Speaker 1: Get in text with Technology with text Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to Tech Stuff. I
Speaker 1: am your host, Jonathan Strickland, and we pick up in
Speaker 1: the middle of a conversation that I was having with
Speaker 1: Shannon Morse. You heard the previous episode last week. If
Speaker 1: you haven't, go back listen to that. It's all about
Speaker 1: how Hollywood is really bad at portraying hackers and hacker
Speaker 1: culture in a realistic way. And today we're going to
Speaker 1: talk more about some of the embarrassing examples out there
Speaker 1: in entertainment as well as some of the really good ones.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna start off with a conversation about a
Speaker 1: pair of movies that not only did a disservice to hackers,
Speaker 1: but also virtual reality. We joined the conversation already in progress,
Speaker 1: Lawnmower and and Lawnmower Man Too, Uh, inspired by the
Speaker 1: work of Stephen King. So these movies are terrible, it
Speaker 1: could be a lot of fun to watch with a
Speaker 1: group of people who just want to see, like a
Speaker 1: really bad movie and make fun of it, you know,
Speaker 1: MST three case style. I included a couple of clips
Speaker 1: and I showed them to Shannon. One of them was
Speaker 1: a demonstration that hacking a system in this world isn't
Speaker 1: just graphical but immersive. Uh So you're you're wearing like
Speaker 1: a head mounted display and and you're wearing gloves that
Speaker 1: allow you to interact with the virtual world. And so
Speaker 1: they're showing a character getting backdoor access to a system
Speaker 1: by slapping at hexagons inside this virtual space. So these
Speaker 1: hexagons are popping up in front of him, and he's
Speaker 1: slapping at them and eventually gets you know, access granted.
Speaker 1: Mostly it's getting access to NIED. 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 would be equivalent
Speaker 1: to that n C I S scene we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: where if you just tie fast enough, you either hack
Speaker 1: in or you prevent a hack from happening. Obviously, this
Speaker 1: is not at all remotely realistic, but it is one
Speaker 1: of those where you you look at you your you
Speaker 1: could tell the screenwriter was saying, well, I want to
Speaker 1: show that this character who has has found that he's
Speaker 1: very powerful in the virtual space, can access a system.
Speaker 1: How can I do that in a way that's not
Speaker 1: just you know, it's over in the 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 is 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. It happens a
Speaker 1: ton and again, actually going through that maze of information
Speaker 1: that's located on a network is actually quite boring looking
Speaker 1: on camera. So they created this al bite terrible virtual
Speaker 1: reality scene to to actually give some kind of uh implementation,
Speaker 1: some kind of visual implementation to the people that are
Speaker 1: watching this movie. And it's it's pretty terrible. It's definitely
Speaker 1: not how gaining access to a network would work, but
Speaker 1: I thought it was hilarious. Yeah. A Lawnmowerman two also
Speaker 1: has a scene that's similar to that. The characters are
Speaker 1: looking at what is just an equation on a computer screen. Um,
Speaker 1: So they're looking at this equation and trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get access and one of the character
Speaker 1: says that she can't get past the memory lock to
Speaker 1: access the chain. So the smarmie computer expert who's next
Speaker 1: to her says, well, all you have to do is
Speaker 1: just enhance the memory index, and which already none of
Speaker 1: that makes any real sense. It's kind of like Star
Speaker 1: Trek techno babble where they talk about reversing the polarity.
Speaker 1: It really, it's just it's just there to say something
Speaker 1: technical is happening, and you don't need to understand what
Speaker 1: it is. It's kind of shorthand. So then a little
Speaker 1: yellow ball appears on the screen and the equation they're
Speaker 1: looking at it starts to rotate uh and starts to
Speaker 1: turn on its side and become a three dimensional maze again,
Speaker 1: so we get another example of accessing a system involves
Speaker 1: navigating through an actual three dimensional maze. Uh. He uses
Speaker 1: gesture controls to move this little yellow ball around until
Speaker 1: finally getting to where the data is. The whole time
Speaker 1: he's just using meaningless computer jargon and incorrectly. And then
Speaker 1: at the very the cherry on top of the Sunday
Speaker 1: is that he says toda. So if you really want
Speaker 1: a good time, watch the hacking scene from lawnmower Man too.
Speaker 1: Both of those, obviously are are in that same category
Speaker 1: of trying to visualize what this this UH process would
Speaker 1: be like In a way that is interesting. I said
Speaker 1: that the worst a movie can do is not only
Speaker 1: be incorrect, but also failed to be entertaining, And then
Speaker 1: I would argue both of these fall into that category.
Speaker 1: I feel like if hacking was as entertaining as it
Speaker 1: is in lawnmower Man, I would have gotten gotten into
Speaker 1: it at a much much younger age. Yea, it's not
Speaker 1: I remember Lawn moore Man's one of the movies I
Speaker 1: would often cite as being a real reason why virtual
Speaker 1: reality died in the mid nineties. So sad because because
Speaker 1: the stuff that was around in the mid nineties was
Speaker 1: very very primitive, Right. You had like Dactyl Nightmare, these
Speaker 1: these games that were just polygons, and they were very primitive. Uh.
