Zero Days

Just watched the documentary "Zero Days" and it's time to put on that tinfoil hat again. It's a great film for anyone that hasn't seen it yet, I've embedded the trailer below.

Summary

The movie goes over a virus that was created by the US government. The virus infects multiple different operating systems and devices using backdoors that hadn't been discovered by the public yet. Evidence suggests that a "western government" used this virus to attack Iranian nuclear power facilities.

The Scenario

The Iranian nuclear facility network has what we call an "air gap", which means that nothing in the facility has an internet connection. This is a security measure put in place to make sure no one from the outside could remotely gain access to the network. To bypass this, the attacker (allegedly a "western government") infected USB sticks with a custom made virus "stuxnet". They gave out these infected USB sticks at events and areas they knew contractors that worked in the nuclear facilities would be. Eventually the contractors used the USB sticks while performing work in the nuclear facilities and the network was infected. The virus was specially coded to look for nuclear cooling equipment and cause them to malfunction which would cause meltdowns.

It's scary to think about the wars being fought in the technology realm. So much of our life is dependant on these systems and equipment that cannot be secured. Who knows what the capabilities of heavily funded nations are when it comes to this.