by vox_mundi » Thu 07 Jul 2016, 12:40:58
Stuxnet Cyberwarfare Documentary ‘Zero Days’ is the Summer’s Scariest FilmOscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney believes
the first atomic bomb of the cyberwarfare age has already been dropped.That bomb was Stuxnet, a computer virus that's the subject of Gibney's latest movie, "
Zero Days." Stuxnet disrupted an Iranian uranium-enrichment facility beginning in 2010 and set back Iran's nuclear ambitions. Iran considers Stuxnet part of a concerted effort by Israel and the U.S. to undermine its nuclear program through covert operations, though neither government has acknowledged any involvement.
"Zero Days" is an examination of Stuxnet: how outside security researchers got wind of it, where it came from, and what it portends for global security in the future.
... The potential threat from these kinds of cyberweapons is huge, especially when you start talking about shutting down electric power grids. I'm not talking about the threat to me personally, but the threat to all of us. We're just at a point where everyone is starting to recognize the potential calamity.
We’re getting into All the President’s Men territory here, though if anything, the stakes are higher here; asked to pinpoint his paranoia levels before and after making the film, Gibney laughed, “Extreme/extremer.” But these are the kind of big questions our best non-fiction films can, and should, pose: do the potential benefits of such a sophisticated weapon outweigh its possible abuse? In theory, it allows an attack on a hostile nation-state without troop deployment or collateral damage, but is this a genie you want out of its bottle?
“From a moral perspective, I think we should take it extremely seriously,” Gibney said. “I think that’s the point of making the film. Now that the weapons are a relatively unadvanced stage – even though they’re at a stage where they can shut down entire grids – now we should be looking at that, and that I think was actually the reason why a number of the sources came forward, because they were convinced that the people at Cyber Command, particularly the military officials at Cyber Command, didn’t really have a full enough appreciation of the damage that these weapons can do.”
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― Leonardo da Vinci
Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late.