Programmer Humor

One of the funnier ones is that the matrix actually did hacking right. It was also so quick you don't notice it.

When Trinity hacks into the power station, it's legit. She checks the software version, which shows an out of date version. She then uses a known flaw in that version to reset the password.

It's the only bit of actual hacking in the movie. They obviously knew that geeks would be checking it frame by frame, so they actually did their homework on it.

Hacking is really a "montage" type activity, but is treated as something you can show in real time.

Like, imagine the A-Team building some weapon out of spare parts but you had to watch the entire build process including measuring, cutting, screwing up the cut, throwing away the part and trying again...

Or, imagine a martial arts film where the hero trains for the big fight... and you include the entire training regimen, showing them getting up at 6am each day to do sit-ups, then following the entire morning run...

Really a hacking sequence should have those zoomed-in calendars with days flipping by and getting crossed out.

If they really need the hack to be in the critical path of the action, it should only be something like:

Boss: We need to hack the satellite!
Hacker: What model is it?
Boss: It's a... let me see... KU-STRZ-4 out of Azerbaijan.
Hacker: A 4-series? We're in luck, NSA's been sitting on a exploit for that model.

Otherwise it's as stupid as:

Boss: We need to defeat Scar Killer in the Kumite tomorrow.
Soldier: I did some basic unarmed combat in boot camp, but...
Boss: You have 24 hours, get training!
Next day, the soldier is massively jacked and is throwing flip kicks etc.

I've love to watch a realistic hacker movie, because the shit that hackers get into is genuinely bonkers. For example, some white hats got all the way into Apple's inventory system and IIRC they could've disrupted all of Apple's logistics. Imagine if a black hat got into that. Or the Ukrainian hackers that got into the taxation system of the Russians and were there for a few months. Or the USAians who got into the biggest Belgian telecom and were kicked out years later by a Dutch security company.

Movies or even better TV series showing the time it takes to get into such systems would be amazing. Day 1 phishing, day 40 established beachhead, day 120 gained access to internal system X, day 121 triggered internal alarm and was nearly discovered but was able to cover up traces, etc.

Nobody watches 90 minutes of football matches. Everyone watches the highlights and that's what movies could be too.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Don't forget 6 hours of digging through the garbage behind the business they want to hack.

Are you constipated again?

No, I have an outline for a PERFECT realistic hacker movie that would put asses in seats. Basically, make it The Life And Times Of Deviant Ollam.

Imagine a slightly farcical take on a heist movie, like take on Ocean's Eleven with True Lies' attitude. It's kind of a heist movie, except the infiltrating crew has permission to be there from upper management, but no one else in the building knows this, and the stakes of getting caught are they get to tell their client their security is in fact pretty good. So since the stakes are non-existent, you can lean into the lulz a little bit. You have room for eccentric characters, witty dialog, a running gag of how hilariously bad door locks are, and an ending sequence where you've got a guy in the security room trying not to laugh as he texts the team leader "Just see what you can get away with." And then some of the team is deliberately silly, acting like rebellious teenagers on bikes in the parking lot chased by half the security team, wackiness ensues, intercut with the rest of the team breaking into server rooms and just taking over this company.

You can have the gearing up scene explaining what the gadgetry is. "This is an ESP key; it's a microcontroller with an onboard SD card and Wi-Fi, that we plug into the data wires on one of your badge readers. How do we get it in there? Send two guys wearing high vis vests, one of them carrying a clipboard and watching the other, no one asks a thing. Yeah, there's a tamper alarm that alerts the security guards if anyone opens the reader...I've never seen it hooked up. Now we get a list of every badge used on this reader, and when. See this guy who's badging in like clockwork every 45 minutes? That's a guard. And the ESP key isn't only listening, it can also talk. We can make it send a credential as if the reader did, and unlock this door remotely. Tiffany has two RFID implants, one in each hand. We've cloned two different credentials to the chips in her hands, so she can walk up, present her hand to the reader, and it opens, thinking the guard just badged in. She's carrying a bash bunny; which looks like a USB thumb drive, with a couple switches on the side. It's actually a little computer that, when plugged into a computer, it can pretend to be a flash drive, a keyboard that can automatically type a whole malicious program really fast, a network device, basically anything we need to compromise a target computer. All Tiffany has to do is walk up to a computer and plug this in. We have it set to put this small text file of an ascii art cow saying "you've been pwn'd" on the desktop to prove we've infiltrated that machine, but we really could do...anything we want."

Make me a movie where a guy breaks into a server room in Pepsi pajama bottoms and a t-shirt that says "I'm A Liability" by slipping the latch with a piece of plastic he finds in a nearby trash can.

AKA, make a movie about one of Deviant's convention presentations. It'll be endlessly entertaining.

surprised Pikachu