How Realistic Is Netflix’s Zero Day?

Computers are terrifying machines and almost no one actually knows how they work. Some people know how some parts of computers work, but you know who definitely do not know how computers work? The plotters and schemers in Netflix’s Zero Day.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen Hackers and The Net and WarGames and Real Genius, movies in which people do things with computers that their parents or the government or other people in Serious Clothes tell them they shouldn’t do. Hijinks ensue. Most of those hijinks are fun and absurdly unrealistic (see: space laser popcorn in Real Genius) and have little to do with reality. But, every once in a while we are gifted a property that is so disconnected from any semblance of the way that software or computers or networks actually operate that it can only bring joy. Think Blackhat or CSI: Cyber.

Enter, Zero Day, the wonderfully incoherent, goofy, and overly serious six-episode series in which truth has been weaponized. What truth, you ask? No one knows! Not Robert DeNiro’s George Mullen, a former president who just wants to swim laps and write stories in his notebooks, and is called in to investigate the attack for…reasons? Not Angela Bassett’s Evelyn Mitchell, the current president, who spends most of her time making exasperated phone calls. Not Bill Camp’s Lasch, the CIA director who has so little to do that he doesn’t even need a first name! And certainly not Joan Allen’s Sheila Mullen, a nominee to the federal bench who mostly wanders around her incredible mansion in upstate New York looking concerned.

Censys security researcher Emily Austin and Dennis Fisher sat down and tried to unravel just what in the world is happening here.