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Brian Krebs

Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime - from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door Paperback – Picture Book, April 30 2015

by Brian Krebs (Author)

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A New York Times bestseller and winner of a 2015 Prose Award!

There is a threat lurking online. A secret war 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

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Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Sourcebooks
Publication date

April 30 2015
Dimensions

13.97 x 2.03 x 20.96 cm
ISBN-10

1492603236
ISBN-13

978-1492603238

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"Krebs' guided tour of the cybercriminal underworld is a cautionary tale about menacing cultures of hackers, spammers and duplicitous digital network 'cybercrooks...' an eye-opening, immensely distressing expose on the current state of organized cyberspammers. " - Kirkus"

"Armed with reams of information sent to him by feuding hackers and cybercrooks, Krebs explores just how and why these spammers get away with so much...By exposing our digital weaknesses and following the money, he presents a fascinating and entertaining cautionary tale. Krebs's work is timely, informative, and sadly relevant in our cyber-dependent age." - Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Brian Krebs is an award-winning journalist, founder of the highly acclaimed cybersecurity blog KrebsonSecurity.com, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Spam Nation, For 14 years, Krebs was a reporter for The Washington Post, where he authored the acclaimed Security Fix blog. He has appeared on 60 Minutes, CBS This Morning, CNN, NPR, Fox, ABC News,and in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, and more, and has been profiled in the New York Times and Bloomberg's BusinessWeek.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sourcebooks
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 30 2015
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1492603236
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1492603238
Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 kg
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 2.03 x 20.96 cm
�鶹�� Rank: #612,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #43 in Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Industry
- #93 in Computer Viruses
- #146 in Biotechnology in Bioengineering
Customer Reviews:
897 ratings

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Brian Krebs

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Brian Krebs is the editor of KrebsonSecurity.com, a daily blog dedicated to in-depth cyber security news and investigation. For the third year running, KrebsonSecurity.com was voted the Blog That Best Represents the Security Industry by judges at the 2013 RSA Conference, the world’s largest computer security gathering. KrebsOnSecurity also won the “Most Educational Security Blog” award, and last year Krebs was presented with the “Security Bloggers Hall of Fame Award,” alongside noted security expert Bruce Schneier. From 1995 to 2009, Krebs was a reporter for The Washington Post, where he covered internet security, technology policy, cybercrime and privacy issues for the newspaper and the website. His stories and investigations have also have appeared in Popular Mechanics, Wired.com and dozens of other publications. Krebs is a 1994 graduate of George Mason University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations.

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Mr K Barker
This a great read for anyone that is interested in all aspects ...
Reviewed in Canada on October 8, 2015
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This a great read for anyone that is interested in all aspects of the underbelly of the criminal spamming economy.

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the dark side of the internet
Reviewed in Canada on February 17, 2017
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great starter book for the beginner in looking at the dark side of the internet

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robc
Very interesting
Reviewed in Canada on July 18, 2020
Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime — from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door by Brian Krebs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I remember back when SPAM actually became a "thing" and the mails came in the form of colorful adds for web sites offering every pill known to man. It was always a mystery to me how these spam mails actually created revenue for the spammers - did people actually respond to these mails and buy?

Unbeknownst to me, Brian Krebs knows the history of SPAM better than anyone else. This book is extremely interesting in how the author walks the reader through the history of SPAM and it's eccentric players.

And yes, people did buy... and buy a lot.

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Catherine Wylie
Three Stars
Reviewed in Canada on March 18, 2016
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it was oka

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David Wineberg
We have seen the enemy, and it is us
Reviewed in Canada on November 18, 2014
Spam 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

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Anabelle Bernard Fournier
Spam is good but dangerous business
Reviewed in Canada on March 26, 2015
Spam: once a gross meat-like substance sold in tins that could probably survive a nuclear apocalypse.

Now, it’s the stuff that clogs your inbox: penis pills and health insurance and lottery winnings and nursing degrees and whatever else spammers think they can convince at least a small percentage of people to spend money on.

I’m not sure if these are scams, but according to Brian Kreb’s Spam Nation, at least in the heyday of the pharmaceutical spam era, most people actually got what they paid for.

Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-from Global Epidemic to Your Front Door covers the relationships between two rival Russian spammers and their crews, the gaggle of hackers and programmers that orbit them, and the consequences of their war on the world, through the Internet.

The book definitely presents a relevant, topical subject. Spam is the bane of the Information Age because it never ends, because it clogs up our inboxes, and because, despite the growing sophistication of anti-spam filters, some still make it through.

Indeed, spam email has become the primary impetus for the development of malicious software… These botnets are virtual parasites that require care and constant feeding to stay one step ahead of antivirus tools and security firms that work to dismantle the networks. To keep their bot colonies thriving, spammers … must work constant to spread and mutate the digital disorders that support them… Botnet operators need to continuously attack and seize control over additional computers and create new ways to infiltrate previously infected ones.
Spam is supported by millions of computers around the world–any one of the many computers you have used in your lifetime may have been part of it. And if you have been used as a carrier for spam, you may have been infected by a bot whose patron was one of two Russian master cybercriminals: Igor Gusev or Pavel Vrublevski.

Krebs presents compelling stories about these two figures: an early collaboration, a falling out, and a devastating rivalry that unravelled the spamming underworld. Unfortunately, the stories weren’t always easy to follow.

