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Hollywood and Hackers
ford23 writes "CNN has a story on Hollywood and how it portrays Hackers to the public, and how the view on them has changed as the issues of hacking have evolved. Listed and discussed are 9 movies that have had the most effect on the image of hackers, WarGames and The Matrix naturally included." Tragically they also included The Net. At least Real Geniuses offsets it.
You pervert.
I know the difference between hackers and crackers. Hackers do stuff with computers. Crackers are small crunchy wafers.
They didn't go back far enough. The Conversation(1974) with Gene Hackman is the precursor to Enemy of the State with Will Smith and Gene Hackman as a character 15 years later. Three Days of the Condor (1975) is one based in the phreaking foundations of the hacker tradition.
Yes, I used to take care of all the big Hollywood scriptwriters and their computers, starting in the CP/M days through the end of the 1980s. I used to consult with writers on computer topics, fix their Scriptor problems, reformat scripts, and eventually I learned enough to become a minor script doctor, working with them on story problems and plotlines. I can attest from personal experience, occasionally, even in small pictures, they do get things basically right. I'll give you an example.
A writer came in and asked me how crackers get access to computers, he had a script where a little kid needs to get access to a military computer. He described the scenario, I didn't know where to go with it, so I just told him about the first box I cracked. I told him about how when I was 13, I always wanted to get a password to our university's new HP minicomputer, it could use paper tape so I wouldn't have to futz with punch cards anymore. So one day I'm walking past the big glass window in the computer room, and lying next to the HP console is a clipboard with the root password written right on it! I just wrote it down, and started using it from the free terminals next to the keypunch room. Of course I got busted almost immediately, and the admins called me into the office and demanded to know how I got root. I told them that if they didn't want people to get root, they better not leave the root password sitting in plain sight of hundreds of people walking past the window. Well anyway, I told the writer that the vast majority of exploits, and the easiest, are social engineering.
So the final scene appeared in the move Iron Eagle, definitely a piece of crapola, but it was good enough to inspire 3 sequels (which were even worse). Look for the scene where the little chubby blonde kid fiddles with the back of a monitor so the operator thinks it's busted, then when the operator goes to get a repair tech, he sits down and grabs the password off the woman's clipboard and fixes the monitor, then orders up a fully armed F-16 for his buddy to fly (something like that, it's been years since I saw it). So sometimes writers do take a modicum of effort to get things to have a vague semblance of reality
I could go on and on with Hollywood scriptwriter stories. Basically, the one thing you should know is that scriptwriters are in general, the most drug-addled, neurotic, agoraphobic, out-of-touch-with-reality idiots you ever saw, they make the hardest-core otaku or geek look positively normal in comparison. The #1 maxim of writers is to "write what you know" and these guys don't even know what normal life is like, so it's not surprising that they can't write about the hacker/cracker world with any sense of reality.
To prove my point, I should tell you my favorite Hollywood scriptwriter story. One day, I got an emergency call that someone's floppy disk with their only draft of a valuable screenplay had been damaged, and he asked if I could come out and try to recover the disk. I worked and worked and could not recover about 15% of the script, so I decided as a last resort to inspect the surface of the floppy by rotating it inside the jacket. I found a little hole all the way through the magnetic medium, it looked like someone heated up a wire and pushed it right through the plastic. I showed it to the writer and asked if he knew anything that could account for such damage. He admitted he knew about the hole, and said he'd been smoking crack when the chunk got overheated and popped, and one little piece flew out of the pipe and landed on the disk, right in the floppy window onto the mag media. But he didn't tell me because he figured I wouldn't be willing to help if I knew the full story. I said the disk was unrecoverable, the damage was too severe, and I'd gotten all the data off that was possible. I suggested he put his disks in a safe place before lighting up his crack pipe next time. Then I gave him a bill for 3 hours work at my maximum rate (which he did pay, although not without first trying to pay me with crack!)
I think there's a new movie coming out with John Travolta entitled Swordfish. During the theatrical trailer (before seeing 15 minutes, I think), Travolta said he was in search of a cracker. What was more impressive is the script-writer got the terms right! The movie looked pretty kick-ass, so hopefully the trailer was a tease of a great movie to come.
Of course, the school "Pacific Tech" shown in the movie is based on the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the school in Pasadena where "hacking" is almost a way of life. Lazlo's Frito-Lay Sweepstakes caper was, in fact, based on a McDonald's sweepstakes hack pulled off by the members of Page House (they won a car, a few thousand bucks, and a lot of free food coupons). And several real Techers show up in the film, for instance, when that one guy starts going nuts during the take home final (they're kind of in the background).
I was actually applying to Caltech about the time this movie came out, but they turned me down. But they did send me a newsletter in which they reviewed the movie. I also had a book at one point called Legends of Caltech that recounted the "untold stories" behind many of the famous Caltech pranks, such as the 1961 Rose Bowl hack cited by ESR in The New Hacker's Dictionary, and the McDonald's caper. Many of those pranks were echoed in the on-screen exploits of Mitch, Chris, Jordan, Ick, and Lazlo.
And of course, now I think "geek movie song" every time I hear "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." (Not just because of this movie though; there was also the influence of TNT's Pirates of Silicon Valley.)
Damn, if they'd release Real Genius on DVD, that'd almost be enough to make me finally give in and get a DVD player...
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
I mean, we go from David Lightman and Martin Bishop -- intelligent, well adjusted people who use their brains (although I don't think Redford ever touched a computer in Sneakers, which is interesting) -- to that "I am inwincible!" moron from Goldeneye and Sandra Bullock (the best-looking girl I can't stand to watch in a movie).
I think I liked it better when hackers and other generally smart people were portrayed as people and not as shallow stereotypes; we came off better then.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Only because it wasn't around yet. :)
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Actually, the article didn't really say anything good about "The Net" - and rightly so. I also thought it was a really lame movie.
:)
I actually thought, when "The Matrix" was released, that it was going to be similar to "The Net" - I hadn't really heard much of anything about it. Good thing some friends convinced me to go with them to see it.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
You're not wrong. The Matrix is not, never was, and never will be, a movie about hackers. It's an entertaining movie, very comic-book like, and has enough special effects and action to make it one of the better sci-fi/action/fantasy films. But the sci-fi plot it's based on is as old as the hills and it doesn't have any intellectual depth. And I won't harp on some of the more ridiculous plot-based premises (human batteries!?). How the hell The Matrix made it into a list of "hacker" inspired movies is simply beyond belief.
Yeah, that really annoyed me about the Mission Impossible movies. The Mission Impossible TV series (though lame) was at least always a team effort with everyones skills coming together to pulloff some brilliant result.
The movies, on the other hand, were just lame attempts to clone the James Bond concept. One massively skilled dude who does everything single handedly and ends up saving the day for all the weaklings around him.
mastrubation.
just like posting to slashdot.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
yeah, nobody appreciated the "wierd things" back in the day. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Mitnik was not a martyr because of what he did, but because of what the system did back to him, holding him without bail or trial for years. It was just plain unamerican how his rights were violated, even if he WAS a criminal.
/.-er's could see their activities drawing the same sort of response, and their activites were "less criminal" - even read-only things, even "white hat hacking". And the situation on the government side continued to degrade. Now they prosecute you and put you to trial more quickly, but in the meantime they search without warrants, and confiscate equipment without returning it for extended periods of time, EVEN in cases of mistaken identity, or identity theft. I don't do ANY hacking at all, but I'm appalled at how hackers have been treated by the law. (except for that guy that wrote that virus in Singapore, he totally got off).
Because many
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
"Goth" didn't even exist back then. I'm sure if it did, Matthew Broderick would have had black fingernail polish.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
actually, he didn't write the virus, the whole thing was just an applescript that launched Outlook and sent an email to the aliens' Exchange server.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I kind of liked Enemy of the State, because the NSA had these sweaty hacker punks, who just did what they were told, and stayed out of the way of the political junk. Sure, the technical stuff was pure fantasy, and Wil Smith was, well, the black Keanu Reeves (only Wil's band sells records, whassup wit dat?). You could tell that these guys were probably ex-black-hat hackers that were caught, arrested, led into a room with "agent smith" and offered a job.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
This TV series was one of my favorites for the few weeks it was on. Hot of the trail of War Games, it was about 4 teenage kids and computers. One (Ritchie) had a HUGE computer which as best as one could tell was basically anything electronic all linked together.
Ritchie was the main whiz kid who, no matter where he was, find a computer that was linked into just about anything. I believe in one episode they were put into a closet to prevent them from spoiling something (Those meddeling kids) and TADA there was a terminal that controled everything in the building.
To those who would trash Hackers as inaccurate, watch "Copycat (1995)", better movie as movies go, but, same year, and way more inaccurate portrayal of computer hackers/crackers. After comparing the two, you might come to see that "The Net (1995)" and "Hackers (1995)" were not that bad in their portrayal of computers/technology/hacking/cracking for that time period in Hollywood.
Hmm.. I just noted a movie reviewer I will never listen to again... Thanks for the tip :-)
It seems that WOPR is playing with planes in South China.
Do you wnat to play a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?
__
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
It is funny. When an attacker illegally slips past security mechanims to retrieve someone elses data it is "because information wants to be free." When an agent of the "government" illegally obtains information, or a corperation quietly accumulates information it is "an invasion of privacy that must be stopped!"
we are all hypocrites
"By Cron, I want the tooth!"
"You can't handle the tooth!"
Right. My best guess is that ClayJar simply objects to the review because he disagrees with it. That is, he thinks The Matrix was a really good movie (philosophically provocative, raising fascinating metaphysical questions, etc. [1]), while the reviewer thought it was garbage (presumably because he was not smart enough to grasp the philosophy, metaphysics, etc. [2]).
From this, we can infer that ClayJar is, like Jon Katz, one of those people who finds the movie's philosophical questions provocative because he was encountering them for the first time, whereas those who have already spent any time pondering those ideas know that they are fascinating and all, but don't give this movie so much of the credit for them, especially given how badly it fumbled them. That is, someone who's just getting used to the idea of mixing reality and virtual reality would find the story "provocative", not minding that it took a beginning that could have been developed into a real alternate-universe thing and punted it into the easier-to-understand Terminator-style intelligent-machines-enslave-mankind ending. I for one was disappointed.
