Countdown to Zero Day is an account of the Stuxnet worm, widely regarded as the world’s first cyberweapon. It was a computer worm that most cybersecurity analysts believe was designed to target Iranian nuclear weapons facilities. Stuxnet sparked an intense debate of the use of cyberweapons and our vulnerabilities to cyber attacks.
Nicole Perlroth is The New York Times’s cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter, and This is How They Tell Me the World Ends is her definitive account of the shady market for zero-day exploits. A zero-day exploit is a software vulnerability unknown to those responsible for fixing it, and zero-days are crucial tools for hackers, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement.
Lawrence Wright’s authoritative history of Al-Qaeda and the lead-up to the September 11 terrorist attacks is one of those books I should have read a long time ago. I finally got around to it, and it was fantastic. It’s non-fiction, but its subjects are presented so compellingly, and the action is described so vividly, that it reads like a novel. Wright’s style calls to mind Peter Hopkirk (The Great Game, Trespassers on the Roof of the World) and Stephen Ambrose (Undaunted Courage).
