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Recently re-watched this movie thanks to Ready Player One: so great to see plausible hacking in a movie (as much as I enjoy Hackers for the entertainment value)

Recently re-watched this movie thanks to Ready Player One: so great to see plausible hacking in a movie (as much as I enjoy Hackers for the entertainment value) - I love this behind the scenes snippet about the movie and its real world impact!

bitwize 11y ago
I love how David researched Stephen Falken in his search for plausible backdoors -- by going to the library, looking through the card catalog, and checking books and magazine and newspaper articles about him.
- TheBlight 11y ago
  Yeah that part wasn't super realistic. A good dictionary file would've cracked that bad boy in less than an hour.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Rate limiting would have killed that dictionary. Just the connection speed: 300 baud means roughly 300 bits per second, or roughly 2250 characters per minute.
    - loeg 11y ago
      1983? He'd get in after his first try, with "password".
      - bitwize 11y ago
        But what kind of credentials would he have? Would he even gain access to the games he was after? The whole point of hunting for the Falken backdoor was to gain the highest access he could, so he could get his hands on what he thought were games in development to be released soon. Also, 'nother WarGames fun fact: Stephen Falken is, of course, a play on Stephen Hawking. At the time of the movie's creation, Professor Hawking had only recently been diagnosed with ALS and was thought to not be long for the world. The original script/treatment was about a relationship between Falken and a teenager, to whom the terminally ill Falken would pass as much knowledge as he could before he died, so his work could live on. When the PC debuted, the script was reworked to incorporate the role computing had in young people's lives, and the nascent "hacker" phenomenon.
      - mixmastamyk 11y ago
        Spoiler alert! The password was "joshua". ;)
  - zitterbewegung 11y ago
    What do you mean that wasn't super realistic. People have figured out peoples passwords and security questions by researching their target. Its basic social engineering.

bitwize 11y ago

I love how David researched Stephen Falken in his search for plausible backdoors -- by going to the library, looking through the card catalog, and checking books and magazine and newspaper articles about him.

TheBlight 11y ago
Yeah that part wasn't super realistic. A good dictionary file would've cracked that bad boy in less than an hour.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Rate limiting would have killed that dictionary. Just the connection speed: 300 baud means roughly 300 bits per second, or roughly 2250 characters per minute.
  - loeg 11y ago
    1983? He'd get in after his first try, with "password".
    - bitwize 11y ago
      But what kind of credentials would he have? Would he even gain access to the games he was after? The whole point of hunting for the Falken backdoor was to gain the highest access he could, so he could get his hands on what he thought were games in development to be released soon. Also, 'nother WarGames fun fact: Stephen Falken is, of course, a play on Stephen Hawking. At the time of the movie's creation, Professor Hawking had only recently been diagnosed with ALS and was thought to not be long for the world. The original script/treatment was about a relationship between Falken and a teenager, to whom the terminally ill Falken would pass as much knowledge as he could before he died, so his work could live on. When the PC debuted, the script was reworked to incorporate the role computing had in young people's lives, and the nascent "hacker" phenomenon.
    - mixmastamyk 11y ago
      Spoiler alert! The password was "joshua". ;)
- zitterbewegung 11y ago
  What do you mean that wasn't super realistic. People have figured out peoples passwords and security questions by researching their target. Its basic social engineering.