Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for another tech Stuff classic
Speaker 1: and we actually have a part two.
Speaker 2: So last week, last Friday.
Speaker 1: We had The Worst Hacking Scenes from Hollywood Part one
Speaker 1: with Shannon Morse, and Shannon is back for this other
Speaker 1: classic episode, The Worst Hacking Scenes from Hollywood Part two.
Speaker 1: It originally published on September fourteenth, twenty sixteen. Enjoy Today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk more about some of the embarrassing
Speaker 1: examples out there in entertainment as well as some of
Speaker 1: the really good ones.
Speaker 2: And we're going to.
Speaker 1: Start off with a conversation about a pair of movies
Speaker 1: that not only did a disservice to hackers, but also
Speaker 1: virtual reality.
Speaker 2: We joined the conver station already in progress.
Speaker 1: Lawnmower Man and lawnmower Man Too, inspired by the work
Speaker 1: of Stephen King. So these movies are terrible, it could
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun to watch with a group
Speaker 1: of people who just want to see, like a really
Speaker 1: bad movie and make fun of it, you know. Mst
Speaker 1: three K style. I included a couple of eclips and
Speaker 1: I showed them to Shannon. One of them was a
Speaker 1: demonstration that hacking a system in this world isn't just
Speaker 1: graphical but immersive. So you're wearing like a head mounted display,
Speaker 1: and you're wearing gloves that allow you to interact with
Speaker 1: the virtual world.
Speaker 2: And so they're.
Speaker 1: Showing a character getting backdoor access to a system by
Speaker 1: slapping at hexagons inside the virtual space. So these hexagons
Speaker 1: are popping up in front of them, and he's slapping
Speaker 1: at them and eventually gets you know, access granted. Mostly
Speaker 1: it's getting access denied, but eventually access granted pops up
Speaker 1: and it looks like the only thing that he did
Speaker 1: differently was just that he hit it a little faster
Speaker 1: that time. So, in other words, it'd be equivalent to
Speaker 1: that NCIS scene we talked about earlier, where if you
Speaker 1: just tiede fast enough, you either hack in or you
Speaker 1: prevent a hack from happening. Obviously, this is not at
Speaker 1: all remotely realistic, but it is one of those where
Speaker 1: you look at and you you could tell the screenwriter
Speaker 1: was saying, well, I want to show that this character
Speaker 1: who has has found that he's very powerful in the
Speaker 1: virtual space, can access a system.
Speaker 2: How can I do that in a way that's not just.
Speaker 1: You know, it's over in a blink of an eye,
Speaker 1: and there's no way to show it visually, So they
Speaker 1: created this sort of three D display. This isn't one
Speaker 1: of those things we see in a lot of Hollywood
Speaker 1: movies where they try and visualize the navigating a secure
Speaker 1: system as like going through a maze.
Speaker 2: It happens a ton.
Speaker 3: And again, actually going through that maze of information that's
Speaker 3: located on a network is actually quite boring looking on camera.
Speaker 3: So they created this out by terrible virtual reality scene
Speaker 3: to actually give some kind of implementation, some kind of
Speaker 3: visual implementation to the people that are watching this movie.
Speaker 3: And it's pretty terrible. It's definitely not how gaining access
Speaker 3: to a network would work, but I thought it was hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Lawnmower Man two also has a scene that's similar to that.
Speaker 1: The characters are looking at what is just an equation
Speaker 1: on a computer screen. So they're looking at this equation
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out how to get access and
Speaker 1: one of the character says that she can't get past
Speaker 1: the memory lock to access the chain so the smarmy
Speaker 1: computer expert who's next to her says, well, all you
Speaker 1: have to do is just enhance the memory index, which
Speaker 1: already none of that makes any real sense. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like Star Trek technobabble where they talk about reversing
Speaker 1: the polarity it really, it's just there to say something
Speaker 1: technical is happening.
Speaker 2: And you don't need to understand what it is. It's
Speaker 2: kind of shorthand.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then a little yellow ball appears on the screen
Speaker 1: and the equation they're looking at it starts to rotate
Speaker 1: and starts to turn on its side and become a
Speaker 1: three dimensional maze again, so we get another example of
Speaker 1: accessing a system involves navigating through an actual three dimensional maze.
Speaker 1: He uses gesture controls to move this little yellow ball
Speaker 1: around until finally getting to where the data is. The
Speaker 1: whole time he's just using meaningless computer jargon incorrectly. And
Speaker 1: then the very the cherry on top of the Sunday
Speaker 1: is that he says to da, so uh, if you
Speaker 1: really want a good time, watch the hacking scene from
Speaker 1: lawnmower Man too. Both of those, obviously, are are in
Speaker 1: that same category of trying to visualize what this process
Speaker 1: would be like in a way that is interesting. I
Speaker 1: said that the worst a movie can do is not
Speaker 1: only be incorrect, but also fail to be entertaining, and
Speaker 1: then I would.
Speaker 2: Argue both of these fall into that category.
Speaker 3: I feel like if hacking was as entertaining as it
Speaker 3: is in lawnmower Man, I would have gotten into it
Speaker 3: at a much, much younger age.
Speaker 2: It's I remember lawnmower Man's one of them movies.
Speaker 1: I would often cite as being a real reason why
Speaker 1: virtual reality died in the mid nineties.
Speaker 4: So sad, yeah.
Speaker 1: Because the stuff that was around in the mid nineties
Speaker 1: was very, very primitive, right. You had like Dactyl Nightmare,
Speaker 1: these games that were just polygons, and they were very primitive.
