Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
Ratings55
Average rating3.9
"This story of the virus that destroyed Iran's nuclear centrifuges ... shows that the door has been opened on a new age of warfare, one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb dropped from an airplane"--
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.