Worm

September 26, 2011
Bestselling Black Hawk Down author Bowden follows a group of white-hat computer experts who came together to fight Conficker, malware that surfaced in late 2008 and appeared poised to take over millions of computers running Windows Operating System on April 1, 2009. Bowden shows how “The Cabal” struggled to stay ahead of the Conficker worm as it evolved in the course of four months into ever more threatening incarnations. The author takes readers behind the scenes, showing the security specialists’ increasing frenzy, not to mention occasional infighting, as they worked to defeat the worm. Along the way, the author lucidly explains how malware can take over computers as well as how the very openness of the Internet makes it vulnerable to attack. “If no one is ultimately responsible for the Internet, then how do you police and defend it?” he asks. But while Bowden presents the Cabal’s efforts to defeat Conficker as an epic good vs. evil battle, the actual stakes are never entirely clear. Even the computer researchers have no way of knowing whether Conficker will set off “Cybarmageddon,” or will amount to no more than an elaborate April Fool’s joke.

May 1, 2011

Not those squishy things but something much more revolting: the Conficker computer worm first noticed in November 2008 that goes after the Microsoft Windows operating system. It's now said to control millions of government, business, and home computers worldwide. Bowden (Black Hawk Down) helps us worry about the consequences.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2011

From the author of Black Hawk Down, a different sort of blood-and-thunder heroism narrative, out on the frontiers of cybercrime.

Journalist Bowden (The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL, 2008, etc.) enthusiastically explains that world commerce faces serious threats from malware, especially "botnets," networked computers with a customized hidden infection that can be triggered by the malware programmer for any number of vicious effects. The largest such threat to date became known as Conficker when it surfaced abruptly in 2008. Much of Bowden's narrative documents the work of a disparate, volunteer group of early Internet pioneers, ex-hackers and driven cyber-security professionals who came together, mostly online, to form the Conficker Working Group or (its preferred name) The Cabal. Initially, the group felt confident in their collective, improvised efforts to minimize the worm's ability to infect individual computers and form a botnet; they were thus increasingly alarmed when Conficker was twice upgraded in sophistication by its mysterious programmers. Worse, their attempts to alert federal authorities were met with comical paranoia and ineptitude. Since Conficker functioned by randomly infecting large quantities of domain names, it was particularly difficult to counteract; yet, after much tension, the activation date for the botnet came and went to no apparent effect. Bowden notes that "the prospect of nothing happening...had actually become the prevailing theory of The Cabal itself." Still, Cabal members and Bowden both insist that the danger was not overstated. The author concludes that Conficker proves that "carefully tailored targeted attacks" are the wave of the future, using as an example the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iranian nuclear-production facilities. Bowden is a sharp, funny writer who can convey a complex narrative in crisp terms, but due to the subject matter, this remains an airy and less-engaging book than his best-known works.

A brief, punchy reminder of our high-tech vulnerabilities.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011
The malicious bundle of digital code known as the Conficker worm first invaded the Internet in November 2008, quickly putting computer security specialists worldwide on high alert. Unlike viruses, which are configured to cripple their computer hosts, worms are designed to take control of a PC's operating system and use it as a drone for nefarious purposes. Bowden, acclaimed author of Black Hawk Down (1999), which described a disastrous U.S. military raid in Somalia, gives this account of the computer world's efforts to neutralize the Conficker worm the flavor of a riveting report from the digital battlefield's front lines. The featured heroes are members of a loose group of computer security experts dubbed the Cabal, which includes digital crimes experts T. J. Campana of Microsoft and Phil Porras of California-based SRI. Bowden provides lucid explanations of computer-related concepts while narrating an edge-of-the-seat account of the Cabal's efforts to isolate and neutralize the worm. A nerve-racking but first-rate inside peek into the world of cybercrime and its vigilant adversaries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)