Speaker 1: The gameplay was limited, the headsets you war had to
Speaker 1: be supported on cables because they were so heavy they
Speaker 1: would really hurt your neck otherwise. Uh. And so when
Speaker 1: people saw what the actual state of the art of
Speaker 1: virtual reality was at the time compared to what they
Speaker 1: were seeing in films, that that gap ended up making
Speaker 1: people say, well, this is this isn't good at all.
Speaker 1: I don't see any reason in in putting any money
Speaker 1: towards this, and virtual reality died for about ten years,
Speaker 1: and now we're starting to see it get back into
Speaker 1: the consumer space with the success of Oculus Rift in
Speaker 1: HTC Vibe, assuming you can get your hands on one. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're starting to see it come back, but it took
Speaker 1: almost twenty years for it to recover. So uh, thanks
Speaker 1: lawnmore Man. The only were you a bad movie? But
Speaker 1: you killed b R your fault. Yeah, I'm not bitter
Speaker 1: or anything. Uh. There's a movie that we have to
Speaker 1: mention everyone that I when I posted on Twitter that
Speaker 1: I was going to do this, I had a lot
Speaker 1: of people say the entire movie of Hackers should be
Speaker 1: considered as part of this as a bad hacking scene.
Speaker 1: And Hackers is a great example, uh, as another one
Speaker 1: of those where it's a movie that was posing as
Speaker 1: an anti authoritarian kind of film, but in the safest
Speaker 1: way possible, like there's nothing really daring about it. Um.
Speaker 1: And the opening sequence has a couple of characters trying
Speaker 1: to battle it out over one another, and and one
Speaker 1: of them isn't trying to create an intrusion into a system.
Speaker 1: The other one detects it and then shuts everything down.
Speaker 1: So Shannon, typically when you're talking about things like a
Speaker 1: hacker intruding into a system, detecting that there's been an intrusion.
Speaker 1: We're not normally seeing this happen on a one versus
Speaker 1: one kind of basis in real time typically are we
Speaker 1: not necessarily a lot of times what you'll see with
Speaker 1: a hack intrusion into a system, like you said, uh,
Speaker 1: is that they will sit and watch and they will
Speaker 1: do a lot of recons so they'll try to figure
Speaker 1: out what's available for them, what can they see, and
Speaker 1: they'll wait for something to happen that will give them
Speaker 1: even more access. Uh. And then if you have somebody
Speaker 1: that's working inside of that company that's being intruded upon, uh,
Speaker 1: usually the first action that you will see is them
Speaker 1: trying to also collect information so they can find where
Speaker 1: this open opening is, where this vulnerability is, and then
Speaker 1: they'll shut it down. Uh. And then after that they'll
Speaker 1: do a whole, uh whole research report on it and
Speaker 1: try to figure out like who actually did it and
Speaker 1: probably take to enforcement agencies so that they can get
Speaker 1: the capture the person and hopefully get them charged, because
Speaker 1: that's not a very good thing to do. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you don't necessarily see people like duking it out like
Speaker 1: they do. Yeah, it's usually you know, like your first
Speaker 1: indication that something is wrong can often just be that
Speaker 1: you've noticed there's unusual amounts of data traffic across your network,
Speaker 1: and you might say, well, why why are we getting
Speaker 1: these spikes? If you're a a savvy hacker, you're trying
Speaker 1: to mask your activity. You're kind of like trying to
Speaker 1: sneak in when a big crowd is going into a room.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the same thing, right, Like you're waiting
Speaker 1: for large transfers of data so that it masks what
Speaker 1: you are doing. In a lot of cases, if you're
Speaker 1: really really good at what you're doing, you're trying to
Speaker 1: kind of go in that route because it means you
Speaker 1: can stay hidden for longer and get more information. Information
Speaker 1: is valuable. Therefore, you don't want to just you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to just break into a system and
Speaker 1: then immediately get booted out. Then what was the point
Speaker 1: of that other than to say, hey, I figured out
Speaker 1: you have a vulnerability, And if that's your job, that's awesome.
Speaker 1: If you're a white hat hacker and your job is
Speaker 1: to hey, we've got the system, we think it's pretty secure,
Speaker 1: but we would like you to really put to the
Speaker 1: test and if you find any vulnerabilities, let us know
Speaker 1: and then we can go and we can address that
Speaker 1: and fix them so that the bad guys don't have
Speaker 1: a chance to do it later. That's a legitimate job.
Speaker 1: But but in the movies, that's not what you see.
Speaker 1: You see a person going like, I've got access and
Speaker 1: then almost immediately everything is uh gone pear shaped right,
Speaker 1: like there's alarms going off, And that's just not how
Speaker 1: it works, not if you're doing it correctly anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so these these movies, I mean, I I appreciate it. Again,
Speaker 1: try to create dramatic tension, but not terribly accurate. Uh.
Speaker 1: One thing that I did like about hackers is the
Speaker 1: fact that he uses social engineering to first gain access
Speaker 1: to this network, which is something that's very very common
Speaker 1: with UM hackers in general, because he men's are the first,
Speaker 1: the first failure in any network. They're the people, they're
Speaker 1: the ones that you can generally go to and find
Speaker 1: some kind of vulnerability because people inherently trust each other.
