DarkMarket: CyberThieves, CyberCops and You

I nearly didn't buy this book because it sounded very technical and dull, but Misha Glenny explains all of the technicalities from a lamens perspective giving the reader enough background so that you can understand how the complex systems worked. It will certainly make you think twice when next choosing passwords for logins to websites and pin numbers for your credit cards. Misha's other book on Audible McMafia is excellent as well. Highly recommended.

At the turn of the Millennium policing and regulation were non-existent on the Internet and individuals could move freely and anonymously across regions and jurisdictions. With the value of business being done online increasing exponentially it was a place ripe for exploitation. At the same time hackers began to evolve from the recreational script kiddies of the nineties to more sophisticated, highly skilled and motivated individuals with specific goals and targets. Some crime syndicates even began to engage this new breed of mercenary hacker.

The book is an account of the fight by worldwide law enforcement agencies against this criminal underworld on the internet. The book describes a sinister domain that is deeply intertwined into the fabric of the global economy via the internet. The author reveals and profiles a network of individuals across the globe, from the US, Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and China to the UK. He delves into the personalities of these individuals in astonishing detail. Really very interesting character profiling here.

It is believed that some Governments have harnessed the energies of this criminal fraternity to target rival nations in Cold War style espionage. In the book, Glenny details the sequence of events which led to the attack on the Estonian Internet infrastructure in 2007. We learn too about Stuxnet a piece of malicious code devised to attack Industrial Control Systems. (The source of the Stuxnet code is said to be a Nation State and its primary target was likely the Iranian nuclear plant at Natanz in 2009.)

Its clear that Glenny is not an engineer or a hacker. Indeed if your looking for specific technical details there isnt a great deal here if you are a techie. However its very accessilbe and certainly the book is authoritative, based on detailed interviews with the characters described within. It’s aimed at anyone with even a basic knowledge of the internet and is a great read.

Glenny is a fine writer and he has a fascinating story to tell about a group of teenagers and geeks who almost accidentally unleashed a global crimewave.

I admit to being disappointed that this is not quite the book I thought it was - the subtitle makes it sound as though it contains a wider discussion of cyber-crime and its importance in the world today whereas this limits itself to a specific aspect of a specific crime. That isn't a criticism of the book - only the subtitle.

I would warn that, if imperfectly rendered accents bother you, you might want to read the book. The Author is not a professional narrator and his renderings of some of his character's voices can grate.