Hacker Breaks Down 26 Hacking Scenes From Movies & TV | WIRED

I need a rest easy all right hi I'm Sammy Kamkar Sammy is a privacy researcher and computer hacker today we're gonna talk about hackings depiction in film and television swordfish hacking montage in this clip we see a pretty recurring theme in a lot of movies that depict hacking and that's a 3d visual interface it's not my problem that really has nothing to do with hacking what the is going on in this place or is really not an efficient interface to use at all the more accurate interface would be a console or terminal yeah and that's simply because it's the most efficient way to obtain a lot of data you can look at a lot of code you can look a look at a lot of text or a database and extract the information you want very quickly thank you Italian Job hacking traffic lights they use video feeds from intersections and specifically design algorithms to predict traffic conditions and thereby control traffic lights so all I did was come up with my own kick-ass algorithm to sneak in and now we own the place see red light green light many of these traffic light systems are actually controlled through systems called SCADA systems which are industrial controllers that allow things like traffic lights lights working fine just an accident in Los Angeles a number of street lights were actually hacked several years ago oops and many of these traffic lights are actually controlled over the internet and often don't even have a password to connect to them so totally realistic it's good Chuck hacking into the Federal Reserve [Music] in this clip we see a common theme and that's pretty interfaces that really have nothing to do with hacking thanks for the help there's too much information just coming up and down and it's too quick for you to actually obtain any useful information I'm sorry we still talk to you pretty much never see pop ups when you're doing any sort of programming or hacking like this Laurie in the middle of the clip they also talk about optimizing their compilation you know what you actually want to pick up there at the bottom of your page compiler can optimize a value away like that what they're talking about is actually optimizing something within code and you're typically doing compiling when you're writing some source code and then you're compiling it into a program or binary that you can later run it's kind of unrelated to what they're doing so they did take some programming jargon and throw it in the middle there was taken out in Skyfall mi6 gets hacked who's using a polymorphic engine do you take the code I never I tried to gain access it changes it's like solving a Rubik's Cube that's fighting back the 3d graphics here are similar to what you see in swordfish there are not really representative of anything you'd actually see unlike swordfish there are more realistic aspects in this clip for one they're talking about polymorphic code he's using a pony morphic engine do you take the codes polymorphic code is a program that essentially changes itself to try to hide itself consider its our filters will no longer work and it can continue to spread they talk a little bit about that in this clip never I tried to gain access it changes they show hex code which could be of the virus it's just another way to represent binary data or binary information and that is pretty accurate however for the purpose of the plot they do add the grand boro boro which is not real hex code as all hex characters are zero through nine or A through F but they show that for the purpose of the plot College if hackers competing with another hacker unbelievable a hacker [Music] this clip opens with a sequence that we would call social engineering I don't play well with others which is communicating with someone pretending to be someone else and trying to extract information that helps you break into a machine or target computer yeah okay besides the unrealistic visuals this is actually something kind of common yeah when you might hack into a machine and you find that someone else has already actually hacked in at this point you do something kind of funny revenge your goal is actually to patch the machine to prevent any other hackers from breaking in and you're actually helping the target the sensitive type but you'll often leave the back door so that you can come back in what a back door is a piece of software that you can run on a machine that grants you access in the future without the authorized users ever knowing you're inside the machine you're the that's been invading my turf yeah wargames 1980s hacking those are great yeah I don't think that I deserved it do you this is actually an accurate representation of hacking back in the 1980s all right back then it was called freaking freaking with a pH as in phone hacking yeah in this case he's actually dialing into a computer network over a telephone line dying into the schools except when you would dial in to dial up you were dialing into an ISP or Internet service provider here he's actually dialing directly into the computer that controls the grades they changed the password every a couple of weeks but I know where they write it down and this is exactly how bulletin board systems or BBS's worked back then and a number of other systems as well okay by accessing a server Tron Legacy we will be making our debut on tokyo's Nikkei index OS 12 is the most secure operating system ever released many films will depict hacking as accessing a machine and installing some malicious software OS 12 o few bugs however I don't really consider that hacking I'm just playing that in this case he's breaking into a place physically accessing a computer that doesn't ask for a password that has no encryption or has no other authorization so he simply acts as a computer and uploading a virus well gift hacking into a hospital mr. robot hospitals a heavily networked one like this are almost too easy to hack I can make my health records look like every other obedient zombie out there mr. robot consistently demonstrates real hacking and pretty reasonable scenarios thank in this case he's hacking into a hospital because they have pretty lack security this is William Highsmith he is the IT department he's also an idiot and their technology is extremely old he's useless security software that runs on Windows 98 which is pretty accurate when you're talking about most hospitals and he's supposed to protect their network from people like me additionally the interfaces in this clip are actually realistic you don't have to worry recently