Expert BCS members have warned movie fans not to try to emulate the realistic depiction of computer hacking seen in hit film The Matrix Reloaded.

The society said many experts were sufficiently concerned about the accuracy of some of the computing scenes that they have alerted young enthusiasts about the illegality of hacking & the tough prison sentences handed out to perpetrators of this crime.

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I noticed that bit. Some of what was on the screen was rubbish but the use of the nmap tool to port scan a system, identify the services running on what ports, etc was accurate and that definately was a UNIX system like linux or freebsd that was used.

Hehehe, Im off to go hack...

HACK HACK HACK HACK

That's ridiculous. Half a minute searching google will tell a would-be script kiddie much more. I thought we were beyond this kind of prudish, reactionist, moral panic. Obviously not.

I am sure that there was also the use of the command line secure shell client ( ssh ) to connect to a server.

Point is, someone obviously did their homework this time. And that was a refreshing change.

Hacking is shown in a completely ridiculous way on TV and films. For a start, if it was that easy, there would have been at least one nuclear war by now. Secondly, user interfaces do not have demonic faces that say "ACCESS DENIED!" and then spit out fire, etc. There are no beautiful or colorful welcome menus and playful electronic spirits churning out mathematical symbols and heavy metal music. Its just a lot of text typed into a terminal window, just like Trinity was doing in the movie.

Some of the best examples of completely unrealistic hacking in movies includes Lawnmower Man, The Net, Hackers, and of course Weird Science. However, even the mother of all hacker movies, the definative War Games includes some complete and utter BS that the general public tend to swallow but anyone who has at least a passing familiarity with these kinds of technologies knows is complete rubbish. Come on - the computers that launch nuclear missiles are not available over the internet!! Get serious!

Sometimes it would be nice if life were a little more like the movies.... hmm... being me and having my interests would be nice if you could indeed hack like you can in the movies, but the truth is that you can't and its stupid to pretend that you can.

I just noticed this review of "The Net":-

People don't actually think that "The Net" is a realistic movie, do they? I mean, the general public doesn't think that that sort of thing can go on - do they? That by like messing around on the Internet a bit, you could get involved in a plot with international crime lords and loose your identity electronically? And that no one would believe you? Get real.

hehehe - lmao. (thats hilarious)

Thats the movies for yah :rolleyes: But hey what can I say, most people dont know the diffrence so wtf, why not pop in those nice colorful screens

God I hate all those movies - Hackers, War Games.....

I think that "Hackers" sux but "War Games" was a classic. Load of BS, but its still a classic.

"Hackers" looks great, but the storyline just fails to deliver. Some of the sets and costumes and whatnot and really cool, but its just not got what it takes in the suspense department, and as a techno-thriller it falls pretty much flat. It should have been much darker, and more geared towards adults. Its too much a kiddies film.

"The Net" is a nice try, and looks good, but even to a non-technical person it MUST be apparent that some of what happens in it is just complete crap. I mean - that scene where the day is saved because someone presses ESCAPE - or where she looks up the bad-guy's real name with a whois - jeez, get real.

"Lawnmover Man" is definately the least realistic, what with the giant, floating, head-like avatar that fired pyschic energy. Give me a break, please. There's no way that a couple of PCs in someone's basement is going to do that. Nothing except an acid trip is going to.

Probably, in retrospect, "War Games" is the best, because it did not insult the audience of the day too much, who were still caught in the spell of home computing. If you can overcome the technical inaccuracies and watch the film for what it gives - basically a good watch for 2 or so hours, then I think you can enjoy it.

Sort of what Trinity was doing.

Didn't you Americans use nuclear bombs at the end of World War 2? Would that not make it a nuclear war? (Yes, I'm using question marks because I'm not completely certain, therefore I'm phrasing my comments as questions )

Hey! Maybe that was a nuclear war due to hacking! Like, I dunno, the English/French/Russians who had been fighting the evil Nazi regime for many years (WW2 started in '39, fact fans) hacked the American Computer Network (which probably consisted of 3 computers - more than any other computer network in the world!) and changed the American War Tactic from 'Wait And See Who's Winning' to 'Finally Join In And Fight Hitler Cause He Might Be A Bit Bad'. Just a thought.

Whoever you are, you need to stop playing so many computer games !

(only kidding....)

Must.... Play... More... Computer games!!!

Hey!!! That was an RL scenario I was postulating (for once). Grrr. I'm off to play more computer games

You do that.

Does this hat make me look fat?

Its a completely lame scene in that movie where Sandra Bollock types something like:-

BASH#> whois thebadguy

into a command prompt, and it comes back with a picture and everything. come on.

Good and interesting read on this here:--

https://www.europe.f-secure.com/news/newsletter/protected/file_10.html

Also here:-

http://www.insecure.org/


What Trinity was doing...

That's not bad at all. Although "sshnuke" is a fictitious hacking tool, the SSHv1 CRC32 problem certainly was an exploit in certain older versions of ssh.

also, the use of the 10.2.2.2 ip address is also authentic, as its a commonly use private internet ip addressing range as described in several RFC documents. an internet LAN with some internet access would likely have an ip addressing scheme from this range.

All in all, I am as impressed with a hacking scene in a movie as I am likely to ever get.

source: http://lists.insecure.org/lists/nmap-hackers/2003/Apr-Jun/0010.html


LOL! There is a disturbance in the force! LMAO!