Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime—from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door
Written by Brian Krebs
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
There is a Threat Lurking Online with the Power to Destroy Your Finances, Steal Your Personal Data, and Endanger Your Life.
In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies—and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks—he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere.
Blending cutting-edge research, investigative reporting, and firsthand interviews, this terrifying true story reveals how we unwittingly invite these digital thieves into our lives every day. From unassuming computer programmers right next door to digital mobsters like "Cosma"—who unleashed a massive malware attack that has stolen thousands of Americans' logins and passwords—Krebs uncovers the shocking lengths to which these people will go to profit from our data and our wallets.
Not only are hundreds of thousands of Americans exposing themselves to fraud and dangerously toxic products from rogue online pharmacies, but even those who never open junk messages are at risk. As Krebs notes, spammers can—and do—hack into accounts through these emails, harvest personal information like usernames and passwords, and sell them on the digital black market. The fallout from this global epidemic doesn't just cost consumers and companies billions, it costs lives too.
Fast-paced and utterly gripping, Spam Nation ultimately proposes concrete solutions for protecting ourselves online and stemming this tidal wave of cybercrime—before it's too late.
"Krebs's talent for exposing the weaknesses in online security has earned him respect in the IT business and loathing among cybercriminals.… His track record of scoops…has helped him become the rare blogger who supports himself on the strength of his reputation for hard-nosed reporting." —Bloomberg Businessweek
Brian Krebs
Brian Krebs is an award-winning journalist and founder of the highly acclaimed cybersecurity blog KrebsOnSecurity.com. For fourteen years, Krebs was a reporter for the Washington Post, where he authored the acclaimed Security Fix blog. He has been profiled in the New York Times and Bloomberg Businessweek and has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, NPR, Fox, ABC News, in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and more.
Related to Spam Nation
Related audiobooks
The World's Most Dangerous Geek: And More True Hacking Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Worm: The First Digital World War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Facing Cyber Threats Head On: Protecting Yourself and Your Business Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming an Ethical Hacker Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Cryptography: The Key to Digital Security, How It Works, and Why It Matters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5We Have Root: Even More Advice from Schneier on Security Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cyber Conundrum: How Do We Fix Cybersecurity? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ransomware Protection Playbook Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human Element of Security Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Exploding Data: Reclaiming Our Cyber Security in the Digital Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5CYBERSECURITY and CYBERWAR: Gain the Experience to Navigate Critical Cybersecurity Challenges Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCyber Crisis: Protecting Your Business from Real Threats in the Virtual World Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Digital Resilience: Is Your Company Ready for the Next Cyber Threat? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Project Zero Trust: A Story about a Strategy for Aligning Security and the Business Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Greatest Hackers in the History Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cyber Smart: Five Habits to Protect Your Family, Money, and Identity from Cyber Criminals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Vulnerable System: The History of Information Security in the Computer Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If It's Smart, It's Vulnerable Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Biggest Cyber Crimes in the History Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Hacked World Order: How Nations Fight, Trade, Maneuver, and Manipulate in the Digital Age Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Politics For You
Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Razorblade Tears: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Small Mercies: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While Time Remains: A North Korean Girl's Search for Freedom in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Overstory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All the Sinners Bleed: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of September 11, 2001 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Out of the Wreckage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Elon Musk Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democrat Plantation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Behold a Pale Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dragonfire: Four Days That (Almost) Changed America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How the President Uses Mind Control Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You Can't Joke About That: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We’re All in This Together Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Spam Nation
29 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Spam Nation sounds really interesting but fails to be compelling.
For starters, it's incredibly disorganized. Krebs talks about one thing for one chapter, then something else for another chapter, then back to the first thing, and so on. A lot of information is repeated throughout the book, often alongside new information, so you might read a passage for a couple minutes before you realize, "Hey, didn't I already read this?"
It's hard to say what the book is about at all. Maybe "pharmacy spam", in a general sense, but beyond that it's just a mishmash. At the beginning, Krebs introduces the book as a sort of saga of the feud between two major cybercrime figures. While this is loosely covered throughout most of the book, there is a lot of rambling on other topics as well. He talks about efforts to stop spam and the spread of malware; how malware is spread; the reasons people choose buy pharmaceuticals from shady online pharmacies; Russian politics in relation to the spam industry; one-off mini-biographies on other people involved in spam; and many other multi-page digressions.
All the topics could be interesting, especially if Spam Nation followed a narrative format, but there are simply too many topics for them to be covered in much depth. Chapter 4 (in case I got the number wrong, it's the one where he interviews people who bought from online pharmacies) was the most interesting to me and the only one that didn't at any point feel like a chore to read. Throughout the first two-thirds of the book, Krebs hypes up an event that turns out to be very anticlimactic and unrewarding, which left me annoyed because it had been the main reason I kept reading.
I'm not sure who the target audience for Spam Nation is - Krebs sometimes defines terms that are common knowledge for most computer users, but at several points he used terms I've never heard of and didn't provide a definition. There are several very simple terms that he explains numerous times throughout the book, as if he forgot he had already done so.
The writing style shifts around constantly. Sometimes it feels like a newspaper article, sometimes a memoir, occasionally narrative nonfiction, and sometimes like a Buzzfeed article.