Speaker 1: The gameplay was limited, the headsets you wore had to
Speaker 1: be supported on cables because they were so heavy they
Speaker 1: would really hurt your neck otherwise. And so when people
Speaker 1: saw what the actual state of the art of virtual
Speaker 1: reality was at the time compared to what they were
Speaker 1: seeing in films, that gap ended up making people say, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't good at all. I don't see any reason
Speaker 1: in putting any money toward this, and virtual reality died
Speaker 1: for about ten years, and now we're starting to see
Speaker 1: it get back into the consumer space with the success
Speaker 1: of Oculus Rift in HTCVI mean you can get your
Speaker 1: hands on one. We're starting to see it come back,
Speaker 1: but it took almost twenty years for it to recover.
Speaker 1: So thanks lawnmower Man. Not only were you a bad movie,
Speaker 1: but you killed v Are.
Speaker 4: It's all your fault.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not bitter or anything.
Speaker 1: There's a movie that we have to mention everyone that
Speaker 1: I when I posted on Twitter that I was going
Speaker 1: to do this, I had a lot of people say
Speaker 1: the entire movie of Hackers should be considered as part
Speaker 1: of this as a bad hacking scene.
Speaker 2: And Hackers is a great example.
Speaker 1: It's another one of those where it's a movie that
Speaker 1: was posing as an anti authoritarian kind of film, but
Speaker 1: in the safest way possible, like there was nothing.
Speaker 2: Really daring about it.
Speaker 1: And the opening sequence has a couple of characters trying
Speaker 1: to battle it out over one another, and one of
Speaker 1: them is it trying to create an intrusion into a system.
Speaker 1: The other one exit and then shuts everything down. So Shannon,
Speaker 1: typically when you're talking about things like a hacker intruding
Speaker 1: into a system, detecting that there's been an intrusion. We're
Speaker 1: not normally seeing this happen on a one versus one
Speaker 1: kind of basis in real time typically are we.
Speaker 3: Not necessarily a lot of times, what you'll see with
Speaker 3: a hack intrusion into a system, like you said, is
Speaker 3: that they will sit and watch and they will do
Speaker 3: a lot of recons so they'll try to figure out
Speaker 3: what's available for them, what can they see, and they'll
Speaker 3: wait for something to happen that'll give them even more access.
Speaker 3: And then if you have somebody that's working inside of
Speaker 3: that company that's being intruded upon, usually the first action
Speaker 3: that you will see is them trying to also collect
Speaker 3: information so they can find where this opening is, where
Speaker 3: this vulnerability is, and then they'll shut it down.
Speaker 4: And then after that they'll do.
Speaker 3: A whole whole research report on it and try to
Speaker 3: figure out like who actually did it, and probably take
Speaker 3: two enforcement agencies so that they can get the capture
Speaker 3: of the person and hopefully get them charged, because that's
Speaker 3: not a very good thing to do. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: you don't necessarily see people like duking it out like
Speaker 3: they do in package.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's usually you know, like, your first indication that
Speaker 1: something is wrong can often just be that you notice
Speaker 1: there's unusual amounts of data traffic across your network, and
Speaker 1: you might say, well, why why are we getting these spikes.
Speaker 1: If you're a savvy hacker, you're trying to mask your activity.
Speaker 1: You're kind of like trying to sneak in when a
Speaker 1: big crowd is going into a room. It's kind of
Speaker 1: the same thing, right, Like you're waiting for large transfers
Speaker 1: of data so that it masks what you are doing.
Speaker 1: In a lot of cases, if you're really really good
Speaker 1: at what you're doing, you're trying to kind of go
Speaker 1: in that route because it means you can stay hidden
Speaker 1: for longer and get more information.
Speaker 2: Information is valuable.
Speaker 1: Therefore, you don't want to just you know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to just break into a system and then immediately
Speaker 1: get booted out.
Speaker 2: Then what was the point of that other than to say.
Speaker 1: Hey, I figured out you have a vulnerability, And if
Speaker 1: that's your job, that's awesome. If you're a white hat
Speaker 1: hacker and your job is to hey, we've got this system,
Speaker 1: we think it's pretty secure, but we would like you
Speaker 1: to really put it to the test, and if you
Speaker 1: find any vulnerabilities, let us know, and then we can
Speaker 1: go and we can address that and fix them so
Speaker 1: that the bad guys don't have a chance to do
Speaker 1: it later.
Speaker 2: That's a legitimate job. But in the movies, that's not
Speaker 2: what you see.
Speaker 1: You see a person going like I've got access, and
Speaker 1: then almost immediately everything is gone pear shaped, right, like
Speaker 1: there's alarms going off, And that's just not how it works,
Speaker 1: not if you're doing it correctly anyway, exactly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: these movies, I mean, I appreciate it. Again, try to
Speaker 1: create dramatic tension, but not terribly accurate.
Speaker 3: One thing that I did like about hackers is the
Speaker 3: fact that he uses social engineering to first gain access
Speaker 3: to this network, which is something that's very very common
Speaker 3: with hackers in general, because humans are the first, the first.
Speaker 4: Failure in any network.
