Joseph Menn: Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet

From fserror.com (promotional website for the book): Joseph Menn’s third book, “Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who are Bringing Down the Internet,” was published in the US in January 2010 and in the UK in February 2010 by PublicAffairs Books. Part true-life thriller and part expose, it became an immediate bestseller, with Menn interviewed on national television and radio programs in the US, UK, Canada and elsewhere. Menn has spoken at major security conferences including RSA, Black Hat DC and DefCon on his findings, which include hard evidence that the governments of Russia and China are protecting and directing the behavior of some of the world’s worst cyber-criminals. He also has given invited talks at meetings convened by the US Secret Service and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. “Fatal System Error accurately reveals the secretive global cyber cartels and their hidden multibillion-dollar business, proving cybercrime does pay and pays well,” said Richard A. Clarke, special advisor to President George W. Bush for cyber security and author of “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror.” The New Yorker magazine said it was “riveted” by the tale, comparing it to the novels of Stieg Larsson, while Business Week called it “a fascinating high-tech whodunit.” Fatal System Error has been placed on the official reading list of the US Strategic Command and is being translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Menn has reported on technology for more than a decade at the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times, mostly from his current base in San Francisco. His coverage areas for the FT include technology security and privacy, digital media, and the PC industry. He is a two-time finalist for the Loeb Award, the most prestigious in financial journalism, for coverage of Microsoft and the Hollywood writers’ strike. Earlier, he won a “Best in Business” award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers for tobacco coverage at Bloomberg News, where as legal editor he directed stories that revealed the landmark settlement talks between the cigarette companies and the states.



Regarding Wikileaks and the security measures that the organization's taken in order to thwart those actors that would like to see the site shut down permanently, the author wrote this for the Financial Times: WikiLeaks appears to be winning the technological fight to publish secret US diplomatic cables, hopscotching around the world to avoid government pressure and hacking attacks. The site has been forced to change a number of service providers, including those hosting its documents and providing bandwidth, and on Friday had to change its website address, moving from wikileaks.org to wikileaks.ch. “The Cablegate archive has been spread to more than 100,000 people. If something happens to us, key parts will be released automatically,” said Julian Assange, WikiLeaks founder. While the shuffling occasionally meant that the cables were unavailable, they demonstrated both the group’s resilience and the extreme difficulty of keeping anything off the internet, particularly something not universally condemned by technology companies and experts. Read that article, in full, here. See also: Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Shlomo ben Ami, Avigdor Lieberman, the Mossad..., WikiLeaks documents expose US foreign policy conspiracies. All cables with tags from 1 5000 [DOES NOT CONTAIN TEXT OF CABLES], WikiLeaks: Removing the 'top secret' seal. NPR affiliate, KQED, recently aired a Forum broadcast on cyber crimes and cyber security; the author was a guest there. See the podcast of that show, just below.