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from the or-is-that-what-they-want-you-to-believe? dept.
Some lighthearted news for the weekend!
The scene doesn’t include a keyboard. Or a computer mouse. But it shows why Michael Mann’s Blackhat may be the best hacker movie ever made.
For Parisa Tabriz, who sits at the center of the info-sec universe as the head of Google’s Chrome security team, it’s a Hollywood moment that rings remarkably true. “It’s not flashy, but it’s something that real criminals have tried—and highlights the fundamental security problems with foreign USB devices.”
Tabriz will also tell you that such accuracy—not to mention the subtlety of the scene with the coffee-stained papers—is unusual for a movie set in the world of information security. And she’s hardly alone in thinking so. Last week, Tabriz helped arrange an early screening of Blackhat in San Francisco for 200-odd security specialists from Google, Facebook, Apple, Tesla, Twitter, Square, Cisco, and other parts of Silicon Valley’s close-knit security community, and their response to the film was shockingly, well, positive.
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/blackhat-the-best-cyber-movie/
Did you find hacking accurately depicted in the movie ?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @03:14AM
there's not even a john mclain or trinity dressed in tight black vinyl
what is this nonsense?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @06:11AM
Wei Tang is smoking though.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SuperCharlie on Sunday January 18 2015, @04:21AM
We are so far down the cyber road it is about time we get a decent portrayal of this. Like most of us here, I have been at this techy thing for a long time..almost 25 years and it pains me every time I see them guess the password in 5 seconds because of their cats name or their birthday or how they instantly can trace someone down to the floor because by God they have the IP address. I am putting this one on my actually go and see it at the theater list.. and thats a pretty rare deal for me.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ilPapa on Sunday January 18 2015, @04:59AM
My favorite is when the monitor of the computer being hacked shows an animated full-screen graphic of the password being revealed character by character. In order, from left to right, while the hacker nervously looks on.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @05:00AM
*maybe*... lets wait and see if this 'positive' review is nothing more than a submit to a bunch of tech sites about 'how good it is' to get good reviews later on.
Wait and see. It smells like a joe job. But then I am feeling rather paranoid today for some reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @05:31AM
Paranoid... Sign of the times dude. Walk it off :-)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @05:55AM
Yeah, just look at all the hype [techdirt.com] about that TV show Scorpion and it is the most silly over-the-top portrayal of hackers I've ever seen. Just so dumb it is amazing that even actors with zero technical literacy can make it through an entire episode with a straight face. At least Poulsen has more credibility than the Scorpion guy, but his role in the Bradley Manning story is not flattering.
BTW, joe job [wikipedia.org] doesn't mean what you think it means.
(Score: 2) by hankwang on Sunday January 18 2015, @08:00AM
"see if this 'positive' review is nothing more than a submit to a bunch of tech sites about 'how good it is'"
In the case of Wired: the script writers consulted a Wired editor (Poulsen), so Wired isn't expected to be objective. Poulsen is probably contractually forbidden to say negative things, like "I argued forever with the writers that anyone with a clue would find this ridiculous, but they wouldn't listen and pushed that implausible plot device anyway"
Avantslash: SoylentNews for mobile [avantslash.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @11:50AM
I've read the Wired article and seen other hype for this movie like interviews with the director.
Then the reviews came. [rottentomatoes.com]
Giving Thor dude a 15 minute course in Linux doesn't make a good movie. And the last thing we need is more cyberhype when our cyberpresident is considering more cyberbills to fight cyberterror while cybershitting on Aaron Swartz's dead meat avatar [eff.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 18 2015, @01:08PM
Looking at the reviews, I don't see any saying the hacker scenes are not authentic (which is all the article is about). They complain about a boring plot, bad character motives, bad filming … but the hacking depicted is nowhere criticised, as far as I see (I haven't read through all the contributions, though).
So what I gather from the article plus the reviews:
If you want to see a good film, better stay away. But if you are just interested in seeing realistic hacking scenes (and great gunfight scenes), this film is for you.
Maybe they should use it in security education. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @05:44PM
The sysadmin frantically typing "ps -ef" and "kill -9" into the command window in Tron Legacy was a nice touch, though.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday January 19 2015, @05:44PM
Actually...a few years back when I was young and naive and running the Norton firewall thing (came with the system I think) whenever it detected an "attack" (Did I mention it was Norton? The "attacks" were never attacks...) it would give you the option to trace the location of the IP. And there was one instance where it traced it back to a specific floor of a specific building. Probably because it was a router owned by my ISP, most traces didn't give anywhere NEAR that level of detail...but still, depending on the system you're trying to trace, it may actually be possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @06:21AM
9 in 10 dentists recommends Solidox!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @11:20AM
is that they get the hacking right.
Otherwise it comes off like one of those amateur space movies where the director obviously has no way of protraying inertial dynamics, and the movie loses all believability.
It has seemed for a long time to me to see others outside the tech community take computer integrity seriously. I sadly observe "just good enough that people don't bring it back to the store and DEMAND their money back, regardless of what was printed in the EULA" has become the order of the day. The general public seems to take presentation over substance; to me that smacks of determining the worth of a bridge as to what color it is, not the architectural design and craftsmanship to make a bridge that will last several hundred years.
Here's hoping that this movie wake up a few people and remind them of the vulnerability we are making for ourselves in order to try to protect a few business models that depend on artificial monopolies sustained by lobbied congressmen and deliberately created ignorance ( EULA - "You will not disassemble to find out how this software works").
We seem to have fallen into some sort of trance where we think we can go after problems with a lawyer and a pen. I believe we are really setting ourselves up for a rude awakening when the same shit we foist on other countries comes back on us. We can even have law-makers stand behind podiums emblazoned with the great seal of the United States, make speeches, shake hands, sign papers, but that's not going to stop some computer relentlessly executing code that's been uploaded into it.
One of the reasons I am working a lot with Arduino type stuff is I believe the microcontroller is one of the last pieces of programmable helpers that I can truly trust.
I just hope we don't have to have the house burn down in order to teach respect for fire safety.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 18 2015, @11:57AM
For me the important thing isn't how accurate a cyberthriller with a 30-35% rating on rottentomatoes portrays hacking, it's whether our legislators see the movie a week or two before voting on the usual crap cybersecurity bills. Maybe Sony will hand free tickets to lawmakers so they can see this well-timed Universal Pictures film.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 18 2015, @01:15PM
Given the recent events at Sony, I guess they make it required watching for their employees.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by citizenr on Sunday January 18 2015, @05:31PM
yep , PERFECT portrait of ordinary hacker - a panel of nerds agrees.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday January 18 2015, @07:57PM
Will it beat the least full of CompSci Bullshi!t film ever, namely Forbidden Planet? In that one, the robot behaves like one, with password and superuser override.
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