There. I've been meaning to get my rant about The Matrix out for all this time. To be fair, though, the "use of humans as batteries" thing wasn't really "the main principle of the movie", except at a very shallow plot-element level. As for the silliness, I got the impression that it wasn't supposed to be just for electricity -- there was at least some attempt to "explain" that there was some mystical property of human nervous systems that the machines needed. On the other hand, this is an even more unfortunate crutch that a lot of mediocre science fiction falls back on: they tend to punt on the question of Strong AI by saying that the intelligent machines aren't regular computers after all -- they are based on some different futuristic technology, e.g., a "positronic brain", a "holographic matrix", or whatever the pods were supposed to be sucking out of the humans in this movie.
--
[1] He could have also just liked the effects, but then what's to disagree about? The reviewer acknowledged the cool effects but had different priorities.
[2] Which may also be true -- there are really three levels on which to understand it: thinking the ideas are old hat and seeing how much better it should have been (me), lacking that context but at least comprehending what was there (ClayJar), and thinking it was all horseshit because it went totally over your head (the review).
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
> very plausable that the device is a DES cracker
a ke rs.htm
Except that Gunter Janek's field is "large number theory, prime numbers, factoring". Ok, that could have been misdirection by the bad guys, but at the lecture we then get "the number field sieve is the best method currently known" and "The numbers are so unbelievably big, that all the computers in the world could not break them down."
That sounds much more like an RSA break than a DES cracker. The EFF showed that brute force search on DES was practical, it wasn't a mathematical breakthrough.
http://members.nbci.com/scriptszone/scripts/sne
--
rant
Well, not about Keanu Reeves. He's dead-on there.
Yeah, that's a ridiculously bitter review (even Mr. Cranky didn't get so bent out of shape). But come on, calling him "stupid" because he hated a movie you really liked? On the other hand, Ebert's review touches on many of the same points and is excellently written (as usual).
Shameless offtopic chatter: I saw Josie and the Pussycats last night and as it turns out, it was actually pretty funny (but it's really, really goofy).
You got this alien race that hacks the human genome, creates humans and then goes off to Jupiter hacks that, causes it to explode and become a half powered sun-2. All before dinnertime.
Pretty fucking cool.
Considering that when Sneakers was made (1992) DES was ubiquitous, and most of the sites shown cracked by the box would be using DES, it was very plausable that the device is a DES cracker. After all the EFF showed it was very practical not long after.
The movie that got me as a kid was this one - Kurt Russel is a student at a college that receives a mainframe donation. During an incident involving a shower of sparks, Kurt is transformed into a friggin' genius and eventually gets on a quiz show. A keyword during the quiz triggers a trance and Kurt spews data about the mainframe's previous owners, a criminal organization, who naturally set out to snuff Kurt.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Well, it just goes to show how stupid you are, then, doesn't it? D.
Yeah, I actually liked this series. In Germany, the series was called "Trio, with four fists".
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
Cool, they can update it for the times:
- The evil entity, instead of "MCP" can be "MPAA" ("Master Proprietary Access Algorith"?)
- Instead of a video game, the hero wrote a program for watching DVDs, which "MPAA" has stolen by cracking the author's website, then had the author's computer confiscated by sending anonymous email to the police accusing him of DMCA violations (and/or kiddie porn trade).
- Of course, the tireless program doggedly continuing to keep the processes going to overthrow the Evil inside the MPAA 'mainframe' (a 'cluster' of two NT/W2K machines) isn't "Tron", it's "Cron".
Hey, this has potential...an action-comedy-special effects movie for all ages! (I know I'd pay to see it!)---
"They have strategic air commands, nuclear submarines, and John Wayne. We have this"
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
My biggest complaint is that many movies assume hackers can do *anything*- break into any company's database in five seconds, stop nuclear missles, etc. This makes for bad scripts when a hacker basically has no limits. Awful movies like this include The Net, Enemey of the State, Superman III, to name a few.
I like movies where hacking is clearly limited to reality, and the plot is driven by character rather than technological onimpotence. Anti-trust is a resent example of this genre.
Because of the type of work that I do, I am occasionally asked by my clients "Are you a hacker?"
I always have to respond "Yes, but not necessarily in the way that you think." I then have to explain in as few words as possible the difference between hacking and cracking, black hat/white hat et all. And I have to do this before their eyes glaze over.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I didn't know what the "Peter Principle" was, so I looked it up. According to this page on the Principia Cybernetica the generalized Peter Principle states that in evolution systems tend to develop up to the limit of their adaptive competence.
The full quote:
I dunno. I liked "Sneakers" enough to buy the DVD, even with the glaring technical inaccuracies.
I think the cool thing about it is that it's about (relatively) 'normal' computer nerds - they weren't saving the world from robots or viruses, they didn't dress all in leather, carry fully automatic weapons, or have uncanny kung-fu skills. They were just security geeks.
C-X C-S
I heard the same thing, but I'm pretty sure that's "Lennox" or "Lenox" street. I have the same issues every time my wife gets a new "Lenox" catalog :)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Did you actually watch the movie? She didn't have to circumvent the security systems at all, she was already running a system configuration tool as (presumeably) root, she just had to fly around and find the right widget that would turn on the power again.
I don't find it so unbelieveable that a pre-teen could do that, considering that I remember programming Apple Basic at that age and it was a little tougher than a graphical system conf/flight sim :) (which BTW is apparently a real tool, available from SGI I believe).
Although there was a pretty bad portrayal of a hacker in that movie to be sure: Dennis Nedry, otherwise known as "Newman". He's fat, slobby, unethical, money-grubbing, arrogant, and playful in a very annoying way. Although part of that could be chalked up to the fact that he was apparently the low bidder on a very tough contract.
I found it amazing that such a genius hacker wouldn't have modified the system so that it couldn't be be repaired by simply power cycling it. C'mon, Dennis, get a decent root kit or something!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
I would say the reviewer was fairly unintelligent to have not managed to get at the plot of the movie correctly, considering that there was a ton of exposition provided specifically so that people wouldn't be confused by the whole alternate reality thing. It's a bad review if you try to make it look worse than it is just because the reviewer didn't like it, and this reviewer never missed a chance to comment on how confusing it all was. I admit Keanu Reeves was questionable at times, but just calling the plot "mumbo-jumbo" and dismissing it is a disservice to the readers. This is a man who apparently has never reviewed any foreign films, or he wouldn't be calling "The Matrix" confusing.
(Not that I have anything but the highest respect for international cinema, in fact I really prefer movies that make you figure things out for yourself rather than just explaining it all prior to entering ass-kicking mode. In that respect "The Matrix" could have been a lot better, but on the other hand they had to make enough money to pay for the sequels, and allowing people to leave the theatre even a little bit confused would have been detrimental to that.)
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
It's true that little actual hacking went on (or at least it wasn't shown onscreen), but on the other hand "The Matrix" probably exposed a lot of people to new ideas about hackers:
Sure, all of this was metaphorical, but that's the point. The public at large won't watch two hours of RMS writing the GPL 3.0, or the OpenLaw mailing list debating the finer points of encryption, even though those are the real actions which are being taken to defend the public interest. Instead you give people surrogates like Keanu and Carrie-Anne kicking ass, and at the end of the movie people feel that they identify a little more with the goals, they see things a little less as black-and-white, and they're more open to the issues that RMS or Emmanuel Goldstein might raise in the press that are relevant to real life.
Identification with your cause and its goals (even if through an inaccurate depication of your day-to-day efforts) is the first step towards getting public mindshare on "hacker" issues.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Gee after I finally rented hackers last year I was totally blown off whenever they spoke anything technical. They don't know what they were talking about!
... c'mon!
... shame.
My favorite movie listed was the matrix but I wouldn't consider it a "hacker" movie. It just wasn't geeky enough.
Sneakers showed that "cracking" involved a lot clever foot work rather than just sitting in front of the PC. But still
I think Antitrust was the most accurate. Although the plot was really,really bad I really liked the bash shells I was seeing. Atleast I recognized what he was doing. To bad the typing sounds didn't match the terminal screens
john
"If a show of teeth is not enough, bite
--
How many classes do you have to take
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
--
How many classes do you have to take
..!!in an intastella burst i am back to save the universe!!
FYI: the katakana looks mighty sweet in OmniWeb for OS X!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
I always thought that the rasteferian refrences were a nod to Gibson. In Neuromancer Case stops off in the Zion cluster to get help from the rastas, the rastas refer to the corporate society enslaved by tech as Babylon, etc..
I'm curious - was your comment sarcastic or serious? I haven't seen Takedown, but you know it's a pile of lies (gross factual errors like writing a guilty verdict into the script before he was tried (he plea bargined in the end), and the guy who found him never actually met Mitnick other than a few minutes in the courtroom),
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I figured since he wrote in Emmanual Goldstein on his name tag, and signs his emails simply "emmanual", he prefers going by that name in his capacity as editor/director/speaker. Also, the credits on the movie listed him as Emmanual Goldstein.
No need to get profane... do you have something to add, or is your reply a near meaningless footnote? Did you know that Susan Sarandon's real name is Susan Abagail Tomalin, and Little Nell was born Laura Campbell, and now goes by Nell Campbell? Plenty of public people are known by alternate names. It's rare that a Michael Keaton article will mention his birth name was actually Michael Douglas, and mentioning such is purely unnecessary other than for trivia reasons.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
You're right, of course... I was referring to the median damage, not the maximum damage that can be caused by hacking.
Point well taken - a malicious terrorist hacker could cause serious problems by introducing a series of planned bugs into... say flight systems (both ground and in-flight). Not that it would be easy, but theoretically possible. And as long as we're in theory, it's possible that the same precise thing could be done by an "innocent" hacker exploring the "flight simulators" that s/he is unaware are real systems. I've noticed the first thing most people do when confronted with a flight simulator is see what happens when you crash.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
The most accurate I saw last weekend at I-Con. Emmanuel Goldstein was on a panel (along with people from the EFF and others) about Privacy in the Electronic Age, and afterwards, he showed Freedom Downtime, about the reality of hackers and how they are treated.
Okay, so it's not Hollywood... and it's a documentary. But it's good enough for PBS and possibly the Learning Channel (incdently, they are finishing up getting the rights to the music; it's not available except in Film Shows right now). It should correct some of the spin - it should be required viewing for people who lobby against overzealous law agencies (Kevin Mitnick spent 8 months in solitary... no paper, no pen, nothing but four walls. Nothing. For eight straight months.) At very best, t might open the eyes of a few congressmen.
And although I had heard beforehand that it was "the Kevin Mitnick Movie", it actually covers more than just Kevin. Several other cases are shown - it's just that Kevin's is so obviously a matter of the press milking the story and overreaction by an ignorant legal system.
