Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and how the tech are you? It is time
Speaker 1: for a tech Stuff classic episode, and the episode we're
Speaker 1: about to listen to, the worst hacking scenes from Hollywood,
Speaker 1: is technically part one of a two parter. Shannon Morse
Speaker 1: joined me to talk about hacking scenes in Hollywood.
Speaker 2: Shannon is.
Speaker 1: She's a hacker. She's been doing the hacking routine for
Speaker 1: several years now. She's been covering hacking for years. She's
Speaker 1: very knowledgeable on the subject and was a great partner
Speaker 1: to have to talk about how Hollywood doesn't always get
Speaker 1: hacking quite right. Sit back and enjoy this episode originally
Speaker 1: published September seventh, twenty sixteen. Guys, we've had Shannon on
Speaker 1: the show a few times, and today it's a real treat, really,
Speaker 1: because we're gonna talk about some examples of hacking in
Speaker 1: pop culture and some of the ones that are incredibly awful,
Speaker 1: just terrible inaccurate ways of showing how hacking works, as
Speaker 1: well as talk about something get it more right than
Speaker 1: not right, which is kind of awesome, and I mean
Speaker 1: the start off, we have to admit the real world
Speaker 1: of hacking. While the results can be quite dramatic and
Speaker 1: have a huge effect, the process itself is not always cinematic.
Speaker 3: Nope, it is not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's actually pretty boring. There's just a bunch of
Speaker 4: text on the screen and that's about.
Speaker 2: It, right, I mean it's coding, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of coding involved, a lot of Python
Speaker 4: and BASS scripts and things of that nature, and a
Speaker 4: lot of terminal work. So you don't see very much
Speaker 4: gooey or graphical user interface usage whenever you're running.
Speaker 3: Some kind of hack implementation. A lot of times it's
Speaker 3: just terminal.
Speaker 1: Right, And you know, I understand the need to stretch
Speaker 1: the truth when you're trying to create a really thrilling
Speaker 1: movie or TV show and you want to have something
Speaker 1: interesting to look at, having your characters look at lines
Speaker 1: of code and going through a process of trying to
Speaker 1: create some sort of exploit for a vulnerability that doesn't
Speaker 1: really hold a lot of people like on the edge
Speaker 1: of their seat. So I get it, but it is
Speaker 1: kind of a problem. And I should also mention we're
Speaker 1: using the word hacker today a lot. But of course,
Speaker 1: as I try to mention every time I talk about hacking,
Speaker 1: hacking is a very broad term, and it doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: mean that you are doing anything illegal, and it certainly
Speaker 1: doesn't even.
Speaker 2: Mean that you're necessarily working on a computer.
Speaker 1: You could be doing some hardware hacks that aren't related
Speaker 1: to software.
Speaker 2: That's important to remember.
Speaker 1: But as far as Hollywood is concerned, there's really only
Speaker 1: one kind of hacking, and that involves trying to break
Speaker 1: into a place that you're not supposed to be in.
Speaker 4: Of course, because those are the most interesting people, they're
Speaker 4: the scary ones, and people are afraid of what they
Speaker 4: don't understand.
Speaker 1: Right, And I imagine that a lot of screenwriters are
Speaker 1: particularly scared of hackers because it's one it's clear that
Speaker 1: they have no understanding whatsoever about it. And two, I
Speaker 1: mean we've seen, especially recently, we've seen some very big
Speaker 1: stories about the entertainment industry running away from hackers attacking.
Speaker 1: And whether it's a hacker who's actually gaining access to
Speaker 1: a system, or it was someone who was on the
Speaker 1: inside who just managed to exploit access in the first place,
Speaker 1: which I would argue really isn't a hack, it's just
Speaker 1: kind of industrial sabotage at that point. But the Sony
Speaker 1: story would be the big example, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the Sony story, I think put a lot of
Speaker 4: fear in the entertainment industry, and I feel like the
Speaker 4: entertainment industry as a whole, with very few exceptions, are
Speaker 4: one of the genres that is the farthest behind when
Speaker 4: it comes to their own security and privacy. They're the
Speaker 4: farthest behind when it comes to a lot of things,
Speaker 4: including how they treat their women. But I think that
Speaker 4: it's something that they really need to start focusing on
Speaker 4: and start understanding, not only for their own security, for
Speaker 4: their employees, for the actors and actresses that work there
Speaker 4: for these different companies, but also because they need to
Speaker 4: understand how to actually portray it so that more people
Speaker 4: understand it as a whole and aren't so afraid.
Speaker 1: Right, And so we're going to dive into a discussion
Speaker 1: of some of the more entertaining and often wildly inaccurate
Speaker 1: versions of hacking in film and TV.
Speaker 2: I should also give a shout out.
Speaker 1: A lot of people on my Twitter feed suggested that
Speaker 1: I check out a subreddit. The subreddit is it's a
Speaker 1: Unix system, which is a reference to Jurassic Park. If
Speaker 1: you remember, the young lady runs up to a computer,
Speaker 1: she takes one look at it, she says.
Speaker 2: It's a Unix system. I know this, And then she's.
Speaker 1: Immediately looking at a graphic user interface and identifying one
Speaker 1: block out of like fifty blocks that are on the screen,
Speaker 1: and immediately makes the conclusion that all the files for
Speaker 1: the entire island are accessible from that one terminal. I
Speaker 1: don't know how she knows. That's amazing. It's amazing that
Speaker 1: you automatically know that everything available on the island is
Speaker 1: on that one drive.
Speaker 2: Somehow, I feel like.
