This is a small review of Zero Day: A Novel by Mark Russinovich

If you are a windows user/developer then the name Mark Russinovich might seem familiar to you, Mark is of course the guy who started Sysinternals, he discovered the Sony rootkit on their CDs and is now a technical fellow at Microsoft. In other words, Mark knows what he talks about when writing about zero day attacks. So what does zero day mean anyway? Here is what wikipedia has about zero day

A zero-day (or zero-hour or day zero) attack or threat is a computer threat that tries to exploit computer application vulnerabilities that are unknown to others or the software developer, also called zero-day vulnerabilities. Zero-day exploits (actual software that uses a security hole to carry out an attack) are used or shared by attackers before the developer of the target software knows about the vulnerability.

The term derives from the age of the exploit. A “zero day” attack occurs on or before the first or “zeroth” day of developer awareness, meaning the developer has not had any opportunity to distribute a security fix to users of the software

The story is about a terrorist organization that tries to bring the US and European systems down by launching a whole variety of viruses (virii) written by the Russian coder superphreak. Our hero must try to find out what the virus does, who created it and how to stop it. He also warned people about September 11th and nobody listens because he wasn’t persistent enough, he doesn’t want to make the same mistake again. Will he succeed? I won’t spoil it here but the books has some major turns and twist that will make it difficult to put the book down.

The book is written in a style similar to Michael Crichton or Dan Brown, the chapters are fast paced and short. The book is hard to put down, it is a page turner and you will stay past your bed time trying to find out what will happen next.

I liked the book and can highly recommend it, if you liked Daemon by Daniel Suarez, then you will like this too

Additional info

Here is some more info about the book and the author

The trailer for the book

Mark Russinovich’s interview for The Big Thrill

Read Mark’s interview on Zero Day in the latest issue of The Big Thrill

Podcast with Herding Code: http://herdingcode.com/?p=320

Check out the Amazon reviews: Zero Day: A Novel by Mark Russinovich

If you know of similar cyber-thriller books like Zero Day or Daemon and Freedom™ leave me a comment, I am interested in checking those out