During the Q&A afterwards, a few people in the audiance (who had just wandered in), asked exactly what hacking is, and to what extent hackers can do damage (like the classic launching missles).
My response to the non-techincal was simple: Hacking is playing with your old car sterio and discovering that you can crank it down and listen to the audio of TV broadcasts. Discovering or inventing new or neat uses for an existing technology. The limit of what damage a hacker can do is very small. Even the cable or power company has to send someone physically to your house to turn off service. If it could be done by computer, they would. The biggest danger that malicious hackers pose is dumping private information... almost everything else can be fixed with some effort (like restoring from backup).
I've always admired the EFF and 2600... they pick good fights that should be fought. And now 2600 is fighting to educate.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
And in their uncanny ability to trace a phone call's routing progress graphically on a projected world map via their acoustically-coupled modem?
This is just a metaphor: the best way to communicate visually what the characters are doing without interrupting the plotline (aka "show don't tell"). Movies have their own language, which is most people understand subconsiously. Problems only arise when you have to consciously think about what you are being shown and you think "That's not right." It's a shame because it spoils your enjoyment of the movie, but you can learn to ignore it.
A lot of technology in movies is enhanced in this way to conform to movie logic instead of real world logic. I recently watched the James Bond movie "Goldeneye", in which the characters use some super e-mail/chat program that shows a little cartoon icon of whoever is writing. This struck me as being a bit silly (although not impossible this time), but it is the same idea in action.
How can you have a list of movies with hackers and not list The Manhattan Project? I mean, there's *real* hacking... building a nuclear bomb out of everyday household items (and some stolen plutonium).
Oh, you meant "cracker." I understand. Nevermind.
Shame on you, CNN.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Wow - I just thought it was more proof for Mulder and Scully that there were aliens, and that they
... did you?
had given the cigarette-smoking man an alien
RFC, thus leading to the creation of TCP/IP.
You didn't think we were smart enough to come up
with TCP/IP
picture from a recent dorm trip from Harvey Mudd College.
--Ben
Wargames made me go out and get a modem. Unfortunately there were about 2 BBS's within dialing distance where I lived
Sorry, just had to get that off my chest, I'll go take my medication now.
-- Carl, who has met the guy who actually lived in the steam tunnels at CalTech...
God forbid a hacker be portrayed as somebody with outside hobbies *Shock* *Shock* *Horror* *horror*
Real hackers don't have time for hobbies.
Real hackers have too much code to fix and optimise to have time for anything else.
Real hackers believe that so-called necessities, like food and sleep, are signs of weakness.
Real hackers don't watch movies. They live them.
skribe
Blog
> ...so it's pretty easy to hook them up to a simulated body and they are happy and stuff.
I don't know if it's easy, but I'm impressed that anyone can tell if a slug is happy or not...
-- Linux. The choice of a GNU generation.
It's no contest. Making Kelly LeBrock from a Barbie Doll is ingenious. I've been trying since then and I still can't get it right!
Last night's "Lone Gunmen" episode seemed to go a surprising step in mainstream depiction of hackers; "What is that gibberish", says one character of a laptop's OS, "It's not gibberish, it's Linux" is the joking reply. Although the depiction of impossible software in Chris Carter's shows (X-Files etc) is somewhat annoying to the literate community, CC's "Lone Gunmen" depicts hackers for truth and justice, hacking not to do damage but to make information available to the right people. Whether or not this is accurate in reality is secondary to storyline, of course, but at least the storyline is no longer negative. This is the main shift in Hollywood's depiction of hackers. The luddite fear that created the market for "Wargames" and "Lawnmower Man" is no longer marketable because everyone's hometown grandma is ordering crocus bulbs over the net. And only the Weekly World News still insists to unknown demographics that viruses explode computers. In Hollywood, net-fear no longer makes money. Yaay money. And yay to the money of all the hackers who have good taste, creating the market to demand intelligent Hollywood productions.
Depends.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Of course that's true
but he said the American people are wary of anything that resembles communism, and socialism does resemble communism
Yes, I know you were being humorous....
But I wrote that guide you're referring to.. Please don't use it as an official reference that makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about.
PLEASE!
:)
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Ryan Philippe has cool hair
sup
you liked "Johnny Mnemonic"? how? did you never read the short story? it's sucked, compared to the short story....
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
The most accurate 'hacker' movie I've ever seen was 'Sneakers', and it's at least 10 years old. 'Sneakers' got me interested in computer security, systems, etc.
Same here. At the time that it came out, I had my first gig working in the industry.. (Right out of High School). I think that movie, (esp Dan Akroyds paranoid conpsiracy theorist) propelled me to get into Unix Security Analysis more than anything else.
Were parts fo it unrealistic, and full of eye candy? Oh hell yes.
http://thepoliticalgeek.com/blog/ Politics for Geeks.
And even if it doesn't, ask an average American to explain the differences.
Sneakers is the only one on the list that is actually a good movie in it's own right, not just a good hacker movie. Yeah, some of it is a bit implausible, but nothing happens that ever made me sit up and snort at the impossibility of it. It was well cast, well acted, well scripted, and a decryption chip makes a good credible McGuffin. What's more, they're a funny/ordinary looking bunch of people. I know damned few nerds/geeks who look like Angelina Jolie or Ryan Phillippe, and a lot who look like Dan Aykroyd or River Phoenix.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
Apperantly somebody at the Hackers, like the screenwriter or director, went to some 2600 meetings and may have talked to Goldstein. Little if anything that is in the movie is accurate. The guys freaking rollerblade!
Angelina Jolie is quite cute in the movie. I would want to be 31337 too, so I can get in the pants of a girl like Angelina Jolie.
The only thing I think they may have gotten right, was the ability of the company "cr/hacked" to manipulate the FBI.
Yeah, especially the part about hackers being thin, attractive and unbearded.
And about how hacking ability is, of course, measured in bright flashing colors. And how the sysadmin can't torch a remote terminal, just gnash his teeth and look like a petty villain.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Well... no.
Do feminists say "okay, we're going to start over with another word, because this one's loaded"? Wait, they do. But see where it gets them? Do you take someone seriously when they say 'womyn' or 'zie' and 'hir'?
You can't just start over like that. 'Hacker' will be our 'nigga'. That, or 'queer'. That sort of thing.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It fucking sucked balls.
This is why: It took a complex and difficult issue, the Microsoft monopoly, and made it into a good-guy-bad-guy movie shootout. It pretended to be about a lot more than it was. (I'm surprised Gates didn't sue for slander.)
Summary: A ruthless corporate honcho is planning on unleashing an incredibly powerful new software system on the planet. Open-source hackers rush to stop him. This is too heady, so they make Mr. Honcho into a petty thug who kills the hackers and steals their code. Oh, and there's some vague attempt at a plot twist near the end. The should have gone for Keyser-Soze-Tyler-Durden broke or just not bothered.
It more than sucked. It ubersucked.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Yeah, it was overrated. Effects were good, but the same quality was used in Fight Club, and that actually helped out the plot. And of course The Cell looked just as cool, though in an entirely different way, and had a big fucking cape to boot.
People who thought The Matrix had a deep plot are fooling themselves. If you want a deep plot, with moral ambiguity and stuff, that manages to include swordplay and decapitation, go watch Princess Mononoke.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Err... no. The biggest issue I had with Hackers was that the characters were all attractive teen idol type. Come on, how many people that good looking invest the time and effort to be hackers?
Oh, no, wait, the movie would have been okay if it was called scr1pt k1dd1ez: 4LL j00r b4s3...
And you may think there's nothing destructive here, but... Joe and Jane {Senator,Sixpack} watch The Sixth Day and want to ban cloning research because THEY COULD BE CLONED AND REPLACED BY AN 3V1L DUPLICATE!! This is sad, but movies that inaccurately portray science and technology while pretending to be true-to-life are a fucking pox.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Super and Hyper keys? Why hasn't this obviously whupass idea caught on?!
Well, it's in the jargon file.
But not being auctioned on eBay. *sigh*... Anyone find a picture?
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Don't defend Hackers. It was a fucking minstrel show. Teen idols in hackface...
Heh. 'Hackface'.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Er...that's "Ghost in the Shell"... great flick. I don't know that I'd consider it a 'hacker' movie, since it was more about the internet spawning a new Intelligence [ala Jane from Speaker for the Dead]. I will admit though, that I don't think there's a geek or hacker alive that wouldn't kill to have hands that could pop out dozens of fingers for some really speedy typing. :)
Then again, I don't really consider The Matrix a hacker movie either.
There was also "Ghost in the Machine" which was kind of a bad rehash of the Lawnmower Man.
Ender
Nothing to see here
...also known as, what's currently in my DVD collection.
(well, almost. I have six of them, and I don't have that many to start with)
Shame on them for making things up that *could* exist.
Please explain to me how a chip can factorize any key used by the US government but cannot factorize other government's keys.
Did you see the movie?
The most accurate 'hacker' movie I've ever seen was 'Sneakers'
Excellent movie. Very good.
Except for the part about being able to crack any encryption instantaneously (actually, only US government-based encryption). That was crap. But I guess every movie has to have one influence from Hollywood. (e.g. The Matrix had Keanu, but it was good anyway...)
maybe i saw another movie... but i saw one with silly graphics, with little kids using macs, and showing unix mainframes as swirling 3d gui's that made noise when you typed commands.
You obviously missed that very important scene in the plane where the kid looks down at NYC and imagines it as computer circuitry. You were supposed to see that as a signal to the audience (you) that complex concepts would be metaphorically represented. Once you realize this the movie is quite enjoyable.
And as for the kids using Macs, real hackers (using the hollywood definition, here) would only need a modem and communications software. Every OS I've seen supports modems and has communications software.
'Intellectual Properties' are uncontrollable in the wild. To base an economy on them is just stupid.
Does that void the warrenty?
Um... I'm sorry, you can rant on hackers|crackers|script kiddies all you want, but Maximum PC is not for posers. So you take CS classes and you think you rule? Right... well good for you for taking CS classes, but Maximum PC is a fucking bad ass magazine as far as computer mags go.. if you don't like it then I suggest you read PC computing.. thats the alternative.. and it blows goat balls.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Jezum Crow
You could also compare it to inside of harwood dorm at Pomona College, 1 mile south of you. That is where that particular scene was shot.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
I'm amazed that no one has mentioned the quick shot in sneakers of them going through the trash of one of the geeks working for the bad guys. The quick flash of a "Captain Crunch" box on the screen caused me to convulse with laughter, much to the bemusement of others in the theater. "Captain Crunch", the original star of the phone phreaking world, an ultimate insiders joke flashed on screen for a couple of seconds with no further mention.
