Netflix has a new miniseries, Zero Day, which stars Robert De Niro as a former US president tasked with seeking the truth behind a devastating cyber-attack. It’s not uncommon for series or movies about cyber to over dramatize or get things wrong.
So how does Zero Day stand up to the test of accuracy?
To answer that, here are some cybersecurity experts to weigh in:
James McQuiggan, Security Awareness Advocate at KnowBe4:
“Zero Day delivers the notion of a nationwide cyberattack as a severe national security threat. The show shows that critical infrastructure, including energy grids, oil refineries, transportation, and telecommunications, are potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks. The concept of a nation-state or advanced persistent threat (APT) having long-term access to these systems and waiting for the right moment to strike is a real concern.”
“The mass hijacking of digital devices to deliver a synchronized message is somewhat plausible. We’ve seen real-world examples where emergency alert systems have sent messages for the wrong reasons. Such as the false missile alert in Hawaii or FEMA’s alert system for climate events.
The attack that occurred in Zero Day would require a well-organized and coordinated cyberattack with a vast array of botnets or pre-existing access to hundreds of devices and networks throughout the country, hence the reason Russia was speculated in the show.”
“Destroying hardware, as seen in the beginning of the second episode as a last-ditch effort to prevent forensic analysis, is also an accurate depiction. In real-world scenarios, cyber operators and spies have used everything from microwave ovens to acid baths to destroy hard drives and prevent data retrieval.”
“Like most dramatized depictions of cyber warfare, Zero Day blends reality with artistic liberties. Some aspects are highly realistic, while others are exaggerated or oversimplified for narrative impact. For example, the idea that the U.S. government could instantly access and crack every device for communications is unlikely. While intelligence agencies have sophisticated interception capabilities, much of this is done through partnerships with telecom providers or exploiting software vulnerabilities, rather than some omnipotent backdoor.”
“The depiction of cybercriminals and their motivations is relatively on point, as organized cybercrime operates with business-like structures, and sophisticated hackers tend to leave backdoors behind for future access. The idea that cyberattacks can be precisely attributed in a short amount of time is misleading. Cyber attribution is notoriously difficult; attackers use proxies, stolen credentials, and false flags to obscure their origins, sometimes taking months or years to unravel. The show also highlights real-world cryptography concepts, like the Caesar cipher and phonetic alphabet for coded communication.”
“There are a few major inaccuracies in the show that stretch reality: A synchronized cyberattack taking down critical infrastructure across multiple sectors simultaneously would require immense coordination, pre-existing access, and unprecedented sophistication. While nation-states have access to infrastructure systems, the level of control depicted would be challenging to execute at such a scale. One of the more glaring issues is that pushing a software patch could instantly restore electricity. The U.S. power grid is fragmented into multiple systems, and backup generators are designed to activate in the event of failure. A cyberattack could cause outages, but the idea that an attack would prevent backup power from kicking in is unlikely unless it specifically targeted those failover mechanisms.”
“Power grids are complex, with thousands of independent components and separate grids, which would require separate recovery plans, especially after a cyberattack, and would require collaboration across multiple federal and state offices. The idea that a cyber “poison pill” could be activated in a way that instantly disables or takes over all systems is overly simplistic. While self-destructing malware exists, turning off infrastructure on a national scale with a single trigger is more Hollywood than reality.”
“Ultimately, Zero Day does what any good cyber-thriller should—it raises awareness about the reality of cyber threats while keeping the audience engaged. It’s a compelling watch, but cyber warfare is often more complex and methodical and takes place in the shadows long before it ever reaches public awareness.”
Martin Jartelius, CISO at Outpost24:
“The attack’s scale is wildly unrealistic. Cyberattacks rarely (if ever) hit every system simultaneously across multiple industries, platforms, and networks. In Zero Day, the malware effortlessly impacts everything from subways to financial systems—an overwhelming challenge for even the most advanced cybercriminals.”
“The show assumes hackers can create a single piece of malware that runs across all major operating systems and applications while staying undetected. In reality, malware is highly specialized—getting even one variant to work properly is difficult, let alone something that scales across diverse infrastructure.”
“While digital infrastructure is critical, most physical systems have failovers to prevent total failure. Subways, for instance, can still brake manually. Nuclear plants, electrical grids, and even traffic control systems often have manual overrides to prevent chaos in the event of a cyberattack.”
“Most real-world cyberattacks aim to overload, destroy, or disable systems—not to take pinpoint control. The Russia-Ukraine cyberwarfare tactics, for example, have focused on shutting down communications, bricking satellite systems, and erasing databases rather than manipulating infrastructure in real-time.”