Speaker 4: The only way you would know that is if you
Speaker 4: were the information security professional that is working for that company.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, No, she seemed like she was a little
Speaker 1: too young to be a full time employee at that point.
Speaker 2: Exactly so Jurassic Park. While it lends the.
Speaker 1: Quote it's a Unix system to the subreddit, I didn't
Speaker 1: really include it on this list. There is one other
Speaker 1: incredibly famous example that I've talked about on a previous
Speaker 1: episode of Tech.
Speaker 2: Stuff that we will hit. But first I'm going to
Speaker 2: talk about a movie. I haven't actually seen this movie
Speaker 2: but I have seen the sequences that involve hacking. That
Speaker 2: movie is.
Speaker 1: The Core, And in the first sequence I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk about, there's a character whose handle is RAT, which
Speaker 1: could be you know, like remote access trojan or remote
Speaker 1: access terminal, depending upon what acronem you want to look at.
Speaker 1: Often one that is associated with hacking, and Rat is
Speaker 1: caught by the FBI. The sequence in which he's caught,
Speaker 1: he's trying desperately to erase all traces of his activities.
Speaker 1: He's got tons and tons of computers, and he's using
Speaker 1: massive magnets to try and wipe drives, and he's throwing
Speaker 1: CD ROM discs into a microwave and turning it on high,
Speaker 1: you know, the typical stuff.
Speaker 2: We do when the Feds come knocking.
Speaker 1: But but my favorite bit about this little sequence is
Speaker 1: he then is taken to an interrogation and as he's
Speaker 1: being interrogated, he just casually reaches over and grabs a
Speaker 1: guy's cell phone out of his.
Speaker 2: Little holster or his pocket or whatever. But the guy's
Speaker 2: it's just a cell phone. What can he do with that?
Speaker 1: Well, Shannon, you know what people can do with so
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have physical access to a cell phone.
Speaker 1: It's game over. But oh yeah, but what this guy does.
Speaker 1: He doesn't do something to get hold of the guy's contacts.
Speaker 1: He doesn't and this is also pre smartphone. It's really
Speaker 1: a cell phone. He doesn't do anything like that. What
Speaker 1: he does is he takes a little a little chewing
Speaker 1: gum rapper. He dials a couple of numbers on the phone,
Speaker 1: and then he uses the chewing gum rapper to make
Speaker 1: a weird little whistling, humming noise and then casually closes
Speaker 1: the phone, tosses it back to the guy and says
Speaker 1: that phone's got free long distance on it forever.
Speaker 2: That's uh.
Speaker 3: I love this one.
Speaker 1: Hundred accurate to real life. That's exactly how it works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: So I'm pretty sure that this is kind of a
Speaker 4: comparison to what people would actually do, which was called
Speaker 4: phone freaking. And this was like before hacking became a
Speaker 4: really big popular norm that you would see in like
Speaker 4: online media that you see.
Speaker 3: In this day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so back in the day, this guy named Captain Crunch.
Speaker 4: He got his online screen name from opening up a
Speaker 4: Captain Crunch cereal box and getting out a little I
Speaker 4: believe it was a kazoo or something similar to that,
Speaker 4: like a w and if he was able to recreate
Speaker 4: or reproduce the kind of tone that you could put
Speaker 4: into a payphone to allow you to make free long
Speaker 4: distance calls. So they're using that real life scenario to
Speaker 4: their advantage in this movie The Core and making it
Speaker 4: seem like you can do the same thing with.
Speaker 3: A gum wrapper.
Speaker 4: Now, personally, I don't believe that you can do the
Speaker 4: same thing with a gum wrapper. That seems a little
Speaker 4: bit odd. I know that you can make noises with
Speaker 4: things like that. You can also do the same thing
Speaker 4: with the piece of grass if you want to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah you can.
Speaker 1: You can entertain yourself in like a third grade kind
Speaker 1: of way for hours at a time.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah. Phone freaking really worked on landlines.
Speaker 1: They worked when the phone system wasn't fully digital yet.
Speaker 1: It was a much different system, I mean, and there's
Speaker 1: some very famous people who got their start as phone freaks.
Speaker 1: I mean, Steve Wozniak was in that world. The Wall
Speaker 1: the Great Wahs was one of the freakers of back
Speaker 1: in the seventies. But it was sort of the same
Speaker 1: thing that you would talk about hackers today. They weren't
Speaker 1: necessarily trying to gain the system.
Speaker 2: They were trying to figure out how does this work?
Speaker 4: Right, They were just messing with things. They were trying
Speaker 4: to reverse engineer them and figure out how they work
Speaker 4: and put them back together and let them let these
Speaker 4: different pieces of technology do things that they weren't necessarily
Speaker 4: supposed to do. Yeah, and that's what I love so
Speaker 4: much about hacking.
Speaker 3: But then you bring it.
Speaker 4: To Hollywood and they're like, oh, these are scary people.
Speaker 4: They're all going to end up in the FBI's hands.
Speaker 4: And that's not necessarily true, right.
Speaker 1: And to take something that worked on landlines on a
Speaker 1: payphone basis using a whistle that had I think he
Speaker 1: even modified it slightly so it would make exactly the
Speaker 1: tone he needed to replicate the tones that the phone
Speaker 1: company was using in order to allow for this kind
Speaker 1: of thing to happen. Yeah, it would never work on
Speaker 1: the cell phone range at all.
Speaker 2: And also just what a weird line.