There were other inside jokes of this sort planted throughout the movie. They seemed to be making the point that their technical advisor really *did* understand this stuff even if they'd turned it into a hollywood fantasy in order to entertain the masses.
Wow I didn't notice that, I'll have to look for that next time I watch this movie. Thanks!
Luxury. We decoded the characters on our C-64 visually and then squawked the ASCII values verbally into a tin-can with a piece of dental floss that, after 50 miles through the swirling snow (uphill! Both ways! In my father's pajamas!) connected to a *real* telephone switch board by two pieces of chicken wire held together by hope and a lump of dirt (and not a hell of lot of dirt, either! That was expensive back then!).
Try to transfer the first Ultima Game over the phone that way! We had to stop, twice, because our vocal chords were tearing!
Kids these days don't know how tough it was back then!
"Don't mind me cutting myself on Occam's Razor"
Are you saying that those kinds of modems aren't realistic?
***
First of all, they're Japanese katakana, which are used mostly to write foreign words. The katakana you see are for ku-ri-su, which corresponds roughly to my first name. I used Unicode to write them -- it's just like using number codes for ASCII. For example, the Unicode for "ku" is 12463, so you would type ク to get that character - .
***
See my reply to the parent post for the answer, and here's a little more info: katakana are 12449 through 12531 (small a through n, - ), and hiragana are 12353 through 12435 (small a through n, - ). I don't know any kanji so I haven't looked into that at all.
***
Yeah, you can suck it. THey look like shit in IE5.
!
***
My IE reads Unicode just fine. WTF are you talking about?
***
The first movie I saw that got me interested in computers I saw in 1st grade: Tron. I hear they're re-doing it?
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Let's face it, hollywood has it's own way with everything. I'm an avid climber, and there hasn't been one accurate climbing movie since the Eiger Sanction with Clint Eastwood, and that wasn't 100% accurate. Lately with Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit (both FALLING movies, not climbing) I sat in the theater and laughed. People get the impression that if you climb, you will fall and DIE! The problem is, real climbing is methodical and boring for an observer, while falling creates excitement for the short attention span MTV crowd.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I'd just like to point out that if Katz had decided to turn this into one of his unrelated screeds we'd have to wade through a lake of adjectives to come to the realization that us geeks are THE MIGHTY GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS!!!
"CNN scores yet another misunderstanding of the geek community by heinously underestimating our massive impact in the technology-challenged film community. When will these whining liberal arts majors realize that we tumescent geeks own the future of everything? Because our manly skins have been hardened by a lifetime of adolescent bullying, we geeks are perhaps one of the safest moving targets found in Hollywood. Why didn't they ask me, Jon Katz, homerian biographer and owner of all things nerdy to comment on this article?"
Instead we got mostly the facts. Thanks taco!
Ah. Well, if it's the the social and cultural aspect it portrays that you're talking about, I'll agree. I thought you were talking about the technology it portrays...
-drin
'Sneakers' got me interested in computer security, systems, etc.
And in their uncanny ability to trace a phone call's routing progress graphically on a projected world map via their acoustically-coupled modem?
Please. I'm not sure to which 'accuracies' you're referring. The movie had so many technical inaccuracies you could have driven a PDP-8 through it. I don't doubt that it inspired some people, but I bet their inspiration fizzled when they discovered that most of the tech toys in the movie were just that - movie toys.
-drin
I know nothing of the movie, but I did read the book by tsutomu shimomura (the guy who led the FBI to him). It seemed to be pretty factual. I don't know enough of the details outside what shimomura said, but he seemed to know his unix backwards and forwards, and explained with the right amount of detail that the average schlub could get the point, but the geek had enough to follow at a higher level. I'm not sure what the actual TRUTH (the caps and bold for snide irony :) is, but if shimomura is to be believed then mitnick really was not much more that a glorified script kiddie and pretty immature. (e.g. leaving harrassing messages on shimomura's answering machine)
hey now...watch yourself. heh...i had doom running on my laptop last night, and one of better girl-friends was like "wow! i used to play that *all the time!*"
i told her i had newfound respect. i had never actually met a girl who played doom. LOL
How could they forget Murray Bozinski on Riptide, that really awful 80's detective show? You simply can't find a better example of the pimply faced, stringy hair and glasses hacker stereotype than Murray. But you've got to admit, he was pretty cool. Sure, he didn't fly the helicopter. Sure, he didn't have the sexy "Who put that roadkill on your face?" mustache. But he was always performing intrusions into corporate networks to solve crimes.
Do we have a word for people into technical or scientific things but who also have other interests and *aren't* socially inept?
This stereotyping is not so healthy; it makes people not tend to talk to or listen to us on other topics than technology. There seems to be plenty of discussion of socially-relevant topics on slashdot, so obviously the stereotype is false - but do we have a better word to describe those of us who don't fit it? Nerd-misfits, perhaps?
Although, nerds are now often portrayed as malicious computer crackers, our image has improved since the 80s. In many movies/shows nerds have a cool persona about them, often respectected to some degree, at least for their skills. This portrait of us may not be ideal, but it is sureley better than the socially inept, pocket protecting wearing, geek of the 80s and early 90s. This change proabably comes from the fact that most americans have computers and the internet is no longer portrayed as an esorteric gathering place for those who do not fit into society.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
You do know that an incident just like that actually happened right around the time they were writing the screenplay for Wargames, didn't you? I remember the two guys who wrote it were wondering if the storyline was too unbelievable, and then they saw the exact same thing reported in the news.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
hey folks...remeber D.A.R.Y.L. the Data Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform? common he hacks the ATM machine and gets all the money for his foster dad....
God is real, unless declared integer.
are the anime ones..like ghost behind shell..
My favorite thing in "Sneakers" (other than the "cattle mutilations are up" bit) was seeing the evil hacker Cosmo demonstrate how he was using his mafia-owned supercomputer (A Y-MP? I don't remember.) to run Excel. Windows everywhere indeed.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Most hollywood hacker films are not accurate, or realistic, but that's part of their charm I have enough of real computer IRL, I don't want it in the movies too. I like Net (well why
the not so unimportant movie 'Takedown' about Kevin Mitnick. In contrast to all other movies mentioned by CNN, Takedown is a biographic. This movie made me buy one of those very-very-small-notebooks!
Bizar technology?
Sure, pages like a nitpicker's guide to ID4, say that Levinson could not have created the virus and the VUU v0.9 in the 4 hours 30 minutes the movie plot allots him, but Levinson is smart and knows how to program. The guy who wrote the Ana virus didn't know how to program and was caught (showing he isn't very smart). Levinson is no script kiddie, but a white-hatted wizard, and the VUU was written by the thousands of ready developers who signed on to SourceForge, who had been patiently waiting for any project, let alone one of this importance.
In the epilogue, the aliens were defeated, but some survived to use the DMCA against Levinson, who went bankrupt on the settlement.
-no broken link
The Net? Did anyone intelligent actually watch this movie? "As happens with many "high-concept" movies, nobody involved with writing, directing, or acting in this film seems to actually know how to use a computer. They don't seem to know the difference between an IP and a PI, and ... it's funny. Unintentionally so."
Most intelligent thing I've seen from CNN in a long time.
Any other movies that go into this - I mean Hollywood movies, not documentaries.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
I wish I knew more about technology to notice the same discrepancies in these movies that everyone else seems to care so much about.
:-)
Technical people probably get a bit more upset about technology errors than most other groups too. Most technology (especially computers) require a high degree of precision to get them to work at all. I think that's part of why the geek crowd cares about accuracy - people naturally drawn to the logical world of programming have the tendency exaggerated by the necessity of precision to get anything to work.
That, and tech is cool now, but real tech is more in the Doing and Creating than it is the Save The World In Six Keystrokes that keeps people's attention. I'd love to see a book outlining reasonable plot devices for writers... why can no movie character ever get a bug in their program that takes 2 days to work out? Guess that would be kind of dull.
sig fault
Hackers complain about movies being inaccurate, but do they (or anyone else) really want to watch people take apart their computers and code on the big screen? I doubt it.
I think the main difference is between "remotely plausible" and "just totally wrong." For a lot of shows, it seems the margin of error wrt computers is like doctors on ER healing people with magic powers. Granted, the realities of software development would probably make for a pretty mind-numbing film... but then why even bother to put it in?
Speculating how the world might be if we could suddenly break any encryption or solve otherwise uncomputable problems can be fun. Throwing in silliness because you don't know any better, just to look "with the times" or cool, seems kind of lame.
sig fault
The accurate representation of technology / hacking in most movies and TV shows is so bad it's usually just too annoying for me to watch. But most people don't notice (or don't care) and probably go away with vastly confused understandings of technology, I have to wonder:
How many shows are vastly confused in other areas as well?
I'm thinking about things like medical or law enfocement (court room / police) dramas. Can doctors, lawyers and police officers find these types of shows as painful as I find "hacker" misconceptions? Just how inaccurate are they (certainly to some degree)?
sig fault
I read on some page that blind people are specially attuned to their other senses, so they are able to pick up, identify, and wistle these tones w/o much trouble.
for some reason i think it was the woz that wrote about this..
no
I was just impressed at the attention to detail in the first episode. You could see Scheme code in one of the background windows of one of the machines.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
CNN Interactive has two "Pauls" reviewing films: Paul Clinton and Paul Tatara. Clinton is actually a pretty decent reviewer. I don't always agree with him, but his opinions are intelligently presented and at least it's always clear that we saw the same movie.
:(
OTOH, Tatara (of Matrix fame) can be counted on to offer the most vapid, content-free analyses imaginable. He treats his column as a vehicle for his own political or philosophical biases, and he rarely if ever manages to deliver any meaningful critical or thematical insights on any films above the Disney level.
Tatara is living proof of the Peter Principle. It's simply astonishing that his career in the entertainment industry has extended beyond asking his clientele if they would like butter on their popcorn.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
No, not "American Pie". Pi should be somewhere in that list. Hackers sucked. Take that out.
----Quid
----Quid
Less talk, more caffeine
You are sooooo right. Pi is all class. I thought the computer/bug plot was excellent. If you look in the cut footage there's a great scen of him scavenging through a trash heap of computer junk.
----Quid
----Quid
Less talk, more caffeine
Great movie. In some ways I liked it better than the Matrix.
----Quid
----Quid
Less talk, more caffeine
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
WWJD -- What Would Jimi Do?
