Zero Day

by Robert O'Harrow Jr., Tom Pile (Reader)

Will the world's next war be fought in cyberspace?

"It's going to happen," said former National Defense University Professor Dan Kuehl. So much of the world's activity takes place on the Internet now - including commerce, banking, and communications - that the Pentagon has declared war in cyberspace an inevitability.

For more than a year, Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow has explored the threats proliferating in our digital universe. This audiobook is a compilation of that reporting. With chapters built around real people, including hackers, security researchers, and corporate executives, this book will help regular people, lawmakers, and businesses better understand the mind-bending challenge of keeping the Internet safe from hackers and security breaches - and all-out war.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

MP3 CD

First published January 9, 2014

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and well written. If you are growing uneasy about cybersecurity and want to get an introduction to the issues, this is your book.

[Randy Ades · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought provoking

Good intro the problems of cyber security in our increasingly connected world. The reporter has an engaging writing style. Worth your time.

[Wayne McCoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zero Day is a term that computer security people use to refer to a new vulnerability. Although companies can be alerted to the threats, sometimes it takes some coercion by hackers to get a company to fix a hole.

In this extended piece from Robert O'Harrow Jr. of the Washington Post, he shows the kind of targets that hackers are looking to exploit. Control systems that run municipal water, electrical and sewage system have been networked for years, but are now a vulnerable target. Recently, these were targeted by the Stuxnet virus, which was created by the US and Israel to target Iran's uranium centrifuges (and did so quite effectively). Other systems at risk include healthcare systems.

Tools hackers use include search engines that expose vulnerable systems, hacking kits, and social engineering. Social engineering attacks are quite effective, and they are becoming specifically targeted.

This is a quick read, and well reported. It's quite accessible to non-technical people who may find this true life story as scary as a movie plot. White hat hackers are shown as the true front line heroes in this new war.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an "anthology" of Washington Post articles on cybersecurity, with the added bonus of being re-formatted for the electronic market (it has cross-links and extra materials).

I can confirm this book's target is really the layman. In fact it's easy to understand. On the other side this report's focus is not Everyman. The focus of the possible threats are not our own computers, but the huge megacentres that runs our life, whether we know about them or not (power plants, hospitals and so on).

There's enough talk on cyberwars and what the government is doing to protect us. I was surprised to discover there's a special search engine that looks for SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition). There's a crawler that goes searching for this kind of "machines"; every time the crawler finds a new, exposed machine on the web (where they shouldn't be), it will add this new info into its database.

This is the kind of books that should wake us up. We should be watching keenly over the shoulders of all vendors to be sure security isn't weakened by the human link: greed and carelessness.

Arc courtesy of publisher via NetGalley

[T. Carter Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is good compilation of Washington Post articles on cybersecurity, but it suffers in this format for being simply a compilation. It could have been much better with some additional editorial attention and some work to join the articles together. Information repeats in the articles in a way that makes sense in a series of newspaper articles that run over several months, but in the ebook there should have been care taken to weave things together better. Even a simple addition of temporal context would have helped; there are multiple instances where something is referenced as happening "last week" or "last month," but with the date on the newspaper page, there's no way to really set that information in time. That said, the information contained in the articles is interesting and of value. The Post also makes good use of the electronic medium to link to related articles, interviews with the author, and other supplemental material.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to read about the near impossibility of keeping yourself safe in the digital world. Three stars because it was dry but the information is 5 stars. I rarely say this but the Washington post did a good job!

[Mike Heller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just got a job in the security field and this really helped me gain a good base level understanding. I would recommend for anyone who likes learning in general as it is not overly technical.

[Mick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily accessible to the lay person.

[Jason]

FYI.

[Richard Pütz]

most interesting read, if you are in the field as a techy or a CISO it is a must read