Download Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon AudioBook Free
Top cybersecurity journalist Kim Zetter says the storyline behind the disease that sabotaged Iran's nuclear work and shows how its presence has ushered in a new era of warfare - one in which a digital harm can have the same detrimental capability as a megaton bomb. In January 2010, inspectors with the International Atomic Energy Organization noticed that centrifuges at an Iranian uranium enrichment plant were failing at an unprecedented rate. The cause was a complete enigma - apparently the maximum amount of to the technicians updating the centrifuges regarding the inspectors observing them. Then, five months later, a relatively unrelated event took place: A pc security organization in Belarus was called in to troubleshoot some pcs in Iran that were crashing and rebooting consistently. Initially, the firm's programmers believed the malicious code on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts throughout the world investigated, they found out a mysterious disease of unparalleled complexness. That they had, they soon discovered, stumbled after the world's first digital tool. For Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other disease or worm built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted pcs or stealing information from them, it escaped the digital world to wreak real, physical destruction on a nuclear facility. In these web pages, Wired journalist Kim Zetter draws on her extensive sources and know-how to tell the storyline behind Stuxnet's planning, execution, and breakthrough, covering its genesis in the corridors of Bush's White House and its unleashing on systems in Iran - and revealing to the spectacular, unlikely tale of the security geeks who managed to unravel a sabotage marketing campaign years in the making. But Countdown to Zero Day ranges significantly beyond Stuxnet itself.
