Name: Attack Surface
ISBN: 9781250757531

Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Little Brother and Homeland. Most days, Masha Maximow was sure she'd chosen the winning side. In her day job as a counterterrorism wizard for an transnational cybersecurity firm, she made the hacks that allowed repressive regimes to spy on dissidents, and manipulate their every move. The perks were fantastic, and the pay was obscene. Just for fun, and to piss off her masters, Masha sometimes used her mad skills to help those same troublemakers evade detection, if their cause was just. It was a dangerous game and a hell of a rush. But seriously self-destructive. And unsustainable. When her targets were strangers in faraway police states, it was easy to compartmentalize, to ignore the collateral damage of murder, rape, and torture. But when it hits close to home, and the hacks and exploits she’s devised are directed at her friends and family--including boy wonder Marcus Yallow, her old crush and archrival, and his entourage of naïve idealists--Masha realizes she has to choose. And whatever choice she makes, someone is going to get hurt.

Attack Surface

Katheryn

"Depression is a fucking liar, but it's a convincing one and I could hear it whispering to me already telling me that I'd ruined everything that I would never work again that I'd never be loved by anyone."

Industry was pumping private data into its clouds like the hydrocarbon barons had pumped CO2 into the atmosphere like those fossil fuel billionaires. The barons of the surveillance company had a vested interest in sowing confusion about whether or how all this was going to bite us in the ass. By the time climate change could no longer be denied, it'll be too late. We'll have pumped too much CO2 into the skies to stop the seas from swallowing the world. By the time the data apocalypse is obvious, even to people whose paychecks depended on denying it, it would be too late. Any data you collect will probably leak. Any data you retained will definitely leak and we're putting data collection capability and fucking light bulbs now. It's way too late to decarbonize the surveillance economy.

Economist call this a "Ulysses pact." The bargain your strong present day self makes with your weak future self. You can make a Ulysses pact by throwing away all your Oreos the night before you go on a diet or only taking enough cash to buy three beers when you go to the bar... Ulysses pacts aren't an admission of weakness, they're a show of strength, a way to use your strong self against your weak self.

Turns out progress bars are a lot more watchable with the right opioids.

Now, fuck off. Then keep fucking off. Fuck off until you come up to a gate with a sign saying "you can't fuck off past here." Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever.

Felipe Saldarriaga 

una novela bastante interesante acerca de cómo se pueden vulnerar nuestros sistemas de información. me encanta la forma de contar la historia que lleva desde lo cotidiano hasta lo más técnico.

Primera vez que leo a Doctorow y el único detalle que no me termina de gustar es que puede ser menos detallado en ciertos aspectos.

ben wolfson

Cindy Lieberman

I know enough about tech to know that I don’t know nearly enough about the tech I rely on every day. If you worry about connected devices, this will confirm your suspicions. Everyone is listening or at least we leave such a large digital trail that it would be fairly simple for someone to listen if they had the means and motive to do so. And by someone of course I mean the government, its contractors and sub-, or “the other side” ie other governments, terrorists, ne’er-do-well hackers, AI, etc. 

Yet, this is a lively and engaging story about a young woman, a gifted technologist, who knows how to be safe / silent / undetectable when necessary. She plies her skills for a very high salary + perks. When this makes her feel guilty, she helps young ideologues push their political agendas more safely. So she’s working different angles until these collide and she must choose. 

“The most important tool we have for curbing official abuses of power is consensual, legitimate, democratic government.“ 
— Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

I read the Little Brother novels quite a while ago, so I was glad this was positioned as more of a freestanding book in the series. No prior experience with Doctorow’s writing is necessary. I enjoyed this much more than last book of his I read (Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town) as I didn’t love the magical realism of that book. 

Attack Surface is all here and now: things happening of which most of us are quite (blissfully) unaware. So sure, download TikTok and What’s App if you think China has no reason to save, store, and associate your data with... whatever they want. After this election, why would anyone trust Facebook to do what’s right with our personal data? But I’m getting off topic. There are some quite techy descriptions of making phone safer and taking precautions, but these primarily serve to ramp up tension in the plot. I don’t actually know if they’d work but I expect they might. 

“Technology is the tool that gives us the space to make political change. Politics are a tool we use to open the space for making better technology. It’s like parallel parking. You go as far as you can in one direction, then back up, and go as far as you can in the other. Use tech to make political achievements, use politics to improve tech. Back and forth.“
— Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow

Attack Surface is about people connecting and helping people: Friends, family members, colleagues, societies. Tech is a tool we use to connect but it’s the human connections that drive the interesting plot.

Ben Nathan

Freaking fantastic. The best of the series so far and of course it makes me paranoid, but at the same time thankful that we don't go quite that far. One day we will though and that idea makes me sad/scared.

Tao Oat

John Manoogian III

Brock

Returning to the world of Little Brotherand Homeland, Attack Surfacetakes us five minutes into the future, to a world where everything is connected and everyone is vulnerable.

Philipp Tessin

Returning to the world of Little Brother and Homeland, Attack Surface takes us five minutes into the future, to a world where everything is connected and everyone is vulnerable. Masha Maximow has made some bad choices in life – choices that hurt people. But she's also made some pretty decent ones. In the log file of life, however, she can't quite work out which side of the ledger she currently stands. Masha works for Xoth Intelligence, an InfoSec company upgrading the Slovstakian Interior Ministry's ability to spy on its citizens' telecommunications with state-of-the-art software (at least, as state-of-the-art as Xoth is prepared to offer in its middle-upper pricing tier). Can you offset a day-job helping repressive regimes spy on their citizens with a nighttime hobby where you help those same citizens evade detection? Masha is about to find out. Pacy, passionate, and as current as next week, Attack Surface is a paean to activism, to courage, to the drive to make the world a better place.

Bastian

Patrick Hof

Cameron Booth

Dave Lehman

Cory Doctorow's Attack Surface is a standalone novel set in the world of New York Times bestsellers Little Brother and Homeland. Most days, Masha Maximow was sure she'd chosen the winning side. In her day job as a counterterrorism wizard for an transnational cybersecurity firm, she made the hacks that allowed repressive regimes to spy on dissidents, and manipulate their every move. The perks were fantastic, and the pay was obscene. Just for fun, and to piss off her masters, Masha sometimes used her mad skills to help those same troublemakers evade detection, if their cause was just. It was a dangerous game and a hell of a rush. But seriously self-destructive. And unsustainable. When her targets were strangers in faraway police states, it was easy to compartmentalize, to ignore the collateral damage of murder, rape, and torture. But when it hits close to home, and the hacks and exploits she’s devised are directed at her friends and family--including boy wonder Marcus Yallow, her old crush and archrival, and his entourage of naïve idealists--Masha realizes she has to choose. And whatever choice she makes, someone is going to get hurt. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.