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A Cybersecurity Professionals Recommended Reading List

With summer upon us, it is time to pull out the recommended reading list. Fortunately, Matthew Devost has put together a great summer reading list for the cybersecurity professional. This list of books reflects a very diverse spectrum of interests and is in no particular order.

What Technology Wants An almost theological look at the emergence of technology. By Kevin Kelly

Kingpin How one hacker took over the billion-dollar cybercrime underground. By Kevin Poulsen

Worm The first digital world war. By Mark Bowden

Tubes A journey to the center of the internet. Understand the physical infrastructure of the internet. Bonus – the center is in Ashburn, VA. By Andrew Blum

The Signal and the Noise Why so many prediction fail, but some don’t. By Nate Silver

CyberStorm A fictional account of a cyber attack with apocalyptic overtones. By Matthew Mather

Nexus A fictional look at mind-enhancing drugs. By Ramez Naam

Upload Fictional story about singularity. By Mark McClelland

Ghost in the Wires My adventures as the world’s most wanted hacker. By Kevin Mitnick

Red Notice A true story of high finance, murder and one man’s fight for justice. Incredibly interesting book regarding the experience of the most successful hedge fund investor in a very corrupt business environment. Read it for the insights on Russia. By Bill Browder

Flash Boys A Wall Street revolt. High frequency trading and flash crashes. By Michael Lewis

@War The rise of the military-internet comlex. By Shane Harris

Countdown to Zero Day Stuxnet and the launch of the world’s first digital weapon. By Kim Zetter

Future Crimes Everything is connected, everyone is vulnerable and what we can do about it. By Marc Goodman

Darknet Fascinating look at autonomous corporations (fictional). By Matthew Mather

A Fierce Domain Conflict in cyberspace, 1986 to 2012. By Jason Healey

Ready Player One One of the best near-future pieces of science fiction I’ve read since Snowcrash which is also fun for 80’s buffs. By Ernest Cline

Wasp – Russell Eric Frank Recommended to me originally through the Highlands forum. San Francisco’s take on insurgency.

Little Brother Required reading in my Georgetown class (fiction). By Cory Doctorow

Super Crunchers Why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart. By Ian Ayres

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines By Manuel De Landa

Exploding the Phone  By Phil Lapsley

Unrestricted Warfare By Colonel Qiao Liang

The Black Box Society The secret algorithms that control money and information. By Frank Pasquale

Spam Nation The inside story of organized cybercrime from global epidemic to your front door. By Brian Krebs

The Last Warrior Andrew Marshall and the shaping of modern American defense strategy. By Andrew F. Krepinevich

Cyber Adversary Characterization: Auditing the hacker mind. By Tom Parker

The True Believer Thoughts on the nature of mass movements. I give out about 1/2 dozen of these a year. One of the most impactful looks at mass movements. By Eric Hoffer

An Army of Davids How markets and technology employer ordinary people to beat big media, big government, and other Goliaths. By Glenn Reynolds

Wikinomics How mass collaboration changes everything. By Don Tapscott

On Intelligence By Jeff Hawkins

Brave New War The next stage of terrorismand the end of globalization. By John Robb

Play Money Or, how I quit my day job and made millions trading virtual loot. I’m fascinated with virtual worlds and economies. By Julian Dibbell

Who Controls the Internet Illusions of a borderless world. By Jack Goldsmith

National Security in the Information Age I still enjoy this 20-year-old look at the topic. Others may as well. By Matt Devost