“Coordinated cyberwarfare is harder than it looks. A synchronized, simultaneous takedown of multiple sectors would require an incredible level of planning, testing, and execution. In reality, attacks often hit some targets successfully but fail against others due to differences in security configurations and countermeasures.”
“The idea that hackers can remotely access anything and everything assumes all systems are connected. Many industrial control systems (e.g., power plants, transportation networks) operate on isolated networks, meaning an attacker would need physical access or insider help to compromise them.”
“Even within a single country, organizations use different security tools and monitoring systems—some have hypervisors, file system protections, AI-driven anomaly detection, and more. This means a large-scale attack would likely have inconsistent success rates rather than the blanket disruption seen in Zero Day.”
“While Zero Day exaggerates, cyberwarfare is a real and growing concern. Attacks on government agencies, hospitals, and financial institutions have already had serious economic and social impacts, though they usually focus on data theft, espionage, or financial disruption rather than full infrastructure collapse. At the end of the day, Zero Day is fiction, just like how Armageddon made us believe Bruce Willis could fly to an asteroid. The entertainment industry often sacrifices technical accuracy for storytelling, and that’s okay—just don’t use it as a cybersecurity training manual.”
“While the technical details are unrealistic, Zero Day does serve an important function: raising awareness. Cybersecurity threats are a real and growing problem, and while an attack of this scale is unlikely, governments, businesses, and individuals must take digital threats seriously to prevent major disruptions.”
Chris Hauk, Consumer Privacy Champion at Pixel Privacy:
“Zero Day was actually quite well done, making for an engaging bit of drama to pass the time. As for the plot line, while we have seen several cyberattacks on sensitive infrastructure, like utilities and banking, we haven’t seen an attack launched against all U.S. infrastructure, such as we saw in the series. Hopefully, such an attack is in the far distant future when we can handle such attacks, but the day is coming.”
“Advancements in AI could someday result in an attack like Zero Day. One character says the code powering the attack can modify itself to run on multiple operating systems, learning about new operating systems on the fly. While I don’t believe we are quite there yet, AI can write the source code for an application for just about any operating system simply by the user describing what the app should do and what device it should run on, stretching back to even devices used in the 80s, like the Commodore 64. (It would be somewhat ironic if C64s from the early 80s were used in a botnet to take down modern infrastructure.)”
“Unfortunately, cyberattacks will continue, as IT security professionals work to plug the security holes used by the bad actors of the world to take down important infrastructure. The United States is not prepared, be it structurally or psychologically prepared for an attack at the magnitude shown in the series. I appreciate that shows like Zero Day, while not 100% accurate, are keeping the possibilities of such an attack on the front burner, spurring viewers to tell their representatives to get their ducks in a row, and improve the safeguards in our infrastructure to better protect against attacks like this. The effects of even “Zero Day” attacks can be mitigated somewhat by reinforcing the protections against such attacks and having well-thought out plans for recovering from such an attack when it does occur.”
Brian Higgins, Security Specialist at Comparitech:
“I sat down to watch Zero Day with some healthy snacks and an open mind. It wasn’t long, however, before I was mentally yelling at the television as episode one unfolded and a wildly improbable Cyber scenario eventually, it turned out, caused 3,402 deaths. It put me in mind of the fictional ‘Fire Sale’ in Die Hard 4. I started making a list of all the things that ‘wouldn’t happen’ and then, at the beginning of episode two, one of the characters sitting in a briefing recited them all back to me. If the penny hadn’t dropped by then it was pretty obvious that the overly doom-laden Cyber events were just a foil for a show that is essentially about power and corruption. It turned out to be quite entertaining but from a technical perspective I’m not going to be chucking all my devices in the microwave and going to live out my days in a cabin in the woods any time soon.”
Roger Grimes, Data-Driven Defense Evangelist at KnowBe4, on the first two episodes:
“In general, episode one was a fairly accurate use of cybersecurity attack terms and use. They obviously had good cybersecurity consultants involved. I found some slightly inaccurate use of terms and other minor things, but overall, it was far better than average for a film concentrating on cyber. The biggest question is, could all that cyber disruption really happen…at once? Yes, all that stuff could happen at once. Not easy and it would likely take more than one malware program. But is it possible? Yes.”
