Trojan Horse

FOREWORD

It is Mark Russinovich’s in-depth knowledge of Windows and how data traverses over the digital landscape that creates the chilling realism in the backdrop of Trojan Horse, the highly anticipated follow-up to his first novel, Zero Day. I’ve long said that people are the weakest link in the security chain (and, in the past, frequently taken advantage of this myself). In his thrilling tale, Mark shows us that malware remains a significant threat as the sophistication of malicious programs continues to grow. The bad actors still use the age-old technique of social engineering — the method of manipulating people into performing an action in order to leverage the help of the victim to exploit a security flaw in the application software that resides on their computer. When used together, these two attack methods can lead to devastating outcomes as they leapfrog over even the most resilient network defenses. No one is immune to social engineering, and even the most technically competent can easily fall victim to this method.

In today’s world, it is rare that such an attack will merely affect one network. Once again, Mark makes us aware of how interconnected our systems are, and how their dependencies can be used to create havoc in our world. Geographic boundaries are no longer an obstacle for those wishing to cause harm. Our future wars may employ people on the battlefield as a last resort. The initial efforts will likely be fought digitally over the vast technology infrastructure that the Internet has created. It is now possible to have a virus weaponized in China, employed in Berlin on behalf of Afghanistan, and have the payload delivered in Sydney or the United States — masking origination, and making detection and accountability almost impossible.

Mark has created well-defined characters in Jeff Aiken and Daryl Haugen, whose challenges will absorb the reader. His attention to detail in both the technical and backdrop settings are realistic because they are closely related to real events exposed by the media. Even the nontechie will have no trouble understanding the well-explained technical details. The story line keeps the reader immersed, anticipating what will happen next, and the only difficulty comes in trying to put the book down.

Trojan Horse is a work of fiction, but it makes you think about the possibilities in the future as the sophistication of our adversaries continues to grow in response to narrowing gaps in security posture. I am both honored and privileged to have the opportunity of an advance read of Mark’s latest work, and look forward to sequels in the future. However, after reading his book, even I am left wondering how prudent the decision was to open an e-mailed copy of the manuscript called “Trojan Horse.doc.”

— KEVIN MITNICK,

SPEAKER, CONSULTANT, AND AUTHOR OF

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER GHOST IN THE WIRES