Speaker 1: And that's just a thing that humans need to understand,
Speaker 1: is if somebody is asking you questions that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily give out. Don't give them out, because they might
Speaker 1: be social engineering you into giving out those answers. Hackers
Speaker 1: also does a good job of pinpointing people towards real
Speaker 1: life hacker culture. For example, there is one scene in
Speaker 1: Hackers where they read off the Hacker Manifesto, which was
Speaker 1: originally found in a hacker magazine, which you can only
Speaker 1: find if you were a part of that culture. And
Speaker 1: then later on in the movie they also show a
Speaker 1: real life booklet, a documentation book that shows that was
Speaker 1: actually used by um By phone operations to you know,
Speaker 1: put up new towers and things like that back in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties. So it has these real life
Speaker 1: parts of culture, but in reality the movie still has
Speaker 1: that terrible Hollywood hockey uh parts of it as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought up the social engineering. I'm actually
Speaker 1: going to do an episode about specifically about social engineering,
Speaker 1: uh live at Dragon Con with our our mutual friend
Speaker 1: Brian Brushwood. Um so Brushwood's gonna come on the show.
Speaker 1: There's no one like a magician to tell you how
Speaker 1: to fool people right, how to how to lie to
Speaker 1: people and get them to do the things you want
Speaker 1: them to do. So we're gonna we're gonna go into
Speaker 1: social engineering big time on that episode. And I'm also
Speaker 1: glad you mentioned that things like the manuals that definitely
Speaker 1: is a big part of hacker culture, going all the
Speaker 1: way back to those phone freak days, where again the
Speaker 1: hackers were not necessarily trying to take advantage of a system.
Speaker 1: They just wanted to know how it worked. They were
Speaker 1: fascinated by the way it actually performed. And so when
Speaker 1: you got a manual's only you had the uh an
Speaker 1: insight into it. Even if the manual didn't go into
Speaker 1: deep detail about how the system as a whole operates
Speaker 1: on the back end, it could give you enough insight
Speaker 1: and then they start understanding like, oh wow, that's really
Speaker 1: cool that they have this system set up in such
Speaker 1: a way where they can route calls like this and
Speaker 1: they can dynamically change things over. And I'm glad you
Speaker 1: brought that up, because once again, being a hacker doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean you're a terrible person at all. It may
Speaker 1: mean that you just have a deep curiosity that is
Speaker 1: only satisfied by learning how this stuff works, and it's
Speaker 1: not always easy to do that. Information is not always
Speaker 1: publicly available at all times. There have been times where
Speaker 1: it accidentally got publicly available. That's again going back to
Speaker 1: the phone freaks. There were some phone manuals that kind
Speaker 1: of were released to the public, not intentionally. It also
Speaker 1: wasn't considered to be a huge problem until the phone
Speaker 1: freakers got hold of it, and somedy, you had all
Speaker 1: these people making weird calls long distance all over the place.
Speaker 1: So yeah, our next one is is another case of
Speaker 1: people just throwing out terms without really having any meaning
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, the terms themselves have meaning, but
Speaker 1: not in the context of the lines. And it was
Speaker 1: from a c s I New York episode in which
Speaker 1: a character says, and this is a quote, I'll create
Speaker 1: a gooey interface using visual basics, see if I can
Speaker 1: track an IP address. So, Shannon, you want to track
Speaker 1: an IP address, Do you go to the trouble of
Speaker 1: developing a graphical user interface? Uh? No. What I would
Speaker 1: do is open up probably netcat in my terminals so
Speaker 1: that I can gain access and see what the heck
Speaker 1: is going on on that IP address. Right. If it
Speaker 1: was wireless, uh, and I was on a nearby network,
Speaker 1: I would I would probably use wire Shark and WiFi
Speaker 1: Pie Apple like it's it's not. You don't have to
Speaker 1: create an entirely new graphical user interface to able to
Speaker 1: be able to access an IP address and see what
Speaker 1: kind of traffic is happening to and from them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Creating a graphical user interface literally makes no sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, it has nothing to do with your ability
Speaker 1: to track an IP address, to identify an IP address,
Speaker 1: It has nothing to do with A graphical user interface
Speaker 1: is an interface in itself. Isn't a thing that performs
Speaker 1: these functions. It's just a way to visualize data and
Speaker 1: allow you to interact with it in some way. So
Speaker 1: Windows is a graphical user interface. It's a googy. Any
Speaker 1: any program that has a graphical representation of information that
Speaker 1: allows you to move things around, that's a gooey. Has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the actual function. It is separate
Speaker 1: from the function. It is just a way of, uh
Speaker 1: manifesting what that data actually means. Now, you might go
Speaker 1: through the trouble of creating some sort of visual day
Speaker 1: if you wanted to explain it to someone else who
Speaker 1: wouldn't understand if you just handed them lines of code
Speaker 1: or whatever. But that's not what that That doesn't even
Speaker 1: work in this case because we're talking about an IP address,
Speaker 1: and I'd be as, you don't need like a pie
Speaker 1: chart or you know, you don't need a graphical representation
Speaker 1: of what an IP addresses. It's an IP address. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one, this one kind of broke my brain for
Speaker 1: about twenty minutes when I when I watched it. The
Speaker 1: next one I had on the list was another example
Speaker 1: of of hackers battling it out in real time and
Speaker 1: seeing who could type the fastest. 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 Freddie Wong and his character was named Freddie. So
Speaker 1: I was like, oh my gosh, it's Freddie Wong, a
Speaker 1: YouTube star. Done good. Um, it's fantastic, It's I think
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's I can't remember. It's like Chuck versus
Speaker 1: the Hackathon or something like that. It's along those line,
Speaker 1: and Freddy Wong plays the leite hacker that he goes
Speaker 1: up against. But in this case, I'm talking about Criminal Minds,
Speaker 1: which has Nicholas Brendan did it who I will always
Speaker 1: and forever think of as Zander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Yep.
