I once wrote a piece of software that cracked passwords for Windows 9x network shares. It looked just like the movies, it would crack one letter of the password

I once wrote a piece of software that cracked passwords for Windows 9x network shares. It looked just like the movies, it would crack one letter of the password at a time, each letter would cycle through the possibilities and then lock in, before it would move onto the next character. Those with a good memory of exploits will recall the exploit that was used. So it's not necessarily fictional, sometimes it does work like that. I wasn't alive in the 80s, but I would guess that such things were very common back then (but obviously are non-existent now).