DarkMarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Misha Glenny (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 4, 2011

"This extraordinarily powerful book demonstrates how utterly we lack the shared supranational tools needed to fight cybercrime. Essential reading." --Roberto Saviano, author of Gommorah

The benefits of living in a digital, globalized society are enormous; so too are the dangers. The world has become a law enforcer’s nightmare and every criminal’s dream. We bank online; shop online; date, learn, work and live online. But have the institutions that keep us safe on the streets learned to protect us in the burgeoning digital world? Have we become complacent about our personal security—sharing our thoughts, beliefs and the details of our daily lives with anyone who might care to relieve us of them?
 
In this fascinating and compelling book, Misha Glenny, author of the international best seller McMafia, explores the three fundamental threats facing us in the twenty-first century: cybercrime, cyberwarfare and cyberindustrial espionage. Governments and the private sector are losing billions of dollars each year fighting an ever-morphing, often invisible and often supersmart new breed of criminal: the hacker.
 
Glenny has traveled and trawled the world. By exploring the rise and fall of the criminal website DarkMarket he has uncovered the most vivid, alarming and illuminating stories. Whether JiLsi or Matrix, Iceman, Master Splynter or Lord Cyric; whether Detective Sergeant Chris Dawson in Scunthorpe, England, or Agent Keith Mularski in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Glenny has tracked down and interviewed all the players—the criminals, the geeks, the police, the security experts and the victims—and he places everyone and everything in a rich brew of politics, economics and history.
 
The result is simply unputdownable. DarkMarket is authoritative and completely engrossing. It’s a must-read for everyone who uses a computer: the essential crime book for our times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“DarkMarket tells you things your mind will have difficulty believing. Twenty-first-century crime is utterly different from anything you've heard about from the media or anyone else. In DarkMarket, Misha Glenny explains the world of cybercrime. You'll think you're inside a hallucinatory science-fiction novel—but it's all true! Over the last two years Misha Glenny met the criminals of the Internet and the people who try to catch them. Everywhere—from the U.S. to Ukraine, via France, Germany and Turkey. This extraordinarily powerful book tells the story of how modern crime knows no borders, how shadowy it is, how impossible to combat. You will realize how these crimes touch your life and your children's lives without your ever noticing it. And this study of Internet crime, like Glenny's book on the international mafia, demonstrates how utterly we lack the shared supranational tools needed to fight it. Like McMafia, DarkMarket is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the world we live in. And you'd better go in with your eyes open.” –Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorra

“A complex, eye-opening account of cybercrime…Scary reading.” –Kirkus

“Glenny’s got an outstanding cast to work with: Before the story is over, Turkish military intelligence agents, the Tamil Tigers, members of the Saudi royal family, and the brother of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer all make appearances. Stieg Larsson and his tales of sleepy Scandinavian hackers start to look vapid in comparison…an eminently readable, witty narrative that sustains suspense until the very last pages.” –Wall Street Journal
 
“Glenny accomplishes the herculean task of converting cryptic and tangled information into short, gripping chapters that often read like a high-tech thriller (complete with a surprise ending).” –Publishers Weekly

“America and its western allies are spending billions to perfect future cyber war capability, but Misha Glenny tells us that cyber crime is right here and has been for years—hiding in plain sight. Glenny's account of the international police hunt for a hacker known as Cha0, one of the most successful cyber criminals of our time, should be required reading for the world's cyber war generals.” –Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker

“The interlocking series of websites, organizations and individuals that [Glenny’s] industry has uncovered make for a truly remarkable story…he has succeeded in illuminating much that was hidden. This is an early, at times magnificent pass at a new world, which will grow greatly as our lives become ever more entangled with the web.” –Financial Times

“About 50 pages into DarkMarket I walked to my laptop to make sure my antivirus software had done its overnight checks. It was a tribute, of sorts, to Glenny, a British specialist in organized crime, who I think has written the most engaging tale of cops and robbers in cyberspace since The Cuckoo's Egg, Cliff Stoll's engaging account of a computer break-in…[Glenny] has brought the threats home with the force of an approaching typhoon.” –San Francisco Chronicle

About the Author

Misha Glenny is a former BBC Central Europe correspondent. Glenny covered the fall of Communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia. He is the author of McMafia; The Rebirth of History; The Fall of Yugoslavia (which won the Overseas Press Club Award in 1993 for Best Book on Foreign Affairs); and The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999. He has been regularly consulted by U.S. and European governments on major policy issues. Misha Glenny lives in London.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition, First Printing edition (October 4, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307592936
• ISBN-13: 978-0307592934
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #352,942 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Misha Glenny is a distinguished journalist and historian. As the Central Europe Correspondent first for The Guardian and then for the BBC, he chronicled the collapse of communism and the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

He has won several major awards for his work, including the Sony Gold Award for outstanding contribution to broadcasting.

