Attack Surface
- 384
- Pages
- about 7 h
- Reading time
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Our view
“Attack Surface” is a sharp, unsettling techno-thriller about a security expert torn between her job and her conscience. Masha Maximow builds the hacks that let repressive regimes spy on dissidents while quietly helping some of them escape, a double life Doctorow makes thrilling and disturbing. Set in the world of “Little Brother” and “Homeland”, it stands on its own. Some readers who work in IT security feel it was written for them.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
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. Source
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.4 across 78 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 35% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Rankings average of 7.8. That is how 7.7 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 9.0 | 8 | 10% |
| Hardcover | 7.2 | 70 | 90% |
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.