Hackers and Movies

[Chainer]

I just finished watching swordfish for the 40th time and thought about other movies with hackers in them. I was wondering what everyone thought about the way that hackers are portrayed in movies and any suggestions on good movies.

laterz,


(<[]=[]/-\[]\[][E[]2

[pinkpanther]

I find it hillarious.

[Zenith]

All movies have their merits when you take the time to deconstuct them, be they through use of camera, sound, special effects, etcetera etcetera.

As for 'movies about hackers', i feel that they paint a slightly false picture of hacking. None of the movies show the hours spent at a compuer programming, but rather choose to concentrate on the 'click here to hack' side of things - leading newbies on to believe it really is that simple, which in turn leads to suffering amongst more learned users when confronted with questions such as 'are u a hacker like on teh hackers mov??!?'.

Of course, one must realize that these, in the end, are just that; *movies* about hackers. To show the 'hard and dirty' side of things would be a waste of film in most directors opinions, and wouldnt draw many viewers to the cinema.

So, in my opinion, i think that hackers are not portrayed very well in the movies. However, i realize this is as a direct result of theatre practicality - action pays. Sitting at a terminal doesnt.

[Chainer]

I love the stereotypical movie hacker who hits random keys followed by enter and he has just gained acces to DoD or Mi6

[Klesk]

You got to love it how in 7 seconds the hackers can brake into the FBI or NSA and all the ports are opened

[techtech]

Yea, personally, my buddy and I find most those movies comedy's. We just can't stop laughing at the attempt of making the hacker. It's a pathetic attempt, if they tried even at all. I agree with Zenith, it's not a glamourous life style (That of the true hacker) Hee hee, it doesn't help the movie business when their technical director is a skiddie!

[x acidreign x]

being an atheist and a computer enthusiast now ruins all movies for me, any horror movie that includes anything supernatual to me is stupid and not scary. any action thriller that features hackers (most of them, now) are stupid. Also, I do alot of 3D graphics and special effects, which ruins that for me too, because I always know how certain things were done, and am too focused of the mistakes that were made and not how spectacular it looks!! It SUCKS, it really does. You want a suggestion for a movie from me? alright, how about making a movie WITHOUT any hackers, ghosts, goblins, or special effects, and relying on decent storytelling to make it interesting. people use hackers in movies because the mythical "UberHacker" in today's world would be a very powerful person. everyone wants to be that guy with the magic hands, that pounds the keyboard for 7 seconds and cracks an uncrackable government supercode. people don't know that cracking encryption is not a matter of skill, but of time. The methods of cracking encryption are pretty much the same, just some cyphers take longer than others. If you were to make a movie that is true to the hacker lifestyle it would BORE YOU TO TEARS. NOONE WOULD WATCH IT!

Here is a day in life of a typical hacker:
wakes up at 5p.m., pisses, checks on the brute force he left running all night, it's successfull, the password is "ilikeass", laughs at the password, tests it, it works, checks recent user activity, leaves a large logfile downloading and goes to get breakfast, egg mcmuffin and mountain dew. returns, checks file download, 10 min. left, f**king 14.4 modem, what a ripoff. turns on the radio, eats breakfast, file is done now, he scans it, looking for proof of his intrusion, there is none, rootkit worked, it should, took him 36 hours to perfect. emails his boss begins to tell him there is "a general protection fault in the secondary password authentication server, am running a vendor patch to secure it", stops himself, realising who he's talking to, deletes what he was going to send the revises: "password server insecure, fixing it now PS: nice password, I like ass too, lol", thinks for a moment, deletes the last part. fixes the server in 10 minutes. plays a game, doesn't like the AI, rewrites it to make the bots smarter, now he can't beat them. fun. realizes he's late for work, grabs a dress shirt that is wadded up in the floor, sprays his unshowered pitts with AXE, and bolts out the door grabbing his tie and nametag on the way out. spends all day recovering data from a hard disk an accountant on the third floor almost destroyed. (idiot) takes a phonecall from a director's assistant on the 7th floor stating estutely "there's nothing on my screen!" , swears to himself if he hears that phrase one more time, he'll go on a shooting spree. finally gets some peace when the IT director calls him to rewire all the cubicles for a beowulf cluster in sector 5 (his idea). Leaves 3 hours later than he should, toolkit it hand with the determination not to ever come back, but the realistic impression that he will anyway. envisions a future in which he'll actually be appreciated, recognizes fiction when he sees it. gets home, eats some cold pizza, passes out watching star trek on laserdisk.

wow, some action flick that would make