Zero Days is an ominous sounding title. Fuck! When did the countdown start? Why am I already at zero?
Something about the title makes it feel like a count down versus the beginning of a count, which is interesting enough on its own. It just screams out negativity.
It turns out the term zero days refers to a malware attack on a computer. It is an unknown type of attack, that affects the entity as soon as it could possibly be known. There is no time to prepare before the attack begins, and you have to just start dealing with it while trying to fix it at the same time. It is technically rare, as most forms of attack are known and can be dealt with before the attack begins.
But what if you have a program on your computer with multiple zero days attached to it? That would be unheard of. And the documentary starts with a talk about Stuxnet, a malware discovered a few years ago with four zero day fronts on it, all around the world.
Unfortunately no, it doesn’t take on human forms and take over that way.
Long story short, Stuxnet was a form of cyberwarfare. The first one ever discovered, but probably not the first one implemented. And it was made in the US and Israel, to target the Iranian nuclear program, and sort of blow it all up from inside with their own tech.
Cool right?!
Given this, the documentary is also about cyberwarfare in general, the history of Iranian nuclear power and US-Iran relations, how other forms of warfare were implemented and so on. It isn’t just on the one very powerful and very specific malware.
And you know what? Zero Days felt like it was all over the place. The beginning was instantly very tech heavy and honestly, I got lost right away. It got better eventually. We got some very powerful testimonies from people who made Stuxnet, from people in the government programs and more. That part of Zero Days is fascinating.
When I say it is all over the place, it is all technically related, it just feels like several different mini documentaries put together almost. It has some good parts, but some parts that just feel above my complete comprehension. So with that, I have to knock it down a bit.