Speaker 3: They're the people, they're the ones that you can generally
Speaker 3: go to and find some kind of vulnerability because people
Speaker 3: inherently trust each other. And that's just a thing that
Speaker 3: humans need to understand is if somebody is asking you
Speaker 3: questions that you shouldn't necessarily give out, don't give them
Speaker 3: out because they might be social engineering you into giving
Speaker 3: out those answers. Hackers also does a good job of
Speaker 3: pinpointing people towards real life hacker culture. For example, there
Speaker 3: is one scene in Hackers where they read off the
Speaker 3: Hacker Manifesto, which was originally found in a hacker magazine,
Speaker 3: which you can only find if you were a part
Speaker 3: of that culture. And then later on in the movie
Speaker 3: they also show a real life booklet, a documentation book
Speaker 3: that shows that was actually used by phone operations to
Speaker 3: you know, put up new towers and things like that
Speaker 3: back in the nineteen eighties and nineties. So it has
Speaker 3: these real life parts of culture, but in reality the
Speaker 3: movie still has that terrible Hollywood hacking parts of it
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the social engineering. I'm
Speaker 1: actually going to do an episode about specifically about social
Speaker 1: engineering live at Dragon Con with our mutual friend Brian Brushwood.
Speaker 1: So Brushwood's going to come on the show. There's no
Speaker 1: one like a magician to tell you how to fool
Speaker 1: people right, how to lie to.
Speaker 2: People and get them to do the things you want
Speaker 2: them to do.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna we're going to go into social engineering
Speaker 1: big time on that episode. And I'm also glad you
Speaker 1: mentioned that things like the manuals that definitely is a
Speaker 1: big part of hacker culture, going all the way back
Speaker 1: to those phone freak days, where again the hackers were
Speaker 1: not necessarily trying to take advantage of a system. They
Speaker 1: just wanted to know how it worked. They were fascinated
Speaker 1: by the way it actually performed, and so when you
Speaker 1: got a manual, suddenly you had an insight into it.
Speaker 1: Even if the manual didn't go into deep detail about
Speaker 1: how the system as a whole operates on the back end,
Speaker 1: it could give you enough insight and then they start
Speaker 1: understanding like, oh wow, that's really cool that they have
Speaker 1: this system set up in such a way where they
Speaker 1: can route calls like this and they can dynamically change
Speaker 1: things over. And I'm glad you brought that up, because
Speaker 1: once again, being a hacker doesn't necessarily mean you're a
Speaker 1: terrible person at all. It may mean that you just
Speaker 1: have a deep curiosity that is only satisfied by learning
Speaker 1: how this stuff works. And it's not always easy to
Speaker 1: do that. Information is not always publicly available at all times.
Speaker 1: There have been times where it accidentally got publicly available.
Speaker 2: That's again going.
Speaker 1: Back to the phone freaks, there were some phone manuals
Speaker 1: that kind of were released to the public, not intentionally.
Speaker 1: It also wasn't considered to be a huge problem until
Speaker 1: the phone freakers got hold of it and suddenly you
Speaker 1: had all these people making weird calls long distance all
Speaker 1: over the place.
Speaker 4: So funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our next one is another case of people just
Speaker 1: throwing out terms without really having any meaning to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, the terms themselves have meaning, but not in
Speaker 1: the context of the lines. And it was from a
Speaker 1: CSI New York episode in which a character says, and
Speaker 1: this is a quote, I'll create a gooey interface using
Speaker 1: visual basics, see if I can track an IP address. So, Shannon,
Speaker 1: you want to track an IP address? Do you go
Speaker 1: to the trouble of developing a graphical user interface?
Speaker 3: No, what I would do is open up probably netcat
Speaker 3: in my terminals so that I can gain access and
Speaker 3: see what the heck's going on on that IP address. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Or if it was wireless and I was on a
Speaker 3: nearby network, I would I would probably use wireshark and
Speaker 3: WiFi Pinapple Like. It's not you don't have to create
Speaker 3: an entirely new graphical user interface table to be able
Speaker 3: to access an IP address and see what kind of
Speaker 3: traffic is happening to and from them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: Creating a graphical user interface literally makes no sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it has nothing to do with your ability to track
Speaker 1: an IP address, to identify an IP address. It has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with a graphical user interface is an
Speaker 1: interface in itself. Isn't a thing that performs these functions.
Speaker 1: It's just a way to visualize data and allow you
Speaker 1: to interact with it in some way. So Windows is
Speaker 1: a graphical user interface. It's a gooey. Any any program
Speaker 1: that has a graphical representation of information that allows you
Speaker 1: to move things around, that's a guy. Has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the actual function. It is separate from the function.
Speaker 1: It is just a way of manifesting what that data
Speaker 1: actually means. Now, you might go through the trouble of
Speaker 1: creating some sort of visual data if you wanted to
Speaker 1: explain it to someone else who wouldn't understand if you
Speaker 1: just handed them lines of code or whatever. But that's
Speaker 1: not what That doesn't even work in this case because
Speaker 1: we're talking about an IP address. We're an IP address.
Speaker 1: You don't need like a pie chart or you know,
Speaker 1: you don't need a graphical representation of what an IP
Speaker 1: address is.
Speaker 2: It's an IP address exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this one, this one kind of broke my brain
Speaker 1: for about twenty minutes when I when I watched it.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more terrible hacking scenes from Hollywood
Speaker 1: after this quick break. The next one I had on
Speaker 1: the list was another example of hackers battling it out
Speaker 1: in real time and seeing who could type the fastest.
Speaker 2: This happens all the time.
Speaker 1: There was also an episode of Chuck that did this
Speaker 1: where the best part of that episode of Chuck was
Speaker 1: that the guy that Chuck was facing against was played
Speaker 1: by Freddy Wong and his character was named Freddie. So
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my gosh, it's Freddy Wong, a
Speaker 1: YouTube star.
