Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses (Symantec Press) (Paperback)

by Markus Jakobsson (Author), Zulfikar Ramzan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

“This book is the most current and comprehensive analysis of the state of Internet security threats right now. The review of current issues and predictions about problems years away are critical for truly understanding crimeware. Every concerned person should have a copy and use it for reference.”

—Garth Bruen, Project KnujOn Designer

 

There’s a new breed of online predators—serious criminals intent on stealing big bucks and top-secret information—and their weapons of choice are a dangerous array of tools called “crimeware.” With an ever-growing number of companies, organizations, and individuals turning to the Internet to get things done, there’s an urgent need to understand and prevent these online threats.

 

Crimeware: Understanding New Attacks and Defenses will help security professionals, technical managers, students, and researchers understand and prevent specific crimeware threats. This book guides you through the essential security principles, techniques, and countermeasures to keep you one step ahead of the criminals, regardless of evolving technology and tactics. Security experts Markus Jakobsson and Zulfikar Ramzan have brought together chapter contributors who are among the best and the brightest in the security industry. Together, they will help you understand how crimeware works, how to identify it, and how to prevent future attacks before your company’s valuable information falls into the wrong hands. In self-contained chapters that go into varying degrees of depth, the book provides a thorough overview of crimeware, including not only concepts prevalent in the wild, but also ideas that so far have only been seen inside the laboratory.

 

With this book, you will 

• Understand current and emerging security threats including rootkits, bot networks, spyware, adware, and click fraud
• Recognize the interaction between various crimeware threats
• Gain awareness of the social, political, and legal implications of these threats
• Learn valuable countermeasures to stop crimeware in its tracks, now and in the future
• Acquire insight into future security trends and threats, and create an effective defense plan

With contributions by Gary McGraw, Andrew Tanenbaum, Dave Cole, Oliver Friedrichs, Peter Ferrie, and others.

About the Author

Markus Jakobsson, Ph.D., is currently principal scientist at Palo Alto Research Center and an adjunct associate professor at Indiana University. The coauthor of more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles and co-inventor of more than fifty patents, Markus studies the human factor of security and cryptographic protocols with an emphasis on privacy.

 

Zulfikar Ramzan, Ph.D., is currently a senior principal researcher with Symantec Security Response. Coauthor of more than fifty technical articles and one other book, Zulfikar is a frequent speaker on his areas of expertise: theoretical and practical aspects of information security and cryptography.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (April 16, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321501950
• ISBN-13: 978-0321501950
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #364,366 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Academically solid, well researched, yet practical, April 28, 2008

By	Stephen Northcutt (Kauai, HI USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Crimeware by Jakobsson and Ramzan sets a new standard for security books. It is both eminently pragmatic and at the same time, a scholarly work. I thought I knew a bit about malware, but I learned tons from the book. I struggled a bit with 16.2 Crimeware-Resistant Authentication and encourage the authors to take another look at that when they do second edition and this book simply must have a second edition. It will also be interesting to see if the taxonomy, chapter 2 takes hold. It would seem like we need a bit more of a classification system than Joanna Rutkowska's type 1 - 3 for our community.

The book gets right down to it, most authors waste the first few chapters with background information. Now to be sure, this is background, but it is pretty deep background. My favorite chapter is 7, botnets, but 6.3 JavaScript is very well done and immediately useful information to know. For a high speed pass, chapter 8 rootkits will get you up to speed, but that needs a whole lot more material to really cover the topic.

As this is an election year, and a crazy one at that, chapter 10 is a must read, it details a number of ways the election could be impacted, I think a bit about evoting machines might make a scary chapter even scarier. As soon as I finish this review, I need to send a note to a friend of mine concerned about click fraud, the authors do a great job on that in chapter 11.

And the best thing, the authors do not just tell you how bad things are, they spend a lot of time talking about defense. And if I can offer a thank you to the fifty or so researchers that helped with the book, thank you very much, the defensive information community is far better off for your efforts. A must own, must read, must read soon if there ever was such a thing. Order it now!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for knowing how the bad guys are working overtime, April 15, 2008

By	Richard L. Russell (Renton, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If you are looking for a book to show you what the bad guys are doing with computers to steal data or comprise systems then this is the book for you.

I really enjoyed chapter 7 on Bot Networks. Like most of the other chapters it covers the basics of the topic, then digs deeper into the workings of the subject. And if you really want deep detail the ending sections go into extremely deep details (the book says these sections may only be of interest to security researchers). Some of the ending sections were over my head. But, the ones I did understand opened my eyes to those topics in a different light.

This book will be on my reference shelf for quite sometime due to the detail and range of topics covered.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Broad, deep, and technically accurate, yet tedious at times, April 26, 2009

By	Richard Bejtlich "TaoSecurity.com" (Metro Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Crimeware is a collection of chapters collectively written by 40-odd security researchers. Sometimes this approach is a formula for disaster, but here the end result is a solid book that covers a broad number of topics. Because each author or group of authors know their field well, they can delve fairly deeply when necessary, and their material is technically accurate. However, some of the chapters are boring and lifeless. This book blocked my reading queue for about 4 months, which is a sign I found the text unappealing. It took a flight from Amsterdam to convince me to finish it! Still, I agree with many of the other reviewers -- Crimeware is an impressive examination of malware, on a variety of fronts.

Chapter 8: Rootkits, by Prashant Pathak, was my favorite. I've read books on rootkits before, by Pathak's chapter presented the subject in a very understandable manner. His methodical and disciplined approach seemed very effective. He explained various approaches and terms, instead of assuming the reader knew what he was discussing already. I recommend reading chapter 8 before tackling other books on rootkits.

Chapter 1: Overview of Crimeware, by Aaron Emigh and Zulfikar Ramzan; Chapter 6: Crimeware in the Browser, by Dan Boneh, et al; and Chapter 7: Bot Networks, by James Hoagland, Zulfikar Ramzan, and Sourabh Satish addressed the core malware topics I would expect to appeal to the sorts of readers who frequent my blog. While several other chapters offered novel research, these three plus the rootkits chapter are probably most helpful to those defending networks.