Speaker 1: Like this phone's got free long distance on it forever,
Speaker 1: and you think there's gotta be multiple ways a phone
Speaker 1: company would say, Hey, something weird's going on with this
Speaker 1: one line. But uh, but the core the Corps also
Speaker 1: has another great scene in it with that same hacker,
Speaker 1: same guy rat h And when I see him, I
Speaker 1: always think, uh, he's he's the he's a character who
Speaker 1: also or he's an actor who also play shows up
Speaker 1: as a character on the show Supernatural as a weird,
Speaker 1: reedy looking, uh demon killer guy that you would just
Speaker 1: expect to get completely obliterated the first time he shows up,
Speaker 1: but he turns out to be more capable than you
Speaker 1: would consider based upon his appearance anyway.
Speaker 2: He walks into a cyber cafe. He's got a.
Speaker 1: CD rom I think it even says Kung Fu on it,
Speaker 1: if I'm not mistaken, and he puts it did puts
Speaker 1: it into a cyber cafe computer, and after like leaning
Speaker 1: back and putting his hand up to his face for
Speaker 1: about five seconds, it ends up completely taking over not
Speaker 1: just his computer, but the entire local network, and all
Speaker 1: of the screens in the cyber cafe pop up with
Speaker 1: this image of his rat network.
Speaker 2: Where he has taken over all the computers.
Speaker 1: I don't even know exactly why he's trying to take
Speaker 1: over all the computers, apart from just seeing lots and
Speaker 1: lots of what appears to be news footage which spoiler
Speaker 1: alert there's a thing we can use to get that
Speaker 1: news footage.
Speaker 2: It's called a TV. You can use that without having
Speaker 2: to hack any systems.
Speaker 1: But it's just a weird little moment where he's taken
Speaker 1: over all the computers in the cyber cafe. Now, let's
Speaker 1: go ahead and make some things clear, Shannon. I know
Speaker 1: that you've addressed this on multiple episodes and ways of
Speaker 1: reaching out to your audience. There are certain things you
Speaker 1: should be concerned about when you go and log into
Speaker 1: any kind of local area network, any kind of open
Speaker 1: Wi Fi. If you're going to a coffee shop and
Speaker 1: you're using that kind of Wi Fi, you need to
Speaker 1: be more.
Speaker 2: Aware of potential security problems.
Speaker 4: Yes, absolutely, it's very easy if you're on your local
Speaker 4: coffee shops network or your local hotels network for anybody
Speaker 4: to snoop on what you're doing. You may be using HTTPS,
Speaker 4: but that's not going to keep somebody from understanding what
Speaker 4: sites you are visiting. But even though that data may
Speaker 4: be encrypted, however, they're still collecting.
Speaker 3: That encrypted information.
Speaker 4: And it really just depends on how a website that
Speaker 4: you're visiting is encrypting that information, whether or not they
Speaker 4: would be able to decrypt it after a specific amount
Speaker 4: of time.
Speaker 3: So I always tell.
Speaker 4: People if they're going to use a hotel Wi Fi
Speaker 4: or a coffee shop WiFi, to use a VPN, use
Speaker 4: some way to tunnel your traffic from point A to
Speaker 4: point B so that nobody else on that network will
Speaker 4: be able to see what you're doing. They may see
Speaker 4: that you're logged on, they may see your IP address,
Speaker 4: but they won't know exactly what's going on with your
Speaker 4: traffic while you're connected. So, and I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 4: everybody who generally uses these Wi Fi networks that are
Speaker 4: available for free aren't necessarily using VPNs, But it's a
Speaker 4: huge security risk for pretty much every consumer out there
Speaker 4: that's using these Wi Fi networks.
Speaker 1: Right, And whereas in the core, you know we were talking,
Speaker 1: it's really hardwired computers that are part of the cyber cafe.
Speaker 1: You just sit down at a terminal and log in
Speaker 1: so that you have access to everything on that machine.
Speaker 1: That's scary too. I mean, it's kind of like using
Speaker 1: a computer at the library. You want to be very
Speaker 1: careful about the kinds of activities you do on that
Speaker 1: machine because it's not really you, and you don't really
Speaker 1: you know, and you don't want to go so far
Speaker 1: to cover your tracks that you're actually causing problems for
Speaker 1: the real purpose of that machine. Still not quite sure
Speaker 1: what he was trying to do. It was like he
Speaker 1: was setting up his own little botnet. Also, if you
Speaker 1: are setting up a botnet, probably a bad idea to
Speaker 1: have a graphic pop up on everyone's screen saying, hey,
Speaker 1: your computer's mine now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's In today's age, it is very popular
Speaker 4: for people to use ransomware, which will basically announces its
Speaker 4: availability on your computer. Yeah, it'll announce its presence on
Speaker 4: your machine to let the user know, Hey, I've just
Speaker 4: encrypted all the information, all the photos, all the documents
Speaker 4: that is on your computer. Now you have to pay
Speaker 4: me like one bitcoin to get your data back, and
Speaker 4: then you pay that bitcoin and you may or may
Speaker 4: not get your data back. So, you know, ransomware it's
Speaker 4: a big thing. But in the case of this one,
Speaker 4: in the case of rat yes, you can install like
Speaker 4: malwares something like that on a CD.
Speaker 3: That's entirely possible.
Speaker 4: You can put pretty much anything on a CD, and
Speaker 4: then it looks like he's he's running this CD through
Speaker 4: the entire network, which you can install malware through pivoting
Speaker 4: a network's open ports or open eyps, so that you
Speaker 4: can put the same power on several different computers. But
Speaker 4: it's it's never a good idea to let everybody know
Speaker 4: what the heck you're doing if you're doing something that
Speaker 4: you shouldn't necessarily be doing.