Speaker 1: And he's brought into to try and access a another
Speaker 1: I think another employees system, but the employees kind of
Speaker 1: on the lamb, and she's working with other folks who
Speaker 1: are trying to do this quietly without the rest of
Speaker 1: the organization taking any notice of them. And uh. And
Speaker 1: so he ends up getting into her system and trying
Speaker 1: to snoop around a bit she notices, and then they
Speaker 1: have this duel and as Shannon has already said, this
Speaker 1: is not really how we see things play out, but
Speaker 1: does have the best line I think out of all
Speaker 1: the examples we have here, which is her gooey is
Speaker 1: mind blowing and would actually see a hacker say, is
Speaker 1: whoa check out this code? Yeah yeah, instead of all
Speaker 1: these little uh these little windows pop up. Also, it's
Speaker 1: funny because in the sequence as they're typing uh, there's
Speaker 1: like one point where the Zander I'll always call him Xander,
Speaker 1: is saying, well, here, see what you think about this,
Speaker 1: and all that you see on the screen is that
Speaker 1: one of the windows on the screen is dragged down
Speaker 1: to like the lower right corner. Yes, and you're thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: you have a mouse, but they're they're actually not even
Speaker 1: using computer mice. They're just typing on the keyboard. And
Speaker 1: so really all you're seeing are all these little windows
Speaker 1: being dragged around the screen and and no real way
Speaker 1: of doing that easily. If you're just if you're using
Speaker 1: a keyboard, you're making it too hard on yourself. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the thing is about hackers that I have noticed. Um,
Speaker 1: I am not as good as a lot of my
Speaker 1: friends are, but keyboard shortcuts are huge, culture huge. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if you're doing the same sort of
Speaker 1: code over and over, if you're gonna be using the
Speaker 1: same sort of strings repeatedly, having like various shortcuts and
Speaker 1: macro set up saves you so much time. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: 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. Uh, I was working for law years.
Speaker 1: I wasn't being pursued by them. Um. Another great example
Speaker 1: weird science. This one. This one sort of gets a
Speaker 1: pass from me too, because it's such a goofy movie.
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's one of those films from the eighties
Speaker 1: where you kind of the the basic premise is kind
Speaker 1: of squeaky, well more than kind of squeaky, because you've
Speaker 1: got too high school males who decide to try and
Speaker 1: create a girl so that they can do various sexual
Speaker 1: things with her, which is pretty awful. But it turns
Speaker 1: out that she ends up having a way more intelligence
Speaker 1: than either of them and a lot more agency than
Speaker 1: either of them. So it's okay because it could have
Speaker 1: gone way worse than that. I know because I've watched
Speaker 1: a movie recently that took the other path and it
Speaker 1: was terrible. That was for a different podcast. Uh So.
Speaker 1: This one also has another depiction of characters trying to
Speaker 1: navigate through a three dimensional virtual environment in order to
Speaker 1: access a secure system. In this case, they're trying to
Speaker 1: create a simulated brain for their they're 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, too real tapes
Speaker 1: that are spinning super fast. Uh. You see lights flashing,
Speaker 1: and then a power surge ends up blasting all of
Speaker 1: the electronics at why it's home like the microwave, and
Speaker 1: there's like a a smoke detector. I think that explodes,
Speaker 1: and so that's what zooms in enough power to not
Speaker 1: only boost the intelligence of the character up to uh
Speaker 1: superhuman levels, but also somehow magically brings to life this woman. Um,
Speaker 1: i'd say accurate. Let's take a quick break to thank
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Speaker 1: slash first. So this is a great example the Weird
Speaker 1: Science series. Your segment is a great example of what
Speaker 1: you can actually do with more computing power. So in
Speaker 1: the real life, we have quantum computing, which people are
Speaker 1: currently working on to be able to d decrypt encryption
Speaker 1: that is not currently vulnerable, but that requires more computing power.
Speaker 1: That's what quantum computing is all about, not necessarily more electricity, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: quantum computing, you know using cubits where you have quantum
Speaker 1: bits that represent not just a zero, not just a one,
Speaker 1: but both and technically all values in between. I mean
Speaker 1: that you can complete calculations in parallel, and this is
Speaker 1: great for certain types of computing problems where you can
Speaker 1: have those parallel computing problems that are easily solved this way.
Speaker 1: Other computing problems are not parallel, and in those cases,
Speaker 1: a quantum computer is not necessarily going to be any
Speaker 1: better than a classical computer. In fact, it may be
Speaker 1: worse depending upon how many cubits the quantum computer has.
Speaker 1: If it has enough, then it'll chug along. But for
Speaker 1: those parallel problems, including encryption, quantum computers will transform our world.
