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Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon by Kim Zetter
bluestarfish's review against another edition
5.0
This was such an interesting read. I could vaguely remember the Stuxnet worm as a name but clearly nothing much about it had sunk in at the time! So this crazy story about a well-crafted malware package searching for a specific uranium enrichment plant in Iran in order to sabotage it was riveting. Kim Zetter covers the evolution and operation of Stuxnet, but also the work of malware researchers, nuclear weapons inspection work, the scary state of infrastructure security (the lack thereof), the murky geopolitical 'security' operations run by governments, the zero day vulnerabilities market, and what happens now we've seen the first digital weapon in use. It is a lot. But it's all interesting and I found I could follow along well enough with even some of the more technical aspects.
jdtangney's review against another edition
4.0
I listened to the Audible book. Let's ignore the reader's flaws and focus on the material.
Ms. Zetter's hard work seems to have been undermined by an overzealous editing process. This book has a very clear audience, yet occasionally, the narrative is interrupted to over-explain some term or tech that the target reader is almost certainly already familiar with. Then, the book will go on to use a less familiar term (e.g. "air gap") that considerably fewer readers will be familiar with.
I got the distinct feeling that a third party got involved and said "Oh you have to explain what a 'worm' is" but that same third party failed to appreciate that anyone reading a book about Stuxnet almost certainly already knows that.
Ms. Zetter's hard work seems to have been undermined by an overzealous editing process. This book has a very clear audience, yet occasionally, the narrative is interrupted to over-explain some term or tech that the target reader is almost certainly already familiar with. Then, the book will go on to use a less familiar term (e.g. "air gap") that considerably fewer readers will be familiar with.
I got the distinct feeling that a third party got involved and said "Oh you have to explain what a 'worm' is" but that same third party failed to appreciate that anyone reading a book about Stuxnet almost certainly already knows that.
carolann331's review against another edition
4.0
I first heard about this book on Jenny Colvin's Reading Envy Podcast Episode 109 with guest Scott Danielson and knew right away that I had to read it.
It's an intriguing story that had me on the edge of my seat for most of the book. It moves at a good pace and alternates between solving the mystery of the who, what, where, and why of Stuxnet, and the historical facts about the players and targets.
It was eye-opening to discover that the U.S. and Israel joined forces to covertly develop digital weapons that not only collected and reported information, but physically destroyed equipment. I can't believe I'd never heard anything about this and that it isn't spoken about more openly, especially when some of the research was conducted in my home town of Idaho Falls, ID and sixty miles out into the desert at the Idaho National Laboratory.
All in all this was a captivating, informative book that has left me enlightend, but no without some disturbing concerns: 1) The very people we've entrusted to keep us safe and state they are "committed to strengthening computer security in the U.S" appear to be the same ones that are exploiting it, and 2) Who/what will become collateral damage in the process?
If you're interested in science, technology, national security.... Read this! Highly recommended.
It's an intriguing story that had me on the edge of my seat for most of the book. It moves at a good pace and alternates between solving the mystery of the who, what, where, and why of Stuxnet, and the historical facts about the players and targets.
It was eye-opening to discover that the U.S. and Israel joined forces to covertly develop digital weapons that not only collected and reported information, but physically destroyed equipment. I can't believe I'd never heard anything about this and that it isn't spoken about more openly, especially when some of the research was conducted in my home town of Idaho Falls, ID and sixty miles out into the desert at the Idaho National Laboratory.
All in all this was a captivating, informative book that has left me enlightend, but no without some disturbing concerns: 1) The very people we've entrusted to keep us safe and state they are "committed to strengthening computer security in the U.S" appear to be the same ones that are exploiting it, and 2) Who/what will become collateral damage in the process?
If you're interested in science, technology, national security.... Read this! Highly recommended.
johnbreeden's review against another edition
5.0
Zetter's work is a very deep and broad investigation into how Stuxnet was released and what lead to its discovery. Most of the work is focused on the facts of discovery and doesn't get bogged down into attempts to analyze the purpose of the attack, beyond the clear target in Iran. It isn't until the last hour (audiobook) or chapter that the work begins to dig into the political choice to employ such a weapon and on how the use of such a weapon might be responded to. There is a sense of "contrast" between President Obama's speeches on the need to secure and defend cyberspace and his approval of the Olympic Games project that employed Stuxnet. Perhaps, this goes a bit more than necessary into the moral grounds of such discussions. Overall, the work exposes a lot of what transpired to bring Stuxnet to light along with everything that is known about its nature and development.
nexxai's review against another edition
5.0
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.
timdams007's review against another edition
4.0
A perfect companion to the equally fascinating documentary, Zero Days, on stuxnet. The book loses some momentum towards the end were it suddenly starts rambling off numbers (amount of enriched uranium produced) which could've more efficiently be reproduced with a simple graph. Other than that, the book reads like a real page turner and has enough depth to satisfy my hunger for this type of books) thanks to the many footnotes, parts of the more technical stuff are left out of the main text making the book accessible for anyone). Good read.