A Fire Sale is an all-out cyberwarfare attack that performs a three-stage systematic attack on a nation's computer infrastructure. Hackers called it Fire Sale because "Everything must go". That operation was used by terrorist mastermind Thomas Gabriel and his group of cyber-terrorists. According to Matt Farrell, setting up a Fire Sale requires sizable resources in addition to the outsourcing of and getting to cooperate a large number of computer specialists into unwittingly giving their encrypted programs and algorithms in order to override the society's technological systems and utilities, for which only a select group of black hats are required to put them into effect; and typically at the point of obtaining those specialized encryptions, the attack's orchestrating parties would proceed to eliminate said specialists so as to tie up loose ends. It was a major part of the fourth Die Hard film, Live Free or Die Hard.
Three Stages of A Fire Sale[]
- Stage 1: Shutting down all transportation systems; such as traffic lights, railroad lines, subway system and airport systems.
- Stage 2: Disable the financial systems; including Wall Street, banks and financial records.
- Stage 3: Turning off public utility systems, such as electricity, gas lines, telecommunications and satellite systems.