The Fifth Domain: A Solid Modern History for 2021

by Paul Jerimy | May 7, 2021 | Book Reviews

y fSummary

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knacke is a follow up to their 2010 novel Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do about It.

This novel discusses the history, workings, and risks of cybersecurity related technologies and problems faced in 2019, many of which are still in the fore-front in 2021. Each chapter covers a cybersecurity event, policy, or technology generally painting a history starting with the Petya randsomware attack of late 2016 and ending in quantum computing announcements of late 2019. The perspective is from government cyber security policy makers with a technical background.

Topics discussed are:

Petya, NotPetya, StuxNet, and Wannacry attacks
Cloud Computing / AWS GovCloud
Spectre/Meltdown and Venom attacks
Separation of internet and state
Hack back
Efficacy of US cyber regulations in both private and public sectors
AI and machine learning
Quantum computing
5G / IoT
ICS / SCADA
Personal cyber security

My Reaction

This novel is a great problems facing modern (as of 2021) cybersecurity professionals. It does a good job of briefly describing recent attacks & emerging concerns while also explaining why these events were so important. I personally struggled through the beginning chapters because it was a rehash of content covered in many other novels, but I did gather some insights.

This novel is laid out very well and doesn’t fall victim to many of the issues of other cybersecurity novels. It gives a “so what” about events, makes recommendations about what can be done to fix problems, and doesn’t ignore the wide breadth of concerns cybersecurity professionals current have to contend with. It uses language that is slightly more technical that most but feels approachable for non-technical readers.

I found the insights about how organizations need dozens of security software suites but no company is making a useful all-in-one suite very topical and is a personal frustration. I was hoping the authors would suggest a solution to this, but they did not.

The authors are very wary about letting government having a role in cybersecurity for private organizations. They outline the dangers of a government run cyber defense screen, encryption backdoors, and “clipper chips” very well. However, the authors also paint a picture that cyber defenders are starting to gain an advantage over attackers which I personally disagree with. It is true that networks who properly implement a full system security plan are much safer than they use to be, attackers continue to develop novel attacks, social engineering methods, and zero-days that get around even the best plan.

Recommendation

I recommend this book as essential reading for all information technology professionals and hobbyists. If you only want to read one book on cybersecurity, this might be the right one to choose. I especially recommend that cyber policy makers read this to understand current and emerging threats as well as solid recommendations for defending against them.

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Zer0es: A Sci-Fi thriller with a little hacking

by Paul Jerimy | Jan 1, 2021 | Book Reviews

The second book in the series (Invasive) does not follow the same cast of characters and drops most of the hacking premise. Because of that and the unrealistic way this story was handled, I will not continue in this series.

Recommendation

Overall I would not recommend this book for any type of development reason. I also do not recommend it as a good cyber security story. That said, it is a decent sci-fi thriller with lots of action which was easy to read. So if you’re looking for a thriller to get your mind off of reality this may be a good one to pick up.

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That said, this story does show more diversity in the types of hackers and does capture some common personality tropes of those hackers. The premise of the main arc is grounded in reality but the author just takes it to crazy town.

Recommendation

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My Reaction

The beginning of the story is exactly what I’ve been asking for with real hackers doing real hacking things. For that, I really wanted to like the story but in the end I’m not satisfied with this book. The characters are not likeable or interesting. The story is very loose with realistic actions and hand waves a lot of science. There’s action for the sake of action and the personal development of characters is forced. This is not a story about hackers, it is a sci-fi that happened to have some hackers in it.

Recommendation

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From there the story becomes less believable, with the actions taken in the dark site losing its technical reality and becoming more of a “hacking is magic” story where characters can just make things happen. Midway through the story, all the hacking just stops and it becomes a quasi apocalyptic thriller involving out of control AI.

My Reaction

Recommendation

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Synopsis

Zeroes is a technothriller set in mid 2010’s that follows fiver hackers with different backgrounds. Two are more traditional skilled hackers while the other three have specialized niches: social engineering, scamming, and an old-school BBS admin. The story starts out relatively believable by following each of five hackers through their most recent crimes up to them getting caught by a 3 letter agency. They are then sent into a dark site to become gray hats for the government and for a team they call the “Zeroes”.

My Reaction

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