I wasn't going to mention this but it's in other reviews so I will point out that the early part of the book displays some really bad narcissism. After the first few chapters it tones down though, so I wasn't as annoyed by it as people who gave up on the book early on.
Overall Spam Nation was a tedious read. I don't feel like I know more about cybercrime or spam than I did before, and I didn't find the loose narrative interesting in the way it was presented. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brian Krebs is something of an authority on internet security, so the story is well-informed and well-told. He reaches the people behind spam, and their story is certainly fascinating. The downside was simply that although this book is only a few months old, it already feels very dated. It's a book about spammers in the previous decade, not this one.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Spam is a Russian industry. There are competitors, partnerships, even contests for most responses. Incredibly (to us), spam delivered in Russia actually offers links to spamming services at the bottom of the spam, so that your business too, can benefit. The drug spam industry is financed by American consumers, who want to save money, avoid going to doctors, or even deal prescription drugs to others. The spammers fill a genuine void and satisfy a genuine demand in a twisted healthcare system. This is the story that Brian Krebs reveals, in dramatic, fascinating and fine detail.The online “pharmacies” contract with fabs in India and China, just like the majors do. Goods are shipped by them directly to the customer. Refunds are easier to obtain than from US firms, because the spammers don’t want their card processors to fine them or cut them off. And better customer service leads to reorders (!). And if they don’t, aggressive outbound telemarketing takes over. They have supply chains, with acquirers of botnets, renters of botnets, pharmacies, affiliate programs and spammers – all getting a cut of the transaction or an upfront fee. So very few get crazy rich. Some had to take legitimate day jobs to make ends meet. Eventually, those legitimate tech jobs became more attractive than the dark ones, so recruiting became a problem. Truly, a parallel universe.The drug spam segment is in clear decline:1) The Achilles Heel of the spammers is that they are not totally vertical. They can collect e-mail addresses, they can create botnets, they can accept and fulfill orders. But they can’t process payment. So credit card companies and Microsoft have gone after banks, card processors and transfer agents, making business impossible for the drug spammers. They built their own universe with their own rules, but stopped short. Eventually, it had to collapse.2) The other weak link is Russia, which harbored them. How long that would last was always questionable, but Russia is so corrupt that spammers bribed officials to investigate and close down their competitors. It was a war of attrition where eventually everyone had to lose. Overall, it was a self-inflicted, two pronged attack – on itself.And it’s not all a semi-legitimate economy. They also evolved from scareware (your computer is not safe) to ransomware (all your files are now encrypted). And there’s the constant selling of personal information.Krebs follows a cast of kingpins through their rise and fall. It’s a passion that cost him his career at the Washington Post, which changed “policy” so he could no longer publish his blockbuster stories. (Krebs had been the reason for the crippling and shutdown of major botnets, himself) He has kept going, following through to the end of the kingpins’ rule, and ends the book with tips on not just how, but why you need to protect your accounts. It’s all chilling and gripping, and unfortunately real.David Wineberg
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A bit old but it provides a lot of interesting and useful information. Online security becomes more important by the day. Real insights into so called Canadian pharmacies. It ends with some practical advice about staying safe online.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brian Krebs is a journalist focused on cybercrime. His 2014 book, Spam Nation: the Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime -from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door, is an excellent read for anyone interested in this common form of crime. He opens the ebook version with an explanation of the title, which I think is helpful.This book isn’t just about spam. By the end, Krebs has walked you through issues of where spam is hosted and why it’s hard to shut down. He explains botnets, the spammer community, and discusses both the malware they distribute as well as attacks they made on their opponents (and business partners!).I was skeptical when I picked it up but it’s both a well-written and fascinating read. Krebs drives the story through the conflict between two successful spammers. He introduces a panoply of related characters, both with his own prose as well as their ICQ chat history.He corrected two misconceptions that I had. First, that the people who click on spam are idiots. He spoke to some of the people who purchased drugs through spam links and found some rational reasons for their doing so. In fact, the discussion of buyers in Chapter 4 is as much about the high cost of pharmaceuticals in the US and the lower cost in India and China as it is spam.That spam was, in the case of pharma, a business enabler also surprised me. I’d assumed that all spam was essentially to deliver a negative payload (malware, viruses, etc.). Much of it is. I’ve never clicked on a link, but was surprised that people who did sometimes actually got what they were paying for.The book wraps up with an interesting timeline of government takedowns of botnets and the tightening of credit card payment systems. Krebs notes the rise in ransomware and gives a good explanation of its impact. He even includes an epilogue with tips on better password management and keeping systems patched. Unpatched routers and PCs are part of the reason the botnets and spammers are so successful.I find this sort of book – and Joseph Menn‘s Fatal System Error, which Krebs mentions – fascinating. As an end recipient of a great deal of spam, running my own e-mail servers as well as e-mail accounts, it is a part of every day Internet life. Krebs tells an interesting story about where it comes from and why.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I've always found the economy behind spam kind of interesting, and this book does an interesting job at shedding light on how spam works, both in terms of who's doing it and how, and also in terms of who is buying and why.