This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth
“This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends” tells the gripping story of a new form of warfare that takes place in the digital realm and its impact on society. New York Times Bestselling author Nicole Perlroth provides readers with an eye-opening look into the cyberweapons race and our vulnerabilities. This fascinating 505-page book includes twenty-three chapters broken out by the following seven parts: I. Mission Impossible, II. The Capitalists, III. The Spies, IV. The Mercenaries, V. The Resistance, VI. The Twister, and VII. Boomerang.
Positives:
1. An exhaustively researched, well-organized book that reads like a spy novel.
2. The fascinating topic of cybersecurity.
3. The writing style is engaging and keeps your interest.
4. Defines key hacking terms such as zero-days, which are basically a software or hardware flaw for which there is no existing patch. They are called zero-days because the victims or good guys have zero days to fix them.
5. It provides a lot of insights into investigative journalism. Perlroth is a part of the story as she relates the challenges she faced to uncover the cybersecurity world. “The first rule of the zero-day market was: Nobody talks about the zero-day market. The second rule of the zero-day market was: Nobody talks about the zero-day market. I’d posed this question many times, and I knew it was the one question nobody in this business would answer.”
6. Does a great job of describing the hackers, their sponsors (if they have any) and state sponsors. “The New Hacker’s Dictionary, which offers definitions for just about every bit of hacker jargon you can think of, defines hacker as “one who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.””
7. Describes how hacking companies operate. “In the mid-1990s Sabien’s team started trafficking in digital access, searching for bugs and exploiting them for customers. The bulk of his company’s revenues—more than 80 percent—came from the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, with the remainder from law enforcement and other U.S. government agencies. The goal was to deliver their government customers secret tried-and-tested ways into every system used by the adversary, be it nation-states, terrorists, or low-level criminals.”
8. The purpose behind the zero-days. “Once his zero-day was in the agency’s hands, they could use it to spy on whomever they chose. In the United States, the likeliest targets were terrorists, foreign adversaries, or drug cartels, but there were never any guarantees that very same zero-day wouldn’t come back to haunt you.”
9. Uncovering the world of spies. “I asked nearly every single one of the men who guided the CIA and NSA through the turn of the century to name the father of American cyberwar, and none hesitated: “Jim Gosler.””
10. Great quotes that must be shared. “Organizations can’t stop the world from changing. The best they can do is adapt. The smart ones change before they have to. The lucky ones manage to scramble and adjust, when push comes to shove. The rest are losers, and they become history.”
11. Defines the role of the TAO (Tailored Access Operations) unit inside the NSA. “In the aftermath of 9/11, these hundreds turned to thousands as TAO accelerated its breaking-and-entering mission around the globe, through a combination of brute-force hacking, cracking passwords and algorithms, finding zero-days, writing exploits, and developing implants and malware that bent hardware and software to their will. Their job was to find every crack in every layer of the digital universe and plant themselves there for as long as possible.”
12. Describes the role of hacking with regards to the Natanz Nuclear Facility in Iran. “By late 2008 the joint operation known as Olympic Games had infiltrated Natanz’s PLCs, and nobody appeared to suspect a cyberattack.”
13. Global hacking described. “The NSA was finding evidence that Russian hackers were tampering with the same routers and switches it had exploited for years. Chinese hackers were breaking into American telecoms and internet companies and stealing passwords, blueprints, source code, and trade secrets that could be used to exploit these systems for their own ends.”
14. Describes some of the stars of cybersecurity. “Inside the agency, these men had been revered as “the Maryland Five,” and time and time again, they had proved indispensable. They were each members of a premier TAO access team that hacked into the systems nobody else could. If the target was a terrorist, an arms dealer, a Chinese mole, or a nuclear scientist, you wanted the Five on it. Rarely was there a system, or a target, they could not hack.”
15. Describes what happens when hackers attack corporations. “It was time to call in the specialists. Google’s first call was to a cybersecurity shop in Virginia called Mandiant. In the messy world of security breaches, Mandiant had carved out a niche for itself responding to cyberattacks, and was now on the speed dial of nearly every chief information officer in the Fortune 500.”
16. Describes famous hacks. “The Chinese had been inside OPM’s systems for more than a year by the time they were discovered in 2015.”
17. The impact of Snowden’s revelations. “Without the companies’ knowledge or cooperation, the Snowden revelations that fall showed that the NSA, and its British counterpart, GCHQ, were sucking up companies’ data from the internet’s undersea fiber-optic cables and switches.”
18. Cyber wars. “Three years after the United States and the Israelis reached across Iran’s borders and destroyed its centrifuges, Iran launched a retaliatory attack, the most destructive cyberattack the world had seen to date. On August 15, 2012, Iranian hackers hit Saudi Aramco, the world’s richest oil company—a company worth more than five Apples on paper—with malware that demolished thirty thousand of its computers, wiped its data, and replaced it all with the image of the burning American flag.”
