Countdown to Zero Day
A top cybersecurity journalist 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. “Immensely enjoyable... Zetter turns a complicated and technical cyber story into an engrossing whodunit.”—The Washington Post The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility. In these pages, journalist Kim Zetter tells the whole story behind the world’s first cyberweapon, covering its genesis in the corridors of the White House and its effects in Iran—and telling the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a top secret sabotage campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day also ranges beyond Stuxnet itself, exploring the history of cyberwarfare and its future, showing us what might happen should our infrastructure be targeted by a Stuxnet-style attack, and ultimately, providing a portrait of a world at the edge of a new kind of war.
Stats for nerds
44recommend
65mentions
55people
2014–2026years
77% recommend23% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I recently read a book from 2015 on the stuxnet hack and a big part of the story is how every president knew how bad a military strike would go. Surreal to read now and the book gave me so much clarity on the current war.
Highly recommend if you like tech AND want some WW II forward context on Iran.
Edit: Countdown to Zero Day is the name of the book.
- Countdown to Zero Day probably! Super good book, technical without being unfriendly to casuals or inaccurate for pros.
- Thanks for posting! ~15k lines of code, a lot to poke around in. I was working on a Siemens S7 PLC project with a WINCC HMI for a power plant (the same target of the cyber-weapon) as I listened to the audio book[2] based on this ~12 years ago, entirely changed how I viewed critical industrial infrastructure. One quote from the book that stuck with me was how you can only use a cyber weapon once at full potential, as it’ll either get patched and/or everyone can reverse engineer it to use.
For those not familiar with Stuxnet, it’s a discovered cyber-weapon from 2010 which “reportedly destroyed almost one-fifth of Iran's nuclear centrifuges. ” and “ neither the United States nor Israel has openly admitted responsibility” but likely were the developers [1]
[1-Wikipedia Entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet)
[2-“Countdown To Zero Day” book if you liked the Wikipedia entry](https://www.audible.com/pd/Countdown-to-Zero-Day-Audiobook/B...)
[3-“Zero Days” movie](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5446858/)
- I very much recommend reading "Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon". Fascinating stuff.
- Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon (by Kim Zetter).
An indepth history of Stuxnet. A bit long but recommended. You can not find any other book which goes this much in describing a mallware (no code).
- I do love when things align for me to do the same, but I struggle to enjoy non-fiction so it's uncommon. Narrative non-fiction is particularly enjoyable when I can find it, especially tech, survival, and true crime.
Tech related narrative non-fiction is the pinnacle of reading for me. My top three are Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll, American King by Nick Bolton, and Countdown to Zero Day by Kim Zetter. OSU Cyber security canon is excellent for finding these but I've read almost everything they list.
If you have any non-fiction suggestions, I'm definitely interested to hear them.