The author of three books on Eastern Europe and the Balkans - The Rebirth of History, The Fall of Yugoslavia, The Balkans; his latest book McMafia is about international organised crime.

He has been regularly consulted by the US and European governments on major policy issues and ran an NGO for three years, assisting with the reconstruction of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo.

He now lives in London.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Riveting November 13, 2011

By mysterysong

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

DarkMarket totally captured me! I found the tales of those deep into the underworld of cyber crime fascinating and frightening. Glenny manages to make what could be a dry subject a page turner and not least, comprehensible (most cyber stuff flies over my head). I tried to read Worm but was completely lost, even bored. Look, if you want to understand what we are up against in this new age of cyber reality, such as identity theft and obsession - then read this book. It explains it all in a dramatic (even fun) way. Enough to get me really thinking about this strange new world we are just beginning to enter. Great book. Glenny hit it out of the park for me.

22 of 30 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Tedious - October 29, 2011

By Loyd E. Eskildson HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

'DarkMarket' begins as an interesting report on cybercrime, using the story of a pastor's account being compromised in England by Nigerian chemical engineer employed locally to get started. Unfortunately, the book quickly degenerates into mostly unrelated threads located all around the world, making it difficult to maintain interest.

The book's value is limited to simply summarizing the difficulty of tracking, apprehending, and incarcerating those involved - problems begin with the fact that criminal acts are often perpetrated from an IP address in one country against an individual/corporation in a second, in which the proceeds may be cashed out in a third. The actions taking place may not even be considered a crime in all three nations, the authorities not on the best of terms with each other (eg. U.S. problems caused by hackers in Russia are not a priority for Russia's KGB, but woe to the Russian hacker who attacks Russian individuals or enterprises). Anonymity makes the physical location of a computer difficult to identify, as well as the individual operating it. Encryption is widely available for free, most notably PGP, further complicating law enforcement, though reportedly government entities use Echelon to break these codes. (On the other hand, simple corruption of local languages - usually Russian, make it almost impossible for American agents to infiltrate Russian networks.) Glenny also mentions that German police officers are legally required to ID themselves as belonging to law enforcement if tracking a suspect over the Internet. Similarly, there are legal limitations in the U.S. and elsewhere on the use of Virtual Network Computing (VNC) oversight programs that monitor downloading and software installation.

Continuing, 'Safemail' is an encrypted email system that cannot be cracked without getting an Israeli Court to subpoena the information (owned and operated in Tel Aviv), victims often reside outside the investigating officer's jurisdiction, often resulting in pressure to instead work on more local cases.

DarkMarket had sections for pirated software, fraudulent documents, viruses, card skimmers, and stolen card information. Also important was its escrow system to enforce trust among the thieves using it, its 'invite' system that limited those who could offer wares on it, and the use of site administrators to patrol for cops and rats. (Those administrators sometimes used their authority to push competitors out, for their own benefit.) Still another law enforcement problem - U.S. agencies sometimes didn't communicate with each other, leading to Keystone Cops situations of one agency investigating the investigators of another.

Most of the material covers the activities of DarkMarket's founder (Renukanth Subramaniam, in London) and FBI agent Keith Mularski's infiltration of it using the alias Master Spylntr; ultimately more than 60 arrests worldwide followed. It had 2,500 users at its peak. Max Vision (Iceman) also was a notorious hacker who ran an underground forum called Carders Market and ended up sentenced to 13 years in jail after stealing nearly 2 million credit card numbers and generating about $86 million in fraudulent charges.

Kevin Poulsen's 'Kingpin' provide much more focused and useful information on the cybercrime underground.

3.0 out of 5 stars A book too far March 21, 2013

By Ivor R. B. Hibbitt

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This book is disappointing in the sense that it is a follow up to the original Dark Market and appears to be a reprint of that book, with merely a new prologue to link the new publication to the old one. Ninety percent of the paperback seems to be a repeat of the splendid investigative record of the first book meaning that there is bacically nothing new apart from the linking prologue.Many readers will feel angry that they have spent money to read a book they had already read. Still the suthor is doing a good job in alerting unsuspecting millions to the inherent dangers of the hackers and carders who use the internet to pickpocket the innocent people of the new electronic age. Yet the feeling persists that this paperback is a money making endeavour that really has no eminent place on the bookstalls. Misha Glenny is at his best in the original Dark Market, a cracking and educative read.