we've heard of actual hospitals getting hacked having malware and ransomware installed and even some parts shutting down simply due to the lack security and old systems they never stood a chance NCIS stopping a hack no way I'm getting hats or ports key it's moving too fast our connection with the intrastate abase separate it's too much I've never seen cold like this stop the pop-ups this is not good defending against a hacker untraceable whoever is behind the site is local and wants attention shut him down we are black holy nice eye piece but every time we shut one down a new mirror pops up the site's IP keeps changing constantly each new address is an exploited server this clip is extremely accurate nice touch a hacker has a domain name Union the u.s. keeps taking down the IP addresses of the domain name and the IP address is essentially the physical address of that domain however the hacker has so many other IPS or machines on the internet hacked that he or she is able to replace them very quickly it wasn't that wonderful now they state that the name server and registrar are hosted in Russia domain register and the name servers are all in Russian which they have no jurisdiction over no jurisdiction there the registrar's where you get your domain names such as wired.com and the name server points the domain name like wire com2 the IP address there's a connection there in this case the one thing they got wrong is the US does have jurisdiction over the dot-com good so the US would be able to take down any dot-com domain name how patriotic CSI cyber clickbait the ads are redirecting site users to what could be a fictitious pharmacy looks like a normal ad right and this is the code for the ad but there's actually two codes written right on top of each other click begging screen right part of this clip is someone accurate being able to hack into a web server and modify the code so that users who visit that site are then affected the fake ad is masking the legitimate app is the real thing that happens quite common actually however the combination of codes being layered on top of each other it's not really accurate it could be a coincidence if you're viewing the source code you're pretty much viewing everything peekaboo so not so realistic in this case yeah the net disassembling a virus not to worry everything's under control it's gonna be okay you run into the same theme where the interfaces themselves are not very accurate yeah however everything that's actually happening here is quite accurate I appreciate it essentially she's taking a virus and she's disassembling it wipe out your own system what that means is she's taking the actual binary executable and turning it into machine code which is the type of code that your computer or CPU actually executes then she's turning into a format that she can read to see what it's actually doing well why don't you just tell me what this is about so that she can help whomever gotten hacked let them know what has happened and how to resolve the issue thank you this is something that actually there are dedicated teams and companies for today what you're kidding right breaching the firewall castle someone synched a rat to one of my servers remote access to a would be hacked their own trying to track our IP address oh can you stop it no but I can't slow him down one thing we see in lot of clips is people attempt to slow hackers down or slow something down but really there's nothing to slow down it's either happening or it's not we have to stop him however there are some macros ease here they do use a rat or no tax exception and there are actual tools called rats which allow you access into machines that you otherwise shouldn't necessarily have access to the interface is quite inaccurate but then it also seems that TB likes to think that hackers send a lot of animal photos as we've seen with the dog intron legacy low end as we see here with lots and lots of cats [Music] The Matrix Reloaded hacking into a power grid [Music] in this we see some realism we see an actual UNIX terminal and someone is actually using a fictitious tool called ssh nuke and what it pretty much does is it gives them access to the power grid it drops them into a root shell on a UNIX machine which actually is pretty realistic thanks and then they use another tool SSH to log into another machine as root which is the administrative privilege it gives you pretty much full access to do whatever you want yeah you can do that unrealistic you have the SSH nuke tool which is not a real tool additionally most power grids aren't on the Internet but there's some pretty good foreshadowing going on here as more and more are becoming connected as it simply makes them easier to maintain there is nothing to stop hacking on a cellphone Iron Man 2 and local intelligence on the ground indicating all of my second boy I need him if you'll direct your attention to shed screens I believe that South Korea in this clip we see Tony Stark using his mobile device to actually hack into multiple TV screens and monitors and it's actually kind of realistic you're welcome as you could easily break into say a chromecast or Apple TV and most Smart TVs are actually internet connected now so it's working there's a big attack surface a lot of ways to actually break into these TVs and cast something that otherwise you shouldn't weird science stealing processing power problem is your computers a wimp and we need a lot more power than this that's why you see James [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have another clip with some graphical interface that isn't very accurate I know that but you know we can we can use and some fun 3d visuals however the act of breaking into a computer especially one with more computing power and resources than your own to try to crack something or decrypt something is pretty accurate today the clips we saw in wargames and weird science take place in the same time period however what we saw in wargames was a lot more accurate than what was depicted here we also get another classic access denied' screen yeah yeah live free or die hard executing a virus in this clip they don't really show actually any hacking they do show running a virus however to actually run a virus or upload a virus you already must have access to the target system thanks for that essentially you will need to have found a vulnerability that you can run the virus on and only then can you actually execute that virus Snowden surveillance think of it as a Google search except instead of searching only what people make public