Book Review: Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers

Reviewed by Br@d

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by (((Andy Greenberg))), 2019, ISBN: 978-0-385-54440-5

I received a free copy of this book back in late 2020.  The author and senior writer for Wired was the keynote speaker at a virtual user conference for a security vendor that I was working with at the time.  I was one of many attendees who won a free copy of this book by taking part in the conference's gamification.  This involved attending various sessions as well as visiting the virtual exhibitor's hall to interact with sponsors.  Not only did I win a free copy of the book but with some basic enumeration, I was able to upgrade my prize winnings to a higher level (the details which will be left for another time).

Around late 2021 I finally got around to reading this book.  It had been on my to-do list for a while; I just never had the urge to dive in.  Once I finally did get to it, I was pleasantly surprised at Andy's flow of information.  It was very easy to follow (regardless of your technical background) as it took us through more than a decade of the world's most well-known cyber attacks.  More important to current times, this book covers a lot of background information that better put in light the current political and technological struggle that is happening between Russia and Ukraine (and the world).

This book is filled with various references that go into extensive detail, yet is still an easy read for the tech and non-tech savvy alike.  Not only was this an informative and enjoyable read, but it was also scary at times, bringing the hard realities of how acts in the digital realm can have a significant (and even fatal) impact on our physical world.