(Smash amp, burn guitar, take home the groupies)
Personally, I found the obsessed Mathematician Max in Pi was a pretty good approximation of a lot of geeks I know.
(Except for the drilling-in-the-head thing and snot coming out of thei computers.)
But then again...It was an Indie film and not Hollywood.
pop quiz hot shot. In what movie was the word Unix released onto the non-computing world.
A: None other than Jurasic Park.
I bought Wayne Knight (Newman from Seinfield) as the eccentric, money grubbing coder, the file browser was unbelievable (has anyone hacked that one together for real world use?), and the little girl saved the day. While the hacking was a short part of the movie, it was a nice touch
Read my plan to save the Bengals
Probably so that he gets more traffic to it.
--
Yeah! Sneakers was pretty factual too. Imagine breaking some of the commonly used cryptosystems. That would be something all parties would kill for.
And how many of you use CPE1704TKS as a password?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
http://www.google.com/search?q=cpe1704tks
(And I thought I was the only one to have caught that...)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I didn't read the article, but The Net sucked, so this article must suck. In addition, because it was written by a journalist and not a hacker, it must have misunderstood the image and confused the distinction we like to make between hackers (us, good) and crackers (them, bad).
(All further posts to this effect are redundant.)
maybe i saw another movie... but i saw one with silly graphics, with little kids using macs, and showing unix mainframes as swirling 3d gui's that made noise when you typed commands.
i did enjoy it, the characters are fun, the the realism is lacking.
-------
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
Wrong! He broke into Ally Sheedy!
But seriously, you'd think that CNN would get the name NORAD right.
Doesn't anyone proofread anymore? Oh wait, this is Slashdot...
(Typewriters have Shift. Teletypes added CTRL. PCs added ALT. Stanford added Top and Meta. The Space Cadet keyboard had all those shift keys, plus Super and Hyper, and they could be used in combination, typically bound to EMACS functions. Plus it had about thirty extra function keys.)
So what if the thing only had about 1 MIPS, cost over $50K, took half an hour to garbage collect, and broke down every few days. Every self-respecting AI lab had to have a few in the early 1980s. There was a period back then when the AI guru thing got completely out of hand, despite the fact that none of the software did much.)
EMACS fully supported this keyboard.
Another bad idea from the history of computing.
Mother wasn't blind man, Dan Ackroid or however you spell his name was Mother.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
Yeah I agree with you, plus they point out many of the flaws in the Net so I don't see any problem with including it.
"A good conspiracy is an unprovable one." -Conspiracy Theory
Did anyone else notice that up through the early nineties (Sneakers), there isn't a bad movie on the list, but in the past eight years the only good movie to make the list was Matrix.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
The trouble with the discussion is the definition of hacker. In the general community, hacker does mean criminal.
I was listening to a radio show where they were talking about criminal use of computers. The word hacker was always used by the host and guest to mean criminal. Someone called in to dispute the definition. The host badgered the caller saying he was out of step. Strangely: The host read the definition of hacker out of the dictionary and the first was about doing something well (a good hack) and the second was about criminal activity. The host then said this proved his point! BUT it didn't.
It would be an uphill battle to get definition one back.
The Star Trek shows had quite a few good hackers. Spock probably wasn't considered a hacker because he wasn't evil. Scotty did a good hack looping himself in the transporter.
- James - [IMAGE]
If you don't remember reading CNN's review of The Matrix from way back in 1999, you've just got to read it again. It's absolutely hilarious that the reviewer was that stupid. (Yet more data to support my belief that whatever the reviews say should be run through an XOR-powered decryption routine with very few bits set in the mask.) Anyway, the review is at http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Movies/9904/09/review.m atrix/
Have you noticed recently how the Geek personna is actually glorified in today's media. I mean back in the 80's we were look down upon as these social misfits. Now hackers and programmers are looked up to as "Gurus" and "Experts". Also the media gives alot of attention to these virus creators and to their arrests etc... this only serves to heighten the mystique and image of hackers, crackers, geeks and otherwise computer savvy individuals. The question is, whether or not this is just a trend or it the image here to stay? Personally, I think as long as PC's are a major part of our everyday life the power of "Geekhood" will be respected. People in trouble like to have answers and who best to turn to than someone who is an expert in computer lingo, software and hardware. Slightly off the topic but in someways related, our current generation of kids are so computer literate it often makes me wonder, who is going to be the futures firemen, policemen, garbage men etc... It just seems that these kids are all headed in the direction of programming, and computer related subjects. No doubt the introduction of the PC has truly changed our world, whether it be for better or worse.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
That movie was ahead of its time, talking about the internet and stuff before the internet was even close to the lumbering giant it is today.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
No, that'll be a few more years.
-Elendale
IANAT (I Am Not A Troll)
Why do we all seem to have a soft spot in our hearts for hacking? Was it because of that thrill we got when we guessed mr. hibbard the science teacher's password so we could up our print-out quotas and print a bunch of ascii porn? Maybe so. I reckon most everyone out there has at least something like that in their background. Is this what makes hacking so fastenating to us all? It's really glorified in our community.
It's glorified because of it's majesty. One does true hacking when someone sees a problem and a solution at the same time, and the solution is so beautiful that you have to apply it. The solution is alive in your head and you have to bring it to the real world.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
By no stretch of the imagination are they saying that it is good that The Net belongs on the list, merely that it does in fact belong there, because it has shaped the public's view of hackers. I agree with them that the degree of computer illiteracy in there is pathetically funny.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Joe Engressia from Tennessee. Blind and pitch-perfect. Started phreaking aged 8. didn't need a Cap'n Crunch whitle to get his 2600. Becaume a bit of a cause celebre around 1971. Calls himself Joybubbles now.
more about Joybubbles here TomV
bravo!
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
Actually the movie is quite different from the book... you should see it you might be plesantly surprised.. Also even though the movie might not be true to what actually happened with mitnick or whatever it is still a movie about hackers... and definiatly the best one of the ones in the story...
How come they didnt list takedown? I thought it was pretty good and one of the most realistic hacker movies ever made, atleast compared to say hackers... although hackers is one of my favorite movies :)
I have seen some of these hackers.
They are rare and the ones I know weren't entirely motivated by doing the right thing but also by the personal glory.
In alt.hackers.malicious about a year ago a group of hackers broke into and shut down a number of kiddy porn sites. The most famous site bing
NAMBLA.org. They took there inbox and handed it off to the FBI and to CPS. CPS emailed them back with a very amusing email that to sum up said:
hacking is bad
pedophilia is bad
hacking pedophilia sites is bad
but if you are going to do it again let us know.
Ascii artist &
I will keep this short as i know it could get very long winded. You mean to tell me that Data, La Forge, Obrian, Scotty, and all the rest arnt included? And what about R2D2. If i needed to reroute a the main power supply i would call on him.
Ascii artist &
They've tried to criminalize 'hacker' and 'cracker' and tried to get people to confuse the two. There might be a reason for this. If people actually start using computers and start respecting the 'net for a legitimate place to get their news and entertainment, then the news and entertainment media loses it's stranglehold on what people actually watch and see.
If people actually see both sides of an issue, they might come to a conclusion that does not fall in line with the media's pre-conceived notion on how society should run.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
This also came off of CNN's site about the guy who reviewed The Matrix, which I think explains quite a bit:
Paul Tatara was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 17, 1963. Tatara and his family moved to Arab, Alabama (pop. 6,800) when he was 4 years old. During his formative years, he focused almost solely on playing baseball, basketball, and football.
Maybe we DID take the blue pill. You wouldn't remember anyway.
In the films, sometimes, hackers actually get laid. This never happens in real life and is a real misrepresentetion of the hacker culture.
More info on this here...
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
Is that we are spotty teenagers who spend all nite staring at crts and downloading pr0n... and to be fair it's probably accurate :)
Ah, yes... Seatec Astronomy; one of the best moments in the film is when Redford is using a scrabble set to try and figure out what that means while the blind guy and River Phoenix (I think?) are discovering the true nature of the device.
"anyone want to crash a 747?" "anyone want to shut down the power grid?" "...anyone want to bankrupt the republican party?"
Sh*t, man I gotta rent that this weekend!
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
ok, where is that guy that has that as his
---
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
Actually, I watched it. While it definantly had problems, it definantly was one of the better hacker-type films. The Microsoft references were over-the-top.. but at the same time, one of the characters wore ThinkGeek's "Code Poet" tshirt. Anyways, I'd recomend picking it up as a rental, anyways. Should be coming out fairly soon....
The average American does not need to know the
difference between communism and socialism. The
average good citizen need only know the difference
between goodsex and badsex.
If you don't get it, read Orwell's 1984.
Look, why don't we just stop using the term Hacker to refer to hackers? Let's just surrender. We lost, they won. Hacker and cracker are synonymous in the mind of the public. Let's just give up the term and come up with another one. Like Dekkers (short for decryptors) or Exters (Gen-X elite extractors of information) or Pekkers (positive ex... er, ok maybe not that one).
i think the issue is getting beter as computers are becomeing more main stream (aka that guy in Missippi has one now) but, people are still afraid of them, and as a result still afraid of people who know how to use them, esp use them well.
Scroll to the bottom of the article, and here's the other headlines you see:
... ignore them?
- IE flaw lets hackers take over user's computer
- Security center issues antihacker tool
- Hunt down those hackers and
- FBI warns of digital-crime wave from Eastern Europe
Etc., etc... gee, a few moments of (little) insight and then it's right back to the media steriotypes.
--
--
#nohup cat
Yeah, because it's sooo easy to hack into the computer that controls all the nukes in the US (the ONE computer, heheh). It also makes sense that they wouldn't have any kind of failsafe or manual override in case the supercomputer went down, got buggy, or wasn't Y2K compliant.
Face it, Hollywood will never make a "realistic" hacker movie, because hacking is so very dull to watch.
Come to think of it, though, I'm kinda dissapointed they didn't mention Johnny Mnemonic. Oh, wait. No I'm not. That movie sucked .
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I think the reason for a lot of the inaccuracies is that they need to dramatize things for the audience. Nobody is going to pay $7 to see some sweaty, pimply faced youth sitting in the glow of a computer screen and the fog of his truely inhuman B.O., surrounded by empty cans of soda, pizza boxes, and twinkie wrappers.
Not that I'm speaking from my own experience, of course. Ahem. I'll be moving along now.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
That's probably what you'll see on his pron site ;-)
--- If something doesn't feel right, you're probably not feeling the right thing.
