Zero Days
Directed by Alex Gibney
4/5

AFTER investigating paedophilia in the Catholic Church, Scientology and WikiLeaks, Academy Award-winning film-maker Alex Gibney now turns the spotlight on cyberwarfare and its secret deployment.

The result is a chilling and disturbing documentary, akin to a thriller.

That chill factor is not just because of what he uncovers but the fact that no-one is prepared to comment on, or admit to, the existence of Stuxnet, a self-replicating computer virus.

No organisation or state has ever admitted responsibility for it, though it’s believed to have been created by the US and Israel during the Bush administration, with the aim of infiltrating Iran’s power plant in Natanz and destroying its nuclear centrifuges while making it look like an unfortunate accident.

Certainly, scores were put out of action and it reportedly set back Iran’s nuclear development programme.

Yet the Stuxnet worm’s cover was blown when it expanded its remit and spread to computers worldwide around 2010, when it was first spotted in Belarus.

Despite Stuxnet being public knowledge, no-one is willing to talk about it on camera and the montage at the start of the documentary of a host of computer security experts and former Mossad and US intelligence officials refusing to comment, with many stating that information is classified, is both telling and frightening.

One of the reasons for the silence is, the film suggests, fear of being prosecuted — Barack Obama has used the 1917 Espionage Act more times than all previous presidents combined, primarily to prosecute whistle-blowers.

Gibney, with the aid of visually stimulating graphics and insightful interviews with former players and people behind the scenes, delivers a hugely engrossing documentary, whose narrative at times rivals an Ian Fleming or John le Carre thriller.

The director shows how the secrecy surrounding Stuxnet was such that even the US government’s right hand didn’t know what its left was up to. The absurdity of the situation was highlighted when the Department of Homeland Security triggered a high alert against Stuxnet because it was attacking the US.

Zero Days shows that Stuxnet is just the tip of the iceberg and part of the bigger and more powerful and sinister “Nitro Zeus” cyberweapons programme which can jam air defences, shut down power grids and destroy infrastructure.

The US has invested heavily in its offensive cyber capabilities and the problem lies in “what we can do to them they can now do to us.” Due to the secrecy surrounding cyberwarfare, we won’t know until it is too late.

While there are international agreements governing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, none pertain to cyberwarfare. Zero Days could be the perfect starting point for a much-needed debate on why this is so.

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