we're also looking at everything they don't so emails chats SMS whatever yeah but which people the whole kingdoms no way this is real seriously there's actually a program called xkeyscore that the NSA uses execute scores under 702 Authority which means no warrants that we actually found out about from Snowden after he leaked a ton of documents to the press and her principal our government and other governments do have the capabilities to do this sort of thing the social network hackathon encryption and then intercept all traffic of work secure of course they're happy yes all behind a picture on you later here's the beauty if we can find a code written this is interesting because it's actually rumored to be true that Facebook would have these drinking programming hackathons yeah although I don't expect so many people and so much of a party atmosphere the type of system that he's talking about hacking into is pretty accurate this sort of thing is actually typical at Def Con a yearly hacking conference in Vegas people are hacking into each other systems defending against other hackers and again a lot of drinking transformers alien hacking in this clip they're trying to listen to a half team however you're not actually going to be able to do that for this type of hat no way or hacking into a lot of computers you will listen to sound however if you are trying to listen to certain types of radio frequencies and recognize what kind of sound or modulation it might be the direct match to the signal in Qatar there actually was a hack recently in Dallas where someone used radio frequency to set off every emergency siren in Dallas breaking encryption under siege to see here access encoded gigabyte of RAM to do the trick in this clip he's attempting to break some encryption by adding a gigabyte of RAM you could buy two Ram to do this but adding that gigabyte of RAM really is not relevant to breaking the encryption here oh you might need some significant memory or storage space but it's not something you'll do in the middle of your operation really so not that realistic yeah blackhat NSA hacking you asked him to change his password he downloaded the PDF what he downloaded was the key logger that was a pretty long password for someone who can't actually differentiate the difference between a PDF file and an executable what he downloaded was the key long because really he downloaded something that looked like a document but because it was actually a key logger that means it was a program that executed and ran an application who really had to steal the code that key loggers are a pretty common way to access information from an individual so if you want to record their keystrokes see what their type being honest learn passwords websites they visit usernames and other private information key logger is the typical way that someone will install that on your machine and learn that information about you is in Jakarta Avengers 2 age of Ultron Ultron hacking Jarvis your intentions to be hostile at the rate of progress with machine learning and artificial intelligence something like this where two different systems could actually begin to learn about each other communicate with each other and actually attack each other this is rage the visualized 3d orbs in real space are not so accurate as insane in the future machines will be able to think and will have access to physical components that they can actually move around I am a programmer so we could see something like this however the actual orbs of electricity your balls of electricity that is pretty much set in science fiction we're out on my field to Criminal Minds hackers competing first we need you to look up the name Colby Baylor this might be the coolest girl I've ever met but her GUI is mind-blowing that's weird this is also kind of similar to hackers where two hackers were competing taking over controller machine it was a bit more accurate in hackers though as they were essentially competing on the same target system trying to prevent the other person from accessing it in this you see they're competing on a system but then someone else's system actually gets hacked what the hell so in this case there are multiple systems getting hacked and it's just a little bit less realistic this isn't good we mentioned the Linux operating systems completely Linux based open source programming and you don't see this in government systems I mean outside of like Switzerland which actually is used in plenty of government series there's lots of open source software is used sort of across the world including our government right I get it the GUI comment is not too accurate her GUI is mind blowing usually when you're breaking into something you're not actually going to run into any GUI your graphical user interface that's weird and even if you do it's usually not that exciting sneakers freakin I'm gonna bounce just call through nine different relay stations throughout the world and off two satellites National Security Agency Director of Operations please it's my dime I'll ask the questions it started the trace this is a cool demonstration of freaking where they're actually jumping not just to one other machine over the phone who are you and made the second leg but actually relaying from phone to phone to phone and you guarantee my safety freaking is not as popular anymore as most machines are Internet connected rather than dial-up or phone connected we make the call but we make it our way algorithm hacking via email in or the weakest link in any security systems it's you with your shitty passwords and how you share every part of your life online and now I own Sam Novak's computer in this clip they're not showing too much of the actual hacking but he does mention that he's exploiting the kernel I'm just exploiting the vulnerability her kernel access was created this is pretty difficult to do however there has been a recent vulnerability in antivirus software it's always a way in where if you received an email with this very specific exploit it could actually exploit the antivirus software running in your kernel which is essentially your operating system and give the attacker full control of your computer means they work for me I think that's what they're implying here even though they're not really showing the actual exploit the difference does that make to me conclusion Hollywood has the challenge of depicting hacking which can actually be quite a challenge because it's not that visually stimulating however it is always exciting when I do see a clip that actually is realistic

