2026 JUN: Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter > Likes and Comments
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It’s a nonfiction about the Stuxnet virus the US used to foil Iranian centrifuges trying to create weapons grade nuclear material. It is not the “thriller” so much, though there is a WTF sort of reaction by the world when it surfaces and analysts are trying to figure out what happened. It is not quite as exciting as a technothriller novel, but … we do have our computer nerds here, and we throw a bone their way semi-regularly, like the hacker book we did last year: The Cuckoo’s Egg—which some of us really liked.I also throw a Neal Stephenson bone once in a while. Usually not a fan of his tomes, but you never know until you put it to the test. His Snow Crash … I did like.
If such a book falls into that TLDR territory, I'll give you this link to a magazine article in WIRED magazine that summarizes the same content much more concisely.https://www.wired.com/2014/11/countdo...
I'm really just getting into it, but so far I'm finding it (a) genuinely intriguing; and (b) well written. It's tripping along nicely, and I'm finding the technical details perfectly digestible (so far).
Very good. I’m doing fine so far too.But … I also want to give another avenue to get into the story. There is a documentary movie called Zero Days that goes through the same story at a less technical level. It can be streamed, and I did.
They have an interesting take on who did the Stuxnet virus.
Not quite a thriller, but very much the technothriller vein in that it talks about computer viruses as an offensive tool for warfare for a first time. It is interesting, but it isn’t your entertaining thriller. That being said, there are many cyber security folks who had their pulse pounding, gathered the team, poured the coffee, and worked numerous weekends to unpack this thing as it unfolded in real-time. They didn’t know what it was they were up against, and they saw evidence that this was a nation-state caliber of cyber attack. It’s interesting to see what kind of reaction is evoked by the real deal, relative to the fictional cyber thriller novels. No, it isn’t as dramatic as Digital Fortress.
What are the top cyber attack novels you’ve read?
Mine, of course (see https://christopherbentleyauthor.com/). :-)After that...
Mark Greany's The Chaos Agent (Grey Man 13) is a solid, pretty mainstream quasi-military technothriller. The sort of thing Tom Cruise would star in if it's turned into a film script.
Charles Stross's Rule 34 is a MUCH more left field tale, and wouldn't be for everyone, but is undoubtedly very clever.
I'm assuming we're not counting 2001 A Space Odyssey ...
Cyber attack books?The Cuckoo’s Egg
Digital Fortress
The Girl Who Played with Fire
Murderbot Diaries
Daemon
Freedom
Aggressor series
Neuromancer
Steve wrote: "Cyber attack books?"
I should have remembered Daemon -- probably my favourite cyber-attack novel to date. (Can't say I enjoyed FreedomTM quite as much).
Freedom was over the top. Daemon was too. Nice premise, but it got too carried away.
Some future options:
Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
by Andy Greenberg (2019)
Pages: 368 | Rated: 4.34 | Ratings: 10.5K
Why? A highly rated nonfiction about cyber attacks from a WIRED magazine journalist about tracking a Russian group.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race
by Nicole Perlroth (2021)
Pages: 528 | Rated: 4.31 | Ratings: 11.6K
Why? A highly-rated nonfiction by a New York Times reporter about the dark side of cyber warfare.
Finished. Might write a review this weekend.
Hi I'm stuck into the audiobook. Glad you said it was non-fiction Steve, as I mistook that cover for fiction.I'm on Ch10. I've found the many explanations of a plc a bit repetitive. I also think the telling jumps around a bit between different security analysts who are analysing the same Stuxnet attack. So we seem to work through the attack, get past it and the ramifications and then later return to another analyst's work through of the software hack or code breakdown. Which is making it tricky for me to assertain any additional features discovered. I was interested in how y2k influenced one analyst to hone in on all kinds of control software for utilities and potential points of denial of power service from generation to the client consumer end.
Onward. This isn't really my idea of entertainment. If it continues to holds my attention I'll stay with it. Looking forward to Asimov!
Yes! I did it. I've finished listening. I had to force myself to keep going. When listening I did find it interesting. It's really helped me think more about switching over to a linex machine. Mostly, I find it scary that governments are so duplicite and I have no doubt that's most of them. I think I might avoid the non-fiction reads unless they're about space or cool stuff.Yay, on to I, Robot!