Speaker 2: Done good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fantastic, It's I think it's it's I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It's like Chuck versus the Hackathon or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's along those lines, and Freddy Wong plays the elite
Speaker 1: hacker that he goes up against. But in this case,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about criminal minds, which, as Nicholas Brendan in It,
Speaker 1: who I will always and forever think of as Xander
Speaker 1: from Buffy the vampire slayer.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And he's brought in to try and access another i
Speaker 1: think another employees system, but the employees kind of on
Speaker 1: the lamb and she's working with other folks who are
Speaker 1: trying to do this quietly without the rest of the
Speaker 1: organization taking any notice of them. And so he ends
Speaker 1: up getting into her system and trying to snoop around
Speaker 1: a bit. She notices, and then they have this duel.
Speaker 1: And as Shannon has already said, this is not really
Speaker 1: how we see things play out, but it does have
Speaker 1: the best line I think out of all the examples
Speaker 1: we have here, which is her gooey is mind blowing.
Speaker 3: And what you would actually see a hacker say is, well,
Speaker 3: check out this code.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, instead of all these little uh these little
Speaker 1: windows pop up. Also, it's funny because in the sequence
Speaker 1: as they're typing uh, there's like one point where the
Speaker 1: Xander I'll always call him Xander, is saying, well, here,
Speaker 1: see what you think about this, And all that you
Speaker 1: see on the screen is that one of the windows
Speaker 1: on the screen is dragged down to like the lower
Speaker 1: right corner.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you're the wow, you have a.
Speaker 1: Mouse so bad, But they're actually not even using computer mice,
Speaker 1: they're just typing on the keyboard and so so really
Speaker 1: all you're seeing are all these little windows being dragged
Speaker 1: around the screen and no real way of doing that easily.
Speaker 1: If you're just if you're using a keyboard, you're making
Speaker 1: it too hard on yourself, honestly.
Speaker 3: One thing is about hackers that I have noticed. I
Speaker 3: am not as good as a lot of my friends are,
Speaker 3: but keyboard shortcuts are huge in the hacker culture.
Speaker 4: Huge.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean, especially if you're doing the same
Speaker 1: sort of code over and over, if you're going to
Speaker 1: be using the same sort of strings repeatedly, having like
Speaker 1: various shortcuts and macro set up saves you so much time.
Speaker 1: It's way more efficient. And you know, I totally get that.
Speaker 1: I've worked on documents where that sort of thing made
Speaker 1: a lot of sense. And I don't even do coding
Speaker 1: right I'm doing I'm talking about working mostly in the
Speaker 1: legal world. I don't like to talk about it. It
Speaker 1: was a long time ago, and I really like to
Speaker 1: leave that chapter behind. I was working four lawyers. I
Speaker 1: wasn't being pursued by them. Another great example weird science.
Speaker 1: This one sort of gets a pass from me too.
Speaker 1: Because it's such a goofy movie. It's one of those
Speaker 1: films from the eighties where you kind of the basic
Speaker 1: premise is kind of squiky, well more than kind of squiky,
Speaker 1: because you've got two high school males who decide to
Speaker 1: try and create a girl so that they can do
Speaker 1: various sexual things with her, which is pretty awful. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that she ends up having a way
Speaker 1: more intelligence than either of them and a lot more
Speaker 1: agency than either of them. So it's okay because it
Speaker 1: could have gone way worse than that. I know, because
Speaker 1: I've watched a movie recently that took the other path
Speaker 1: and it was terrible. I was for a different podcast,
Speaker 1: So this one also has another depiction of characters trying
Speaker 1: to navigate through a three dimensional virtual environment in order
Speaker 1: to access a secure system. In this case, they're trying
Speaker 1: to create a simulated brain for their created female, but
Speaker 1: the computer that Wyatt has is only capable of getting
Speaker 1: her intelligence up to fifth grade level, and they need
Speaker 1: more than that, so they tap into some as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell, unidentified government agency to get more
Speaker 1: computing power, which in this film is equated to electricity.
Speaker 1: I guess because if you watch the sequence when they
Speaker 1: get access to the computers, everything at the government center
Speaker 1: is going crazy. You're seeing these real to real tapes
Speaker 1: that are spinning super fast. You see lights flashing, and
Speaker 1: then a power surge ends up blasting all of the
Speaker 1: electronics at Wyatt's home, like the microwave, and there's like
Speaker 1: a smoke detector. I think that explodes, and so that's
Speaker 1: what zooms in enough power to not only boost the
Speaker 1: intelligence of the character up to superhuman levels, but also
Speaker 1: somehow magically brings to life this woman. I'd say ninety
Speaker 1: seven percent accurate. Let's take a quick break to thank
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Speaker 3: Oh, so this is a great example the Weird Science series.
Speaker 3: Her segment is a great example of what you can
Speaker 3: actually do with more computing power. So in the real life,
Speaker 3: we have quantum computing, which people are currently working on
Speaker 3: to be able to decrypt encryption that is not currently vulnerable,
Speaker 3: but that requires more computing power. That's what quantum computing
Speaker 3: is all about, not necessarily more electricity.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, quantum computing, you know, using cubits where you
Speaker 1: have quantum bits that represent not just a zero, not
Speaker 1: just a one, but both and technically all values in
Speaker 1: between mean that you can complete calculations in parallel. And
Speaker 1: this is great for certain types of computing problems. Where
Speaker 1: you can have those parallel computing problems that are easily
Speaker 1: solved this way, other computing problems are not parallel, and
Speaker 1: in those cases, a quantum computer is not necessarily going
Speaker 1: to be any better than a classical computer. In fact,
Speaker 1: it may be worse depending upon how many cubits the
Speaker 1: quantum computer has.
Speaker 2: If it has enough, then it'll chug along.
