Overview

The story you ve just finished reading was completely fictional. Well, at least the story itself was fictional. The technology was very real and accessible today on the Internet. The unfortunate, and very scary part about all this is that the story fails to touch on the reality of the situation. For years, the Western world has ignored the threat of destructive activities over the Internet. Our perception has been that the technology is neither known nor prevalent in the parts of the world we consider to be dangerous.

I left the conclusion of the story hanging, intentionally. It mirrors real life. The good guys manage to catch one of the terrorists in this book, but what about the other four? It was difficult for Tyler and Jeremy to find the messages hidden in all the garbage on the Internet. Without a little creative maneuvering on the government s part, they might have missed the mark entirely. The threat is real. We live in a time period that parallels the end of the story.

Government entities aren t the only potential victims of covert channels, either. If you perform a keyword search on the Internet, you can find a plethora of news articles that present both evidence and speculation on the use of these mechanisms in the real world. Commercial entities can just as easily become victims to covert channels, losing customer information, affecting competitive advantage, and disrupting the finances of the organization.

The truth of the matter is that we ve...