Why Hack In Leave the World Behind Is Chilling But Unlikely

In Leave The World Behind, a much-hyped Netflix movie starring Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, hackers attack the US, sending the country into an apocalyptic mess. Shipping container ships plow into the beach. Thousands of hijacked Teslas pile up on roadways. As the credits roll, society teeters on the brink of a civil war.

But could it really happen? The film, based on a 2020 novel of the same name and counting Barack and Michelle Obama as executive producers, arrived on the streaming service during a barrage of real-life hacks and dire warnings.

A Russian cyberattack on a Ukrainian telecommunication company cut civilians there off from basic communication and critical alerts about Russian shelling. A hacking group linked to Iran’s military recently compromised US water utilities, though the safety of water wasn’t affected.Meanwhile, a British parliamentary committee warned that the country isn’t prepared for a hypothetical crippling ransomware incident.

Still, cybersecurity experts told me that it was unlikely hackers could create such large-scale chaos. Some of the scenes from Leave The World Behind, such as the Teslas piled up on the roadway, are “far-fetched,” said Jasson Casey, chief executive officer of the authentication company Beyond Identity.

In a world of self-driving cars, “it’s not hard to imagine exploiting the core software of a company like Tesla,” Casey said. But targeting an entire fleet would be incredibly difficult and unlikely to go undetected. Similarly, it’s improbable that planes would drop out of the sky or ships would run aground.

“While it’s possible to both hack systems on boats and planes as well as send fake navigation signals, most of the planes and boats still have an ability for the crew to take over if something seems amiss,” Casey said. Even a cybersecurity expert who describes himself as a prepper said that while it’s possible for hackers to disrupt critical sectors of the economy and even cause human harms, it’s “very different” than using cyberattacks to impact an entire nation.

Peter Nicoletti, global field chief information security officer at Check Point Software Technologies, said resilient energy systems, undersea fiber cables, stronger cyber defenses and human intervention each represent strong safeguards against such attacks.

Nevertheless, Nicoletti is preparing for some kind of apocalypse. A self-described prepper, he waved around a Geiger radiation sense and iodine pills during a Zoom call and said his Florida home is equipped with emergency power and months of food and water. He warned that cyberattacks on certain sectors could fuel panic, like a run on banks or fuel supply chain issues, using the 2021 ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline — which created fuel shortages along the US East Coast — as an example.

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Why Hack In Leave the World Behind Is Chilling But Unlikely

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