Speaker 3: In the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean again, it's there for dramatic effect.
Speaker 1: But if you're the one person in the cyber cafe
Speaker 1: who isn't visibly freaking out when all the computers switch over,
Speaker 1: here's a here's a little hint, they're going to figure
Speaker 1: out it was you, right, I mean, that's kind of like,
Speaker 1: if you're the one guy not surprised that everything's on fire,
Speaker 1: you probably set the fire.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying.
Speaker 1: Shannon and I will be back to talk more about
Speaker 1: the worst hacking scenes from Hollywood this quick break. Our
Speaker 1: next example comes from one of my favorite movies of
Speaker 1: all time.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, me too. I love this movie, The Net.
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh it's so great. It's so cheesy and wonderful.
Speaker 1: The Net also is a movie in which a character
Speaker 1: actually has her identity stolen, and very prescient for its time.
Speaker 1: It's not like it got everything wrong. Some of the
Speaker 1: stuff it actually predicted quite well. For example, best prediction
Speaker 1: of any movie ever it predicted being able to order
Speaker 1: pizza online. This was before the dot com bubble even began.
Speaker 1: This the movie came out in the mid nineties, so
Speaker 1: this was actually pretty advanced. The people behind the film said,
Speaker 1: we wanted to be able to let our character make
Speaker 1: an activity online that would stress how she was distancing
Speaker 1: herself from other people.
Speaker 2: She was trying her best to.
Speaker 1: Limit the amount of interaction she had with other human beings.
Speaker 1: It stresses her loneliness, also her paranoia to some extent,
Speaker 1: and it was a neat way of doing it, and
Speaker 1: it also ended up being accurate. However, that being said,
Speaker 1: there's a bit in the very beginning. It's right when
Speaker 1: she's going to order pizza, when she's on the phone
Speaker 1: with a client and she does essentially tech support and
Speaker 1: really helps people who have been attacked by a virus
Speaker 1: recover their systems, and it takes her like no time
Speaker 1: at all to identify what the virus is on this
Speaker 1: customer's computer, which she does not have access to.
Speaker 2: She's accessing it remotely.
Speaker 1: She identifies the virus, she sequesters the virus. She removes
Speaker 1: the virus, plus apparently does repairs to the system so
Speaker 1: it so it starts working again, and that takes her
Speaker 1: less time than it would take for her to order
Speaker 1: the pizza. That's incredible. I mean, she should Every security
Speaker 1: firm should hire her.
Speaker 3: She's a genius apparently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I like making.
Speaker 4: The comparison between Sandra Bullock's character in the Net to
Speaker 4: an actual penetration tester that we have in the two
Speaker 4: thousands or in the twenty tens. In the twenty tens,
Speaker 4: penetration testers go through contracts. They go through a company.
Speaker 4: They're usually hired on by a large firm to go
Speaker 4: through their security and make sure everything's okay. They have
Speaker 4: to write reports, everything has to go through a financial
Speaker 4: financialist before they're actually paid for any of their work.
Speaker 4: They don't actually discuss how much they're getting paid with
Speaker 4: the client. They discuss how much they're getting paid with
Speaker 4: the company that they are salaried through. So in the
Speaker 4: case of Sandra Bullock's character here, she's talking about you know,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, I mean he's like, yeah, I'm gonna pay
Speaker 4: X amount of money and he's like, I don't care
Speaker 4: how much it costs, it's worth it, and that's not
Speaker 4: necessarily something that you would talk to the penetration tester about, right,
Speaker 4: because when you do, they're going to make their they're
Speaker 4: going to make their time with you as a client
Speaker 4: much longer to make it seem like a much more
Speaker 4: important case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you if you do, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like what Scotty would say is that
Speaker 1: he'd say he'd figure out how long it was going
Speaker 1: to take him to do a task, and then he
Speaker 1: would then he would give the captain a time that
Speaker 1: was longer than what it would take him to do.
Speaker 1: In that case, it wasn't so that he could get overtime.
Speaker 1: It was so that he could impress the captain by
Speaker 1: finishing early.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: It's like I told you it was going to take
Speaker 1: me three days, but I really put my nose to
Speaker 1: the grindstone and got it done in a day and
Speaker 1: a half and the Captain's and pressed like, wow, you're amazing.
Speaker 2: In this case, it would be yeah, that's probably going
Speaker 2: to take me.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know a week's worth of work
Speaker 1: and you're done in you know, five hours, then you're
Speaker 1: just billing the time, right.
Speaker 4: So so during the conversation that needs two have, it
Speaker 4: sounds like she's a like she's a red teamer, Like
Speaker 4: she's a penetration tester that works for a big security firm,
Speaker 4: and she's she's talking to her client though, but but
Speaker 4: her actions make me think that she's a freelancer.
Speaker 3: So I'm not sure what's going on here.