- 1999
...
Ennnk! Wrong.The Matrix
In this film, released on the eve of the 21st century
What are the chances that CNN journos do have a clue about computers but don't know how to count?
CNN, you are the weakest link. Goodbye!
-OzJuggler.
Life's a buffer; you can only get out of it what you put into it! C:-)
The limit of what damage hackers can do has not yet been discovered, but we know that it is high.
As a very simple example, the first destructive worm was a hacker experiment gone awry.
Taking down a medical database at a hospital might slow down the ER staff just enough to kill somebody who otherwise might have lived. Hacking is an important method for learning about how things work, but to say that it can do no real harm is a little misleading.
I recall when I was a young kid we had a teacher that insisted that "you can not damage computer hardware with software"... we of course saw that as a great hacking challenge. One of the kids in our class wrote a small program that caused both of an Apple]['s floppy drives to spin (and keep spinning) simultaniously. Run it overnight, and burn out the power supply. A fairly simple trick, but not bad for a 10 year-old kid.
A hacker can do tremendous ammounts of damage, both deliberately and by mistake, when rummaging through an unfamiliar system looking for weaknesses. Most good hackers, like good wilderness campers, do their best to leave no trace of their visit, but not all hackers are good hackers... and even the good ones were green and ignorant once.
The biggest danger malicious hackers pose is not dumping private information. There's the danger of theft. There's also the danger of higher maintenence costs (both in preventative security and disaster recovery).
That said, I know of no case where a malicious hacker has done as much damage to a company as bad software design. Looking through that lens, the most effectively destructive hacker in history is Bill Gates. (Not because Microsft's software is the worst, there have definately been worse software companies through the years, but because Microsoft's bad software has been put on more critical systems than anybody else's.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It was a movie about a crypto expert who used work for the government, but was suddenly left "out in the cold".
It also has what was probably one of the earliest phone phreaking scenes ever made, if not the first.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
For years I was the "Hacker" at my high school only because I understood what to do when windows/dos fscked up. No one else understood what DOS was, other than the black screen before windows loaded. I was 13 (1994-5) when I got on the internet. This was when evil hackers and the alt.sex.everything usenet groups were making the news.
Great. So what, having people think you are a hacker really doesnt do anything to your life, except bother teacher in your schools. Folks found out how I got on the internet (remember this is 1994) and got crap from folks: I dialed into my library's card catalog, bounced my connection to a gopher on NJIT's card catalog, and was on my way. NJIT at the time had a choice on their gopher that opened up lynx to connect to another college's webpage. I just pointed lynx to a real page and off I was.
Thank god this was the days before schools had LANs because I would have been in deep shit everytime something went wrong. I was the hacker, it had to be my fault. I couldn't convince anyone that I wasn't a hacker, and for years, I couldnt convince the parents of my friends that if their computer was left unsupervized that I wouldnt "hack something". Were busy eating pizza and playing playstation, and they were worried about me leving the room we were in, sneaking off alone, dialing into "something" from their pc, and "hacking" while they were off doing something else.
I don't think anyone is that lame.
Besides, I couldnt hack.
I just understood what I was doing on a pc. Come to the later years of high school, into the days of LAN's in school, and I got continued references to "Thank god your on 'our side'". By this time I was the kid they asked when something was broken. I went out of my way to be helpful to the teachers running the network to prove I could be trusted, and that if something happened, it wouldnt have been me.
I guess its a good thing I was there, the teacher involved didn't know that the entire hard drive the school's webpage was stored on had file sharing on, and had no password. Eventuallly someone would have found it and done something stupid.
Kalrand
-the voice of reason
Movies portray hackers having wayyyy too much fun. Such as in the movie 'Hackers' where they go flying through a 3d universe in order to get r00t. This gets really annoying when people who belive the media (almost everyone) start wanting to fly through space on their computers. This gets really annoying for anyone on an irc board that have to put up with the constant barrage of people that want to fly through space because they saw it on a movie. I understand that movie makers have to make hacking interesting because i don't think most people find port scanning exciting. I'm not too angry at the people that belive that though, as i probably have views on subjects that were formed by movies that are completly wrong that they are interested in.
why don't you form the "Hacker Defamation League" and join the list of growing bully/whiner groups.
start writing your email/letters now! protest!
Or just grow up and realize that not everyone has a clue about the community, which is so surprising since we're the most open and friendly group out there. Always willing to make newbies and "outsiders" feel welcome.
*end drip*
If you are looking for accuracy, stop being assholes to people, give information without condescending, act less self-important. Because in the long run, your "l33t skilz" aren't that important.
Except for the part about being able to crack any encryption instantaneously (actually, only US government-based encryption). That was crap.
That chip is the holy grail of public key cryptography: A way to quickly factorize large integers. It's a fictional movie. Shame on them for making things up that *could* exist. At least they don't have long haired viruses announcing that tankers will be sunk if ransom demands aren't fulfilled. Oh wait, someone *could* write such a beast...
I think the X Files has had a far greater influence on the public's perception of nerds than any of the films mentioned in the article (except perhaps Sneakers). The Lone Gunmen are certainly cool, if slightly weird. They're very popular characters which is why they're getting their own spinoff series.
How can you tell if a slug is happy?
When their eyestalks stick straight up, of course.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
I just started my Computer Science study back in that time, and I can assure you that when I was 13 (that's 1989) the reaction to computer-savvy people at high school was just downright hostile. You just did "weird" things that nobody understood and you were hated for it. Try to get socially accepted if you're hated... Now, don't get me wrong: I talk about my peers at that time, not about the teachers who were generally understanding and wanted to *learn* (Imagine that!) Guess I was just lucky.
Now back to today, the situation for people like us has changed even more drastically. Note that I only know high school life trought the things my sister told me. It seems that computer-savvy people are now accepted and respected. There is much less fear of "the unknown" because a computer is "not so unknown" anymore. Just try to imagine a high school *without* a computer lab. It's even hard to imagine it without internet connection! I don't know why exactly "knowing about computers" has become accepted, it may be due to media coverage, it may be due to the fact everyone seems to have one, it may because certain software has become easy-to-use, or just because computer knowlegde means future wealth, it may be due to anything...
Please, don't flame me because you think I'm wrong, but feel free to give me different facts. I just tried to present the facts I know about my European situation (in a county considered wealthy). Of course I realise this might be localised and that schools over at the US, Pakistan and Zimbabwe may be completely different.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I was pretty happy to see them totally rip "The Net" apart like it deserved. People need to get the word out that that movie was SO far form the truth.
I can't believe they left out Weird Science. That has gotta be the most realistic hacker movie ever. When is mainstream society going to get a clue.
The Net? Ok, yeah, it was about people who used computers to undermine a persons life. But why tout that one when the underated 'Enemy of the State' is by far better and is loosly the same thing (not to mention a poor sequal to the wonderful but forgoton 'The Conversation' with Gene Hackman').
And when I think about it, yeah, I guess the Matrix starts out with characters who are 'hackers', but the movie is really more of a sci-fi thriller about alternate realities. To say the Matrix is about hackers is as realistic as saying 'eXistance' is about video game programmers.
The Internet is generally stupid
The news report informing us that the Republican Party is bankrupt does not occur until the very end of the movie. As I interpret it, Martin isn't the culprit, Cosmo is. Cosmo wanted to use the box to remake the world into a Marxist utopia. The news report is meant to show that after Martin defeats him, he has resorted to the same cheesy pranks he was doing thirty years ago, screwing with Republican bank accounts.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
I promise... its a wired.com link, no goatsex :P
"I want him in the stores until he dies paying" - MCPAA
And, most importantly, the article did a good job of saying how movies like the Net and Hackers were more than little unrealistic. (But that doesn't mean it's not what people still believe...)
Actually, it's the slugs doing it to you, you just don't know it yet. Savor the irony.
Yeah, but Charlie's Angels used IE. ("Hot babes use our product!") Actually, that's probably not a bad marketing plan...
They really play on the computer all night.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Scanners:
(where the hero hacks into the pharmoceutical company's computer simply by scanning it over the phonelines with his mind)
The President's Analyst:
While not a true hacker movie, it DOES however draw interesting parallels to modern times despite dating back to 1967 (quickie synopsis, a psychiatrist is hired on to act as the president's shrink... Several spy organizations follow him, each trying to capture him in order to find out just what's on the president's mind... He's finally captured by the most nefarious spy organization around, the phone company... They in turn atempt to brainwash him into advising the president to sign a new bill allowing them wider reaching powers of operation (telecommunications bill, anyone?), and allow them to implant a microscopic wireless telephone into everyone's brains (literal cellular phone, anyone?)...
Colossus: The Forbin Project:
A classic 'Computers want to rule the world' movie... First good example of using a DOS attack to stop a mainframe computer from communicating with it's counterpart...
Demon Seed:
While a pretty lame movie, it does introduce a better grasp of how misunderstood by Hollywood that computers are, and thusly how their users are similarly misunderstood...
Max Headroom:
Believe it or not, this WAS a movie before it became a TV show... Lots of hacker-fu in this one kids...
Johnny Mnemonic:
Bwahhahhahhhahhahhhhh!!!! (sorry)
Oh, wait, I'm drifting into cyberpunk now... Well... I'll leave it at this then...
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Your're right... the statement they made about Tron that seems to suggest Tron was made using only hand-animation is incorrect. It was one of the first movies done with CG sequences. I'm sure not all of them were CG but quite a few were.
Dude, that IS what modems used to be.
-------------------------
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
was that they pointed out that the key sizes of the Americans and European markets were different. It reminded me immediately of DSS and IDEA.
Wonder why it didn't make the list....
I thought that Brazil was a glaring omission; >15 years old, and still 100 times more relevant than crap like The Net and Hackers.
Incidentally, is Tron really 'hand-painted' as the article asserts? I thought it was B&W footage over proto-CG.
I don't know about you, but I thought that Gladiator had the best "hacking" of any movie.
Yeah Mission: Impossible had a really cool hacker, pretty nerdy type too - I really identified with Ving Rhames (he played Luther Stickell - the cool black guy with the *shiver* mac - ok, maybe I didn't identify truly:-)... :-)
He was also in M:I2 - but his role was very downplayed unfortunately, maybe he didn't sit well with the public? Oh well, it's late
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
"When it comes right down to it, everything that goes on with hacking these days is pretty damn juvenile. But has this changed? Not in 10 or 15 years. It's not worse now, it's always been stupid. Back in the 80's elite hackery generally involved getting someone's TRW records and posting it somewhere to let people screw with them."