Speaker 1: But for those parallel problems, including encryption, quantum computers will
Speaker 1: transform our world. The encryption that we rely upon today
Speaker 1: will be trivial if you have a significantly powerful quantum computer,
Speaker 1: because it will be able to go through all the
Speaker 1: possible answers that are the basis for your encryption. Typically
Speaker 1: we're talking about very large hash numbers and assign probabilities
Speaker 1: to them and figure out things like your encryption keys
Speaker 1: very very quickly. So that is interesting, But as you say,
Speaker 1: not just by It's not something that's done by pumping
Speaker 1: more electricity through a power line exactly. That would be
Speaker 1: a little little simplistic. Our next example is of course
Speaker 1: the most famous one in my mind. It's the one
Speaker 1: that I spent an episode ranting about previously on tex stuff.
Speaker 1: So I won't go into too much detail. It is
Speaker 1: Independence Day. It's like Kickbook movie. Yeah, I gotta tell you,
Speaker 1: if an alien race ever attacks us, I want Jeff
Speaker 1: Goldbloom to develop the computer virus that we're going to
Speaker 1: put on their on their ships so that they can't
Speaker 1: attack us.
Speaker 3: So this is a great example because he was was
Speaker 3: out of any prior knowledge, he was able to get
Speaker 3: a computer virus from his Mac laptop onto an alien
Speaker 3: spacecraft and be able to basically take them over and.
Speaker 4: Shut them down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there's so many things wrong with this one.
Speaker 1: We cannot be certain that any alien, intelligent alien civilization
Speaker 1: out there uses computers that remotely resemble the way our
Speaker 1: computers work. That's problem one. Problem two, we can't be
Speaker 1: certain that a virus that we would create for Earth
Speaker 1: based computers would ever be transferable onto an alien craft.
Speaker 2: Problem three, we don't even know how.
Speaker 1: We would do that, right, Like, it's do they have
Speaker 1: universal serial ports or something? What's how do you get
Speaker 1: your stuff, your your program into alien technology, even if
Speaker 1: it's wireless, the wireless protocols, those are things. We don't
Speaker 1: just have computers shooting off random radio waves. They have
Speaker 1: to follow very specific rules for computers to communicate with
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 2: Everything about this is wrong.
Speaker 3: And given the premise of this movie, I highly doubt
Speaker 3: that their alien technology would even remotely compare to ours.
Speaker 4: I'm sure that they would be.
Speaker 3: Much much stronger and much more, much more advanced than
Speaker 3: our own.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some of the arguments are that, oh, but see,
Speaker 1: the whole point of the movie is that the United
Speaker 1: States took technology from the Aliens and use that to
Speaker 1: boost our own technology so that we would advance faster.
Speaker 1: And my thought to that is how that considering that
Speaker 1: all the technology that we rely upon today is based
Speaker 1: off of very very very well documented advances in engineering,
Speaker 1: none of which are so dramatic as to say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's when the Aliens arrived.
Speaker 4: This is so great. I love that one.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I included this next one just for you, Shannon, because
Speaker 1: I know that you are a lover of Japanese culture,
Speaker 1: and so I found a great anime scene from tangin
Speaker 1: Tapa gurin Lagan gurn Hen and it involves a character
Speaker 1: going into a virtual world as a virtual avatar.
Speaker 2: Runs through a maze as we've.
Speaker 1: Seen before, finds a lock box that apparently has the
Speaker 1: data he wants to get At takes out a green
Speaker 1: glowing key, puts it in the lock box, tries to unlock.
Speaker 1: It doesn't work, so as he do, his virtual avatar
Speaker 1: head butts the box repeatedly till it breaks open.
Speaker 2: He grabs hold of a red sphere, which.
Speaker 1: Represents the data he wants, and then his character eats
Speaker 1: the data and that's how they analyze it.
Speaker 2: And boy do I wish that's the way it worked.
Speaker 4: Oh that's hilarious. I just I hope that it tasted good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I mean it is a virtual character,
Speaker 1: so I guess you could technically assume it tastes any
Speaker 1: way you like it to taste. I watched this and
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is delightful, but it's it's also
Speaker 1: again not trying to play this as this is how
Speaker 1: real hackers are. This is obviously a fantasy sci fi
Speaker 1: world that we're looking at, but one of the most
Speaker 1: entertaining versions of that meme that I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: I just love it, and like, just watching that scene
Speaker 3: makes me want to watch the entire.
Speaker 4: Anime because it's just so ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like somebody trying.
Speaker 3: To brute force, but their implementation of brute forcing is headbutts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, literal brute force, like not not putting password after
Speaker 1: password attempt through a password manager, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 1: literally attacking a virtual box with a virtual headbutt. It's wonderful.
Speaker 1: The last little bit I have on here, this one.
Speaker 1: This one doesn't really count because it was done on purpose.
Speaker 1: But there was a segment on the Late Show with
Speaker 1: Stephen Colbert who had Michael Ian Black on Michael Ian
Speaker 1: Black who was in the state and tons of other stuff,
Speaker 1: and Michael Ian Black explained that he had dramatic acting
Speaker 1: chops that he felt he never got a chance to
Speaker 1: really exercise. He's known as a comedic actor, and that
Speaker 1: he always wanted his dream role is that of a
Speaker 1: hacker on a police procedural show, because it meant that
Speaker 1: he could dress in nice clothes, sit down behind a desk,
Speaker 1: and everything he would do would seem really important. He says,
Speaker 1: it's a dream job. And so then they do a
Speaker 1: segment where Stephen Colbert's show gets hacked and Michael Ian
Speaker 1: Black comes back out to fight off against the hack.
