6 ms·

Sneakers was the best technically, but Hackers captured the spirit of hacking during the time the best. Wargames is inbetween those. I'd argue Weird Science and

Sneakers was the best technically, but Hackers captured the spirit of hacking during the time the best. Wargames is inbetween those. I'd argue Weird Science and Ferris Bueller are at the same level as the Matrix as far as the hacking content goes.

jmuguy 5y ago
Yeah its probably not fair to compare them really, because I think Hackers (and Wargames) are great too. Just in terms of the movie itself (and cast... I mean my god) its great.
jkingsman 5y ago
While I completely agree with you, as a very minor point, The Matrix Reloaded features Trinity correctly using nmap to find an exposed SSH server, and then correctly using SSHNuke to exploit an era-appropriate CRC vuln -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U
wcarss 5y ago
I feel Wargames is often underrated. It was one of the very first movies about the topic (1983), and yet it balances being an entertaining blockbuster with very realistic depictions of many kinds of hacking, from waiting around for a port-scanner, to patiently shoulder surfing an administrator, to dumpster diving and just doing research on your opponents, plus many others. It even bases the overall plot on AI-training-set-poisoning! To this day that topic remains pretty far out of the public consciousness as a concern, but it's probably gonna be a pretty big deal. It also captures a core hacker cultural feeling of "curious grey-hat teenagers having fun exploring" versus "large powerful entities getting very mad at the wrong people over their own failures to implement basic security safeguards." It even manages to stuff a nuclear deproliferation + broad antiwar morality play in there, and through all of this, there's not a single crazy imaginary hacking visualization! It's a great hacker movie.
- passwordreset 5y ago
  I think we shouldn't forget the real stars of that movie, Maury Chaykin and Eddie Deezen, both playing epic nerds. Jim and Alvin were my heroes. Not so much now.
- jedberg 5y ago
  > there's not a single crazy imaginary hacking visualization! The graphics for thermonuclear war simulations were pretty out there in 1984.
  - mwcampbell 5y ago
    And don't forget, the speech synthesis was fake.
excalibur 5y ago
Obviously not a movie, but Mr. Robot deserves a mention here anyway for the highly realistic hacking supporting its less realistic plot.
- ffhhj 5y ago
  Mr. Robot is more about mind hacking (Elliot) and society hacking (Whiterose and other powerful figures), along with Fight Club, Who Am I, and 23 [1998].
bena 5y ago
I wouldn't say Hackers captured the spirit, but more like captured an aspirational desire. Everyone wanted to be a slick William Gibson cyberpunk inspired digital cowboy. Truth is, there were way more Dan Aykroyds than Jonny Lee Millers.
runjake 5y ago
Having been actually hacking in the time when WarGames came out, it portrayed exactly how it was for me and my sphere of young hackers (sans the NORAD visits, of course). I found Sneakers great, too. Great story, and the TTPs (techniques and tradecraft) were mostly spot-on. Has anybody else been to NewHackCity West (in the bay area, now defunct, AFAIK) and remember the sign out front? :) Maybe I'm not giving it a fair shake, but Hackers looks awful. I never saw Hackers completely, only scenes and such, but it never interested me and seemed silly and outlandish, as if it were written by some Hollywood outsider who was trying to be as imaginative against stereotypes at the time as possible. It doesn't resonate with me at all (from the scenes I've watched).
- twox2 5y ago
  I think you should give Hackers a chance... it is silly and full of hollywood tropes, but it definitely captures the hacker culture of city hacker kids in the 90's. I also think the film pays homage to well known hackers from the 80's and 90's, all the handles of the characters in the movie are named after real people and there are even references to the types of textfiles/books we all shared at the time. If you can suspend your disbelief it's great. But I do have a soft spot for the movie. It was filmed in the HS I went to (thought I attended a few years later) - there's a scene where one of the characters was redboxing on one of the school payphones, and I got to do that from the same phone as a student in that school - how cool is that?
  - TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    Did you ever swim in the pool on the roof?
    - twox2 5y ago
      Only when it sprung a leak. Funny enough, there were a few of us that would go hang out on the roof. The stairs were gated, but it was the kind of gate you could reach your arm through and open on the other side. It's a big school though, and in reality there was a pool on the ground floor... so the pool on the narrative would fall apart in real life :D
pmarreck 5y ago
Hackers also had that early-90's "before it was cool" techno soundtrack vibe.
- wwweston 5y ago
  Halcyon On and On is an evergreen awesome track.
- namdnay 5y ago
  I love the soundtrack but it wasn’t exactly “before it was cool”. Music for the Jilted Generation was already number 1 in the UK
  - pmarreck 5y ago
    Ha! The US story was completely different, there. I was very jealous of the UK music scene for years. Then Deadmau5 and Skrillex showed up and suddenly... a niche interest became a mainstream one circa 2010. Just look at Winter Music Conference attendance as a gauge... it was basically an underground scene for its first 2 decades... https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125237731 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125237... We're talking about a country where Disco Demolition Night was a huge thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night And the backlash persisted for decades. Also, this is so effing American, sigh (everything from media preying on rock-fan fears that "disco is taking over," to using explosives to "blow up" the records, to it starting a riot, to the not-very-hidden homophobia and masculine insecurity, to...) But me? I've been into this stuff since listening to Kraftwerk in the 80's on one of the first Walkman knockoffs in the high school cafeteria! I never cared how cool (or not) it was, I just loved the beats. And yet, interest in dance music has been the butt of American media jokes in movies and elsewhere for a long time. Related: I was once in New Orleans not long ago and asked a bartender where the electronic music venues were and he goes, "you don't LOOK like a f_g..." (sorry about language, but that's literally what he said, sigh) At least in New Orleans, that music is TIGHTLY associated with a certain orientation and NO ONE outside of that orientation listens to it. It's weirdly rigid. But I digress
Ansil849 5y ago
> Sneakers was the best technically How so? In terms of technical accuracy, Wargames is vastly more accurate (everything down to the old paperclip trick to get free phone calls, a very old school fone phreaking trick) than Sneakers, or Hackers for that matter.
- metalliqaz 5y ago
  Probably because Sneakers features more social engineering. That would be my guess. Wargames features realistic war dialers and such, but it also features WOPR, a 1980's computer that can speak and learn and reason like a human.
  - Ansil849 5y ago
    > but it also features WOPR, a 1980's computer that can speak and learn and reason like a human. While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt anything, at the touch of a power probe. Both films have nonsensical MacGuffins as their central element, but Wargames has vastly more technically-accurate methodology sprinkled throughout the film.
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      > While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt anything, at the touch of a power probe. That is more reasonable to me than Skynet. Due mainly to things like the Clipper Chip[0] and other efforts made by the government[1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
      - Ansil849 5y ago
        > That is more reasonable to me than Skynet. Have you heard of RYAN [1]? Or LAWs [2]? Skynet is here in full force, while strong crypto remains unbreakable. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/wargames-for-real-how-one-1983-exercise-nearly-triggered-wwiii/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/warga... [2] https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm

jmuguy 5y ago

Yeah its probably not fair to compare them really, because I think Hackers (and Wargames) are great too. Just in terms of the movie itself (and cast... I mean my god) its great.

jkingsman 5y ago

While I completely agree with you, as a very minor point, The Matrix Reloaded features Trinity correctly using nmap to find an exposed SSH server, and then correctly using SSHNuke to exploit an era-appropriate CRC vuln -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U

wcarss 5y ago

I feel Wargames is often underrated. It was one of the very first movies about the topic (1983), and yet it balances being an entertaining blockbuster with very realistic depictions of many kinds of hacking, from waiting around for a port-scanner, to patiently shoulder surfing an administrator, to dumpster diving and just doing research on your opponents, plus many others. It even bases the overall plot on AI-training-set-poisoning! To this day that topic remains pretty far out of the public consciousness as a concern, but it's probably gonna be a pretty big deal. It also captures a core hacker cultural feeling of "curious grey-hat teenagers having fun exploring" versus "large powerful entities getting very mad at the wrong people over their own failures to implement basic security safeguards." It even manages to stuff a nuclear deproliferation + broad antiwar morality play in there, and through all of this, there's not a single crazy imaginary hacking visualization! It's a great hacker movie.

passwordreset 5y ago
I think we shouldn't forget the real stars of that movie, Maury Chaykin and Eddie Deezen, both playing epic nerds. Jim and Alvin were my heroes. Not so much now.
jedberg 5y ago
> there's not a single crazy imaginary hacking visualization! The graphics for thermonuclear war simulations were pretty out there in 1984.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  And don't forget, the speech synthesis was fake.

excalibur 5y ago

Obviously not a movie, but Mr. Robot deserves a mention here anyway for the highly realistic hacking supporting its less realistic plot.

ffhhj 5y ago
Mr. Robot is more about mind hacking (Elliot) and society hacking (Whiterose and other powerful figures), along with Fight Club, Who Am I, and 23 [1998].

