4 ms·
I was never that upset about Hackers, but I've had my fair share of laughs at it over the years. I've had some revelations since then though. If you don't docu
by gozo 11y ago
I was never that upset about Hackers, but I've had my fair share of laughs at it over the years. I've had some revelations since then though.
If you don't document things yourself, you don't get to write history. There just isn't that much material out there of how things were. In hind-sight I also think it was more accurate than given credit for. Partly because a lot of the things it described, like phreaking, isn't a thing anymore. So technical accuracy is no longer that important.
The people who made the movie to some extent understood hacker culture better than the hackers themselves. They realized that it wasn't the technical details that was important, but describing the sentiment among hackers. Otherwise they could have made a movie about security researchers at Microsoft.
PS. Regarding hacking traffic lights, back in the day you could supposedly flash a light at the same frequency as emergency vehicles to turn the lights green, or at least that's what the textfiles said.
- rudolf0 11y agoI agree, I think the script writers knew exactly what they were doing. They did not have to achieve technical accuracy to convey the hacker ethos to a general, or even a technical, audience.
- Gracana 11y agoThe traffic light exploit still works, sort of. They didn't upgrade the sensors or the communication protocol, they just changed it so that it turns all of the lights red. Emergency vehicles can run reds, so it works for them and not you.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoThis is true, and an Arduino and a switchable strobe will let you figure out the frequency. The important thing is to know which direction it lets go first after the light goes away :-) I read an advertisement for a red light camera system that offered this as a feature (traffic management for emergency vehicle (EV) ingress and egress) it had the feature that you had to have red and blue lights, so it wasn't fooled easily by civilians.
- Gracana 11y agoOh, using the same system but taking advantage of the additional signals already present on emergency vehicles... that's pretty clever thinking.
- cguess 11y agoThe article talks about how that actually was not possible when the movie came out in '95, but it is now. Back then most of them were on mechanical timers I believe. They actually quote the researcher that figured out the flaws, apparently in SF the lights are still unpatched.
- superuser2 11y agoIt depends. Many of those systems are still IR without crypto. Some teenager was in the news a few years ago for reversing the IR signaling protocol of a nearby railroad (!!) and operating track switches at will.