• cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      11 months ago

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

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 She checks the software version, which shows an out of date version.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

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

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      231·
      11 months ago

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Otherwise it’s as stupid as:

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

    • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
      141·
      11 months ago

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

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

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

      CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
            21·
            11 months ago

            I’m pretty sure they’re talking association football. Gridiron football “matches” (which are called games in the US) are 60 minutes of clock-on time but more than 2 hours if you count all the ad breaks and clock-stopped time. The 90 minute figure only makes sense for association football. And yes, it’s at least a billion people watching them every week.

            • Omgpwnies@lemmy.zip
              1·
              11 months ago

              oh and the ads run into playtime, so once the commercials are done, they give you a 30 second recap of what you missed, then back to commercials because the coach called a time out

              • merc@sh.itjust.works
                1·
                11 months ago

                I’ve been to an NFL game twice, and it’s so much worse in person. At home at least the ad breaks are a chance to go to the bathroom or get a snack. At the game it’s not worth getting out of your seat and trudging up to the concourse because 2 minutes isn’t long enough for that. So, instead, you sit and wait for the action to resume.

                It also makes it more clear that a lot of the long timeouts are purely TV-based.

                There are plenty of time-outs that have to do with the state of the game: teams calling time-outs to discuss a plan, a time-out after a point is scored while the sides change, the 2-minute warning, the break after the 1st and 3rd quarters, and so-on. But, you also get explicit TV timeouts that are called by the TV networks when it’s been too long since the last commercial.

                In the stadium when that happens the offense might be in a flow, and the defense may be wobbling. But, the TV networks need to show their ads, so the network calls a timeout. Meanwhile, the players just stand around on the field, ready for the next play until the network television coordinator lowers his bright orange glove.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
        7·
        11 months ago

        There’s a podcast called Darknet Diaries you might like. Skip the first year or so and start after that.

          • jaybone@lemmy.world
            1·
            11 months ago

            The first like 10 episodes I feel like he was just trying to figure out how to do the podcast.

            I feel like when I recommend the show and people start from the beginning, it kind of sucks.

            I like the later episodes.

            First 10 episodes kind of suck.

            He should actually pull those and remove them from his channel.

            The later episodes are really good imo.

      • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.todayEnglish
        5·
        11 months ago

        Mr. Robot was fairly good at the realism, and even there it was mostly just good for jokes like this:

    • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      11 months ago

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

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

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

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

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

  • dan@upvote.au
    23·
    11 months ago

    Be sure to wear a hoodie in a dark room so that you can hack faster.

  • M500@lemmy.mlEnglish
    20·
    11 months ago

    Maybe we took it out of context, maybe they mean that they are logged into their own computer 😂

  • snrkl@lemmy.sdf.org
    17·
    11 months ago

    FWIW, Little known fact: Matrix 2 used real vuln (SSH CRC32) for trinity power grid hacking scene.

    Even better to know: the scene was completed before the CRC32 vuln was public. So the scene used real 0day vuln…

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
      61·
      11 months ago

      Mr. Robot was the best depiction of hacking I can think of. It was fairly realistic while being entertaining too. It shows that anybody who actually wanted to be realistic in a hacking movie could do it, they just choose not to.

      • swordsmanluke@programming.dev
        2·
        11 months ago

        Yup. The fakest thing in that movie is the MacGuffin that can z break RSA encryption.

        …Also maybe a bunch of hackers stealing a ton of govt funds, donating it to greenpeace and the NSA not immediately busting heads.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        21·
        11 months ago

        Yeah, the “magic device” they discover that makes encryption obsolete is unrealistic, as is the way it “decrypts” what shows up on their screens. But, the rest of it is really realistic, down to probing individual leads of a chip to see what kinds of signals they emit.

  • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
    3·
    11 months ago

    The main reason I never got into Slow Horses was its utterly ridiculous stereotype of the “computer boffin”. It was so cack-handed it was almost hard to believe.

  • niktemadur@lemmy.world
    3·
    11 months ago

    What about DJ Qualls in “The Core”?

    While being interrogated in his introduction sequence, he casually folds an aluminum chewing gum wrapper, puts it to his lips and kinda whistles with it for a second, while holding a cell phone in front of his mouth. After this little public display of phreaking, he hands the cell phone over to the hero and says “Here… now you can call anywhere free for life with it”.