Tag Archive for: books

Hitting the Books: How hackers turned cybercrime into a commercial service

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As anyone who regularly games online can attest, DDoS (dedicated denial of service) attacks are an irritatingly common occurrence on the internet. Drawing on the combined digital might of a geographically diffuse legion of zombified PCs, hackers are able to swamp game servers and prevent players from logging on for hours or days at a time. The problem has metastasized in recent years as enterprising hackers have begun to package their botnets and spamming tools into commercial offerings, allowing any Tom, Dick, and Script-kiddie rental access to the same power. 

It’s a big internet out there, and bad actors are plentiful. There are worse things than spammers and scammers swimming in the depths of the Dark Web. In his new book, Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks, Dr. Scott J Shapiro, Professor of Law and Philosophy at Yale Law School traces the internet’s illicit history through five of the biggest attacks on digital infrastructure ever recorded.

portrait-oriented oil painting of a smirking bear in a purple suit, black text on red background top third of the space.

Farrar Straus Giraux

FANCY BEAR GOES PHISHING: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro. Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © 2023 by Scott J. Shapiro. All rights reserved. 

Crime as a Service

Not all Denial of Service attacks use botnets. In 2013, the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA)—the online propaganda arm of the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime—hacked into Melbourne IT, the registrar that sold the nytimes.com domain name to The New York Times. The SEA altered the DNS records so that nytimes.com pointed to SEA’s website instead. Because Melbourne IT contained the authoritative records for the Times’ website, the unauthorized changes quickly propagated around the world. When users typed in the normal New York Times domain name, they ended up at a murderous organization’s website.

Conversely, not all botnets launch Denial of Service attacks. Botnets are, after all, a collection of many hacked devices governed by the attacker remotely, and those bots can be used for many purposes. Originally, botnets were used for spam. The Viagra and Nigerian Prince emails that used to clutter inboxes were sent from thousands…

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The Financial Times and McKinsey’s best business books of 2021 cover pressing topics like global cybersecurity, climate change, and the opioid epidemic

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  • The Financial Times & McKinsey announced the best business book of 2021 on December 1.
  • Judges chose “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by journalist Nicole Perlroth.
  • Below, find this year’s shortlist — ranging in topics from the opioid epidemic to climate change.

The Financial Times and McKinsey have announced the winner and finalists for the 2021 Business Book of the Year award.

This year’s winner, “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” by “New York Times” reporter Nicole Perlroth, delivers a crucial and thorough analysis of the cyber arms race, encountering hackers, spies, and criminals clamoring to infiltrate essential computer systems.

Intrepid journalist Nicole Perloth delves into cyber crime to create an urgent, alarming analysis of the threat posed by the cybercriminals arms race.

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“Nicole Perlroth has done something that hasn’t been done before: going this deep into the mysterious world of hackers,” Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf said in a press release. “Cyber security isn’t featuring highly enough on CEOs’ agenda. I hope this award will prompt them to read this book and pay attention.”

McKinsey’s Managing Partner Europe, Magnus Tyeman, echoed the importance and singularity of Perlroth’s book. “Nicole Perlroth has written a book that is more than just a timely wake-up call to the fact that the world has largely ignored the realities and profound implications of the arms race between hackers, cybercriminals and businesses and national governments,” Tyeman said. “It is an alarming book, one in which the author makes a compelling, granular and matter-of-fact case for how vulnerable global computer systems have become, even as it also comes with an urgent plea for specific and systematic action.”

Below, you’ll find the six books listed on this year’s shortlist — stacked with journalists and ranging in topics from the opioid epidemic (by the prolific author of “Say Nothing“) to racism, climate change, and meritocracy. 

The winner of the Business Book of the Year…

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The Best Identity Management Books on Amazon

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The Best Identity Management Books on Amazon

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Solutions Review finds the Best Books for Identity Management available on Amazon right now. You need to add these to your collection today. 

There are plenty of valuable resources that security companies can use to improve and maintain their employees’ skills and industry expertise. However, if you’re looking for something to help a newcomer get started or want something for your team to do together, there are few options better than a good book. To help you find the right title to utilize as an educational resource, our editors have researched some of the best identity management books on Amazon and spotlighted some of them below.

These books are intended for beginners and experts alike and are written by authors with proficiency and/or recognition in the field of cybersecurity.

The Best Books for Identity Management Available Now

Book Title: Identity Management: A Business Perspective

Our Take: Graham Williamson has 27 years of experience in the IT industry, with expertise in identity management. This text is a clear enterprise resource. 

Description: For business managers and CIOs, managing identity data of employees, contractors, business partners, and customers has become an important core capability. This practical guide discusses the impacts of identity management on organizations from a businessperson’s perspective. This book will help managers and CIOs understand: • Automating identity provisioning into your access control systems • How to evaluate the maturity of your identity management environment • The difference between authentication and authorization • Why federated authentication is so important and how to get it right.

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Book Title: Consumer Identity & Access Management: Design Fundamentals

Our Take: Simon Moffatt is a recognized expert in the field of digital identity and access management, having spent nearly 20 years working in the sector. It comes through in the book. 

Description: Modern organizations need to not only meet end-user privacy, security, and usability requirements but…

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Beware of Kindle books infested with Malware

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The Kindle is easily among the lesser attractive targets when it comes to hacking. However, it could still be worthwhile to ensure the highest levels of security to the device considering that it contains such information as your Amazon account details as well as billing info, and in the wrong hands, these could lead to disastrous consequences.

Fortunately, anything of that sort has been averted, or so it seems. A flaw of this magnitude did exist in present-day Kindle eReader devices that have been detected by the Israeli security firm, Check Point Research. It revealed its findings at the hacker and cybersecurity convention, DEF CON. Amazon responded with a patch via Kindle firmware update 5.13.5 that plugged the hole. So, anyone who might not have connected their Kindle to the internet in a while has a strong reason to do so now.

As for the modus operandi, it couldn’t have been simpler than this. All that could have led to your Kindle being hacked was download malware that is in the guise of an eBook. Just opening the eBook would hand over the control of the Kindle to the hackers, who will now have complete control over your device without you even being aware of it.

The damage is done in the few seconds that the device needs to process the eBook before displaying it on the screen. A code will be running in the background that would make the Kindle be remotely operable by the hackers. Your Kindle could also be used as a launchpad for attacking other devices in the local network.

Does downloading eBooks from the Kindle Store could have posed a risk? Less likely but no way it can be guaranteed. After all, there is no dearth of self-published authors uploading their content on the Kindle Store regularly. Plus, we often tend to side-load eBooks which too could have been another source of malware-infested eBooks making their way to the Kindle.

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