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

Recommendation

The Art of Deception

by Paul Jerimy | Oct 2, 2020 | Book Reviews

Synopsis

At the time of my reading, The Art of Deception was 18 years old. It was published in 2001 and covered the career of a hacker that spanned from from the 80’s to the turn of the millennium. As such, much of the information on specific technologies and tactics are painfully out of date. But with that said, the purpose of this book was not to teach people how to write a mainframe code, it is to teach you how to use deception as part of your hacking toolkit. In that regard, this book is timeless.

The book is organized into about 20 anecdotes, each demonstrating a different tactic or imparting a key issue with the way humans hand their information. It shows you that not all hackers sit behind a screen alone using their programming skills to cause havoc. Some cause havoc in person using more analog methods.

My Reaction

While I did enjoy reading about these anecdotes, I feel like these chapters would be better in a blog or a series of social media posts. That said, each one did touch on a very real issue of the time such as phone phreaking, dumpster diving for credentials, and working you way into places you shouldn’t be allowed. The age of the book makes finding those real issues a bit of a drag, but I feel it is worth while to stick with it to the end.

Recommendation

This novel will not teach you how to be a hacker, but it may open your eyes into aspects you previously had not considers. I do count this as mandatory reading for cyber security professionals, but I wouldn’t be upset it if were lower on your list.

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