Some of the chapters seemed out of place, or out of time. Although I was interested to learn about those who order and consume pills from spammy pharmacies, I felt it wasn’t really what the book was about. It distracted me from the main story and just got in the way of actually understanding the bigger narrative.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s an excellent piece of investigative journalism. But being good at writing short-form pieces doesn’t automatically a good book make. I feel like the structure could have been revised, the narrative clarified. The “who’s who” list at the beginning definitely helps, but I felt lost more often than I wanted to be.

There is definitely plenty to learn from Spam Nation. I was fascinated by the political, social and criminal surroundings that enable such large operations to operate with impunity for so long. But the book too often swerved away from the meat of the story for my taste. A shorter book with a tighter narrative would have been just as satisfying, and just as effective.

It’s a good read though, if you can just remember to stay focused on the main story. It’s accessible too, without too much technical jargon to bog the writing down. If the origin and nature of all the emails you get but never read interests you, this is a good way to spend a few hours.

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MarkT
Great read and insightful
Reviewed in Australia on March 7, 2017
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A good reference for anyone interested in knowing the background and context for the spam industry. Based on this I will be reading Krebs future publications too!

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Mark Gibson
SPAM Nation - Book Review: Ignore this book at your Peril
Reviewed in the United States on November 9, 2015
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Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-from Global Epidemic to Your Front DoorBrian Krebs is an investigative journalist and former Washington Post staff reporter, where he covered Internet security, technology policy, cybercrime and privacy issues for the newspaper and website.

Brian left the Washington Post after editorial management at WP decided that Cybercrime was an area that was a little too risky for its appetite.

Brian went on to found his own Website www.krebsonsecurity.com a daily blog dedicated to in-depth cyber-security news and investigation. Brian has become one of the most informed and prolific writers on the subject of Cybercrime.

His first book SPAM Nation chronicles the activities of two leading Russian figures of the Pharmaceutical SPAM racket, Igor Gusev and Victor Vrublevsky, who leaked detailed information about the other in an effort to destroy the other.

This book is a worthy read as it details the feud that developed between key Cybercrime characters and the supporting cast of corrupt banks, less than diligent ISP’s, crooked beauracrats and victims of toxic counterfeit drugs bought over the Internet from “Canadian Pharmacies”. These two individuals (Vrublevsy and Gusev), are responsible for a large percentage of SPAM that has plagued your and everyone else’s inboxes for the past 10 years.

It provides insight into motives, modus-operandi and the environment, sponsored by corrupt bureaucrats who enable Cybercrime to flourish in Eastern Europe, Russia and parts of Asia.

Why is it worth reading? Because YOU and YOUR IDENTITY are under constant threat from billions of SPAM emails and social engineering scams generated by a sophisticated, determined, patient and growing cadre of Cyber criminals.

If you have not received a letter from your bank or institution where you hold a credit account offering free credit protection services, advising that you that your credentials may have been stolen and that your account may be compromised in the past 12 months, it is almost certain you will receive one in the next 12 months.

Pharma Spam provided the trainer-wheels for the first generation of hackers. They made $millions selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals, manufactured in India, sold via online “Canadian” Pharmacies to Americans who could not afford or could not acquire drugs for any number of serious illnesses and addictive needs.

The Botnets that infected and continue to compromise millions of PC’s, causing them to generate billions of Spam emails daily still exist. They provide a platform to develop and launch more sophisticated phishing and spear-phishing attacks.

Hackers have perfected their craft in what history will record as the “wild-west” days of the Internet.

Ten years ago, these miscreants were making $millions.
Now they are making $Billions.
An increasing variety of clever scams, including impersonation of senior executives using look-alike URL’s to launch phishing and spear phishing attacks (social engineering), to gain access to the corporate network and commit fraud; extortion, identity theft, credit card theft, website ransom and Intellectual Property theft.

The epilogue, A Spam-free World: How you can protect yourself from Cyber-crime, is worth the price of the book ten times over.

If you don’t want to read the book, then please observe Brian’s three simple rules to protect your identity… and never click on a suspicious link or a link unless you can expose and validate that the underlying hyperlink is genuine.

Rule 1: If you didn’t go looking for it, do not install it.
Rule 2: If you installed it, update it.
Rule 3: If you no longer need it, remove it.

If you are interested in any subject related to Cybercrime, follow @Briankrebs on Twitter, make #Cybercrime a Twitter hashtag that you track and read daily and visit Brian’s website, it’s a must.

Finally, if you have never heard of and don’t know what “social engineering” is, then you had better do some research in a hurry, before you become the next victim of identity theft and fraud.

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Aaron
Excelente servicio
Reviewed in Mexico on July 10, 2015
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Excelente servicio, que bueno que llegaron a México . La logística funciona muy bien , aunque les falta ampliar su catálogo en México

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Harish Jonnalagadda
If you care about InfoSec, you should read this book
Reviewed in India on January 26, 2017
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A truly masterful take on the web underbelly and the folks behind it.

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The Freeman
Fantastic book! Krebs paints a candid yet accurate picture ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2016
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Fantastic book!
Krebs paints a candid yet accurate picture of the spam underworld and it's kingpins. Though a factual detailing of events during the last decade of the spam scene, it's far from a tedious read as the major players in this world are extremely colourful characters and the ways in which their empires are run is truly fascinating.

A five star read from Mr Krebs - Bravo!

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