This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth. Nicole covers cybersecurity and digital espionage for The New York Times. Certainly this is one of the more anticipated books addressing a new cyber arms race. More than ever before, it is imperative to understand how a global market for Zero Day exploits began and today how it is certainly tipping the scales.
Quite frankly, Nicole’s reporting will stun readers. This book will also surprise long time IT professionals.
As it seems so often in life, by chance, a ‘stumbling’ idea took hold. Initially a company in 2003 began buying exploits from hackers for as little as $75. Fast forward to today, a good iOS zero day commands over $3 million dollars.
Nicole begins her reporting role at the NYTimes by reviewing secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden and Glen Greenwald.
This of course revealing the illegal spying on American citizens by the Bush Administration. At the same time, this project was tapping phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The Guardian obtained copies via Greenwald who passed a copy to the NYTimes. This proved to be her introduction to the cyber world.
In addition, Nicole retells the hard lessons from Soviet spying (actually from within the US embassy) in Moscow back in the 1950s. This reveals a good baseline to today’s advanced attacks including the resources and dedication necessary to carry them out.
Cyber weapons for Board rooms
Chapter One’s Closet of Secrets is certainly mandatory reading for organizational leaders. It will become very apparent that organizations must reconsider their outdated understanding of information security. One cannot walk away from this book ignoring an often repeated message: your organization has already been hacked, or your organization does not yet realize it has been hacked. Thus, Nicole makes the case in her interviews with hackers that every computer, phone, network, or storage drive has been compromised.