Speaker 4: I think that they that it was produced a little
Speaker 4: bit confusingly, But now that I understand how penetration testing works,
Speaker 4: even though I am not one myself, I was quite
Speaker 4: confused by this scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I I I think it was. Out of all
Speaker 1: the errors that we're talking about today, it's one of
Speaker 1: the less egregious, because, again, unless you were to show
Speaker 1: like that time had obviously passed a significant amount so
Speaker 1: that she had had time to really identify what was
Speaker 1: happening and then respond to it, it's not that big
Speaker 1: a deal compared to some of the other versions that
Speaker 1: we've got in this episode. So I'm I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give this one a pass. It's not as bad
Speaker 1: as could have been. It's certainly not as bad as
Speaker 1: the next one.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, can you just talk about ncis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about n CIS for a bit, because
Speaker 1: you know, in CIS, first of all, it has one
Speaker 1: of the most infamous awful hacking scenes in Hollywood, and
Speaker 1: so much so that there are multiple versions of the
Speaker 1: clip we're going to talk about on YouTube. My favorite
Speaker 1: title too Idiots One Keyboard. But yeah, let's talk about
Speaker 1: n CIS for a second here. So we've got a
Speaker 1: character in NCIS who is sort of she's the young
Speaker 1: hip hacker character who is the one responding in this
Speaker 1: particular scene to an attack that's coming in that attack
Speaker 1: is being represented by lots and lots of pop ups
Speaker 1: of just strings of characters meaninglessly appearing all over her
Speaker 1: her computer monitor, and her response is that each one
Speaker 1: of these is absolutely meaningful, and she knows exactly what's happening,
Speaker 1: that the hacker is attacking their systems and trying.
Speaker 2: To get at very.
Speaker 1: Very secure data and is quickly winnowing through all the
Speaker 1: different security and so she's just furiously typing on her
Speaker 1: keyboard in response, and her coworker, who's standing next to
Speaker 1: her and asking her questions and giving her suggestions that
Speaker 1: don't necessarily mean very much, ends up deciding to help
Speaker 1: her out by simultaneously typing on the same keyboard she's
Speaker 1: typing on, So you have four hands typing on the
Speaker 1: same keyboard at the same time. So bad, dear Hollywood.
Speaker 1: That is not how keyboards work. A computer can't tell
Speaker 1: which person is typing which thing. It would just come
Speaker 1: out as a super garbled mess.
Speaker 4: Not to mention the frustration, like, have you ever had
Speaker 4: somebody come up and just like start pressing on your keyboard,
Speaker 4: because it's very irritating.
Speaker 2: Is there's no way.
Speaker 4: That these two characters would be able to type on
Speaker 4: the same keyboard at the same time.
Speaker 3: That's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: It feels like a violation when someone does that to me,
Speaker 1: Like if they're like move, even if it if it's
Speaker 1: preceded by move, I'll show you. I'm like, no, no,
Speaker 1: you'll tell me and then I'll do it. This is
Speaker 1: my computer and I don't let you touch it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: This was one of those sequences where really the whole
Speaker 1: purpose of this scene was to show how a non
Speaker 1: tech savvy, pragmatic guy has a solution to a problem
Speaker 1: that the two tech wizards completely overlook. So in a way,
Speaker 1: it's it's about taking down the tech wizard folks. A
Speaker 1: peg or two because they're not thinking practically, they're too
Speaker 1: filled with panic.
Speaker 2: So you've got these.
Speaker 1: Two characters who are responding in real time to a
Speaker 1: security threat as if they're doing battle with the hacker.
Speaker 2: And this is a common.
Speaker 1: Thread in a lot of television and movies. It's not
Speaker 1: terribly accurate in the real world scenarios, but they are
Speaker 1: acting like the keystrokes they're doing are going to end
Speaker 1: up either booting the hacker out or securing some of
Speaker 1: the data away from the hacker, and they're just furiously
Speaker 1: typing when the pragmatic guy walks behind the computer system
Speaker 1: and unplugs it, thus saving them from the hack because
Speaker 1: now there's no connection for the hacker to exploit.
Speaker 4: Except what he did was actually make it worse because
Speaker 4: now they don't have a computer that they can work
Speaker 4: through to hopefully find the hack, find the open port
Speaker 4: that this guy is coming through.
Speaker 3: This attacker, and close it off.
Speaker 4: So he's unplugging a computer as opposed to going to
Speaker 4: the server and cutting that off and turning off the server.
Speaker 4: He's just unplugging one of the open PCs, right, And
Speaker 4: that just drives me nuts. This int okay, I wanted
Speaker 4: to throw things at my TV when I was.
Speaker 3: Watching this scene, because I was like, this is so bad.
Speaker 2: It's so bad.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one, this one's probably out of all the
Speaker 1: ones that we have, this one's probably maybe not the worst,
Speaker 1: but it's way up there, and it's it's clearly played
Speaker 1: for laughs, at least a little bit for laughs. Maybe
Speaker 1: not like outright belly laughs, like you know, anyone who
Speaker 1: knows what a computer is is probably chuckling, but it's
Speaker 1: obviously played for this little moment where the pragmatic character
Speaker 1: can kind of be a smug jerkface and be like,
Speaker 1: huh see, I thought of it first, and the other
Speaker 1: two characters like why didn't we think of that?
Speaker 2: And as as Shannon points out.
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't solve the problem, No, it does not.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend if anyone is unfamiliar with this go
Speaker 1: look for NCIS two it hits one keyboard and watch
Speaker 1: this scene and really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: I also liked when I was reading.
Speaker 1: Comments about this one, one of the comments I read
Speaker 1: in that subreddit was the part of the scene that
Speaker 1: completely pulls me out of it is the fact that
Speaker 1: when the guy takes a bite of his sandwich, it's
Speaker 1: such a tiny little bite. It lost all credibility with me.
Speaker 2: There. No one needs a sandwich like that.
Speaker 3: Oh it's so funny.
Speaker 2: Redditors are great.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: Next on our list is Swordfish, which actually has quite
Speaker 1: a few awful, awful hacking scenes, some of which involve
Speaker 1: material not.
