We are reviewing one of the premier cybersecurity books that are currently available for purchase. The book was written by the World renowned author, investigative reporter, security blogger and former Washington Post Columnist Mr. Brian Krebs. His book is properly named “Spam Nation.” Brian Krebs is an award winning investigative reporter and journalist; he is also the founder of an award winning blog “krebsonsecurity.com.” Brian Krebs started his career as a reporter, writing for The Washington Post and his career has been highlighted in both The New York Times and Security Week Magazine. He started his career about ten years ago writing on various topics in cybersecurity in his Washington Post blog and column named “The Security Fix.” He broke the news on the largest breaches in The United States such as the big-box stores of Target and Home Depot. It has definitely caused The United States government to rethink its strategy and cybersecurity posture as more breaches have occurred just in this past year.

Brian Krebs is bold and brash in his story-telling skills and abilities. He was once a visiting lecturer at a George Mason University course on Cybercrime, where he and another professor named Dr. Damon McCoy were collaborating on different random and various cybercrime research. One of the major collaboration projects was on going and covered the online counterfeit pharmaceutical operations that were being operated by a leg of the Russian Mafia called “The Russian Business Network” (RBN). Brian Krebs presented his methodologies on his extensive investigative reporting and writing. Brian starts his investigations by scanning web sites that are actively involved on the TOR network, and by integrating and collaborating with underground hacker forums. Krebs along with Dr. McCoy sometimes would play the cyber victim. They would sometimes follow up with attackers request for data or even click on knowingly malicious URL sites to examine the abilities and potential of vicious hackers and then write up the results in a research paper.

Krebs’s book “Spam Nation” started and sounded like a James Bond novel with the book opening with a luxury car chase of a BMW and Cadillac sedan. The chase was between two Russian bad actors that operated two of the largest online counterfeit pharmaceutical operations that pedal fake Viagra and Cialis drugs. The two operations marketed their fake pharmaceuticals through mass spamming efforts that had malicious links that would redirect users to their ordering page for the fake drugs. The operation as described in the book was very efficient. The owner of the counterfeit pharmaceutical company belong to a notorious Russian Mafia affiliated named The Russian Business Network (RBN) as mentioned earlier above. The RBN has been known for various criminal cybersecurity activities. Krebs continues to describe rival gangs that were operating the largest pharmaceutical corporations in Russia named “SpamIt” and “GlavMed.” Spam Nation goes on to describe the drama of controlling that trade. The counterfeit market is extremely booming and unfortunately provides the mass funding for the unscrupulous activities of other mindless gang activities.

The final message that Brian Krebs’s wants to convey in his new book is that it is very important for users to be very vigilant and to be aware of receiving suspicious e-mails and not to click on any links that are considered to be unfamiliar to them. Every user can be susceptible of malicious attackers as Brian Krebs states in the last chapter of his book. Finally, it’s a very good read and very much worth the book price of approximately twenty to twenty-five dollars.


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