Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age


Steven Levy - 2001
    From Stephen Levy—the author who made "hackers" a household word—comes this account of a revolution that is already affecting every citizen in the twenty-first century. Crypto tells the inside story of how a group of "crypto rebels"—nerds and visionaries turned freedom fighters—teamed up with corporate interests to beat Big Brother and ensure our privacy on the Internet. Levy's history of one of the most controversial and important topics of the digital age reads like the best futuristic fiction.

Worm: The First Digital World War


Mark Bowden - 2011
    Banks, telecommunications companies, and critical government networks (including the British Parliament and the French and German military) were infected. No one had ever seen anything like it. By January 2009 the worm lay hidden in at least eight million computers and the botnet of linked computers that it had created was big enough that an attack might crash the world. This is the gripping tale of the group of hackers, researches, millionaire Internet entrepreneurs, and computer security experts who united to defend the Internet from the Conficker worm: the story of the first digital world war.

Zero Day: The Threat In Cyberspace


Robert O'Harrow Jr. - 2013
    For more than a year, Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow has explored the threats proliferating in our digital universe. This eBook is a compilation of that reporting. With chapters built around real people, including hackers, security researchers and corporate executives, this book will help regular people, lawmakers and businesses better understand the mind-bending challenge of keeping the internet safe from hackers and security breaches -- and all out war.

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers


Andy Greenberg - 2019
    Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes became ever more brazen, eventually leading to the first-ever blackouts triggered by hackers. They culminated in the summer of 2017 when malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, compromising, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. NotPetya spread around the world, inflicting an unprecedented ten billions of dollars in damage--the largest, most penetrating cyberattack the world had ever seen.The hackers behind these attacks are quickly gaining a reputation as the most dangerous team of cyberwarriors in the internet's history: Sandworm. Believed to be working in the service of Russia's military intelligence agency, they represent a persistent, highly skilled, state-sponsored hacking force, one whose talents are matched by their willingness to launch broad, unrestrained attacks on the most critical infrastructure of their adversaries. They target government and private sector, military and civilians alike.From WIRED senior writer Andy Greenberg comes Sandworm, the true story of the desperate hunt to identify and track those attackers. It considers the danger this force poses to our national stability and security. And as the Kremlin's role in manipulating foreign governments and sparking chaos globally comes into greater focus, Sandworm reveals the realities not just of Russia's global digital offensive, but of an era where warfare ceases to be waged on the battlefield--where the line between digital and physical conflict begins to blur, with world-shaking implications.

Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World


Bruce Schneier - 2000
    Identity Theft. Corporate Espionage. National secrets compromised. Can anyone promise security in our digital world?The man who introduced cryptography to the boardroom says no. But in this fascinating read, he shows us how to come closer by developing security measures in terms of context, tools, and strategy. Security is a process, not a product – one that system administrators and corporate executives alike must understand to survive.This edition updated with new information about post-9/11 security.

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace


Robert J. Deibert - 2013
    We depend on it for everything we do. We have reengineered our business, governance, and social relations around a planetary network unlike any before it. But there are dangers looming, and malign forces are threatening to transform this extraordinary domain.In Black Code, Ronald J. Deibert, a leading expert on digital technology, security, and human rights, lifts the lid on cyberspace and shows what’s at stake for Internet users and citizens. As cyberspace develops in unprecedented ways, powerful agents are scrambling for control. Predatory cyber criminal gangs such as Koobface have made social media their stalking ground. The discovery of Stuxnet, a computer worm reportedly developed by Israel and the United States and aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities, showed that state cyberwar is now a very real possibility. Governments and corporations are in collusion and are setting the rules of the road behind closed doors.This is not the way it was supposed to be. The Internet’s original promise of a global commons of shared knowledge and communications is now under threat. Drawing on the first-hand experiences of one of the most important protagonists in the battle — the Citizen Lab and its global network of frontline researchers, who have spent more than a decade cracking cyber espionage rings and uncovering attacks on citizens and NGOs worldwide — Black Code takes readers on a fascinating journey into the battle for cyberspace. Thought-provoking, compelling, and sometimes frightening, it is a wakeup call to citizens who have come to take the Internet for granted. Cyberspace is ours, it is what we make of it, Deibert argues, and we need to act now before it slips through our grasp.

The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization


James Bamford - 1982
    The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War, and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant account of the use and abuse of technological espionage.

Black Code: The Battle for the Future of Cyberspace


Ronald J. Deibert - 2011
    It is difficult to imagine a world without instant access and 24/7 connectivity. We have reengineered our business, governance, and social relations around a planetary network unlike any that has come before. And, as with any social transformation, there have been unintended consequences.     In Black Code, Ron Deibert examines the profound effect that cyberspace is having on the relationship between citizens and states, on the private and public spheres, and on domestic and international affairs. Cyberspace has brought us a world of do-it-yourself signals intelligence, he argues, and WikiLeaks is only a symptom of a much larger phenomenon to which governments, businesses, and individuals will have to get accustomed. Our lives have been turned inside out by a digital world of our own spinning.     Fast-paced, revealing, and sometimes terrifying, Black Code takes readers into the shadowy realm of cybersecurity, offering insight into the very future of cyberspace and revealing what new rules and norms we will need to adopt in order to survive in this new environment.

A Drive into the Gap


Kevin Guilfoile - 2012
    About fathers and sons. It’s about memory and identity, and an insidious illness that can rob a person of both.It’s also a detective story, an investigation into the improbable journey of a baseball bat from one of the most iconic moments in baseball history to a 12-year-old boy’s bedroom.

