Countdown to Zero Day

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.

A masterful account of the Stuxnet worm that targeted Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. Zetter meticulously documents how this first true cyber weapon was discovered and analyzed, revealing the dawn of a new era in digital warfare.\n\nThe book reads like a thriller while providing deep technical insights and important context about the geopolitical implications of state-sponsored cyber attacks. Essential reading for understanding modern security threats.

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.

“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'.

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.

Death by footnote... an otherwise interesting read made rather unpleasant by the constant interruptions.