// Alternatives
Alternatives to @War
Books in our catalog with overlapping topics and a similar reading level to @War. If @War is the wrong fit at beginner level, start here.
01 · 2016
Dark Territory
Fred Kaplan's policy-side history of US cyber capability, from Reagan-era panic about WarGames to the institutional buildup of NSA's offensive arm and the political fights over its use.
Beginner4/5Fred Kaplan02 · 2020
The Hacker and the State
Ben Buchanan's argument that state-on-state cyber operations are not deterrence-shaped (like nuclear) but signaling-shaped: countries use cyber to shape the environment, not to threaten escalation. Builds the case from declassified incidents.
Beginner5/5Ben Buchanan03 · 2019
Sandworm
Long-form journalism on the GRU's hacking operations, the best non-technical book on what state-level cyber actually looks like.
Beginner5/5Andy Greenberg04 · 2011
Kingpin
Kevin Poulsen's reconstruction of Max Butler's career — from white-hat consultant to running CardersMarket, the carding forum that consolidated the early-2000s underground — and the FBI investigation that finally took him down.
Beginner5/5Kevin Poulsen05 · 1999
The Code Book
A narrative history of cryptography from Caesar ciphers to public-key, told through the people and the wars that turned on broken codes. Still the best on-ramp to why crypto matters.
Beginner5/5Simon Singh06 · 1989
The Cuckoo's Egg
Clifford Stoll's first-person account of investigating a 75-cent accounting discrepancy at LBNL that turned into a year-long pursuit of a KGB-paid intruder across early-internet networks.
Beginner5/5Clifford Stoll07 · 2023
Fancy Bear Goes Phishing
Five famous hacks used as a way into the deeper question of why software is insecure at all, written by a Yale law professor who learned to code to write it. More a history and theory of vulnerability than a how-to.
Beginner4/5Scott J. Shapiro08 · 2021
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends
Nicole Perlroth's reporting on the global zero-day market: how exploits get bought, by whom, and how the gray-then-black market shapes which vulnerabilities get fixed and which get hoarded.
Beginner4/5Nicole Perlroth09 · 2019
Cult of the Dead Cow
Joseph Menn's history of cDc — the Texas-rooted hacking collective that coined 'hacktivism', shipped Back Orifice, and threaded its way through three decades of the security industry's coming-of-age.
Beginner4/5Joseph Menn10 · 2018
The Perfect Weapon
The NYT national security correspondent's account of how cyber weapons became the tool states reach for short of war, from Stuxnet to Russian election interference. Strong on the politics and decision-making, light on the technology.
Beginner4/5David E. Sanger