Speaker 2: Appropriate for this podcast, and so I did not include
Speaker 2: those scenes when I wrote.
Speaker 1: There's one in particular where a guy is being tested
Speaker 1: to see if his hacking skills are laite enough to
Speaker 1: join Travolta scene.
Speaker 2: It is awful.
Speaker 1: It is terrible in so many ways, but that one
Speaker 1: was so bad that I was like, no, I can't
Speaker 1: that's not going on the list. So instead I looked
Speaker 1: at a different one. And Hugh Jackman's playing the hacker
Speaker 1: and he's trying to get access to a system, and
Speaker 1: the way that they decided to depict this was they
Speaker 1: show a little cube on the screen and he's building
Speaker 1: onto this cube with other cubes to make what looks
Speaker 1: like essentially a Rubik's cube sized digital construct. It's all virtual,
Speaker 1: there's no actual physical cubes, and this is what represents
Speaker 1: getting access to a system somehow, building a three dimensional
Speaker 1: virtual object out of smaller three dimensional virtual objects. Now, Shannon,
Speaker 1: is that, in fact, how that looks like when you're
Speaker 1: trying to access a system you're confronted with a Rubik's
Speaker 1: cube that you have to construct virtually.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I'm gonna say no shucks. So for me,
Speaker 4: this looks like they are trying to show their viewers
Speaker 4: a graphical compilation of what coding would look like once
Speaker 4: you finally compile your code and you get the aok
Speaker 4: that everything is okay and there are no errors. So
Speaker 4: that's what it looks like to me. If you see
Speaker 4: actual code, if you see somebody building a virus or
Speaker 4: building a worm, or like in this case, Hugh Jackman's
Speaker 4: character is building a worm, you'll see lines and line
Speaker 4: hundreds of lines of code, and then at the end
Speaker 4: they'll probably choose, like going to the guy and choose
Speaker 4: to compile code, and then the interface that they're using
Speaker 4: will give them the okay and tell them that there
Speaker 4: are no errors. But in this case, he's building a
Speaker 4: Rubik's cube on his computer, and it looks nothing like
Speaker 4: what actual compilation looks like.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, compiling code is so to give you guys a
Speaker 1: little bit of an insight into how computers quote unquote think.
Speaker 1: We use computer languages in order to construct programs, and
Speaker 1: the computer languages are written in such a way that
Speaker 1: a computer understands what operation it needs to perform in
Speaker 1: order to progress through the program. Ultimately, that stuff gets
Speaker 1: compiled and you have like high level computer languages and
Speaker 1: low lane computer languages, and then you eventually get down
Speaker 1: to the point where you get to machine code, and
Speaker 1: that's where you're getting into the binary codes zeros and ones,
Speaker 1: where most humans, the vast majority of humans, nearly all humans,
Speaker 1: are not capable of reading that, at least not with
Speaker 1: a whole lot of time on their hands, right. So
Speaker 1: that's why we have these programming languages to kind of
Speaker 1: bridge the gap between the language that computers speak and
Speaker 1: the languages that we speak. So, if you're completely unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with coding languages or programming languages.
Speaker 2: And you take a look at it, it.
Speaker 1: Looks like nonsense, right it For someone who is completely unschooled,
Speaker 1: it looks like you would have to be a genius
Speaker 1: in order to use it. But in fact, it follows
Speaker 1: very specific rules. So once you learn those rules, you
Speaker 1: know it does take there is a learning curve, but
Speaker 1: you do get to a point where you start feeling
Speaker 1: a little confident with that stuff exactly.
Speaker 4: And there's plenty of programmers that I know who never
Speaker 4: are in every single rule in a specific language that
Speaker 4: they know, but they have books and books, they have,
Speaker 4: you know, definitions and posters and things of this nature
Speaker 4: so that they always have a reminder, so they're able
Speaker 4: to write different kinds of programs.
Speaker 3: But as long as.
Speaker 4: You know a few general rules for any language that
Speaker 4: you're working with, you can write a programs. It's very hard,
Speaker 4: it is very complicated, but it's possible.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it's not going to look like you're building
Speaker 1: a cube, unless, of course, your program, once executed, is
Speaker 1: a cube building program, in which case, if it looks
Speaker 1: like you're building a cube, congratulations you coded it correctly.
Speaker 1: We're going to take another quick break from the episode
Speaker 1: and we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: Our next one is one of my favorite examples of
Speaker 1: that because it takes me back to my childhood. I
Speaker 1: had a discussion with some of my coworkers here about
Speaker 1: this particular movie, and some of them couldn't remember ever
Speaker 1: seeing it. Some of them remembered seeing it as a
Speaker 1: kid on video. I remember seeing.
Speaker 2: This in the theater because I'm old. Superman three. So
Speaker 2: in Superman three.
Speaker 1: You've got a character played by Richard Pryor who is
Speaker 1: a computer programmer, and he goes to work for a
Speaker 1: company and.
Speaker 2: He's a data entry guy.
Speaker 1: For some reason, the data entry folks at this company
Speaker 1: all have to wear like slippers and stuff. It's almost
Speaker 1: like it's a clean room, like kind of a clean room,
Speaker 1: but not really a clean room. And he finds out
Speaker 1: that everyone in the company is paid. Their payment involves
Speaker 1: fractions of a cent that end up getting rounded down.