Finally got through this. I'll probably do a review for it, but the highlights for me are:- A very enjoyable read overall. Well, maybe 'enjoyable' is the wrong word, but certainly a worthwhile read overall.
- The detail and pacing of the coverage of the various interconnected investigations was just right, and well written. It may not be a thriller as such, but it read like one at times.
- In general, the level of technical detail about the virus strains worked well for me, and it was well presented.
- On the other hand, the second half of the book got very bogged down from time to time in accounting for centrifuges. I kind of gave up trying to follow this.
- It's a minor point, but I thought the author switched over to the 'supply side' a bit too early - the accounts of the government cyberwarfare programs and development of Stuxnet variants. It took the steam out of the investigation narrative a little.
- Finally, the review of the issues and implications around international law towards the end of the book looks quaint in the light of more recent history.
Notwithstanding all that, it was a very good read and I'm glad I spent the time doing so. Now I'm off to catch up with Uncle Isaac.
Very good, Chris! I’m impressed. Didn’t expect more participation and commentary on a non-fiction than many fictional thrillers. I don’t see anyone else “currently reading”.
I gather between the book and the Zero Days documentary that this was initiated by the CIA/NSA by Bush, who had already spent his political capital to prevent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and couldn’t do it again in Iran when it started to become evident Iran was indeed pursuing nuclear weapons. These released a subtle virus … still not 100% clear how they cross the air gap, but I gather they had multiple vectors. The USB zero days were interesting. It isn’t clear to me whether they only infect laptops on the “low side” or if these USBs somehow made it direct to the “high side” as well. This was the software equivalent of a space mission, hacking specific kinds of software and being very selective. It will probably be decades and maybe not my lifetime before we hear more about the human side of this on site.
The documentary made the case that Israel got restless. Somehow, they were collaborating. For a fleeting moment, I may have understood. But, it seems Israel eventually got restless and put the kitchen sink of tactics into this thing like the A Team welding a monstrosity together. It spread so prolifically outside the desired zone that it was discovered. Their attempt at putting this on steroids to do more damage may have sunk the ship.
It seemed like a unique collaboration that was a little out of control. Interesting to hear about how the antivirus guys picked it apart, and the conduct of interest in the NSA not immediately reporting known zero day threats to vendors to fix their security. It seems the policy is now to report threats, but the language seem weak enough that they might have a bit of latitude on how long they take to report it, and they seem to be able to report it on the down low instead of publicly.
Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
by Kim Zetter (2014)
Pages: 406 | Rated: 4.16 | Ratings: 8.5K
Why? Nonfiction about Stuxnet and Cyberthreats.
Publisher’s Summary
In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed that centrifuges at a uranium enrichment plant in Iran were failing and being replaced at an unprecedented rate. The cause of their failure was a complete mystery.
Five months later, a seemingly unrelated event occurred. A computer security firm in Belarus was called in to troubleshoot some computers in Iran that were caught in a reboot loop—crashing and rebooting repeatedly. At first, technicians with the firm believed the malicious code they found on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a virus of unparalleled complexity and mysterious provenance and intent. They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world’s first digital weapon.
Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: It was the first attack that reached beyond the computers it targeted to physically destroy the equipment those computers controlled. It was an ingenious attack, jointly engineered by the United States and Israel, that worked exactly as planned, until the rebooting machines gave it all away.
And the discovery of Stuxnet was just the beginning: Once the digital weapon was uncovered and deciphered, it provided clues to other tools lurking in the wild. Soon, security experts found and exposed not one but three highly sophisticated digital spy tools that came from the same labs that created Stuxnet. The discoveries gave the world its first look at the scope and sophistication of nation-state surveillance and warfare in the digital age.
Kim Zetter, a senior reporter at Wired, has covered hackers and computer security since 1999 and is one of the top journalists in the world on this beat. She was among the first reporters to cover Stuxnet after its discovery and has authored many of the most comprehensive articles about it. In COUNTDOWN TO ZERO DAY: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Zetter expands on this work to show how the code was designed and unleashed and how its use opened a Pandora’s Box, ushering in an age of digital warfare in which any country’s infrastructure—power grids, nuclear plants, oil pipelines, dams—is vulnerable to the same kind of attack with potentially devastating results. A sophisticated digital strike on portions of the power grid, for example, could plunge half the U.S. into darkness for weeks or longer, having a domino effect on all other critical infrastructures dependent on electricity.