“The phone message, “This Will Happen Again,” is displayed in a strange way on the central part of the cell phone screen that would require taking complete control of the phone OS. A message like that is far more likely to be displayed in SMS or a common communication app (i.e., RCS, WhatsApp, etc.). It was likely done as part of an app that allowed it to be easily displayed on the larger part of the screen, Hollywood-style, for the bigger, easier-to-read effect.”
“The zero-day definition in the show, from a background news broadcast, describes a zero-day as an “unknown software vulnerability,” which is probably the most common way the world hears it described. But it’s a little lacking. Zero-days often target firmware these days, not just software. The broad attack described in the movie would have likely required firmware attacks. Also, the vulnerability is never unknown. It’s unknown to the general public, but to the person/group using it, it’s certainly not unknown. And it could be that lots of people and groups know about the vulnerability. The vendor involved in the vulnerability could also know about it. It’s a misnomer that no one knows about it. Lots of people and groups could know about it. The general public just doesn’t know about it and the people who do know about it aren’t sharing publicly.”
“Ex-President, George Mullen, says the zero-day attack is “…beyond our [US gov’t] capabilities!” And says the Russians are the most likely candidates. This is a widely held belief, but not true. The US government’s hackers are the best at it. We just don’t publicly show our hands like the Russians and Chinese do. There is no doubt in my mind that our hackers are better than the rest of the other world’s hackers by an order of magnitude and that if we wanted to take down another country’s critical infrastructure, no one could do it faster or better. Any US President would be briefed on this and know it.”
“Lily Caplin’s worry about the commission that will seize Martial Law and other powers and be a threat to civil liberties — and possibly not cede it once the crisis is over — is something that is hotly debated and worried about in real life time-to-time, such as whenever the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws are debated. The Russian GRU reference and description is fairly accurate, where they are funding Russian hackers in other countries to cause digital mayhem. They talked about a larger GRU server farm that could crack crypto… that’s accurate.”
“In episode two, they intimated that malware could hide, not be found, and come back at any moment. That is really not possible with good cyber forensics. It’s really hard to hide perfectly. It would be more likely that an unknown 0-day(s) can be reused at any time to regain control. But it would be hard for it to hide where we can’t find it and it would be far harder for there to be zero evidence of what happened…if not impossible.”
Cybersecurity Experts React To Netflix’s Zero Day
Posted in Commentary with tags Netflix on March 1, 2025 by itnerdNetflix has a new miniseries, Zero Day, which stars Robert De Niro as a former US president tasked with seeking the truth behind a devastating cyber-attack. It’s not uncommon for series or movies about cyber to over dramatize or get things wrong.
So how does Zero Day stand up to the test of accuracy?
To answer that, here are some cybersecurity experts to weigh in:
James McQuiggan, Security Awareness Advocate at KnowBe4:
“Zero Day delivers the notion of a nationwide cyberattack as a severe national security threat. The show shows that critical infrastructure, including energy grids, oil refineries, transportation, and telecommunications, are potentially vulnerable to cyberattacks. The concept of a nation-state or advanced persistent threat (APT) having long-term access to these systems and waiting for the right moment to strike is a real concern.”
“The mass hijacking of digital devices to deliver a synchronized message is somewhat plausible. We’ve seen real-world examples where emergency alert systems have sent messages for the wrong reasons. Such as the false missile alert in Hawaii or FEMA’s alert system for climate events.
The attack that occurred in Zero Day would require a well-organized and coordinated cyberattack with a vast array of botnets or pre-existing access to hundreds of devices and networks throughout the country, hence the reason Russia was speculated in the show.”
“Destroying hardware, as seen in the beginning of the second episode as a last-ditch effort to prevent forensic analysis, is also an accurate depiction. In real-world scenarios, cyber operators and spies have used everything from microwave ovens to acid baths to destroy hard drives and prevent data retrieval.”
“Like most dramatized depictions of cyber warfare, Zero Day blends reality with artistic liberties. Some aspects are highly realistic, while others are exaggerated or oversimplified for narrative impact. For example, the idea that the U.S. government could instantly access and crack every device for communications is unlikely. While intelligence agencies have sophisticated interception capabilities, much of this is done through partnerships with telecom providers or exploiting software vulnerabilities, rather than some omnipotent backdoor.”
“The depiction of cybercriminals and their motivations is relatively on point, as organized cybercrime operates with business-like structures, and sophisticated hackers tend to leave backdoors behind for future access. The idea that cyberattacks can be precisely attributed in a short amount of time is misleading. Cyber attribution is notoriously difficult; attackers use proxies, stolen credentials, and false flags to obscure their origins, sometimes taking months or years to unravel. The show also highlights real-world cryptography concepts, like the Caesar cipher and phonetic alphabet for coded communication.”
