Mark Bowden’s book, WORM, is the first to describe what’s really going on with the one’s and zero’s inside your computer as the battle for ownership of cyberspace, by those who wish to attack it (cyber criminals, cyber spies, cyber hoaxsters) and those who wish to preserve its safety and freedom of access (cyber developers, cyber capitalists, cyber protectors). It should become a classic if it hasn’t already attained that status within cyber circles.
Ever heard of Conficker? It was all over the news in 2008. It was that moment in time when we were all forced to begin understanding, or at least recognize, the difference between a computer virus or any other nefarious entities that we could collect in a public internet that could make our computers sick and frustrating to turn on. Conficker was a worm...for many of us it was the first time we heard the term worm as well. It was used to differentiate a bad thing happening to our computers from the litany of other bad things that could happen, such as spyware grabbing our email list, or malware, grabbing that list and sending links to porn sites to all of our friends (for the record that never happened to me). However, as it turns out, Conficker didn’t actually do bad things “to” your computer...as spyware and other apps aimed at disrupting our computer use had intended. Conficker aimed to do bad things “with” your computer. The purpose of Conficker was to take control of your computer. Conficker was designed to exploit a known vulnerability in the Windows operating system in order to gain root access to your computer so they could ask it to do anything they wanted at any time they wanted. Once an external source has administrative privilege on your computer, even remotely, they can do whatever they want. Certainly, they can do very bad things, like wipe your hard drive, steal your bank account numbers and passwords, or corrupt your system so it will never work again, but the aim of Conficker was to own an army of computers, that could be called into action by its one master. It was also designed so this control could be rented out, to another master. So Conficker was designed to be extremely innocuous on your computer day to day. You may not even know you were infected. The intent was for it to just lie there in wait for one day when it’s owner called it into action.
In general, a computer worm no more nefarious than any computer program running on your computer. The difference is, in the wild, it is designed to move from computer to computer, gaining root access, and then phoning home to tell it’s master which computer it owns within the army of other infected computers it has taken over. Then it continues to propagate to another computer, phone home, and lie in wait until commanded to do something. That is Conficker.
In WORM Bowden brings to light the first group of cyber protectors who believe in using their computer knowledge for good to battle this Conficker worm. He describes how this group, after discovering the Conficker attacks, banded together to isolate, dissect, and attempt to destroy Conficker, prior to being used for whatever nefarious purpose happened to be on their owner’s mind. They did so without the support and approval of state governments, in particular that of the United States, where there was a denial that such cyber-attacks could be as invasive, widespread, and achievable as the Conficker infection appeared to be. When realized, it proved to be a turning point, in how we view the power of the internet, how much we depend on it, how fragile it can be, and the possibility of what could happen if these fragilities led to a loss of control. The security posture of the internet, the software and hardware that define it, and how the government, in particular our government, viewed cyber would change our policies to protect against, and for, the possibility of Conficker like attacks in the future.
Bowden brings all of this to light in a well told tale of these superheroes of cyber. These hacker good guys. Most books about hackers talk about the dark side. Bowden has given us tremendous knowledge to convince us that the good guys with a deep knowledge of computer science and computer security are not the same guys who are both attacking us and selling us anti-virus software at the same time. In fact, he describes a case where that is exactly what was happening. Nevertheless, we must believe that there are many forces for good out there, since the internet is of great, dare I say supreme, goodness for most of us on a day-to-day basis. He gives us a glimpse of how impossibly large the internet already is, and that was back in 2008, and how hopelessly complex these problems of internet security actually can be. The very fact the Conficker still exists in the wild, still infecting millions of computers, and still lying in wait until one day when it finds a hole in the defenses put in place to protect us from it, and begins it’s dirty deeds, should hurt your head. It paints a picture of how vulnerable we really are and how fragile the one’s and zero’s that govern our daily lives can actually be.
I like this book. I think it’s a must read for everyone who considers themselves to be in the business of cyber, for whatever reason. Bowden did and tremendous job making this material available to everyone. Not being a cyber professional himself, but immersing himself science and culture, you can see from page to page, his knowledge grows. From the first pages where he is awkward and struggles to find the right words to express the technology, and even gets some of it wrong, or at least not exact, to the end where he has graduated from a master’s program in cyber and has full command and understanding of both his medium (as he is an expert storyteller) and now his subject matter. All cyber professionals should have a few facts in their history jar about Conficker. This is the most accessible treatment of the subject. I’ll give WORM four stars. It’s not a must read but it’s done well and will become should become a historical classic on the subject.
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