"Half a Second" — a book on the XZ backdoor

Adrian Mastronardi has released a book called Half a Second; it is adetailed look into the XZ backdoor attemptof 2024. The book is freely available under a (non-free) noncommercial,no-derivatives CC license.

Half a Second tells that story as one continuous narrative:the burned-out volunteer who maintained the code alone and waspatiently, expertly manipulated into giving it up; the engineerwhose half-second of curiosity caught the attack through a chain ofluck and hard-won instinct; and the operator who built it, who hasnever been identified and, this book argues, may never be.