“There are a few major inaccuracies in the show that stretch reality: A synchronized cyberattack taking down critical infrastructure across multiple sectors simultaneously would require immense coordination, pre-existing access, and unprecedented sophistication. While nation-states have access to infrastructure systems, the level of control depicted would be challenging to execute at such a scale. One of the more glaring issues is that pushing a software patch could instantly restore electricity. The U.S. power grid is fragmented into multiple systems, and backup generators are designed to activate in the event of failure. A cyberattack could cause outages, but the idea that an attack would prevent backup power from kicking in is unlikely unless it specifically targeted those failover mechanisms.”
“Power grids are complex, with thousands of independent components and separate grids, which would require separate recovery plans, especially after a cyberattack, and would require collaboration across multiple federal and state offices. The idea that a cyber “poison pill” could be activated in a way that instantly disables or takes over all systems is overly simplistic. While self-destructing malware exists, turning off infrastructure on a national scale with a single trigger is more Hollywood than reality.”
“Ultimately, Zero Day does what any good cyber-thriller should—it raises awareness about the reality of cyber threats while keeping the audience engaged. It’s a compelling watch, but cyber warfare is often more complex and methodical and takes place in the shadows long before it ever reaches public awareness.”
Martin Jartelius, CISO at Outpost24:
“The attack’s scale is wildly unrealistic. Cyberattacks rarely (if ever) hit every system simultaneously across multiple industries, platforms, and networks. In Zero Day, the malware effortlessly impacts everything from subways to financial systems—an overwhelming challenge for even the most advanced cybercriminals.”
“The show assumes hackers can create a single piece of malware that runs across all major operating systems and applications while staying undetected. In reality, malware is highly specialized—getting even one variant to work properly is difficult, let alone something that scales across diverse infrastructure.”
“While digital infrastructure is critical, most physical systems have failovers to prevent total failure. Subways, for instance, can still brake manually. Nuclear plants, electrical grids, and even traffic control systems often have manual overrides to prevent chaos in the event of a cyberattack.”
“Most real-world cyberattacks aim to overload, destroy, or disable systems—not to take pinpoint control. The Russia-Ukraine cyberwarfare tactics, for example, have focused on shutting down communications, bricking satellite systems, and erasing databases rather than manipulating infrastructure in real-time.”
“Coordinated cyberwarfare is harder than it looks. A synchronized, simultaneous takedown of multiple sectors would require an incredible level of planning, testing, and execution. In reality, attacks often hit some targets successfully but fail against others due to differences in security configurations and countermeasures.”
“The idea that hackers can remotely access anything and everything assumes all systems are connected. Many industrial control systems (e.g., power plants, transportation networks) operate on isolated networks, meaning an attacker would need physical access or insider help to compromise them.”
“Even within a single country, organizations use different security tools and monitoring systems—some have hypervisors, file system protections, AI-driven anomaly detection, and more. This means a large-scale attack would likely have inconsistent success rates rather than the blanket disruption seen in Zero Day.”
“While Zero Day exaggerates, cyberwarfare is a real and growing concern. Attacks on government agencies, hospitals, and financial institutions have already had serious economic and social impacts, though they usually focus on data theft, espionage, or financial disruption rather than full infrastructure collapse. At the end of the day, Zero Day is fiction, just like how Armageddon made us believe Bruce Willis could fly to an asteroid. The entertainment industry often sacrifices technical accuracy for storytelling, and that’s okay—just don’t use it as a cybersecurity training manual.”
“While the technical details are unrealistic, Zero Day does serve an important function: raising awareness. Cybersecurity threats are a real and growing problem, and while an attack of this scale is unlikely, governments, businesses, and individuals must take digital threats seriously to prevent major disruptions.”
Chris Hauk, Consumer Privacy Champion at Pixel Privacy:
“Zero Day was actually quite well done, making for an engaging bit of drama to pass the time. As for the plot line, while we have seen several cyberattacks on sensitive infrastructure, like utilities and banking, we haven’t seen an attack launched against all U.S. infrastructure, such as we saw in the series. Hopefully, such an attack is in the far distant future when we can handle such attacks, but the day is coming.”
