Zero Day by Mark Russinovich

When the most modern airliner suddenly starts to fall from the sky, when a nuclear power plant damn near exposes its core, and Manhattan firms see their computers go belly up, losing all a company’s history and ability to conduct business, something is afoot.

Jeff Aiken, a former CIA IT geek, is hired by one of the Manhattan firms hit hard by a virus that has the signature of a Russian hacker who goes by the name Superphreak. But the virus is too advanced, too cagey, too hidden, too tricky even for Aiken. Homeland Security is on it, too but they are also stumped. Once thing both Aiken and DHS have learned is that it is set to be triggered by a date 4 weeks in advance: September 11.

As both rush to track down this Superphreak, the people who dreamed up the plot that, if successful will bring down the economies of both the US and Europe sending each into an economic stone age, start eliminating anyone involved in developing the virus as well as anyone who just may have stumbled across a breadcrumb or two.

It’s kind of hard to imagine a story where the main activity is a bunch of hacker/geeks bent over keyboards as being ‘a thriller’ but let me tell you, Russinovich has done it. Sat down to read this at breakfast on Monday. Next thing I knew it was after normal lunchtime and I was halfway through the book. Make no bones about it. Had I not been in a beach house in the midst of 18 family members, I would’ve finished this in one day, one sitting.

And what is impressive is that this is written by a IT security insider. Russinovich is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft where it’s his job to dream up such scenarios and devise ways to stop them in their tracks. The level of techno-speak is high, but not so high as to confuse the reader, but you really get the sense that Russinovich knows of what he speaks. Looks like he has maybe 3 other Jeff Aiken books. First rate stuff for thriller readers, especially those with a bit of the geek in them.