What!!? hacking juvenile? You would not be online now if it where not for people playing with, experimenting "HACKING" computers. Hacking is fundamental and does not necessarily apply to just computers (cue inspirational background music) Apollo 13 never would have gotten back to earth safely if the astronauts didn't "Hack" there system, you would not be able to download any Divx movies let me say that again you would not be able to down load any Divx if it were not for those loveable "Hackers". Homer Simpson and his fellow co workers never would have been able to leave work early if he had not "Hacked" the security camera by playing a continues VHS loop of them working from 70's.
Also someone defacing a web site is not really hacking in my book there just doing something that's been done before. It's sometimes interesting, some times amusing. But basically its just digital graffiti. Just don't call it hacking....
Sorry my attention span doesn't last that long so I missed that. blame Hollywood
Wargames WAS cool! Not quite as realistic as Hackers, but yeah, it was very cool! I loved the modem that you put your phone headset into.
Aw, shit, I could hardly understand the technical stuff they were doing. I wasn't sure if it was real or not. Although, if I do ever go blind, I do plan on getting one of those nifty brail writer thingies that Mother used. Very cool.
I didn't say that it was accurate, just that it was one of the most accurate hacker movies I've ever seen. What, was 'The Matrix' more realistic? Actually, it WAS accurate in what hacking can really be all about... You work hard, and you get to make a lot of money as security experts (or go to jail when you get caught doing black hat stuff). And, there's more to 'hacking' then just computers. It also involves social engineering, etc. The movie shows all of this pretty well, I thought.
The most accurate 'hacker' movie I've ever seen was 'Sneakers', and it's at least 10 years old. 'Sneakers' got me interested in computer security, systems, etc.
Tragically they also included The Net.
Why is this tragic? The point of the article is how movies present the image of a hacker. The Net falls into this category.
Even though Sandra B is, of course no hacker, the uninformed will think she is; thus molding the general publics perception of what hackers are, and what hacking is like.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. --Robert Benchley
Whilst the criticism you have made is of course accurate, you have to bear in mind that the subtle nature of hacking would not easily be portrayed in a film, whereas the the more brutal but obvious thrill of cracking is easily portrayed in films. There simply isn't time in a standard length film to show to the average person (ie not a hacker) the difference between the two, and the excitement and ethics of hacking as opposed to cracking. If there is to be a decent plot, an audience will be more excited by the malicious nature of cracking as opposed to hacking which, not to sound too terrible, is an elitist pleasure.
The reason hackers are often misrepresented as "crackers" in the movies is simple. People don't understand the difference. What really is the difference between someone who breaks the law about DVDs and someone who breaks the law about infiltrating a server? People just see that someone is breaking the law, with a computer, and they get scared. What if he uses his '1337' skillz to hurt my computer? Another aspect of the fear, though unrelated, is the socialistic aspect of many parts of hacker society. (the GPL, for instance) People (in America, at least) don't like Communism and are likely to be wary of anything resembling it.
The truth about Michael
The slugs are happy? How is a slug happy? How can you tell if a slug is happy? Do they simply feed it VR of it avoiding salt and pounding footsteps? Or perhaps of becoming a super slug and eating McDonald's french fries with impunity?
Well, they obviously had to edit the results out becuase of the 1,909,809,200,345,543 references to hand(job) and blow(job). It is Usenet, after all...
I don't think it's all that black and white. First off, neither the government or a corporation (and this is something people and politicians tend to forget) is a person. They have no rights. They only exist (in theory) because the people allow them to. They only exist because they benefit the people.
Secondly, is the aspect of what is done with that information. If information was free, then there would be no reason to sell and trade my personal information between companies. That annoys me that companies make a profit off of my information. Natural persons don't tend to make a profit off of information....and those that proclaim information wants to be free rarely do. Corporations almost always make a profit off of information, and seek to restrict that information in order to make it more valuable. If I try to restrict my home phone number from being freely available, it's not to make it more valuable, it's to protect my privacy. Totally different motives.
The government, of course, is a special case. They are restricted in their methods because they have an awesome responsibilty to the people. Unfortunately, our (the US) government seems to have forgotten this long ago, and feel that the people serve the government. And besides, the government usually illegally collects information in order to arrest people who think information should be free.
It's as good as encryption down here on Earth...
Damn right, bro, Amen. All these people... They are loosers. They have no life, so they go around and does something so insignificant that was [illegal/wrong/3733T] and laugh their heads off (and finishes smoking the crack). Just as you people promote the difference between hacker and crackers, I demand that there be a difference between cyberpunks and everyone who isn't. These teens who thinks that they are eleet because they RuLe at Half life, and makes "awesome" images with photoshop and flash, and overclocks their pitiful I386 and because they succeeded installing a Redhat, thinks that they rule the world. I demand that there be a distintion between me and everyone who uses the phrase "0wnz j00". I wish that I, who sincerely wants to learn the study of computers and mathematics, be clearly seperated from these cyberpunk-ass-bitches. I am taking classes in CS, and all these people who are just plain loosers who are excited by articles from MaximumPC. I am just interested in Unix and its internals. I just want to learn C and learn theory and stuff. But I am just disgusted by the rest of the class. Thank you for reading my rant.
But come on, I think all IT workers, which could include hacker's who may or may not be working, hate Corporate Think. And you've got a couple of programmers who use the old 'put the hundredths of cents into my account' gimmick to steal from the Company. They kind of were hacking around.
And they were doing it all for themselves. That's what hackers do. They don't care who they harm, who they hurt, what laws they break, so long as they gratify their own twisted desires and lusts. There is no cause for defacing a website. It's just stupid. Nobody pays any attention to what you put up there, it's like grafiti you morons. People stop trying to read it and just paint over it first chance they get. Stop being such pre-adolescent morons and do something constructive like help write for OpenOffice and let's kill M$ Office once and for all, and thusly bring about the demise of Winders. Linux or *BSD won't be a great desktop OS it's easy to start (OK, that's simple enough) and has the tools for people to do their spreadsheets, presentations, and letters to grandma or the Board, without being a geek like ourselves.
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
Seeing Bill Gates in shackles for stealing Open Source code then killing the programmers was DELIGHTFUL !!
Now surely that has got to have the most realistic hack ever - only coz it's got three cute babes in it (and we all know that they are really into that kinda cracking stuff).
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
I think that what hackers do is mostly only of interest for people somehow related to computer industry. These movies are oriented to the "average citizen" but not necessarily to the so-called geeks or tech fans. These people will get bored if the watch a movie about guys getting into computers, leaving messages, breaking security just for fun, curiosity, etc.
Real Genius is one of the reasons why I'm such a geek. Val Kilmer was my role model at that age. ;)
The thing I liked best about Sneakers was not that it got the tech right. You can't get the tech right in a movie, it seems. But they got the people right. I mean, every Slashdot whacko can identify with Dan Akroyd's character.
Two funny anecdotes...
After War Games aired, people who were going to be telecommuting suddenly weren't allowed because everybody was scared to have a modem attached to the net. I'm not making that up.
And I was having a chat with an AI researcher friend of mine. It turns out that they are doing something just like the matrix to slug brains. They have very very few neurons, so it's pretty easy to hook them up to a simulated body and they are happy and stuff.
Gentoo Sucks
My personal favourite moment from that film: when he does a global search for "job" on usenet and get 0 hits.
Now there's a pretty damn impossible mission.
Jedidiah
--
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
If someone would eventually get around to making a decent filmn of Ender's Game then we might actually have something. Ender certainly qualifies as a hacker, and the subplot with Val and Peter suggests similar sorts of things.
And you've got figure someone is going to make the film eventually.... and as long as they don't butcher the book as they did with Starship Troopers we'll be fine...
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
Consider the Tiger Team. Hackers are hired by corporations to enter their systems and find security holes.
I actually got a chance to do this myself when I was in high school. The school was interested in this fancy new IBM network for the business students. One of the sales pitches was that it was so secure. My Computer Science teacher approached me and, after relating the details of the school's recent purchase and telling me that the network was just newly installed and was now up and running, he asked me and a friend of mine to see if we could "break in" to it.
When we asked for clarification of what "break in" meant, he said that he just wanted to see what we could do: Examine teacher's files or other students work, disable services, delete or corrupt files, etc. So we went to work on it, and here's what we discovered.
(Although I understand MUCH more about computers now, I'll try to relate this story at the level technical understanding I had of it in high-school.)
The system was quite secure from the outside. A username and password was required for any kind of entrance to the system. The workstations had floppy disks, but booting from them was disabled. There were bios passwords on all systems. The computers were physically locked closed and chained to the desks. Apart from the possibility of vandalism, the computers were relatively secure. (Another not-so-cool student in the school had recently been in trouble for stuffing a floppy disk with bits of tractor feed and lighting them on fire! It's hard to protect against that because he did it in class, right under the teacher's nose.)
We commenced trying to guess passwords. "administrator" "root" "backup" and other kinds of accounts would typically have secure passwords, while user accounts were less careful and would have easy-to-guess passwords. We succeeded in logging in with guest accounts and even guessed the password of a couple empty test accounts. Both were no-privlege student accounts.
Then we found it... The backup user, which of course has privleges to read just about everything for the purposes of archiving data, had a password that was the same as the login name. A two part security flaw, one, the bogus password, and two, the privileges of the backup user were not restricted to read-only. This meant that we could delete pretty much anything we wanted to...and we did.
Although the commands (executables) were restricted, so we couldn't run any programs, the basic command line was sufficient to move, rename or delete files and directories. With no recursive delete at our disposal, we began deleting every file we could.
We were destroying school property with mad abandon. Since my friend and I were working concurrently, I would often change in to a directory, get a list, and try to delete everything only to recieve a message like, "file does not exist". My friend would shout out "got it!" as he sat at the workstation beside me and deleted a directory he realised I was working on, and had beaten me to the punch in deleting it.
Soon the very last directories were deleted, and in trying to delete the Netowrk Operating System files themselves and the command line implementation, the system went down...hard. It couldn't be brought back up. And thanks to the security there was no more fixing it, no way to log in, even with legitimate accounts. The network software was trash.
With nothing left to destroy, we revisited our teacher. "What could you do?" he asked.
We responded, "We found out that we could delete stuff."
"What did you delete?" asked our teacher.
We glanced at each other and responded very matter-of-factly, "Everything."
The teacher was taken aback and his jaw dropped open a couple of inches. He quickly rushed over to find the IBM technician and confirm that the damage had been done.