“Advancements in AI could someday result in an attack like Zero Day. One character says the code powering the attack can modify itself to run on multiple operating systems, learning about new operating systems on the fly. While I don’t believe we are quite there yet, AI can write the source code for an application for just about any operating system simply by the user describing what the app should do and what device it should run on, stretching back to even devices used in the 80s, like the Commodore 64. (It would be somewhat ironic if C64s from the early 80s were used in a botnet to take down modern infrastructure.)”
“Unfortunately, cyberattacks will continue, as IT security professionals work to plug the security holes used by the bad actors of the world to take down important infrastructure. The United States is not prepared, be it structurally or psychologically prepared for an attack at the magnitude shown in the series. I appreciate that shows like Zero Day, while not 100% accurate, are keeping the possibilities of such an attack on the front burner, spurring viewers to tell their representatives to get their ducks in a row, and improve the safeguards in our infrastructure to better protect against attacks like this. The effects of even “Zero Day” attacks can be mitigated somewhat by reinforcing the protections against such attacks and having well-thought out plans for recovering from such an attack when it does occur.”
Brian Higgins, Security Specialist at Comparitech:
“I sat down to watch Zero Day with some healthy snacks and an open mind. It wasn’t long, however, before I was mentally yelling at the television as episode one unfolded and a wildly improbable Cyber scenario eventually, it turned out, caused 3,402 deaths. It put me in mind of the fictional ‘Fire Sale’ in Die Hard 4. I started making a list of all the things that ‘wouldn’t happen’ and then, at the beginning of episode two, one of the characters sitting in a briefing recited them all back to me. If the penny hadn’t dropped by then it was pretty obvious that the overly doom-laden Cyber events were just a foil for a show that is essentially about power and corruption. It turned out to be quite entertaining but from a technical perspective I’m not going to be chucking all my devices in the microwave and going to live out my days in a cabin in the woods any time soon.”
Roger Grimes, Data-Driven Defense Evangelist at KnowBe4, on the first two episodes:
“In general, episode one was a fairly accurate use of cybersecurity attack terms and use. They obviously had good cybersecurity consultants involved. I found some slightly inaccurate use of terms and other minor things, but overall, it was far better than average for a film concentrating on cyber. The biggest question is, could all that cyber disruption really happen…at once? Yes, all that stuff could happen at once. Not easy and it would likely take more than one malware program. But is it possible? Yes.”
“The phone message, “This Will Happen Again,” is displayed in a strange way on the central part of the cell phone screen that would require taking complete control of the phone OS. A message like that is far more likely to be displayed in SMS or a common communication app (i.e., RCS, WhatsApp, etc.). It was likely done as part of an app that allowed it to be easily displayed on the larger part of the screen, Hollywood-style, for the bigger, easier-to-read effect.”
“The zero-day definition in the show, from a background news broadcast, describes a zero-day as an “unknown software vulnerability,” which is probably the most common way the world hears it described. But it’s a little lacking. Zero-days often target firmware these days, not just software. The broad attack described in the movie would have likely required firmware attacks. Also, the vulnerability is never unknown. It’s unknown to the general public, but to the person/group using it, it’s certainly not unknown. And it could be that lots of people and groups know about the vulnerability. The vendor involved in the vulnerability could also know about it. It’s a misnomer that no one knows about it. Lots of people and groups could know about it. The general public just doesn’t know about it and the people who do know about it aren’t sharing publicly.”
“Ex-President, George Mullen, says the zero-day attack is “…beyond our [US gov’t] capabilities!” And says the Russians are the most likely candidates. This is a widely held belief, but not true. The US government’s hackers are the best at it. We just don’t publicly show our hands like the Russians and Chinese do. There is no doubt in my mind that our hackers are better than the rest of the other world’s hackers by an order of magnitude and that if we wanted to take down another country’s critical infrastructure, no one could do it faster or better. Any US President would be briefed on this and know it.”
“Lily Caplin’s worry about the commission that will seize Martial Law and other powers and be a threat to civil liberties — and possibly not cede it once the crisis is over — is something that is hotly debated and worried about in real life time-to-time, such as whenever the Patriot Act and other surveillance laws are debated. The Russian GRU reference and description is fairly accurate, where they are funding Russian hackers in other countries to cause digital mayhem. They talked about a larger GRU server farm that could crack crypto… that’s accurate.”
“In episode two, they intimated that malware could hide, not be found, and come back at any moment. That is really not possible with good cyber forensics. It’s really hard to hide perfectly. It would be more likely that an unknown 0-day(s) can be reused at any time to regain control. But it would be hard for it to hide where we can’t find it and it would be far harder for there to be zero evidence of what happened…if not impossible.”
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