4 ms·

Thing is, some of the stuff I used to laugh at as bullshit can be done now. Use the enhance feature to magically unblur images to clarity? I've seen ML demos o

Thing is, some of the stuff I used to laugh at as bullshit can be done now. Use the enhance feature to magically unblur images to clarity? I've seen ML demos of stuff like that. Giant realtime database of all phone calls meta data and recordings? Realtime facial/license plate recognition search of millions of people/cars? Not so funny anymore. Tracking peoples movements in realtime. Sure just cary this phone wherever you go. Realtime overhead imagery of an entire city? There's a company that flies drones around that lets them rewind the movements of all cars in the city throughout the day... Magic black box that can decrypt all encryption? Sure, funny only if you overlook underhanded C planted by the NSA. Hacking into industrial machinery and power systems? Having millions of computers all under your control to launch attacks? This was all funny Hollywood BS and conspiracy theories two decades ago. Elaborate animated "hacking" scenes are still funny but what they accomplish is possible.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Yup. Watch_Dogs-style hacking of CCTV cameras? As the other story on HN's frontpage today will tell you (and so will any experience with Shodan), it's totally doable in theory - the only practical reason this doesn't happen is that every camera is broken in a different way, and as a protagonist, to hack them in a field-actionable way, you'd have to have a hundred people in your tech support staff, who manually engage appropriate exploits based on your requests.
- wybiral 9y ago
  You'd be surprised by how many of them use the exact same tech, rebranded. For many of them, everything about the server is the same (HTTP headers, directory structure, default logins, etc) but they'll display a different logo and maybe some different CSS. Maybe the problem is that my sample size isn't large enough, but I've only encountered about a dozen widely used DVR servers that are actually unique tech instead of rebranding.
- lionelione43 9y ago
  I mean that's basically all hacker suites in a nutshell isn't it? A big collection of various tools and exploits for various problems, utilizing the right exploit for the right problem. That's the big thing in Watch_Dogs, you have a pretty big hacker group working together to find exploits and then bundling it together into a suite that the main character can control from his phone. I'm sure with the proper scripting and metadata you can make a DB of CCTV exploits for various popular brands and automatically apply that exploit on the target based off it's brand. It's just a matter of doing all that work.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Yup. Watch_Dogs-style hacking of CCTV cameras? As the other story on HN's frontpage today will tell you (and so will any experience with Shodan), it's totally doable in theory - the only practical reason this doesn't happen is that every camera is broken in a different way, and as a protagonist, to hack them in a field-actionable way, you'd have to have a hundred people in your tech support staff, who manually engage appropriate exploits based on your requests.

wybiral 9y ago
You'd be surprised by how many of them use the exact same tech, rebranded. For many of them, everything about the server is the same (HTTP headers, directory structure, default logins, etc) but they'll display a different logo and maybe some different CSS. Maybe the problem is that my sample size isn't large enough, but I've only encountered about a dozen widely used DVR servers that are actually unique tech instead of rebranding.
lionelione43 9y ago
I mean that's basically all hacker suites in a nutshell isn't it? A big collection of various tools and exploits for various problems, utilizing the right exploit for the right problem. That's the big thing in Watch_Dogs, you have a pretty big hacker group working together to find exploits and then bundling it together into a suite that the main character can control from his phone. I'm sure with the proper scripting and metadata you can make a DB of CCTV exploits for various popular brands and automatically apply that exploit on the target based off it's brand. It's just a matter of doing all that work.