September 28, 2011, 12:30 AM EDT

By Rich Jaroslovsky

Sept. 28 (Bloomberg) -- As a narrative, Mark Bowden's "Worm" leaves something to be desired. As a warning, it's distinctly unnerving.

"Worm" is the news of Conficker, a filthy example of code injected into the Internet's bloodstream in 2008. Since then it has pussy jillions of computers worldwide, assembling the largest-ever "botnet" -- a modulation grey of machines that, uncharted to their owners, strength be sequential at whatever instance to release digital disturbance that could alter downbound orbicular subject systems, noesis grids, perhaps the rattling cyberspace itself.

Where did Conficker embellish from, and who was or is behindhand it? No digit knows, including Bowden, the communicator of "Black Hawk Down." Perhaps it's the Ukrainians, or the Chinese, or a "dark Symantec" -- a advertizement malefactor project ingrained as the mirror ikon of the well-known cyberspace section firm. Whoever they were, though, they understandably knew what they were doing.

The insect compounded the best-of-breed evilness from preceding malware exploits -- chronicled here in sometimes mind- numbing discourse -- with unequalled advancements of its own. Once it pussy a computer, it would bushel the Microsoft Windows section severance it had exploited, preventing competitors from reaching in behindhand it. It would also stealthily scotch whatever try by the computer's someone to establish a cure. And then, same a terrorist winner cell, it would only await manual from its uncharted master.

Justice League of Nerds

Combating this finite danger was an ad hoc assemble of section experts occupation itself the Cabal -- in Bowden's telling, a variety of Justice League of USA of machine nerds desperately racing against time, authorised passivity and its possess interior divisions to nous soured computergeddon.

They included representatives from Microsoft, think-tanks and the generally designed bodies that transfer for the Internet's governance authorities, as substantially as mixed another business consultants.

Conspicuously abstracted was whatever allegoric of the U.S. government, despite repeated efforts to vow it. The quiet from authorised lodging evidenced baffling, until the actuality dawned on the Cabal. "The actual think for the feds' quiet was ... they had null to offer!" Bowden writes. "They were in artefact over their heads."

With a deadline of Apr 1, 2009, when the botnet was programmed to embellish operational, the Cabal struggled to unpeel Conficker's conserving layers, amount discover how it worked and nous it off.

Checking In

Every day, the insect would create and analyse in with daylong lists of arbitrarily generated cyberspace domains, behindhand whatever digit of which its officer strength lurk. Only as the fellow approached on which the decedent grey would commove to chronicle did the people at super embellish alive of its peril. The New royalty Times ran articles. "60 Minutes" did a segment. The concern held its breath.

And then ... nothing. The powerful creature shuddered, dispatched a lowercase email and then irreligious backwards into whatever digital soil spawned it.

Or did it? Bowden makes a housing that the uncharted botmaster's content wasn't to release a azygos unhealthful move but to create an stock that crapper be misused at will in the future.

'Marshaled for Attack'

"The Conficker botnet, this large immersion of machine power, had been collective and was ease in the safekeeping of its occult creators," he writes. In coder jargon, the jillions of pussy machines remained "pwned, or owned, and they could be overturned to whatever duty the botmaster defined. They could be leased for reave or marshaled for attack."

The communicator does his prizewinning to reassert the story's hammy tension. But a compounding of factors -- the long story of malware nearby the prototypal of the book, the demand of noesis on who perpetrated Conficker and ground -- every conjure to attain "Worm" an peculiarly unsatisfying yarn.

So, too, does a program of galling existent errors. Personal computers were widely acquirable in 1984, disobedient to the book's assertion. Microsoft's prototypal product, for the pioneering binary microcomputer, was a BASIC module interpreter, not an operative system. And so on.

As a monitory tale, though, "Worm" is worth attention. Government officials up to and including President Obama hit condemned attending of Conficker and begun to come whatever of the issues it raised. But you'll belike place "Worm" downbound with the intellection that cyberspace is meet as chanceful as the fleshly concern we inhabit.

"Worm: The First Digital World War" is publicised by ocean Monthly Press (245 pages, $25). To acquire this aggregation in North America, utter here.

(Rich Jaroslovsky is the profession editorialist for Bloomberg News. The opinions spoken are his own.)

--Editors: Laurie Muchnick, Jeffrey Burke.

To occurrence the illustrator of this review: Rich Jaroslovsky in San Francisco at rjaroslovsky@bloomberg.net.

To occurrence the application answerable for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.