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About MeSpooks Series 7: Episode 2
Category: Miscellaneous Tags: Spooks TV Writing-----
It’s a terrible burden actually knowing stuff. At least that’s how the writer of this episode must feel. There is a certain cuteness, it must be said, when the mainstream media tries to do technology, like a puppy trying to join in a game of football. It’ll make you go ‘aw’ but what you really care about is the team.
Strained analogy. Sorry.
The episode had a distributed denial of service attack on the UK, carried out by a submarine tapping an underwater cable. Which is, er, a single location. The ‘distributed’ part of it was obviously merrily sidelined in favour of - gasp! - a big dangerous looking thing!
So of course the defence against this is to launch a ‘zero day attack’.
Oh dear.
A zero day attack is making use of an undisclosed computer vulnerability, i.e. zero days have gone by since it was discovered and hence no defence is in place.
I actually laughed out loud when I heard this. Politics and police procedures are carefully researched for that added authenticity, of course, but as soon as technology is involved, any old shit is made up. In this case by someone who has heard the phrases but has clearly no idea what they mean.
And just for good measure, the zero day attack is also a virus. Because as far as TV people are concerned, computer viruses can do anything. Perhaps it should have been named the MacGuffin virus?
This kind of thing, being a flagship BBC program, should be beneath them; it turned the normally excellent Spooks into a cartoon.
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