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

Andy Greenberg

Nov 2019 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Mark Bramhall

About this audiobook

"With the nuance of a reporter and the pace of a thriller writer, Andy Greenberg gives us a glimpse of the cyberwars of the future while at the same time placing his story in the long arc of Russian and Ukrainian history." —Anne Applebaum, bestselling author of Twilight of Democracy

The true story of the most devastating act of cyberwarfare in history and the desperate hunt to identify and track the elite Russian agents behind it: "[A] chilling account of a Kremlin-led cyberattack, a new front in global conflict" (Financial Times).

In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billion dollars in damage—the largest, most destructive cyberattack the world had ever seen.

The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in history: a group known as Sandworm. Working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike.

A chilling, globe-spanning detective story, Sandworm considers the danger this force poses to our national security and stability. As the Kremlin's role in foreign government manipulation comes into greater focus, Sandworm exposes the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield. It reveals how the lines between digital and physical conflict, between wartime and peacetime, have begun to blur—with world-shaking implications.

Ratings and reviews

Great book, very interesting and learned so much but would not recommend it in audio form. There are many details, so much so that this could be considered a reference book (and it has a detailed index at the end). Also, the reader's voice seems to overdramaticize every second paragraph which gets old after a couple of hours in. Not that this isn't intense content, perhaps just a personal preference. After listening to the halfway point, I caved and bought the paperback which was much more enjoyable in this case and helped me to retain the info. Highly recommend to buy the actual paperback for a book of this depth and detail.

AÀA BOSS NETWORK

About the author

ANDY GREENBERG is an award-winning senior writer for Wired magazine, where he covers security, privacy, information freedom, and hacker culture. He is the author of the 2012 book This Machine Kills Secrets, and his stories for Wired on Ukraine's cyberwar (including an excerpt from Sandworm) have won a Gerald Loeb Award for International Reporting and two Deadline Club Awards from the New York Society of Professional Journalists. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, documentary filmmaker Malika Zouhali-Worrall.