Netflix’s Leave the World Behind: Is a ‘Fire Sale’ cyberattack possible?

Netflix’s new movie “ ” is causing a buzz for its apocalyptic messages, ambiguous ending, and portrayal of a near-complete failure of modern technologies, brought on, at least in part, by a devastating cyberattack. The disaster thriller’s story of a world where many of the ubiquitous devices and technologies of our day have been rendered useless prompted an explosion of discussion on social media. “Leave the World Behind” summary The film, adapted from the National Book Award–nominated novel of the same name by Rumaan Alam, starts with a New York couple, Amanda and Clay Sanford, renting a luxurious home for a spur-of-the-moment weekend away with their kids. Their idyllic, out-of-season vacation is soon upended when two strangers — G.H. and his daughter Ruth — arrive in the night with a story of a mysterious power outage and seeking refuge in the house they claim is theirs. The two families must reckon with a looming disaster that grows more terrifying and inexplicable by the minute, forcing everyone to come to terms with their places in a collapsing world. Unexplained events include: a beached oil tanker, plane crashes, flyers filled with misinformation falling from the sky, internet, TV, and phone service going out, mysterious and oddly threatening behavior from deer and other animals, and a loud noise that causes painful side effects. At one point, The Sanfords try to escape by driving toward New Jersey but find the highway completely jammed by a fleet of white Teslas in self-drive mode crashing into one another. The ending is left deliberately ambiguous, with scenes of fires and bombs going off in New York City and G.H. telling a story of one of his clients, who was working on a plan to cause chaos in an enemy nation by sowing confusion that caused people to turn on one another. The book was a favorite of Barack Obama’s, and it was produced in part by , the production company owned by the former U.S. President and his wife, Michelle Obama. Could it really happen? So could this type of attack really happen? 2023 saw an explosion of cyber attacks, with facing cyber attacks, including from hackers in Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. As such, “Leave the World Behind” could be seen as a cautionary tale. In an interview with the film’s director, Sam Email, addressed what to some was a disappointingly ambiguous ending that failed to explain much of what was occurring in the film. “We knew going into this that the ending was going to be polarizing, but we did not want to pull punches on it,” shared Email. “I think in a traditional disaster film, a genre that I’m a huge fan of, so no knock on disaster films — I mean, is one of my favorite movies — but the expectation is at the end of these films, your cast of characters overcomes the disaster and the world reverts back to some sane semblance of normalcy.” He made it clear that he had no interest in that type of ending. However, many incidents in the film are somewhat similar to a “Fire Sale” attack (as in “everything must go”). In such a event, also discussed in the 2007 film a nation’s infrastructure can potentially be taken down in three steps. The steps are designed to create chaos and leave a country without leadership and direction, ready to be picked apart by the enemy. The steps involve shutting down the means of communication, transportation, and financial systems and turning off public utilities like electricity and gas. In the film, the next step was causing misinformation by pitting different sides of an attacked society against each other. This stage feeds off the fact that when it’s not clear who is the actual attacking party, people within the country will fight among themselves. The last stage may or may not involve a “coup d’etat” or invasion. Could such an attack be possible? Considering the growth of cyber crimes that target financial, infrastructure, and military sectors, it is very likely that it may be possible to carry out a wide-ranging attack like a “Fire Sale.” It’s possibly just a matter of time before a large-scale version of such an attack is attempted. Real-world attacks One early, real-world example of a on a nation’s infrastructure took place in 2007 when Russia worth of distributed denial-of-service on Estonia. They were supposedly prompted by the removal of a Soviet-era war monument from an Estonian city. The attacks were aimed at both state and commercial websites, including defense ministries, banks, and media outlets. The sites were flooded with junk traffic, which made them inaccessible to the public. To remedy the problem, Estonia was forced to temporarily block all international web traffic. Another infamous attack took place in 2010 when the computer worm Stuxnet disabled key parts of the Iranian nuclear program. Likely designed by American and Israeli intelligence agencies, Stuxnet’s purpose was to destroy the centrifuges Iran used to enrich uranium. The Stuxnet worm in infecting the software of at least 14 industrial sites, which included a uranium enrichment plant. The malicious code first attacked Microsoft Windows machines and networks. Then it replicated itself, going after software that was used to control industrial systems and operate equipment like centrifuges. It also undermined programmable logic controllers, allowing access to spying. Could Teslas be hacked? As the movie memorably features a fleet of Tesla Model 3s cars crashing into each other in self-drive mode, it’s perhaps no surprise that Elon Musk weighed in on the movie. Tesla’s autopilot feature has already been the subject of numerous regulatory investigations, prompting a of 2 million of the company’s electric vehicles — nearly all the Teslas sold in the US. The recall is meant to update software and fix a defective system that’s supposed to ensure drivers are paying attention when using Autopilot Posting about the film on X, Musk : “Teslas can charge from solar panels even if the world goes fully Mad Max and there is no more gasoline!” Of course, as numerous social media users pointed out, that wasn’t the main problem in the film’s Tesla scene. Yes, the cars could be charged even in an apocalyptic scenario, but the movie got milage by having them taken over by a hacker and driven into each other by exploiting their GPS connectivity.