19. Describes American vulnerabilities. “Their letter was blunt: “Virtually all of our civilian critical infrastructure—including telecommunications, water, sanitation, transportation, and health care—depend on the electric grid. The grid is extremely vulnerable to disruption caused by a cyber or other attack. Our adversaries already have the capability to carry out such an attack.”
20. The impact of Stuxnet (computer worm responsible for the destruction of Iranian centrifuges). “Stuxnet had inspired dozens of other countries to join the zero-day hunt, and the United States was losing control over the market it had once dominated.”
21. Describes many attacks and the impact of misspelling. “North Korea’s hackers had been caught—but never punished—for major cyber heists at banks in the Philippines, Vietnam, and at the Bangladesh Central Bank, where they’d made a $1 billion transfer request from the New York Federal Bank. Only a spelling error (they’d misspelled foundation as “fandation”) had kept bankers from transferring the full billion, but they’d still made off with $81 million, among the largest bank heists in history. WannaCry was the next evolution in North Korea’s efforts to generate badly needed income.”
22. The impact of hacks. “China was decades behind the United States in nuclear weapons development, but thanks to Legion Amber, it had stolen everything it needed to catch up. In 2018, U.S. officials watched in horror as Beijing successfully tested a new submarine-launched ballistic missile and began moving ahead with a new class of subs that could be equipped with nuclear-armed missiles.”
23. An excellent Epilogue that describes defenses against hacks. “So-called “password-spraying attacks” have surged in the past three years, in which hackers try common passwords (e.g. “password”) across multiple user accounts. It’s not rocket science, but it’s insanely effective. Password-spraying is all it took for Iranian hackers, working at the behest of the IRGC, to break into thirty-six private American companies, multiple U.S. government agencies, and NGOs. Multifactor authentication is the best defense against these attacks.”
24. Notes included.
Negatives:
1. This book was begging for some key supplementary material but to no avail. I can think of many examples. I would have added a table of state sponsored hacking and their main goals. Another would be list of the top hackers in the world and their strengths. List of the biggest known hacks in the world.
2. No formal bibliography.
3. At around 400 pages of main narrative, it will require an investment of your time.
4. With so many players and intersecting stories involved it can be easy to lose yourself.
5. A glossary would have been helpful.
In summary, this is an excellent book that describes the vulnerabilities of our digital world and how the modern arms race have moved away from the sea and air to said digital world. Perlroth identifies the major players and countries involved in the cybersecurity arena and what their main goals are. It also tells the story of how the US had become the world’s stockpiler of zero days and lost control of it. It reads like a spy novel but it’s real global warfare taking place in our digital realm with real-life consequences. Lack of supplementary material aside, I highly recommend this book.
Further recommendations: “Cyber War” by Richard A. Clark, “The Personal Cybersecurity Manual” by Marlon Buchanan, “The Hacker and the State” by Ben Buchanan, “The Smartest Person in the Room” by Christian Espinosa, “Hunting Cyber Criminals” by Vinny Troia and “Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking.
Enjoy fast, free delivery, exclusive deals, and award-winning movies & TV shows with Prime
Try Prime
and start saving today with fast, free delivery
Loading your book clubs
There was a problem loading your book clubs. Please try again.
Not in a club? Learn more
Join or create book clubs
Choose books together
Track your books
Bring your club to Amazon Book Clubs, start a new book club and invite your friends to join, or find a club that’s right for you for free.
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Great on Kindle
Great Experience. Great Value.
Putting our best book forward
Each Great on Kindle book offers a great reading experience, at a better value than print to keep your wallet happy.
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Get the free Kindle app: 
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more about Great on Kindle, available in select categories.
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Similar items that may deliver to you quickly
Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1
Popular Highlights in this book
“The most likely way for the world to be destroyed,” it read, “most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we come in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents.”Highlighted by 348 Kindle readers- “The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That’s where we came in; we’re computer professionals. We cause accidents.”Highlighted by 244 Kindle readers
- And so, in 2003, iDefense became the first shop to publicly open its doors to hackers and start paying bounties for zero-day bugs.Highlighted by 189 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
|
|
|
|
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
About the author
Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Reviews with images
Useful for cybersec nonprofessionals —scarce data, some salient facts and lots of opinions
This is an interesting effort — Ms. Perlroth is a skilled writer dealing with a complex set of topics. She spends considerable amount of time dealing with the drama of cybersecurity and cyber warfare. The author does provide some useful interviews with some cyber specialists, government figures and mercenary elements involved in intrusion of information systems. Unfortunately she omits several well less known cyber attacks and the various roles of non-state actors in our present cybersecurity environment. This is a useful read for nonprofessional cybersecurity readers. It's unfortunate that she sometimes renders some sensationalist opinions that are not backed by appropriate facts. In sum, I would recommend this book however, I urge some caution because some of her facts have scant attribution. I respect your opinions however in cybersecurity we have to make a clear differentiation between facts and opinions. I enjoy her skilled writing and varied perspectives.
Top reviews from other countries
Kindle Customer
Well researched and captivating
Reviewed in India on December 22, 2023
Harish Medhekar
Makes you think
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2023