Speaker 1: It is a send up of all the tropes we've
Speaker 1: been mentioning so far in this episode, and if you
Speaker 1: have not seen it. I recommend going out and watching
Speaker 1: it because it's hilarious.
Speaker 3: My favorite part is the fact that he comes out
Speaker 3: with black lipstick on and he's like biker gloves, which
Speaker 3: first off, would be incredibly hard to type in yep,
Speaker 3: wearing those gloves. And second off, like the hackers, I know,
Speaker 3: do you not wear black lipstick, especially if they're male. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The first one of the first things he says is
Speaker 1: talking about how he's gonna be typing, and then his
Speaker 1: typing will in no way be hampered by the fact
Speaker 1: he's wearing fingerless biker gloves, so he's actually he actually
Speaker 1: brings attention to that, and there is a funny there's
Speaker 1: a funny moment he's bent over Stephen Colbert's desk and
Speaker 1: he's typing furiously, not really typing, he's just slapping at
Speaker 1: the keyboard furiously. And then it becomes clear that his
Speaker 1: lines are on the screen and he scrolled past them,
Speaker 1: and so he's like, I'm trying to find my line.
Speaker 1: So there's the But it's great because they just roll
Speaker 1: with it, they just keep on going. So it's fantastic
Speaker 1: to see that kind of self aware take on the
Speaker 1: way hackers and hacking culture has been portrayed in the
Speaker 1: popular media. We're going to take another quick break and
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more of the worst hacking
Speaker 1: scenes from Hollywood. We've harped on a lot of different
Speaker 1: shows in movies about being terrible or being inaccurate, but
Speaker 1: there are some examples out there that are trying really
Speaker 1: hard to be respectful and realistic when it comes to
Speaker 1: hacker culture. One of the ones that leaps to mind
Speaker 1: is Mister Robot, a series where hacking plays a very
Speaker 1: important part. It's not like it's all about hacking, but
Speaker 1: that's an important plot device in several episodes.
Speaker 2: And they name.
Speaker 1: Real security firms, they name real penetration teams that actually
Speaker 1: go and do the sort of testing. They name real
Speaker 1: software packages that are meant to either help someone commit
Speaker 1: one of these attacks or defend against them.
Speaker 2: They use real products.
Speaker 1: They're so it's clear that people who are working on
Speaker 1: the show do their research.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's very clear, and in fact, I have a
Speaker 3: very close working relationship with the team over at Mister
Speaker 3: Robot to make sure that they get our products right,
Speaker 3: because they have shown very recently one of hack Five's
Speaker 3: products called the USB robber Ducky.
Speaker 2: They have a.
Speaker 3: Team over there that includes somebody who used to work
Speaker 3: for the FBI, so they have actual people who have
Speaker 3: worked with security and with privacy and they have a
Speaker 3: general understanding, but they still like to talk to real
Speaker 3: life hackers to make sure that everything that they show
Speaker 3: on the show is legit and is an actual hack.
Speaker 3: Mister Robot is such a great example because it gives
Speaker 3: it perfect real life scenario where you have people that
Speaker 3: are fighting back.
Speaker 4: You have people that are.
Speaker 3: Fighting back against you know, the big corpse and trying
Speaker 3: to do something that's right for the little guy, which
Speaker 3: you do see a lot in real life hacking cases.
Speaker 3: A lot of times people will go after large corporations
Speaker 3: because they don't necessarily agree with their tactics, or they
Speaker 3: don't agree with how much they're paying their employees or
Speaker 3: something like that. So I just I love watching Mister
Speaker 3: Robot because it gives me the chance to look at
Speaker 3: it and be like, like, oh, what they're showing right
Speaker 3: now is a real it's a real hack.
Speaker 4: Like they're actually showing this too. A huge fan.
Speaker 3: Base of people who wouldn't necessarily be interested in this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff unless they were watching a show. So
Speaker 3: I just love that they're bringing such a huge fan
Speaker 3: base into what we do on a day to day basis.
Speaker 1: And I like that not only are they taking these
Speaker 1: steps to make sure that the stuff they portray is accurate,
Speaker 1: but they are even going so far as certain aspects
Speaker 1: that we do see reflected in the news. You were
Speaker 1: mentioning this shan and things like someone being on the
Speaker 1: inside of a company and for one reason or another,
Speaker 1: they decide to aid someone who wants to access that
Speaker 1: company's information, and they're doing so knowingly. It's not that
Speaker 1: they've been tricked into it. We see this where we
Speaker 1: have their hackers who one of the best things, one
Speaker 1: of the best tools you can have is making friends
Speaker 1: with someone who works for the company that you want
Speaker 1: to try and access, like you want to get into
Speaker 1: their system. And if it's someone who's disgruntled for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: maybe they were looked over for promotion, maybe they don't
Speaker 1: like what the company is doing, maybe what the company's
Speaker 1: purpose is conflicts with their own ethical code. They might
Speaker 1: feel like helping someone out is the right choice. And
Speaker 1: even if they themselves are not the ones doing the
Speaker 1: programming or or whatever. When it comes to it they
Speaker 1: might be the ones who allow the access in the
Speaker 1: first place. We do see that in real life, and
Speaker 1: there are sometimes where we have to ask the question
Speaker 1: like was this someone from the inside or was this
Speaker 1: someone who attacked from an external site.
Speaker 2: Again, going back to Sony.
Speaker 1: There's still a lot of argument about who ultimately was
Speaker 1: responsible for that. At the time, the two big arguments
Speaker 1: that were coming out was that it was either someone
Speaker 1: in North Korea who had done this, or someone who
Speaker 1: was in the pay of North Korea, like a state
Speaker 1: agent in other words, or it was someone who used
Speaker 1: to work for Sony or was currently working for Sony
Speaker 1: and they did not like something that happened, and so
Speaker 1: as a result ended up stealing a ton of information
Speaker 1: and dumping it online for public review.
Speaker 2: And then the.
Speaker 1: North Korea part just became a great smoke screen for
Speaker 1: that burst. I saw that a lot of security experts,
Speaker 1: at least at the time, felt more inclined to believe
Speaker 1: it was the second possibility, that it was someone from
Speaker 1: the inside and not necessarily a state sponsored attack. I
Speaker 1: don't know if that opinion ultimately changed. I've honestly lost
Speaker 1: track of the Sony story at this point because it
Speaker 1: kind of died down after that initial flare of controversy
Speaker 1: around all the different elements. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The interesting thing that I found about that is a
Speaker 3: lot of the friends that I have in hacker culture
Speaker 3: just move on because there are so many different hacks
Speaker 3: that you see in our day and age that they
Speaker 3: don't have time to go back and.
Speaker 4: Discuss the Sony hack.
Speaker 3: And disclaimer, I did do a bunch of videos for
Speaker 3: Signal by Sony, which was a different, different core company
Speaker 3: inside of Sony that was doing these shows that I
Speaker 3: was working with.
Speaker 4: It wasn't the entertainment one that got hacked.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I definitely went to them when I got
Speaker 3: that job, and I was like, you sure you want
Speaker 3: to hire me because that thing happened to you guys,
Speaker 3: and I'm kind of a hacker, so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm pleased that mister Robot is out there.
Speaker 1: You were mentioning before we went on on the recording,
Speaker 1: before we started recording that that Silicon Valley also typically
Speaker 1: does a pretty good job of portraying hacking in a
Speaker 1: in a realistic way.
Speaker 3: They do so Silicon Valley. I actually hired one of
Speaker 3: my friends, Rob Fuller, who you can see in the
Speaker 3: credits of several of their episodes to give them a
Speaker 3: good overview, a good synopsis of what they should be
Speaker 3: showing on their show and what would be fake, what
Speaker 3: would be called out. So he helped, and he's actually
Speaker 3: a penetration tester. He does this as his day job,
Speaker 3: and he's been doing it for you know, a couple
Speaker 3: of decades, I believe, so he was the perfect person
Speaker 3: for them to go to to say, you know, is
Speaker 3: this right?
Speaker 4: Is this correct?
Speaker 3: Can you can you actually build a script for us
Speaker 3: to show on on camera so that we don't get
Speaker 3: called out by our fan base, a lot of which
Speaker 3: is going to be the Silicon Valley, you know, gurus
Speaker 3: that actually do coding on a day day and day
Speaker 3: out basis. So Mister Robot and Siliconbat Valley both have
Speaker 3: hired on several people who have worked in security and
Speaker 3: penetration testing, information technology, things of that nature so that
Speaker 3: they can get it right on camera. And I think
Speaker 3: that's very important because what we're finding in this in
Speaker 3: this genre, in this career career path is that.
Speaker 4: Where there's a lot of people who lose.
Speaker 3: Interest very very quickly in it because it is hard,
Speaker 3: it is ever changing, and it's complicated, and you have
Speaker 3: to go to school for it, and you have to
Speaker 3: get certificates that increased your knowledge, and you have to
Speaker 3: renew those certificates day in and day out every year.
Speaker 4: So it's expensive to stay in this career too.
Speaker 3: Hopefully you get a company or get a job with
Speaker 3: a company that you know will pay for those certificates
Speaker 3: for you. Yeah, So the fact that they're showing these
Speaker 3: real life scenarios on camera, I'm hoping that it will
Speaker 3: increase more interest in this in this genre of work,
Speaker 3: because we really need more people to be interested in
Speaker 3: it in the long term, because it is so so
Speaker 3: important for companies as a whole, especially if they're holding
Speaker 3: user data, to be secure and to be private and
Speaker 3: to be very conscious of what they're doing behind the
Speaker 3: scenes as opposed to just making a website pretty.
Speaker 4: The things that are most important.
Speaker 3: To me are security and privacy, and it's it's very
Speaker 3: important to me that more and more companies get involved
Speaker 3: with this information and get a much broader understanding of
Speaker 3: how important it is to actually pay money to make
Speaker 3: sure that you have good security.
Speaker 1: And to that end, I mean, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: movie that's coming out later on this year, I believe
Speaker 1: called I. It's got Pierce brosen in in it, uh.
Speaker 1: And in that film, there's this idea of privacy and
Speaker 1: security plays a huge part of it, as well as
Speaker 1: the Internet of Things, which again is a great illustration
Speaker 1: of why security is so important. We have more and
Speaker 1: more devices that are are opening up opportunities to be
Speaker 1: a point of entry for a hacker, right like if
Speaker 1: you have not if you haven't designed your IoT device
Speaker 1: to also be secure and encrypted, that's a potential in
Speaker 1: depending upon how it communicates with the rest of your devices.
Speaker 1: So this movie I that's coming out, there's a Pierce
Speaker 1: Brosnan's playing like a a Tony Stark like business guy
Speaker 1: who ends up having a an IT guy come in
Speaker 1: and help him out when he's giving a presentation and
Speaker 1: the technology is failing. The IT guy gets it turned around,
Speaker 1: and so Pierce Brosidan says, Hey, come back to my house.
Speaker 1: I'd like you to help me out with some stuff.
Speaker 1: And the guy's like, okay, sure, and he comes by
Speaker 1: and the guy's house has got all this high tech equipment,
Speaker 1: most of which is not really working up to the.
Speaker 2: Possibility that could.
Speaker 1: But he also has a young like a teenage daughter
Speaker 1: that the IT guy ends up becoming fixated with. So
Speaker 1: then it becomes a psychological thriller where the IT guy
Speaker 1: who was upgrading all the systems is really using them
Speaker 1: to spy on people, and when he's rebuffed, he uses
Speaker 1: them to terrorize people. So it becomes kind of a
Speaker 1: psychological thriller slash horror movie that's IT based and Internet
Speaker 1: of Things based. And while that is going to be
Speaker 1: pushed to the limit for drama for dramatic purposes, there's
Speaker 1: a lot there.
Speaker 2: That you could say, like, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1: It went to extremes for the purposes of this movie,
Speaker 1: but it does drive home certain things you should be
Speaker 1: aware of, like how many devices do you own that
Speaker 1: have microphones in them? How many do you own that
Speaker 1: have cameras in them? What are they connected to? And
Speaker 1: is it secure? Is your router secure? Did you buy
Speaker 1: any chance not change the default identifier and password to
Speaker 1: your router because you might want to do that that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: So I'm so grateful that I got into this early, so.
Speaker 3: Like before Internet of Things became a thing, because now
Speaker 3: I can go home, like right at this minute, pull
Speaker 3: up a program on my computer, sit down on the
Speaker 3: same networks as my camera, and make sure that it's
Speaker 3: not open to the World Wide Web, because it's it's
Speaker 3: entirely possible that those things can happen.
Speaker 4: They have happened, and.
Speaker 3: It's oh, man, consumers, just I wish more consumers were
Speaker 3: interested in this kind of thing because it would make
Speaker 3: them so much safer.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the sort of stuff no one wants to
Speaker 1: really think about. The convenience of the technology is so
Speaker 1: great that it people don't feel feel comfortable thinking about
Speaker 1: the other side of it because the technology they rely
Speaker 1: so heavily on it it does so many useful things
Speaker 1: for them that I think that ends up making them
Speaker 1: kind of ignore the possible security problems, because if they
Speaker 1: paid attention to it, they would feel that they would
Speaker 1: either need to take a lot of effort to fix
Speaker 1: those security issues, at least the ones they can fix
Speaker 1: from a consumer side of things, or they would have
Speaker 1: to abandon the technology, which is so incredibly useful and convenient,
Speaker 1: and neither of those.
Speaker 2: Seem particularly interesting. It's way better to just, you know,
Speaker 2: just pretend like.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen and keep using your unsecured Wi Fi
Speaker 1: and yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3: I mean there, I've made some sacrifices in my life
Speaker 3: to be more secure. For example, I don't use Facebook
Speaker 3: Messenger on my phone, Yeah, because I don't I don't
Speaker 3: trust that feature. I don't even use the Facebook app
Speaker 3: on my phone because I don't trust the app.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I noticed that when I abandoned the Facebook app. You
Speaker 1: gave me a big thumbs up on that day.
Speaker 4: Oh, yes, I did.
Speaker 3: And there's other things that I've chosen convenience over security,
Speaker 3: even though I understand what what I might what might
Speaker 3: happen to me if I because I chose that convenience.
Speaker 3: For example, I use a thumbprint to unlock my phone,
Speaker 3: even though you are basically forced to give away a
Speaker 3: thumb print if you are ever if there is a
Speaker 3: warrant on your phone, as opposed to if you have
Speaker 3: a pin code or a password, you don't have to
Speaker 3: give those away. So that's like those kind of things
Speaker 3: you really have to think about, especially if you know
Speaker 3: you're going into this with the with the thought you know,
Speaker 3: I have to better my security and privacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And see it's different for you too, Shannon, because you're
Speaker 1: you are aware of all the potential or at least
Speaker 1: a large majority of the potential bad things that can happen,
Speaker 1: so you can make an informed decision, and you can
Speaker 1: you can measure that risk versus the reward you get
Speaker 1: based upon whatever choice you make.
Speaker 2: A lot of people out there they aren't.
Speaker 1: I think the problem is so scary they don't even
Speaker 1: want to look at it, and that means that they're
Speaker 1: making uninformed, uneducated decisions. And I know the problem is scary, guys,
Speaker 1: but that's why you gotta look at it. You can't.
Speaker 3: That's why we're here so that we can inform everybody
Speaker 3: and we can educate everyone right on the proper uses
Speaker 3: of the security and privacy.
Speaker 1: So if you guys out there, take anything at all
Speaker 1: away from this episode, I want you to take a well, really, there's.
Speaker 2: Two things I want you to take away.
Speaker 1: One is, really give it some serious thought if you
Speaker 1: have it before, because it's something that could save you
Speaker 1: tons of heartache down the line, and it can protect
Speaker 1: you and those who are close to you from attacks.
Speaker 1: And the second thing I want you to remember is
Speaker 1: if aliens attack, get Jeff goldblooma mac because that guy
Speaker 1: can do anything. And that's it for that classic episode
Speaker 1: that originally published September fourteenth, twenty sixteen, The Worst Hacking
Speaker 1: Scenes from Hollywood, Part two. Big thanks to Shannon Morse,
Speaker 1: even seven years later. She has always been a great
Speaker 1: friend and a phenomenal guest, and also is a great
Speaker 1: host all on her own. You should definitely go seek
Speaker 1: out her work. She has done tons of cool stuff
Speaker 1: and is wicked smart and experienced with things like hacking
Speaker 1: and understand that on a much deeper level than I do.
Speaker 1: So check out her stuff. It's great and I hope
Speaker 1: all of you are well, and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 3: Zo