Speaker 1: So if this sounds like office space, it's very much
Speaker 1: the same sort of plot. He figures out, Hey, what
Speaker 1: if I took all the fractions of a cent that
Speaker 1: otherwise go unaccounted. They're just floating around out there, and
Speaker 1: I pay myself all those fractions of a cent, so
Speaker 1: that I make a real huge amount of money, because
Speaker 1: once you accumulate all of them, it actually amounts to
Speaker 1: something significant. But because each individual little appearance of it,
Speaker 1: it's tiny, no one takes notice of it. Right Like
Speaker 1: if I took a halfpenny, no one is going to
Speaker 1: care if I take a billion half pennies suddenly it matters.
Speaker 2: But he does this by staying late.
Speaker 1: One day and turning on his computer and he does
Speaker 1: type some stuff with one hand on a little bit
Speaker 1: of keyboard that then I'll make texts start to disappear
Speaker 1: and appear like one letter at a time, to a
Speaker 1: point where it's a very common thing in Hollywood, right
Speaker 1: that the display has some sort of weird effect to
Speaker 1: it that indicates that, yes, something is happening, like a
Speaker 1: hacker is attacking or the is being compromised. Once he
Speaker 1: does that, he types in a command that essentially just says, hey,
Speaker 1: pay all the fractions of a cent to me, and
Speaker 1: it's written out in more or less natural language, and
Speaker 1: then he hits enter and it works. A lot of
Speaker 1: problems with this, the big one being natural language. Like
Speaker 1: we just said just a second ago, computers do not
Speaker 1: understand the languages that we communicate with to each other,
Speaker 1: not on their own.
Speaker 2: They have to be taught how to do that.
Speaker 3: They don't automatically speak English.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you ever open up a command line on
Speaker 1: any kind of computer, doesn't matter what operating system pick one,
Speaker 1: whether it's Linux or DOS or whatever. You get to
Speaker 1: that command line and you try and type in full
Speaker 1: English sentences to see if you can make your computer
Speaker 1: to do stuff. You're going to be sorely disappointed. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work that way. It's not like a search bar
Speaker 1: with Google. I mean, the Web has really spoiled us,
Speaker 1: and that anyone who has not had experience with computers
Speaker 1: before the web was a thing doesn't really understand that
Speaker 1: when you get to the command line, it's not like
Speaker 1: a search field like you're.
Speaker 3: Not has spoiled us.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I side note again, I'm old enough where
Speaker 1: DOS was the way to interface with a computer when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, or Apple Basic, but I was
Speaker 1: mostly using DASS at that point. And then you had
Speaker 1: the Mac come out in nineteen eighty four. They took
Speaker 1: the Guy. They didn't create the guy, the graphic user interface.
Speaker 1: They actually kind of took that from Xerox Park. Xerox
Speaker 1: Park really kind of pioneered that. Then Microsoft came out
Speaker 1: with Windows, and I resisted switching to Windows for a
Speaker 1: very long time and eventually broke down to get Windows
Speaker 1: when it became clear that all the software coming out
Speaker 1: only would be supported through Windows and not through DOS.
Speaker 1: And to this day I'm bitter about that because I
Speaker 1: taught myself all the tree commands.
Speaker 2: Darn it.
Speaker 4: I grew up with Windows since I was a kid,
Speaker 4: so it was always I started in the gooey graphical
Speaker 4: user interface.
Speaker 3: I didn't start with commands.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this is where Shannon makes me feel old.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was born in the eighties, so I think
Speaker 4: that's the difference.
Speaker 2: That's that's fair. That's that's fair. Go ahead.
Speaker 3: I love you, Jonathan.
Speaker 2: I love you too, Shannon. It's fine. Every every every
Speaker 2: co host I have.
Speaker 1: Makes me feel old because I'm older than everyone but
Speaker 1: one podcaster at this company.
Speaker 2: So pray continue.
Speaker 4: So I actually liked this Superman three scene because back
Speaker 4: in the day before I was born, it was very
Speaker 4: popular among people all over the place, no matter what
Speaker 4: company you were working with, to deal with fractions of
Speaker 4: a penny, because even a penny as a change in
Speaker 4: pricing would be a lot of money. So people would
Speaker 4: be like, Okay, well it's a penny and a half.
Speaker 4: And I believe at one point there was even a
Speaker 4: half cent coin that was distributed in the United States.
Speaker 3: So this was a thing.
Speaker 4: You can still see it in this day and age
Speaker 4: at gas stations. Whenever you go to a gas station,
Speaker 4: you see on the sign it says like gas is
Speaker 4: two ninety five and nine tenths of a penny. That's
Speaker 4: from back in the day one they would use these exact,
Speaker 4: precise measurements for gasoline distribution at gas stations.
Speaker 3: So that really is a thing. But the whole hacking
Speaker 3: scenario of this scene is very false.
Speaker 4: You can't do a specific distribution of money in that nature,
Speaker 4: and anybody who has act sus to that kind of
Speaker 4: information who is working for a company should not have
Speaker 4: that access in the first pace, especially if they're they're
Speaker 4: getting paid and they're not like a chief operating manager
Speaker 4: of that company.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the idea that you would have these dumb terminals,
Speaker 1: like i am assuming they were dumb terminals. I'm assuming
Speaker 1: they were all connected to a main system as opposed
Speaker 1: to each being individual computers. But either in either case
Speaker 1: you would have limitations on what any of those terminals
Speaker 1: could access. But because of his leap programming skills, he's
Speaker 1: able to bypass that and get access to the mainframe.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure they use it as a mainframe.
Speaker 1: Mainframe, by the way, is also a great general term
Speaker 1: that Hollywood has misused throughout all the computer films. But
Speaker 1: it's one of the things that's never explained how he
Speaker 1: does it. It's just it's just a thing that happens
Speaker 1: in the movie.
