Hacking a Terror Network: The Silent Threat of Covert Channels [With CDROM]

"Hacking a Terror Network" tells a convincing tale of Cyber Terrorism. This fictional story uses communication technology readily available today to spin a fascinating tale a potential scenarios for any criminal element and easy enough for the novice computer user. By combining emotional motivation and computer savvy, terrorist threats press US counterterrorism teams to keep ahead of electronic means of causing death and destruction. The only thing missing are sidebars describing instructional exercises for the reader to try out these easily used technologies. The reader might enjoy supplementing this book with another Syngress book, Zero-Day Exploit, to continue reading cyber terrorism scenarios. The author talks about applications to use and you don't even have to google them on the internet. They're included on the accompanying CD. Additionally, Syngress gives you 4 free e-booklets online.

I found this book to be interesting both as a fiction and technical material. The plot develops around a very hot topic of these days - the war on terrorism. Unlike your "conventional" terrorists, the characters in this book use Internet and computer technology to secretly plan and launch an attack against the US. The tools discussed in this book were new to me, although I've heard of something similar in the past. I found it difficult at times to adjust to this interesting combination of suspense fiction and the technical explanations of how certain tools work. However, overall information obtained is quite useful and encouraged me to further research the topic of "covert channels" and stenography. Besides a few grammar errors and typos that were missed by the editors, this is a good introduction to stenography, especially for computer enthusiasts and professionals. If you are looking for a page turner fiction novel you may want to look somewhere else.

I enjoyed this book and I think that many who would like to learn more about information security, or covert communications specifically, will benefit from this book. Steganography, encryption, and other areas of information security can be exceptionally dry subjects that many people may find hard to drudge through. Putting it into a cyber-thriller novel format helps convey it while providing some entertainment value at the same time. That said, Russ Rogers is no Dan Brown or Stephen King. If you are expecting the storyline to be as gripping as The Da Vinci Code or Digital Fortress, you will most likely be disappointed. Rogers also sacrifices some on the educational side in order to wrap the information into the storyline and keep it entertaining. So, if you are expecting Hacking Exposed or Hiding In Plain Sight, you will also be a tad disappointed. But, the book serves it purpose and works well for the audience it was intended for. Movie critics will often slam movies for nit-picky technical reasons that nobody really cares about. In the end, if the movie entertains you for 90 or 120 minutes, it was probably worth the price of the ticket. This book will teach you and entertain you and is worth the price to read it. [...]

By way of full disclosure, I was the techincal editor on this book. I think Russ and I would be the first to admit it is far from perfect, but it does achieve its desired objective which is to educate readers on how terrorists might communicate using covert channels in a way that is generally accessible via a fictional narative. I would take issue with W Boudville's claim of pretentiousness. He is missing the point on the emergence reference, as it is not intended to describe the cell's tactics (which were traditional), but rather the way they came together and engaged in action in support of a movement with no solid formal ties to the movement itself (in this instance, al Qaeda). No attempt at trendiness is intended, but I'll solidly stand by the reference. If you are looking for a perfectly rounded novel with sophisticated character development and irrefutable plot components, you're likely to be unsatisfied with this book. If you want to learn about the technical topic at hand and be entertained at the same time, this book serves as an interesting and viable tool to do so.

Syngress has created what I would call a new technical niche for publishing. For lack of a better term, I'll call it the "instructional cyber-novel". Their latest volume is Hacking A Terror Network - The Silent Threat Of Covert Channels by Russ Rogers. And like the other books of this type, I really liked it... The core storyline revolves around an Arab student whose brother was killed many years ago when a misplaced mortar round (by western forces) blew up the cafe he was in. The father vows revenge, and raises the student with one overriding mission... strike back at the US. Using hidden internet communication vehicles such as stenography, the network is formed and a terror plot is launched. But before the first phase can be carried out, the student finally comes to grips with the fact that this hatred isn't what their religion is all about, and attempts to help the government figure out what's going to happen before disaster strikes. I've made the plot line pretty vague, as I don't want to give away any twists or endings... In this instructional book, the plot line supports the technology behind covert communications. A great deal of time is spent on the subject of stenography, which is hiding messages within pictures and . But beyond that, they also cover how to send the data across communication protocols and use headers to hide the data. What it comes down to is that there are nearly endless places to communicate covertly over the 'net, and trying to uncover them is nearly impossible. The author shows plenty of software packages that facilitate this type of communication, as well as packages that help discover files that have stenography characteristics. They story line isn't Tom Clancy blockbuster material, but it's not meant to be. This type of novel serves to both entertain and show how technology could be used to attack a country. I personally really like the genre and look forward to each new book that Syngress puts out in this area. If you're at all interested in this area of computing, you'll probably like this book.