Channel: WIRED

Views: 12,224,728

Rating: 4.8421612 out of 5

Keywords: computer hacking, hack, hacker, hackers, hacking, how to hack, mr robot, samy kamkar, hacking scenes, hacking scenes technique critique, technique critique hacking, technique critique hacks, movie hacking scenes, movie hacking, hacker reacts, real hacker, realistic hacking scenes, mr robot hacking, mr robot hack, samy kamkar hacking, samy kamkar hack, tv hacking scene, ncis hacking scene, hacking movie, phreaking, phreak, wargames hacking, ott technique critique, wired

Id: SZQz9tkEHIg

Length: 21min 13sec (1273 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Maskdask]

"A more efficient tool would be a console or terminal"

shows picture of an HTML text editor

[u/foxxguthy]

Mr. Robot, just killing it as always.

[u/rickisen]

Kinda missed the classic "code a UI in visual basic to track an ip address". Other than that it was a fun watch.

[u/Souperstrawer]

I don't why he considered 'sshnuke' is unrealistic. I mean, anyone can create their own scripts and call them whatever they want.

[u/CptBL]

On a side note, I can no longer look at Remi Malek and not see Freddie Mercury.

[u/iGraveling]

Just finished both seasons of Salvation.

"Hey TESS, solve all the worlds problems", "Ok"

sigh

yeah yeah, I know is fiction

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[u/holloway]

Pretty good overall. The only thing I'd disagree with was PDFs vs executables at 16:30 because some PDF viewers (eg Adobe Acrobat) support JavaScript and there have been exploits that allow breaking out and gain OS access. So it's not just a matter of thinking that PDFs are different to executables.

[u/derpnowinski]

I certainly didn't expect The Net would come off accurate. Is bringing your laptop on vacation because you can't stop hacking realistic too?

[u/[deleted]]

I like how "disassembling the virus" is actually disassembling Wolfenstein 3D