Speaker 2: Doesn't you know. They're not drawing attention to it.
Speaker 1: It's not an important thing other than the fact to
Speaker 1: illustrate that one he is smart. Two he doesn't see
Speaker 1: anything ethically wrong with bending the rules because in his mind,
Speaker 1: these fractions of a cent, they're not doing anything right.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not in an account, they're not being
Speaker 1: used by the company. They're just they're just kind of
Speaker 1: loose somehow. They're they're they're in the company's ownership, but
Speaker 1: no one's doing anything with it. So therefore, if no
Speaker 1: one's doing anything with it, no one's going to miss
Speaker 1: them when they're gone. So that's kind of how he
Speaker 1: justifies it, and eventually he becomes one of the he's
Speaker 1: more of a reluctant villain in the movie, but he's
Speaker 1: one of the villains in Superman three. Ah Okay, that's
Speaker 1: a If you have not seen Superman three, good job.
Speaker 1: Continue on that track. Don't feel tempted to change that.
Speaker 2: It is not a good movie.
Speaker 1: It's better than Superman four. Although my coworker Joe would
Speaker 1: probably trounce me for saying, so, uh, Superman four is awful.
Speaker 2: The next move.
Speaker 1: The next example we have is Numbers, which I love
Speaker 1: just because of the way it mischaracterizes IRC, which is,
Speaker 1: there's a scene in which people are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what these what these hackers, these two different hackers
Speaker 1: are trying to do, and they don't know, and they
Speaker 1: aren't sure how they're going to track down the hackers
Speaker 1: and learn what they're trying to do. But then one
Speaker 1: of the characters says, oh, we got to go on
Speaker 1: I R C because that's where all the hackers go
Speaker 1: to chat. And they use handles, you know, they don't
Speaker 1: use the real name they use. They use handles on
Speaker 1: I RC and that way they can secretly chat to
Speaker 1: each other. And then they use this weird meaningless analogy
Speaker 1: talking about two ships that are sailing across the ocean
Speaker 1: and they meet in the middle of the ocean and
Speaker 1: they exchange illegal goods and then they sail away, and
Speaker 1: because the wake of a ship fades so quickly, they
Speaker 1: leave no trace behind.
Speaker 2: That's the same thing as I R C.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: They actually do this whole sequence where that that ship
Speaker 1: analogy I just talked about is visualized on screen because folks,
Speaker 1: I r C is boring, Like showing I r C
Speaker 1: on screen is incredibly dull, So it's way more exciting
Speaker 1: to have a visualization of a meaningless ship analogy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I r C is super boring to look at, but
Speaker 4: it's very fun. You can make lots of friends in
Speaker 4: I r C, so it's it is called Internet relay chat,
Speaker 4: so that is a sure thing. People do use lead
Speaker 4: speak in I r C, uh, even though lead speak
Speaker 4: is not that hard to read, right, And her definition
Speaker 4: going into the ships made absolutely no sense to me
Speaker 4: as an I r C user, because when I pop
Speaker 4: into I r C and then when I leave, my
Speaker 4: chats are still there, and they are still there for
Speaker 4: anybody to see who was also logged in at the
Speaker 4: same time.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: So saying that they disappear after X amount of time
Speaker 4: is not necessarily true because anybody with a very very
Speaker 4: simple script can capture everything that was said in an
Speaker 4: IRC for X amount of time, for whatever time that
Speaker 4: they want to save a file for, and then they
Speaker 4: can upload that file anywhere that they want to. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so that this information disappears is completely false.
Speaker 1: I love that there's a I'm pretty sure it's the
Speaker 1: same one. I'm not watching the clips as i'm going
Speaker 1: through them, so I'm not entirely certain.
Speaker 2: But I think there's a moment in this.
Speaker 1: Where they have a desperate like take a screen shot,
Speaker 1: take a screen shot, and she does it like at
Speaker 1: the last second before the connection's broken, and I was
Speaker 1: laughing so hard that the idea of oh, yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to take a screenshotter it's gone forever. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty ridiculous. And there is a funny little exchange where
Speaker 1: the lady says like they'll be speaking in lait, but
Speaker 1: don't worry, I also speak leaked, like, oh, screenwriter, you're
Speaker 1: so adorable.
Speaker 3: Oh so funny. Yeah, Lea, it's easy to speak, so
Speaker 3: anybody can do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's really it's really just replacing certain
Speaker 1: characters with other characters that look similar to the ones
Speaker 1: you're replacing, and then sometimes purposefully misspelling words because someone
Speaker 1: some at some point misspelled things people thought was funny
Speaker 1: and they went with it, like.
Speaker 2: Poone pone is a great example. Pwn.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be owned, but someone just did a
Speaker 1: typo and then that typo became the word yep.
Speaker 2: That's the lovely thing about it.
Speaker 1: And that's it for the first part of the Worst
Speaker 1: Hacking Scenes from Hollywood. Sadly, there's no shortage of subsequent
Speaker 1: terrible hacking scenes out of Hollywood. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things that admittedly can be a little tricky to portray
Speaker 1: in an exciting and dramatic fashion, and so a lot
Speaker 1: of liberties are taken when it comes to showing hacking
Speaker 1: on screen. Next Friday, we will have part two of
Speaker 1: this little two part series. Shannon again will be on
Speaker 1: the show and we'll talk more about the worst scenes
Speaker 1: well hacking scenes from Hollywood. Those the worst scenes from
Speaker 1: Hollywood would be a much longer show. I hope you
Speaker 1: are all well, and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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