... immensely readable ... a hair-raising, cautionary tale about the burgeoning, post-Stuxnet world of state-sponsored hackers. This is a book that goes beyond influence campaigns and ransomware. Greenberg lays out in chilling detail how future wars will be waged in cyberspace and makes the case that we have done little, as of yet, to prevent it ... In Greenberg’s capable hands, the twists and turns of the attribution process are not tech-laden and confusing, but instead become tantalizing clues in a detective story. Readers are ushered into darkened rooms where cyber-sleuths tease out bits of code and write programs to scan for malware matches, just as a detective might for fingerprints.

Andy Greenberg’s Sandworm has achieved what I thought was no longer possible: it scares me. Sandworm is the story of the Russian GRU hacking team that has evolved in a few short years into the most methodical, persistent, and destructive intelligence agency cyber warriors. After reading Sandworm you will not doubt those superlatives ... In addition to taking us on a journey of understanding of the events around multiple attacks by Sandworm, Greenberg takes a stab at answering these bigger questions. What motivates the Sandworm hackers? Why is the response from those in charge of protecting critical infrastructure so tepid? What lessons have we learned? Greenberg’s Sandworm has earned a position beside Cliff Stoll’s Cuckoo’s Egg, and Kim Zetter’s Count Down to Zero Day, both in university curricula and your bookshelf.

Greenberg took a book leave from Wired to write Sandworm, a comprehensive look at the technical, military and political stories of this new hidden war. The result is an essential guide to help us make sense of what will surely be an increasingly consequential form of military, criminal and insurgent aggression ... a work of in-depth, personal investigative journalism. [Sandberg] profiles the U.S., Russian and Ukrainian technologists and generals who are at the center of the tale, using their frustrations, fears and triumphs to humanize the very abstract business of cyberwar ... Sandworm is much more than a true-life techno-thriller. It’s a tour through a realm that is both invisible and critical to the daily lives of every person alive in the 21st century. Understanding cybersecurity isn’t just for those who write the ciphers and configure the firewalls. It’s a civic literacy that equips you to evaluate the actions taken on your behalf by the governments that you elect. As Greenberg so aptly demonstrates, you may not be interested in cybersecurity, but it is certainly interested in you.

As Russia has attacked, Greenberg has not been far behind, reporting on these incursions in Wired while searching for their perpetrators. Like the best true-crime writing, his narrative is both perversely entertaining and terrifying ... Greenberg leans heavily on the detective work of cybersecurity researchers scattered around the world, many of them veterans of intelligence agencies now working for private firms. Their forensic skills enable them to parse Sandworm’s ever-evolving code, reading it like a manuscript whose author keeps revising ... So far, cyberwarfare has been fundamentally psychological warfare. Cyberwar will not be.

There’s a riveting story to be told in Sandworm, but Andy Greenberg hasn’t figured out how to tell it ... One roadblock for Greenberg is helping us understand the enormity of the situation. At least in this country, we’re used to computer viruses being something that are annoying but can be handled with $150 and a trip to the Geek Squad. There’s also the problem of language, since Greenberg is forced to scatter computer terminology (BlackEnergy) and proprietary computer systems (Stuxnet) throughout his prose, and he’s already given to jargony language, anyway ... Where Greenberg does succeed is in scaring the heck out of his readers ... what Greenberg also makes clear is that Ukraine was a test case, and that, as election meddling has already shown, cyberterrorists have everything they need to hack into American government, health care and power grids. Which leaves readers with this unpleasant pair of questions: Which is worse, that terrorists disrupted life in Ukraine for no other reason than to prove they could? Or that they’re already doing the same thing here and we’re not paying attention?

... shocking ... At times, the book reads like a novel ... Greenberg delves into the technical details of how malware works, often leaving me, a man with no background in software, befuddled ... We should take Andy Greenberg’s Sandworm as a warning.

Technology journalist Greenberg ...delivers a taut inquiry into the 'most devastating and costly malware in history' and the state-sponsored Russian hacker team that developed and deployed it ... Though much about Sandworm remains unknown, including its exact motivations, Greenberg is an adroit investigator and gifted metaphorist. His lucid, dynamic exposé is a must-read for those worried about the vulnerabilities of the digital world.

Cyberwar Armageddon hasn’t happened yet, but it’s coming, according to this disturbing but convincing journalistic chronicle ... Throughout, Greenberg writes in the fast-paced style that characterized his first book, and while the narrative is occasionally scattershot, he effectively captures the disturbing nature of this new global threat. A credible, breathless account of the discovery and defeat (perhaps) of major Russian computer cyberattacks.