I would recommend the physical book, but not the audio book. Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why? Interesting Story, Terrible Production Quality By the end, while you never learn who the faces are behind Stuxnet, you'll have zero doubts about which nations were behind it. In the end, it's wild ride, stranger than fiction journey that involves international conspiracies, assassinations, wildly intelligent researchers across the entire globe. I remember clearly being blown away when the MD5 collision attack was discovered as it essentially confirmed that Stuxnet was made by nation-state actors. As someone who's livelihood is tied web development, and followed stuxnet in the news, this book is fascinating. I could easily see an average reader getting lost or eyes glazing over at times. This book isn't for everyone due to the technical nature of it. Those unfamiliar with patch Tuesday and the significance of out-of-band updates from Microsoft, or even what a zero-day exploit is, may want to start with Worm as a primer. It's sure to alienate less technical readers. Having read, Mark Bowden's Worm, about Conficker, Zetter avoids pandering and cuts into the technical aspects without apology. Essentially, the inaction of government agencies to report weaknesses, flaws and glitches to save as a goodie bag for the United States puts everyone at risk as its arrogant to assume the United States will be the only ones who can use an exploit, and the "digital missiles" can be caught, deconstructed and fired back. Towards the end, Zetter quotes and deconstructs the mantra, NOBUS (Nobody but us) used by the NSA, as an inherently flawed and naive view of cyber-security. Kim Zetter is extremely versed in his technology, and painstakingly details each major reveal in the case of Stuxnet as a hodgepodge of global researchers chase the rabbit continually further down the hole.Zetter isn't afraid to critique, often using quotes between security firms and government representatives to express the problematic nature of our digital platform. For a book that requires mostly narration, he's a great match. He's exceptionally easy to listen to, and never distracting. I barely registered him as I was lost within the content. Joe Ochman is almost a non-entity, transparently blending into the content and I mean this as a positive. It's painfully damning George Bush Jr and Barrack Obama's administrations. The book is measured, and isn't written as a fear-mongering piece, advocating more security but rather how the United States rushed head first into a new domain of espionage and war without ever fully considering the ramifications. Kim Zetter carefully introduces the mystery of who wrote the Stuxnet virus and takes plenty of intermissions to explain the instability and insecurity of industrial control systems, and the very real threats they yield, as told by real world incidents, controlled tests and government experts assessment. "Countdown to Zero Day" chronicles the discovery Stuxnet from its origins in Belarus, and follows the painstakingly detailed researched conduncted by a truly international cast, from Symantec researchers in the United States, Kaspersky Labs in Russia and security firms in India. However, that changed when Stuxnet was discovered, a carefully multiple pronged attack against Iran's secretive nuclear weapons program. In these chapters, 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.īut 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.Īmazingly detailed, sober and above all, damningĭigital warfare generally conjures up bad science fiction imagery and seems more fanciful fiction than reality. 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. Zetter turns a complicated and technical cyber story into an engrossing whodunit.”- The Washington Post 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.
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