Cyberwar: The Next Threat to National Security & What to Do About It


Richard A. Clarke - 2010
    Clarke sounds a timely and chilling warning about America’s vulnerability in a terrifying new international conflict—Cyber War! Every concerned American should read this startling and explosive book that offers an insider’s view of White House ‘Situation Room’ operations and carries the reader to the frontlines of our cyber defense. Cyber War exposes a virulent threat to our nation’s security. This is no X-Files fantasy or conspiracy theory madness—this is real.

Dawn of the Code War: America's Battle Against Russia, China, and the Rising Global Cyber Threat


John P. Carlin - 2018
    We've seen North Korea's retaliatory hack of Sony Pictures, China's large-scale industrial espionage against American companies, Russia's 2016 propaganda campaign, and quite a lot more. The cyber war is upon us.As the former Assistant Attorney General and Chief of Staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller, John Carlin has spent 15 years on the frontlines of America's ongoing cyber war with its enemies. In this dramatic book, he tells the story of his years-long secret battle to keep America safe, and warns us of the perils that await us as we embrace the latest digital novelties -- smart appliances, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars -- with little regard for how our enemies might compromise them. The potential targets for our enemies are multiplying: our electrical grid, our companies, our information sources, our satellites. As each sector of the economy goes digital, a new vulnerability is exposed.The Internet of Broken Things makes the urgent case that we need to start innovating more responsibly. As a fleet of web-connected cars and pacemakers rolls off the assembly lines, the potential for danger is overwhelming. We must see and correct these flaws before our enemies exploit them.

Stengel: His Life and Times


Robert W. Creamer - 1984
    Here is the brilliant manager stripped naked—the person underneath all the clowning, mugging, and double-talking. Robert Creamer shows us Casey at twenty-two, famous from his very first day in the big leagues. We see Casey’s playing career fall apart as he is traded, shunted to last-place teams, hampered by injuries, considered finished—until he bats a glorious home run in the 1923 World Series. Here are Casey’s managing successes and failures—dismissed by the Yankees, he returns to the limelight with his new and inept New York Mets, the team he single-handedly lifts into the nation’s consciousness.“I’m a man that’s been up and down,” Casey said in a serious moment. Certainly his knack for bouncing back made him a legend in our national pastime. Here are the stories and gags, the Stengelian style, the full dimensions of the man.

The Surveillance State - Big Data, Freedom, and You


Paul Rosenzweig - 2016
    A retail store uses predictive data analytics to send pregnancy-related advertising to a teenager who has not told her parents about her condition. A police officer places a GPS device on a suspected criminal's car to follow him and build a case against him. The news is full of such stories, in which new technologies lead to dilemmas that could not have been imagined just a few decades ago. The 21st century has seen remarkable technological advances, with many wonderful benefits. But with these advances come new questions about privacy, security, civil liberties, and more. Big Data is here, which means that government and private industries are collecting massive amounts of information about each of us - information that may be used in marketing, to help solve criminal investigations, and to promote the interests of national security. Pandora's box has been opened, but in many ways the government is behind the times, relying on legislation from the 1970s to inform its stance on regulating the collection and use of this information. Taught by Professor Rosenzweig, JD, esteemed legal expert and professorial lecturer at The George Washington University School of Law, these 24 revealing lectures tackle the tough questions about surveillance and data in the 21st century. With Professor Rosenzweig's guidance, you'll scrutinize our system of oversight for intelligence agencies, and you'll consider the ways in which the information that is collected impacts (or potentially impacts) our civil liberties. This is your reliable source for all the facts you need to make your own reasonable choices - and take a first step toward an empowered future.

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


Kim Zetter - 2014
    The cause of their failure was a complete mystery.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 caught in a reboot loop—crashing and rebooting repeatedly. At first, technicians with the firm believed the malicious code they found on the machines was a simple, routine piece of malware. But as they and other experts around the world investigated, they discovered a virus of unparalleled complexity and mysterious provenance and intent. They had, they soon learned, stumbled upon the world’s first digital weapon.Stuxnet, as it came to be known, was unlike any other virus or worm built before: It was the first attack that reached beyond the computers it targeted to physically destroy the equipment those computers controlled. It was an ingenious attack, jointly engineered by the United States and Israel, that worked exactly as planned, until the rebooting machines gave it all away. And the discovery of Stuxnet was just the beginning: Once the digital weapon was uncovered and deciphered, it provided clues to other tools lurking in the wild. Soon, security experts found and exposed not one but three highly sophisticated digital spy tools that came from the same labs that created Stuxnet. The discoveries gave the world its first look at the scope and sophistication of nation-state surveillance and warfare in the digital age.Kim Zetter, a senior reporter at Wired, has covered hackers and computer security since 1999 and is one of the top journalists in the world on this beat. She was among the first reporters to cover Stuxnet after its discovery and has authored many of the most comprehensive articles about it. In COUNTDOWN TO ZERO DAY: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World’s First Digital Weapon, Zetter expands on this work to show how the code was designed and unleashed and how its use opened a Pandora’s Box, ushering in an age of digital warfare in which any country’s infrastructure—power grids, nuclear plants, oil pipelines, dams—is vulnerable to the same kind of attack with potentially devastating results. A sophisticated digital strike on portions of the power grid, for example, could plunge half the U.S. into darkness for weeks or longer, having a domino effect on all other critical infrastructures dependent on electricity.

@War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex


Shane Harris - 2014
    In fact, as @WAR shows, U.S. hackers were crucial to our victory in Iraq. Shane Harris delves into the frontlines of America’s new cyber war. As recent revelations have shown, government agencies are joining with tech giants like Google and Facebook to collect vast amounts of information. The military has also formed a new alliance with tech and finance companies to patrol cyberspace, and Harris offers a deeper glimpse into this partnership than we have ever seen before. Finally, Harris explains what the new cybersecurity regime means for all of us, who spend our daily lives bound to the Internet — and are vulnerable to its dangers.