A few hours later we spoke again. "You really shouldn't have done that," began his response. I feared the worst: that perhaps he was going to change his story and blame us for the crime. I was sure I had dont the right thing. The teacher wanted us to find out what we could do. Surely that included seeing if it was possible to delete the very last file off the network and reboot after that. The only empirical test for which was the complete annihilation of the network resources.
My teacher explained, "That guy from IBM was here for three days installing all that software, and he's pissed that he has to do it all over again." Sure he was pissed! He was kicking himself for not changing the default password on the backup account. I'd be pissed too, mostly because over the course of three days, I couldn't really guarantee that I could have done any better, or not made a similar mistake.
The IBM worker buckled down for another 3 days of contract labour with the school, re-installing the software, taking extra caution, this time, to change ALL the passwords and ALL the privleges.
So the day ended with a reprimand for me and my friend, and my teacher never mentioned the incident again.
* * *
But the real problem wasn't that we discovered that we could delete everything, it's that we DID delete everything. The outcome was good, though, wasn't it? I mean, we helped to make the network more secure, and got the guy 3 days more pay, right? And FYI: I'd just like to apologise if the whole reason that schools don't have any money is because bratty hackers like us. I didn't know any better.
So if you're going to hire a Tiger Team, sure the teenagers may find the gaps, but will they act professionally? I certainly didn't, and it wasn't out of malice, it was just that I was young and didn't know any better.
-Wyck
What about how hackers are portrayed as the Evil Ones in Jurassic Park1 and James Bond::Goldeneye (barely mentionned)?
<rant>In JP1, the fat fast-food-eating porno-addicted jerk runs away and gets killed. The hero is of course an innocent intelligent kid that knows Unix. Ok, sure, she knew Unix, maybe a future hacker (it's not because you know unix that you're a hacker), but to the eyes of the public, she's the smart kid that saved the day, while the evil-hacker ran away.
In James Bond, there again: sex-craving anti-social evil genious always trying to hide. Of course, he dies while his ego expresses itself. Blah, Tomorrow Never Dies does a much better job at showing that technology and the media are the Evil. Tomorrow Never Dies really gave me the impression that we must impose stronger regulation on technology because technology helps evil people.
What Hollywood is saying, is that technology enslaves us, and that evil people can use this to their advantage.
Then again, I'm just a computer geek. My two cents.
</rant>This may not happen: I admit to not having read all the comments, but I read the article, and *never* - absolutely *never* did they mention two movies that are really good - they are'nt exactly "hacker" movies from the muggles point of view, but it is from mine, and probably yours:
The Pirates of Sillicon Valley - The story of Microsoft and Apple.
Operation Takedown - The *completelyliedupandscrewedup* story of Kevin Mitnick: the perspective of the stupid idiot (forgive my dogma) who got him locked up.... well, enough about that...
This would be like counting up the Star Trek movies and skipping out the Undiscovered Country!
After my parents watched Hackers for the first time it took 2 hours before they stopped believing that I wore sunglasses while I glared at the screen. "Yes mom, I hack by day and suck blood out of the sysop by night!"
I personally haven't (missed the debut at the Toronto film festival), but apparently this movie is a true story hacking drama based around the exploits of the Computer Chaos Club. A friend who saw the movie explains it's one of the best he's seen in the genre.
This title was created in Germany (home to many of the club's members) and was shown at the local film festival with English subtitles. There is currently no DVD, but there is a non-subtitled or dubbed VHS available from the Dutch version of Amazon Books.
There is a five-meg trailer of 23 available at: http://www.netcologne.de/~nc-schmitbo/down23.html
ICEPHREAK
My biggest complaint about Hollywood is that they don't seem to understand the difference between Hackers and Crackers. Oh well. When I tell people I decrypt DVDs, they usually look at me like I'm going to kill them, so I guess that misunderstanding of intent is common. My favorite depiction of hackers/crackers is in the movie "Sneakers" with Robert Redford. Along with a whole bunch of comical thievery and hijinks, the main characters manage to secure a piece of hardware which can decrypt almost anything. They promptly bankrupt the republican party via the bank. -OK Scotty, very funny, now beam me my pants.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
I think James Cameron is an awesome director, he consistently gets these little details right.
How could they mention "Goldeneye" and leave out "Mission:Impossible"? Remember the obvious use of Netscape Navigator? (I think they used version 1.0, although 2.0 was out at the time). There was some nifty movie "hacking" in that film, but my favorite part was that the good guys all used Mac Powerbooks, while the bad guys all had IBM laptops.
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www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Sure enough, checking the internet movie database reveals two writers worked on both films. http://us.imdb.com/Name?Lasker,+Lawrence http://us.imdb.com/Name?Parkes,+Walter+F These guys also collaborated on "True Believer", which is a darn good film IMO, "Awakenings", another Mathew Broderick film, "Project X", and a TV series, called "Ernie Dodd".
Parkes seems to have had a pretty strong career as a producer, both before and since, and these two films are the only two he has a writing credit for. Note that he is one of the producers of the upcoming movie "A.I.".
It's "Real Genius".
In movies all they do is play on the computer all day. What do they really do?
"Don`t worshop me like a god, Worshop me as your god."
Good stuff, i guess, especially if you can turn off the "that's not how it works" part of your brain.
I'm still saving my pennies for a powerbook. Because when the aliens arrive on July 4th, I want to be able to hack their network up in orbit. Why do you suppose the aliens are using appletalk?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
That is of course, unless you mean that Richard stallman was the fuck who rooted my redhat box last week.
But what are we celebrating here? I understand that all this could be pretty exciting for the population at large, as it's an unknown world. But what about the geeks out there? It's a pretty known world right? Worse yet, it's pretty fucking boring.
Why do we all seem to have a soft spot in our hearts for hacking? Was it because of that thrill we got when we guessed mr. hibbard the science teacher's password so we could up our print-out quotas and print a bunch of ascii porn? Maybe so. I reckon most everyone out there has at least something like that in their background. Is this what makes hacking so fastenating to us all? It's really glorified in our community.
But what do "hacking" bring us? Where are the 31337 hackers that have stopped an evil mastermind hacker from bring down greenpeace and killing all the whales for his huge whale oil bomb to be set off at the polls? Where have the robin hoods been that stol 100th's of a penny from everyone's account at BigMegaBancCorp to fund the orphanage up on lookout road so that little jimmy would get the liver transplant? Where in fact is a single account of anyone anywhere close to black hatery doing anything that wasn't 100% in their own interests?
I don't see the examples. In fact 99.99% of the self-proclaimed hackers out there are into nothing more than web site defacement via the unicode bug, or root hacking cable modem linux boxes with the DNS exploit to put up eggdrop bots to hold their favorite channel. Maybe once in a blue moon someone will apply these pre-written tools and break in somewhere good, see lots of data, and have absolutely no idea what to do with it. Wow, look at all these credit cards, maybe I should buy freestolencreditcards.com and post em all? Hahaha, that'll stick it to the man.
I was a netcom subscriber in '94/'95 when kevin mitnick was raveging their networks. He's supposed to be an elite uber-hacker, using cell-phone booky boxes and all manner of tools to hide his tracks. The FBI was after him at this point, and I think he knew. Never the less, what was he doing on netcom? Mostly making stupidly named files in people's root directories with root priv's, just to show people he could. And who was he doing this to? Mostly to people a friend of his (and netcom subscriber) didn't like. Wow, way to go kevin.
When it comes right down to it, everything that goes on with hacking these days is pretty damn juvenile. But has this changed? Not in 10 or 15 years. It's not worse now, it's always been stupid. Back in the 80's elite hackery generally involved getting someone's TRW records and posting it somewhere to let people screw with them.
When the revolution comes, I think I'll stick with the government instead of the cyber-revolutionaries. At least when the government wins they won't be sitting alone in their bedroom laughing and snorting up a storm saying "oh kewl. viva la revolution. Heh. I am the supreme elite commander, you all must bow down to me! Haha! maybe i should order a pizza"
[note if you wish please silently change the word hacker to cracker, black hat hacker, ciminal, h4x0r or whatever other word will keep you from replying to me about the use of the word hacker. you know damn well who we're talking about and it's not alan cox]
I remember as a kid watching a show called "The Wiz Kids" (I think that's what it was called). I loved it; a bunch of nerds doing all this fun stuff. I haven't seen it since I was about 10 I guess, so I can't really comment on it's accuracy of the portrayal of hackers, but from memory it was pretty good.
I don't know if this film was ever release into theaters, or perhaps it went straight to video. It was called "Takedown", and featured Skeet Ulrich playing Kevin Mitnick. That film did an excellent job (relatively speaking) of defining the difference between a hacker and a cracker. They took some artistic liscence with the story, but aside from that, a decent flick.
The One,
The Only,
--The Kid
the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
www.quantumheresy.com
The hacker as an antihero is popular in books, and has been for a long while now. We have the entire genre of cyberpunk as a good example (and no, I don't mean to imply that cyberpunk is just about hackers in the traditional computer sense) Movies about hackers don't have a good enough understanding of computers to realize that it's not just a fancy special effect that'll bring people in. They have straight up villans and heros. It's not bad because it's inaccurate. Lots of things are innacurate but fun. It's just too simple. It's an idiotic black and white portrayal.
[haven't you tried FunWithPerl?]
I didn't know anyone actually watched AntiTrust, let alone enough people for it to actually impact the public's perception of hackers.
And am I the only person who finds it hard to picture Ryan Philippe as a hacker? Sure, I know he wore glasses for the role (and apparently glasses = smart = hacker), but it was still Ryan Philippe under there, dammit.
veronikka.com
I find it a tad saddening that few people ever bother mentioning "The Thirteenth Floor" when they list "hacker" or "Matrix-like" movies. Sure, maybe I'm being over-wacky, but I liked the movie more than The Matrix and frankly, I think it did the whole "How do we know what the world really is?" thing much better. But hey, what do I know? -Calim
What pisses me of this the misuse of PC terminology. Like last nights ER, their talking about damaged clusters and missing files. They have no clue was a CP even it. When discussing what type of PC it was the character goes "CD-rom"... wtf? Hackers had a kewl plot but since they only showed these artsy screensaver like shots it came of lame, why does hollywood have to do that?
perl -e s++=END;++y(;-P)}s?C++=;
Come on now....cyber gliding through a bunch of ones and zeroes...that's really acceptable... Dialing into a gaming BBS was and is a more realistic approach to reality. "Reality is the illusion created from lack of enebriation." -Lord Byron