Speaker 1: The encryption that we rely upon today will be trivial
Speaker 1: if you have a significantly powerful quantum computer, because it
Speaker 1: will be able to go through all the possible answers
Speaker 1: that are the basis for your encryption. Typically we're talking
Speaker 1: about um you know, very large hash numbers and assigned
Speaker 1: probabilities to them and figure out things like your encryption
Speaker 1: keys very very quickly. So that is interesting, But as
Speaker 1: you say, not just by it's not something that's done
Speaker 1: by pumping more electricity through a power line. That would
Speaker 1: be 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 text Ups,
Speaker 1: So I won't go into too much detail. It is
Speaker 1: Independence Day. It's like, yeah, I gotta tell you, if
Speaker 1: an alien race ever attacks us, I 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. So this is a great example because he
Speaker 1: was without about any prior knowledge, he was able to
Speaker 1: get a computer virus from his Mac laptop onto an
Speaker 1: alien spacecraft and be able to basically take him over
Speaker 1: and shut them down. Yeah. So there's so many things
Speaker 1: wrong with this one. One. We cannot be certain that
Speaker 1: any alien, intelligent alien civilization out there uses computers that
Speaker 1: remotely resemble the way our computers work. That's problem one.
Speaker 1: Problem too, We can't be certain that a virus that
Speaker 1: we would create for Earth based computers would ever be
Speaker 1: transferable onto an alien craft. From three we don't even
Speaker 1: know how we would do that, right, Like, it's do
Speaker 1: they have universal serial ports or something? What's how how
Speaker 1: do you get your stuff, your your program into alien technology,
Speaker 1: even if it's wireless. The wireless protocols. Those are things.
Speaker 1: We don't just have computers shooting off random radio waves.
Speaker 1: They have to follow very specific rules for computers to
Speaker 1: communicate with each other. Everything about this is wrong, And
Speaker 1: given the premise of this movie, I highly doubt that
Speaker 1: their alien technology would even remotely compare to ours. M
Speaker 1: I'm sure that they would be much much stronger and
Speaker 1: much more, much more advanced than our own. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: some of the arguments are that, oh, but see, the
Speaker 1: whole point of the movie is that the United States
Speaker 1: took technology from the Aliens and use that to boost
Speaker 1: our own technology so that we would advance faster. And
Speaker 1: my thought to that is, how that considering that all
Speaker 1: the technology that we rely upon today is based off
Speaker 1: of very very very well documented advances in engineering, none
Speaker 1: of which are so dramatic as to say, oh, that's
Speaker 1: what the aliens arrived that one. Now, I included this
Speaker 1: next one just for you, Shannon, because I know that
Speaker 1: you are a lover of Japanese culture, and so I
Speaker 1: found a great eneme scene from Tangan Toppa Guran Lagan
Speaker 1: Guran hen and Uh. It involves a character going into
Speaker 1: a virtual world as a virtual avatar runs through a
Speaker 1: maze as we've seen before, finds a lock box that
Speaker 1: apparently has the day that he wants to get at,
Speaker 1: takes out a green glowing key, puts it in the
Speaker 1: locked box, tries to unlock. It doesn't work, so does
Speaker 1: he do His virtual avatar head butts the box repeatedly
Speaker 1: till it breaks open. He grabs hold of a red sphere,
Speaker 1: which represents the data he wants, and then his character
Speaker 1: eats the data and that's how they analyze it. And
Speaker 1: boy do I wish that's the way it worked. Oh
Speaker 1: that's hilarious. I just I hope that it tasted good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean it is a virtual character, so
Speaker 1: I guess you could technically assume it tasted anyway you
Speaker 1: like it to taste. Uh. I watched this and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: this is delightful, but it's it's also again not trying
Speaker 1: to play this as this is how real hackers are.
Speaker 1: This is obviously a fantasy sci fi world that we're
Speaker 1: looking at, but one of the most entertaining versions of
Speaker 1: that mean that I've ever seen. I just love it,
Speaker 1: and like, just watching that tea makes me want to
Speaker 1: watch the entire UH anime because it's just so ridiculous. Yeah, yeah, works.
