KM Book Club announces summer 2003 selection

The KM Book Club, the MITRE Employee Book Club for Knowledge Sharing has announced its new book selection. The book is by MITRE author Bill Neugent and is called "No Outward Sign." A book discussion will be held in August as a part of InfoCenter Service's Lunchtime Seminar Series. This follows the Stephen Wolfram book discussion on "A New Kind of Science." Neugent is willing to be of assistance with a lunchtime discussion in any way that he can. Dave Lehman wrote, "The book highlights an important security problem for which there is no good solution."

From PR Newswire: MCLEAN, Va., June 3 /PRNewswire/ - A novel about cyberterrorism offers $1,000 to the first person who can find a message hidden within the book. The prize has been brought within easy reach by monthly clues posted to the author's website.

"The contest dramatizes the difficulties of countering cyberterrorism," said Bill Neugent, author of "No Outward Sign" (Writers Club Press, November 2002), "just as the book shows how it feels to be under professional computer attack." The goal of both the book and the contest is to raise public awareness of the challenges of cyber conflict and the vulnerabilities that underlie computer-based society.

The message was hidden using a technique called steganography, the same approach used by Al-Qaeda terrorists to communicate via postings on Internet websites, the same approach used by the novel's protagonist to communicate with his vigilante hacker band.

Days after the book's release on amazon.com, sales surged until the novel became one of Amazon's 500 best-selling books. Two conferences have purchased the novel, including the recent Government Chief Information Officer Summit in Savannah, Ga., which bought 150 copies for attending executives.

As the chief engineer for 200 experts on computer security and information assurance at MITRE, Neugent's job is to help the government achieve computer network defense against professional adversaries. He's also in demand as a keynote speaker for his talk: "Cyberterrorism; We're Toast."