Arms race has moved to the internet: accidental bystanders are on the firing line

The book “This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race” is both fabulously entertaining and scary to read. The author, The New York Times journalist Nicole Perlroth, spent seven years researching and talking to hackers, security business leaders, and national intelligence officers. She wanted to understand how the world of hacking, cyber spying and attacking computer systems works. Well, it works. And it reaches everywhere.

No computer expertise is required to read the book, all technical concepts are explained. The key lead the author follows in the book is zero-day flaws in computer software. A zero-day means an error in software that lets experts to exploit it freely because no patches for the error exist yet. Usually, the software or hardware vendor is not yet aware of the error.

In the early days of hacking, people who were the first to discover an error in commercial software tried to inform the vendor or posted the information on an online forum. This changed when a hacker realized the high value of the information. Market for trading zero-day information was gradually established. Today, sellers, middlemen, and buyers operate behind the scenes, but as described in the book, a single zero-day can be valued at million dollars today.

The full book review and a couple of suggestions how everyone can make their life with computers a little bit safer can be read in this article.

Securing your network traffic, updating software regularly, downloading apps from trusted sources only, not clicking links provided in messages received from unknown people, not revealing anything to unknown people who call and request personal information, using long password, and all other, often repeated advice is crucial. It significantly decreases the risk of being a target of a successful attack.