Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon

by Kim Zetter

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780770436193
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/01/2015
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	185,011
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 5.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Kim Zetter is an award-winning journalist who covers cybercrime, civil liberties, privacy, and security for Wired. She was among the first journalists to cover Stuxnet after its discovery and has authored many of the most comprehensive articles about it. She has also broken numerous stories over the years about WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning, NSA surveillance, and the hacker underground.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Countdown to Zero Day"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Kim Zetter.
Excerpted by permission of Crown/Archetype.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Prologue: The Case of the Centrifuges 1

1 Early Warning 5

2 500 Kilobytes of Mystery 19

3 Natanz 33

4 Stuxnet Deconstructed 52

5 Springtime for Ahmadinejad 69

6 Digging for Zero Days 38

7 Zero-Day Paydays 99

8 The Payload 116

9 Industrial Controls Out of Control 129

10 Precision Weapon 166

11 A Digital Plot Is Hatched 190

12 A New Fighting Domain 205

13 Digital Warheads 227

14 Son of Stuxnet 249

15 Flame 276

16 Olympic Games 308

17 The Mystery of the Centrifuges 336

18 Qualified Success 359

19 Digital Pandora 371

Acknowledgments 407

Index 413

Editorial Reviews

An authoritative account of Stuxnet’s spread and discovery . . . [delivers] a sobering message about the vulnerability of the systems—train lines, water-treatment plants, electricity grids—that make modern life possible.”—Economist

“Exhaustively researched . . . Zetter gives a full account of this ‘hack of the century,’ as the operation has been called, [but] the book goes well beyond its ostensible subject to offer a hair-raising introduction to the age of cyber warfare.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Part detective story, part scary-brilliant treatise on the future of warfare . . . an ambitious, comprehensive, and engrossing book that should be required reading for anyone who cares about the threats that America—and the world—are sure to be facing over the coming years.”—Kevin Mitnick, New York Times bestselling author of Ghost in the Wires and The Art of Intrusion

“Unpacks this complex issue with the panache of a spy thriller . . . even readers who can’t tell a PLC from an iPad will learn much from Zetter’s accessible, expertly crafted account.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A true techno-whodunit [that] offers a sharp account of past mischief and a glimpse of things to come . . . 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. . . . Governments, hackers and parties unknown are launching ticking computer time bombs every day, all coming to a laptop near you.”—Kirkus Reviews

“An exciting and readable story of the world's first cyberweapon. Zetter not only explains the weapon and chronicles its discovery, but explains the motives and mechanics behind the attack—and makes a powerful argument why this story matters.”—Bruce Schneier, author of Secrets and Lies and Schneier on Security

From the Publisher

★ 09/08/2014
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. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

2014-10-05
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.

Kirkus Reviews