Speaker 1: It's like somebody trying to brute force, but their implementation
Speaker 1: of brute forcing is headbuts. Yeah, literal brute force, like
Speaker 1: not not putting password after password attempt through a password manager,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. It's literally attacking a virtual box with
Speaker 1: a virtual head butt. It's wonderful. The last little bit
Speaker 1: I have on here, this one, This one doesn't really
Speaker 1: count because it was done on purpose. But there was
Speaker 1: a segment on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert who
Speaker 1: had Michael Ian Black on Michael Ian Black who uh
Speaker 1: was in the state and tons of other stuff, and
Speaker 1: Michael Iam Black explained that he had dramatic acting chops
Speaker 1: that he felt he never got a chance to really
Speaker 1: exercise he's known as a comedic actor, and that he
Speaker 1: always wanted his dream role is that of a hacker
Speaker 1: on a police procedural show, because it meant that he
Speaker 1: 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: is a dream job. And so then they do a
Speaker 1: segment where Stephen Colbert's show gets hacked and Mike William
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. My favorite part is the fact
Speaker 1: that he comes out with black lipstick on and these
Speaker 1: like biker gloves, which first off, would be incredibly hard
Speaker 1: to type in wearing those gloves, and second off, like
Speaker 1: the hackers, I know, do you not wear black lipstick,
Speaker 1: especially if they're male? Yeah, yeah, he The first one
Speaker 1: of the first things he says is talking about how
Speaker 1: he's gonna be typing, and then it's typing will in
Speaker 1: no way be uh hampered by the fact he's wearing
Speaker 1: fingerless microgloves, so he's actually he actually brings attention to that,
Speaker 1: and there is a funny there's a funny moment he's
Speaker 1: bent over Stephen Colbert's desk and he's typing furiously, not
Speaker 1: really typing, he's just slapping at the keyboard furiously. And
Speaker 1: then it becomes clear that his lines are on the
Speaker 1: screen and and he scrolled past them, and so he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to find my line. So there's but it's
Speaker 1: great because they just roll with it. They just keep
Speaker 1: on going. So uh, it's fantastic to see that kind
Speaker 1: of self aware um uh take. On the way hackers
Speaker 1: and hacking culture has been portrayed in the popular media,
Speaker 1: there are you know, we've we've harped on a lot
Speaker 1: of different shows and movies about being terrible or being
Speaker 1: uh inaccurate, But there are some examples out there that
Speaker 1: are trying really hard to be respectful and realistic when
Speaker 1: it comes to hacker culture. One of the ones that
Speaker 1: leaps to mind is Mr Robot, a series where hacking
Speaker 1: plays a very important part. It's not like it's all
Speaker 1: about hacking, but that's an important plot device in several episodes.
Speaker 1: And they they name real security firms, they name real
Speaker 1: penetration teams that actually go and do this sort of testing.
Speaker 1: They name real software packages that are meant to either
Speaker 1: help someone commit one of these attacks or defend against them.
Speaker 1: They use real products, they're not so it's clear the
Speaker 1: people who are working on the show do their research. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's very clear, And in fact, I have a very
Speaker 1: close working relationship with the team over at Mr Robot
Speaker 1: to make sure that they get our products right because
Speaker 1: they have shown very recently one of hack fives products
Speaker 1: called the USB rubber Ducky. They have a team over
Speaker 1: there that that include Lude, somebody he used to work
Speaker 1: for the FBI, So they have actual people who have
Speaker 1: worked with security and with privacy and they have a
Speaker 1: general understanding. But they still like to talk to real
Speaker 1: life hackers to make sure that everything that they show
Speaker 1: on the show is legit and is an actual hack. Um.
Speaker 1: Mr Robot is such a great example because it gives
Speaker 1: a perfect, uh, real life scenario where you have people
Speaker 1: that are fighting back. You have people that are fighting
Speaker 1: back against you know, the big corps and trying to
Speaker 1: do something that's right for the little guy. Um, which
Speaker 1: you do see a lot in real life hacking cases.
Speaker 1: A lot of times people will go after large corporations
Speaker 1: because they don't necessarily agree with their tactics, or they
Speaker 1: don't agree with how much they're paying their employees or
Speaker 1: something like that. UM. So, I just I love watching
Speaker 1: Mr Robot because it gives me the chance to look
Speaker 1: at it and be like like, oh, what they're showing
Speaker 1: right now is a real it's a real hack. Like
Speaker 1: they're actually showing this to a huge fan base of
Speaker 1: people wouldn't necessarily be uh interested in this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff unless they were watching a show. So I just
Speaker 1: love that they're bringing so such a huge fan base
Speaker 1: 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're even going so far as certain aspects that
Speaker 1: we do see reflected in the news. You were mentioning
Speaker 1: this ship and things like someone being on the inside
Speaker 1: of a company and for one reason or another, they
Speaker 1: decide to aid someone who wants to access that company's information,
Speaker 1: and they're doing so knowingly. It's not that they've been
Speaker 1: tricked into it. We see this where we have their
Speaker 1: their hackers who one of the best things, one of
Speaker 1: the best tools you can have is making friends with
Speaker 1: someone who's works for the company that you want to
Speaker 1: try and uh access, like you want to get into
Speaker 1: the their system. And if it's someone who's disgruntled for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, maybe they were looked over for a promotion,
Speaker 1: maybe they don't like what the company is doing, maybe
Speaker 1: that what the company's purposes conflicts with their own ethical code.
Speaker 1: They might feel like helping someone out is the right choice. Um,
Speaker 1: and even if they themselves are not the ones doing
Speaker 1: the programming 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. Again, going back
Speaker 1: to Sony, there was there's still a lot of argument
Speaker 1: about who ultimately was responsible for that. At the time,
Speaker 1: the two big arguments that were coming out was that
Speaker 1: it was either someone in North Korea who had done this,
Speaker 1: or someone who was in the pay of North Korea
Speaker 1: like a state agent in other words, or it was
Speaker 1: someone who used to work for Sony or was currently
Speaker 1: working for Sony and they did not like something that
Speaker 1: happened and so as a result ended up stealing a
Speaker 1: ton of information and dumping it online for public review. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then the North Korea part just became a great
Speaker 1: smoke screen for that person. I saw that A lot
Speaker 1: of security experts, at least at the time, I felt
Speaker 1: more inclined to believe it was the second possibility, that
Speaker 1: it was someone from the inside and not necessarily a
Speaker 1: state sponsored attack. I don't know of that opinion ultimately changed.
