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Countdown to Zero Day

Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter tells the story behind the virus that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear efforts and shows how its existence has ushered in a new age of warfare—one in which a digital attack can have the same destructive capability as a megaton bomb.
 
In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed that centrifuges at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete mystery—apparently as much to the technicians replacing the centrifuges as to the inspectors observing them.
 
Then, 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 crashing and rebooting repeatedly.
 
 At first, the firm’s programmers believed the malicious code on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a mysterious virus of unparalleled complexity.
 
They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world’s first digital weapon. For Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it escaped the digital realm to wreak actual, physical destruction on a nuclear facility. 
 
In these pages, Wired journalist Kim Zetter draws on her extensive sources and expertise to tell the story behind Stuxnet’s planning, execution, and discovery, covering its genesis in the corridors of Bush’s White House and its unleashing on systems in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a sabotage campaign years in the making.
 
But Countdown to Zero Day ranges far beyond Stuxnet itself. Here, Zetter shows us how digital warfare developed in the US. She takes us inside today’s flourishing zero-day “grey markets,” in which intelligence agencies and militaries pay huge sums for the malicious code they need to carry out infiltrations and attacks. She reveals just how vulnerable many of our own critical systems are to Stuxnet-like strikes, from nation-state adversaries and anonymous hackers alike—and shows us just what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by such an attack.
 
Propelled by Zetter’s unique knowledge and access, and filled with eye-opening explanations of the technologies involved, Countdown to Zero Day is a comprehensive and prescient portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 8, 2014
      Cyberwarfare catapulted from science fiction into reality in 2010, when a previously unknown military-grade computer virus attacked centrifuges in Iran that were allegedly being used to enrich uranium for nuclear bombs. Zetter (Simple Kabbalah), a senior writer for Wired magazine, details how a series of clues led a small but intrepid group of computer security specialists from around the world to discover Stuxnet, the world’s first “zero-day exploit,” a virus without a patch. The origins of the virus were eventually traced to the U.S. and Israel, and though the allies frustrated Iran’s efforts to acquire a nuclear weapon, unleashing the virus was “remarkably reckless,” Zetter argues. Stuxnet and its successors have compromised trusted components of the international computer world, like digital certificates and security updates, and have drawn unwelcome attention to vulnerable U.S. energy, water, and transportation infrastructures. Zetter suggests that the Stuxnet attack has opened up a digital Pandora’s box, “legitimizing” a new strain of warfare against which there is little defense and inciting an arms race carried on behind the scenes. Even readers who can’t tell a PLC from iPad will learn much from Zetter’s accessible, expertly crafted account, which unpacks this complex issue with the panache of a spy thriller. Agent: David Fugate, LaunchBooks Literary Agency.

    • Kirkus

      October 15, 2014
      Iran's nuclear program spills out into the world's computers in this true techno-whodunit by Wired senior reporter Zetter.In the weird world of atomic policing, international agencies have only limited access to information under the best of circumstances-and still more limited when the regime is secretive. When Iran began to replace components at an unusually fast pace a few years ago, inspectors noticed. They had no way of knowing why, and the Iranians weren't talking, but the cause was devilish: "Months earlier...someone had quietly unleashed a destructive digital warhead on computers in Iran...to sabotage Iran's uranium enrichment program and prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from building a nuclear bomb." That "someone" is the object of Zetter's quest, and it would spoil her fun to tell who it turned out to be. Suffice it to say that, as she notes, there's a whole Pandora's box effect to the business of digital warfare and that once the identity of the aggressor was established, it became difficult for that party to cry out in moral aggrievement when other parties began to unleash similar warheads. Zetter writes lucidly about mind-numbingly technical matters, reveling in the geekery of malware and espionage, and she takes the narrative down some dark electronic corridors, as when she describes the deployment of a hidden Trojan horse designed to harvest transactional information specifically from Lebanese banks suspected of being involved in laundering Iranian funds. Readers don't have to know steganography from a stegosaurus to follow the discussion, though some programming background is surely of help in following some of the more arcane details. Governments, hackers and parties unknown are launching ticking computer time bombs every day, all coming to a laptop near you. Zetter's well-paced study offers a sharp account of past mischief and a glimpse of things to come.

      COPYRIGHT(2014) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      February 15, 2014

      What's more powerful than an exploding megaton bomb? The virus that destroyed Iran's nuclear centrifuges in 2010. The tip-off: inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Agency noticed that the centrifuges were failing at a surprising rate. Then a security firm was asked to investigate a computer in Iran and noticed an unusually complex virus that could, in fact, physically destroy the devices the computers controlled. A whole new way of doing war; senior reporter Zetter originally broke the story.

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2014

      "Zero Day" refers to a threat or attack upon a computer system during which programmers have no time to detect it or protect the system. Stuxnet is the virus that attacked the centrifuges at Iran's uranium enrichment facilities in 2009. Zetter, a reporter for Wired with wide interests in civil liberties, privacy, and security, describes how the digital warhead causes equipment to be physically--as opposed to technologically--damaged by manipulating its operating system. The author provides background information on how this virus was supposedly developed by the United States to disrupt Iran's nuclear weapons program. Lots of technical terms abound, but the book is written so that general readers can understand what is going on. It doesn't include a bibliography, photos, or charts, but the many footnotes reference personal interviews, news and research articles, official documents, and specialized news websites. VERDICT Read this not only for the purported history but also to understand the very real threat to the complicated yet vulnerable and delicate infrastructure that is the basis of interconnected modern society.--Daniel Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL

      Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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