reeling in shock … although in my personal experience saying this wish such lack of tact is less than ideal for your friendships {wink} …

Sometime in the next 5 to 15 years (let’s call it 10 years) there will be an act of cyber-war or cyber-terrorism that will shock much of the western world. But really the shocking thing would be if such an event doesn’t occur.

This book is the story of the creation of a formidable new weapon in the “cold” cyber-war, which seems to have been escalating for about 5 years, by none other than the former Soviet Union. It is told from the perspective of rag tag band of American intellectuals who fought intently to prevent its creation. It is a very good story, but more importantly knowing this story will elucidate future world events. In the end there is just enough

The story is one that most computer security experts don’t know, or only vaguely know. In this regard this is a must read for mainstream computer scientists. But the author goes to great lengths to explain concepts to non-programmers. For example he explains in surprising detail the, somewhat rudimentary, buffer overflow attack at the heart of the sorry through an extended analogy to a cook following a recipe a bit too slavishly while a miscreant tricks the cook into inserting ruinous items into his own recipe. Often this sort of thing is tedious for the expert listener, but somehow it wasn’t in this case.

Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down), in Worm, tells the story of the Conflicker worm which was introduced to computers in 2008 and infected 1.5 million computers in 195 countries. He brings to the public the story of those who would disrupt the internet and those who are charged to protect it. A strength of Bowden is his uncanny ability to tell this story in a way that the nongeek will easily follow and understand. I was particularly interested in passage where Bowden explains what goes into protecting the internet, profiles the people involved in that task, and explains something of what takes place in such an atmosphere and environment. It is probably the topic covered, but I found Black Hawk Down to be far more engaging than Worm. On the other hand, the battle scenes of Black Hawk Down lend themselves to life-and-death struggle and computer hacking and worms are not that bloody. Nonetheless, Bowden fan will be entertained, informed, and otherwise rewarded for reading his most recent book. Christopher Lane's reading is well done.

It started off good, and went down hill from there.
If you like a lecture on the terms and history of the internet great. It was like listening to someone read a dictionary of computer terms.

For anyone that is reading my review you are already connected to the digital world, as we know as the Internet. Even though you may not be an ultra geek or just don't care what is going on in cyberspace, you should wake up and be more aware of the new digital threat to our new society because the attack will effect everyone, no matter if they go online or not because all of our financial institutions are link together and we live in a digital world.

There were many articles, postings, warnings, security patches and ongoing technology podcasts and blogs on Conficker. They were all mix match of speculation, like Y2K. No one really knew what was going to happen when Conficker went off.

"Worm" is a good read, even though you might not have any interest on this subject. The material that is presented is elementary for people that aren't aware of these types attacks, but it also goes much deeper for savvy users to keep their interest. More like inside baseball on Conficker.

C Day came and went like Y2K. The Internet didn't break down, the power grid didn't blew up and we had access to our bank accounts. The book addresses several valid points. If we are not careful or up to date, there will be a virus that will bring the net down and we will all be broken.

This is an interesting story about a world I know little about. I like the way the author weaved some information in as to how things work in the computer world, as I like to understand how things work. It is an engaging story, a mystery. Well written and well narrated.

An interesting read about a subject I knew little about. Sure I surf the internet but never understood the workings and how someone benefits from all the viruses(malware).
I came away knowing more about the internet and with less confidence in my government to protect us.
I would recommend this book as an eye opener!

We all have computers and we have all had malware, which I have never understood. This story concerns a worm/ virus/ or whatever that panicked everyone, but came to very little harm in the end.

There were huge efforts to sort it out without particular success. Actually, I still don't understand this stuff and the worm malware certainly vexed the people who do understand it - so I suppose we are all in for a very big kicking in the future.... we will just have to wait and see.

A bit depressing at the end of the day!

If you are interested in international security and conflict Worm should be on your radar. Bowden condenses and focuses a very heady topic with aplomb.

I just finished this book and I see in today's newspaper some of the people that are in the book have a grant from the government to build a new firewall. They are to start from the beginning to create a new way of protecting computers instead of patches. Mark Bowden's well written book allowed me to understand the problem and the importance to the new firewall. The conficker worm is the largest most frighting malware I have heard of. This book reads like a sci-fi book only it is all real. The conficker has created the largest bot-net ever seen and no one yet knows what this worm is going to do or when never mind how to stop it. Just imagine what would happen if some one shut down all the Internet traffic and crashed all the computers. This is a great book and Christopher Lane did a good job narrating the story.