Speaker 1: I've honestly lost track of the Sony story at this
Speaker 1: point because it kind of died down after that initial
Speaker 1: um flare of of controversy around all the different elements. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing that I found about that is a
Speaker 1: lot of the friends that I have in hacker culture,
Speaker 1: um just move on because there are so many different
Speaker 1: hacks that you see in our day and age that
Speaker 1: they don't have time to go back and discuss the
Speaker 1: Sony hack. And disclaimer, I did do a bunch of
Speaker 1: videos for Signal by Sony, which was a different, um,
Speaker 1: different core company inside of Sony that was doing these
Speaker 1: shows that I was working with. It wasn't the entertainment
Speaker 1: one that got hacked, but um, I definitely went to
Speaker 1: them when I got that job, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you sure you want to hire because um, that thing
Speaker 1: happened to you guys, and I'm kind of a hackers,
Speaker 1: so yeah, okay with Yeah, So I'm I'm pleased that
Speaker 1: Mr Robot is out there. You were mentioning before we
Speaker 1: went on on the recording, before we started recording that
Speaker 1: that Silicon Valley also typically does a pretty good job
Speaker 1: of portraying hacking in a in a realistic way. They
Speaker 1: do so Silicon Valley I actually hired one of my friends,
Speaker 1: Rob Fuller, who you can see in the credits of
Speaker 1: several of their episodes, to give them a good overview,
Speaker 1: a good synopsis of what they should be showing on
Speaker 1: their show and what would be fake, what would be
Speaker 1: called out. So he helped, and he's actually a penetration tester.
Speaker 1: He does this as his day job, and he's been
Speaker 1: doing it for you know, a couple of decades, I believe,
Speaker 1: uh So, he was the perfect person for them to
Speaker 1: go to to say, you know, is this right? Is
Speaker 1: this correct? Can you can you actually build a script
Speaker 1: for us to show on on camera so that we
Speaker 1: don't get called out by our fan base, a lot
Speaker 1: of which is going to be the Silicon Valley you know,
Speaker 1: gurus that actually do coding on a day day and
Speaker 1: day out basis. Uh So, Mr Robot and siliconbat Valley
Speaker 1: both have hired on um several people who have worked
Speaker 1: in security and penetration testing, information technology, things of that
Speaker 1: nature so that they can get it right on camera.
Speaker 1: And I think that's very important because what we're finding
Speaker 1: in this in this genre, in this career career path
Speaker 1: is that where there's a lot of people who lose
Speaker 1: interest very very quickly in it because it is hard,
Speaker 1: it is ever changing, and it's complicated, uh, and you
Speaker 1: have to go to school for it, and you have
Speaker 1: to get certificates uh that increase your knowledge, and you
Speaker 1: have to renew those certificates day in and day out
Speaker 1: every year. So it's expensive to stay in this career too.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you get a company or get a job with
Speaker 1: a company that you know will pay for those certificates
Speaker 1: for you. So the fact that they're showing these real
Speaker 1: life scenarios on camera, I'm hoping that it will increase
Speaker 1: more interests in this in this genre of work, because
Speaker 1: we really need more people to be interested in in
Speaker 1: it in in the long term, because it is so
Speaker 1: so important for companies as a whole, especially if they're
Speaker 1: holding user data, to be secure and to be private
Speaker 1: and to be very conscious of what they're doing behind
Speaker 1: the scenes as opposed to just making a website pretty Uh.
Speaker 1: The things that are most important to me are security
Speaker 1: and privacy, and it's it's very important to me that
Speaker 1: more and more companies get involved with this information and
Speaker 1: get a much broader understanding of how important it is
Speaker 1: to actually pay money to make sure that you have
Speaker 1: good security. And uh to that end, I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a movie that's coming out later on this year,
Speaker 1: I believe called I T. It's got pierced broadening in it. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in that film there's, uh this idea of privacy
Speaker 1: and security plays of a huge part of it, as
Speaker 1: well as the Internet of Things, which again is a
Speaker 1: great illustration of why security is so important. We have
Speaker 1: more and more devices that are are opening up opportunities
Speaker 1: to be a point of entry for a hacker, right
Speaker 1: Like if you have not, if you haven't designed your
Speaker 1: IoT device to also be secure and encrypted, that's a
Speaker 1: potential in depending upon how it how it communicates with
Speaker 1: the rest of your device aces. Uh. So this movie
Speaker 1: I T that's coming out, there's a Pierce Brosiden's playing
Speaker 1: like a Tony Stark like business guy who ends up
Speaker 1: having a an I T guy come in and help
Speaker 1: him out when he's giving a presentation and the technology
Speaker 1: is failing. The I T guy gets it turned around,
Speaker 1: and so Pierce President 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 1: possibility that could. But he also has a young like
Speaker 1: a teenage daughter that the I T guy ends up
Speaker 1: becoming fixated with. So then it becomes a psychological thriller
Speaker 1: where the I T guy who was upgrading all the
Speaker 1: systems is really using them to spy on people, and
Speaker 1: too when he when he's rebuffed, he uses them to
Speaker 1: terrorize people. So it becomes kind of a psychological thriller
Speaker 1: slash horror movie that's I T based uh an 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 that you could say, like, you know, um, 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 to
Speaker 1: have microphones in them? How many do you own that
Speaker 1: have cameras in them? What what are they connected to?
