4 ms·
Nmap in the movies (2008)
- ear7h 7mo ago> At least it is a lot more realistic than silly 3D animation approach used in many previous movies (e.g. "hacking the Gibson" on Hackers, or the much worse portrayals on Swordfish) One of the things I love about Hackers is that it portrays the feeling of hacking and programming to someone who might not have done it. Yea I think a lot of people have the green text hackerman image when they think about hacking but it hardly conveys what's happening inside the head of the hacker, it's just something cryptic magic that solves a problem and advances the plot. In Hackers, the Gibson is a space, somepeople live there and oversee it, other's have to transport themselves (there's a montage with fast shots of a subway, then computer circuit boards, then the "buildings" of the gibson that work really well imo). Not every film has to convey all of this but I really appreciate that Hackers does.
- Sharlin 7mo agoI mean, it was a solid interpretation of cyberspace as envisioned by one W. Gibson (the name of the system not being a coincidence, obviously). As it was meant to be. You (hopefully) wouldn't see boring nmap terminals in a hypothetical Neuromancer filmization, either!
- nikanj 7mo agoWould that be the same Cowboy Gibson who was mentioned in Hyperion?
- joshmarinacci 7mo agoYes. A reference to the real author who’s work inspired the cyberpunk chapters.
- saidnooneever 7mo agowhat u mean, the swordfish decrypting cubez is fake? :((
- NitpickLawyer 7mo ago> but it hardly conveys what's happening inside the head of the hacker Mr Robot is another great one at that. It has layers of trippy stuff, but the hacking stuff is both real-ish and pretty well explained by the main character's monologues.
- elcapitan 7mo agoOne of the odd things about Hackers is how it created a cultural feedback loop. When it came out, the style it showed was pretty weird and kind of campy, but I think it got integrated into actual hacker culture over time (e.g. visible in hacker spaces, conferences, online culture etc), and because of that today the movie as a whole seems less weird than originally.
- 00zayn 7mo agonmap killed those goofy 3D 'hacking the Gibson' visuals. The CLI has the same effect as a grainy CCTV feed.
- elophanto_agent 7mo ago[dead]
- bluebxrry 7mo agoThey should let NMAP have its own celeb page on IMDB. Better than MGM's lineup nowadays.
- whirlwin 7mo agoFor showing something "hacker-looking" in the screen, I think also tcpdump could be a good alternative, because nmap might be a bit slow...
- tamimio 7mo ago> Hollywood has decided that Nmap is the tool to show whenever hacking scenes Because it was the tool for when you want anything to do with recon or scanning, especially back in the day, network aspect was a big part (no cloud no api etc) and not that complicated (no vpn no zero trust) so if you managed to scan the network you get a lot of goodies. It’s better than how “hackers” usually portrayed, and ruining the word for generations.
- bastiao 7mo agoZenmap also appeared, at least once :)
- mmooss 7mo ago(2012) is incorrect: It includes later movies and a comment at the top from 2020.
- otikik 7mo agoRelated: htop sightings: https://htop.dev/sightings.html https://htop.dev/sightings.html
- profer602 7mo ago[flagged]