“The world is on the precipice of a cyber catastrophe.“ —from This is How They Tell Me the World Ends.
Beginning with zero-days or back doors into famous software like Microsoft Windows, Google and Cisco, hackers have been hacking into our digital information since the 1990s. But the hackers are not nerds living in their mom’s basement anymore. They are elite special forces employed by governments worldwide. Israel, Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have extensive shadow corps of hackers that have digitally infiltrated into other countries—as does the US.
“It’s like having cyber nukes in an unregulated market that can be bought and sold anywhere in the world without discretion.”
In the United States, the National Security Agency was the world’s best at finding zero-days and coding exploits to use them to secretly move around in other’s systems. That quickly changed in 2016, when their secret weapons were released online by a mysterious group whose members are still unknown today. Aided by the NSA’s gold standard of hacks, other, less friendly, nations began their ascent. First, there were the physical weapon wars like WWI and WWII. Then there was the nuclear deterrent wars called The Cold War. And now there is cyber war. Is it the war to end all wars?
This is How They Tell Me the World Ends is scary—very scary! It is enough to make you stockpile cash and change all your passwords to nonsense words, if you haven’t done so already. While the book is well-researched, it also drags a bit at the beginning. However, it is an important subject written in regular English that everyone needs to read. 4 stars!
Thanks to Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.