Speaker 1: And is it secure? Is your router secure? Did you
Speaker 1: buy any chance not change the the default identifier and
Speaker 1: password to your router because you might want to do
Speaker 1: that that kind of stuff. So I'm so grateful that
Speaker 1: I got into this early, so like before Internet of
Speaker 1: Things became a thing, because now I can go home,
Speaker 1: like right at this minute, pull up a program on
Speaker 1: my computer, sit down on the same network as my
Speaker 1: as my camera, and make sure that it's not open
Speaker 1: to the World Wide Web, because it's it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that those things can happen. They have happened, and it's
Speaker 1: oh man, consumers, just I wish more consumers were interested
Speaker 1: in this kind of thing because it would make them
Speaker 1: so much safer. Yeah. Yeah, it's the sort of stuff
Speaker 1: no one wants to really think about. The The convenience
Speaker 1: of the technology is so great that it people don't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable thinking about the other side of it because
Speaker 1: the technology they rely so heavily on it, it does
Speaker 1: so many useful things for them that I think that
Speaker 1: ends up making them kind of ignore the possible security
Speaker 1: problems because if they paid attention to it, they would
Speaker 1: feel that they would either need to take a lot
Speaker 1: of effort to fix those security issues, at least the
Speaker 1: ones they can fix from a consumer side of things,
Speaker 1: or they would have to abandon the technology which is
Speaker 1: so incredibly useful and convenient, and neither of those seem
Speaker 1: particularly interesting. It's way better to just, you know, just
Speaker 1: pretend like it doesn't have been and keep using your
Speaker 1: unsecured WiFi. And yeah, absolutely, I mean there. I've made
Speaker 1: some sacrifices in my life to be more secure. For example,
Speaker 1: I don't use Facebook Messenger on my phone because I
Speaker 1: don't I don't trust that feature. I don't even use
Speaker 1: the Facebook app on my phone because I don't trust
Speaker 1: the app. And I noticed that when I when I
Speaker 1: abandoned the Facebook app, you gave me a big thumbs
Speaker 1: up on that day. Oh yes I did. And there's
Speaker 1: other things that I've chosen convenience over security, even though
Speaker 1: I understand what what I might what might happen to
Speaker 1: me if I because I chose that convenience. For example,
Speaker 1: I use a thumb print to unlock my phone, even
Speaker 1: though you are basically forced to give away a thumbprint
Speaker 1: if you are ever um, if there is a warrant
Speaker 1: on your phone, as opposed to if you have a
Speaker 1: pin code or a password, you don't have to give
Speaker 1: those aways. So that's like those kind of things you
Speaker 1: really have to think about it, especially if you know
Speaker 1: you're going into this with the with the thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I have to better my security and privacy. Yeah. And
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. A lot of people
Speaker 1: out there they aren't. I think the problem is so
Speaker 1: scary they don't even want to look at it. And
Speaker 1: that's and that means that they're making uninformed, uneducated decisions.
Speaker 1: And I know that. I know the problem is scary, guys,
Speaker 1: but that's why you've gotta look at it. You can't.
Speaker 1: That's why we're here so that we can inform everybody,
Speaker 1: and we can educate everyone right on the proper uses
Speaker 1: of the security and privacy. So if if you guys
Speaker 1: out there take anything at all away from this episode,
Speaker 1: I want you to take a well, really there's two
Speaker 1: things I want you to take away. One is really
Speaker 1: give it some serious thought. If you have it before,
Speaker 1: because it's it's something that could save you tons of
Speaker 1: heartache down the line, and it can protect you and
Speaker 1: those who are close to you from attacks. And the
Speaker 1: second thing I want you to remember is if aliens attack,
Speaker 1: get Jeff goldblooma Mac because that guy can do anything.
Speaker 1: Ah So, Shannon, thank you so much for joining this episode.
Speaker 1: Help everyone where they can find your work. Sure, so,
Speaker 1: you can find me on Twitter. I'm at snubs s
Speaker 1: and uvs and I promise I will not snubs you
Speaker 1: unless you're mean to me. Uh. And you can also
Speaker 1: find me on Hack five and tech Thing, both of
Speaker 1: which are over at h K five dot org. And
Speaker 1: we talk about the simplest of simple hacks and we
Speaker 1: go all the way up to the hardest of the
Speaker 1: hardest hacks. So there's something there for everybody, and I
Speaker 1: hope that you guys will enjoy it. Awesome, Shannon, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. And guys, if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with me and talk about some of the
Speaker 1: stuff we chatted about on this episode, maybe there's a
Speaker 1: television or film that you know we didn't touch that
Speaker 1: you think absolutely needs to be on this list. Let
Speaker 1: me know if you have a suggestion for anything else,
Speaker 1: like whether you know, maybe it's another guest I could
Speaker 1: have on the show. Let me know the addresses tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com or drop me
Speaker 1: a line on Facebook or Twitter. The handle of both
Speaker 1: of those is text stuff H s W. And I
Speaker 1: will talk to you guys again really soon. For more
Speaker 1: on this and bathrooms of other topics. Is it how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com.