Countdown to Zero Day
Ratings17
Average rating4
15
Ratings17
Average rating4
A top cybersecurity journalist tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare—one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb. “Immensely enjoyable . . . Zetter turns a complicated and technical cyber story into an engrossing whodunit.”—The Washington Post The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility. In these pages, journalist Kim Zetter tells the whole story behind the world’s first cyberweapon, covering its genesis in the corridors of the White House and its effects in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a top secret sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day also ranges beyond Stuxnet itself, exploring the history of cyberwarfare and its future, showing us what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by a Stuxnet-style attack, and ultimately, providing a portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.
Reviews with the most likes.
“A new age of mass destruction will begin in an effort to close a chapter from the first age of mass destruction.”
A dense (but engrossing) read, this is about Stuxnet, the game-changing virus/worm that signalled the age of cyberwarfare.
Since this is a true story (and not based on one), it becomes a drudgery to wade through the ‘boring' parts, but it is all made up for in the last third of the work, which details how the world landscape was changed irrevocably (for the worse) through trying to sabotage Iran's nuclear program.
TL;DR - reads like an expanded magazine article series, read if you can withstand factual writing which looks to be techno-babble, but don't read it if you want some sort of ‘excitement' in your ‘plot'.
Fantastic, in-depth look into the history of Stuxnet, Duqu and Flame, and how the very definition of war has changed with the launch of this cyber-weapon.
Originally posted on bluchickenninja.com.
I think this might possibly be one of the most interesting books I have ever read. It gives a detailed account of the US-Israeli effort to sabotage Iran's nuclear enrichment program through a cyber-attack on the computers controlling the centrifuges. It has interviews with the specialists who originally found the virus and their efforts to slowly pick apart its code, the book then goes on to show how this virus affected the machinery at the nuclear plant. I found this fascinating, its incredible to see how a few thousand lines of code could have such devastating real world consequences. It really makes you think about the future now that computers are such a huge part of our daily life.
The book does however assume that the reader has some knowledge of computers. If you think viruses are those things you go to the doctor for and worms are found at the bottom of the garden you may want to give this one a miss.
Quite good, but a bit boring in the last fifth or so. Just seemed to drag on, but most of it was really interesting and the author did a good job interleaving history, human stories and the technology.