bena 5y ago

I wouldn't say Hackers captured the spirit, but more like captured an aspirational desire. Everyone wanted to be a slick William Gibson cyberpunk inspired digital cowboy. Truth is, there were way more Dan Aykroyds than Jonny Lee Millers.

runjake 5y ago

Having been actually hacking in the time when WarGames came out, it portrayed exactly how it was for me and my sphere of young hackers (sans the NORAD visits, of course). I found Sneakers great, too. Great story, and the TTPs (techniques and tradecraft) were mostly spot-on. Has anybody else been to NewHackCity West (in the bay area, now defunct, AFAIK) and remember the sign out front? :) Maybe I'm not giving it a fair shake, but Hackers looks awful. I never saw Hackers completely, only scenes and such, but it never interested me and seemed silly and outlandish, as if it were written by some Hollywood outsider who was trying to be as imaginative against stereotypes at the time as possible. It doesn't resonate with me at all (from the scenes I've watched).

twox2 5y ago
I think you should give Hackers a chance... it is silly and full of hollywood tropes, but it definitely captures the hacker culture of city hacker kids in the 90's. I also think the film pays homage to well known hackers from the 80's and 90's, all the handles of the characters in the movie are named after real people and there are even references to the types of textfiles/books we all shared at the time. If you can suspend your disbelief it's great. But I do have a soft spot for the movie. It was filmed in the HS I went to (thought I attended a few years later) - there's a scene where one of the characters was redboxing on one of the school payphones, and I got to do that from the same phone as a student in that school - how cool is that?
- TigeriusKirk 5y ago
  Did you ever swim in the pool on the roof?
  - twox2 5y ago
    Only when it sprung a leak. Funny enough, there were a few of us that would go hang out on the roof. The stairs were gated, but it was the kind of gate you could reach your arm through and open on the other side. It's a big school though, and in reality there was a pool on the ground floor... so the pool on the narrative would fall apart in real life :D

pmarreck 5y ago

Hackers also had that early-90's "before it was cool" techno soundtrack vibe.

wwweston 5y ago
Halcyon On and On is an evergreen awesome track.
namdnay 5y ago
I love the soundtrack but it wasn’t exactly “before it was cool”. Music for the Jilted Generation was already number 1 in the UK
- pmarreck 5y ago
  Ha! The US story was completely different, there. I was very jealous of the UK music scene for years. Then Deadmau5 and Skrillex showed up and suddenly... a niche interest became a mainstream one circa 2010. Just look at Winter Music Conference attendance as a gauge... it was basically an underground scene for its first 2 decades... https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125237731 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125237... We're talking about a country where Disco Demolition Night was a huge thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night And the backlash persisted for decades. Also, this is so effing American, sigh (everything from media preying on rock-fan fears that "disco is taking over," to using explosives to "blow up" the records, to it starting a riot, to the not-very-hidden homophobia and masculine insecurity, to...) But me? I've been into this stuff since listening to Kraftwerk in the 80's on one of the first Walkman knockoffs in the high school cafeteria! I never cared how cool (or not) it was, I just loved the beats. And yet, interest in dance music has been the butt of American media jokes in movies and elsewhere for a long time. Related: I was once in New Orleans not long ago and asked a bartender where the electronic music venues were and he goes, "you don't LOOK like a f_g..." (sorry about language, but that's literally what he said, sigh) At least in New Orleans, that music is TIGHTLY associated with a certain orientation and NO ONE outside of that orientation listens to it. It's weirdly rigid. But I digress

Ansil849 5y ago

> Sneakers was the best technically How so? In terms of technical accuracy, Wargames is vastly more accurate (everything down to the old paperclip trick to get free phone calls, a very old school fone phreaking trick) than Sneakers, or Hackers for that matter.

metalliqaz 5y ago
Probably because Sneakers features more social engineering. That would be my guess. Wargames features realistic war dialers and such, but it also features WOPR, a 1980's computer that can speak and learn and reason like a human.
- Ansil849 5y ago
  > but it also features WOPR, a 1980's computer that can speak and learn and reason like a human. While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt anything, at the touch of a power probe. Both films have nonsensical MacGuffins as their central element, but Wargames has vastly more technically-accurate methodology sprinkled throughout the film.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    > While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt anything, at the touch of a power probe. That is more reasonable to me than Skynet. Due mainly to things like the Clipper Chip[0] and other efforts made by the government[1]. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
    - Ansil849 5y ago
      > That is more reasonable to me than Skynet. Have you heard of RYAN [1]? Or LAWs [2]? Skynet is here in full force, while strong crypto remains unbreakable. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/wargames-for-real-how-one-1983-exercise-nearly-triggered-wwiii/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/11/warga... [2] https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm