You must have seen movies that involve hacking as their main plot. Success or failure of the hacking attempts decide the climax of the movie. The protagonist or the antagonist is the world’s No. 1 hacker and has developed a software that is a so advanced, it can practically hack into anything. But have you ever considered, or even, given it a thought, how relevant these things are, in real life? Doesn’t all this seem surreal? So, I decided to give you a list of movie-hacks that are real enough to be implemented out of the reel-life by the real-life hackers.
Matrix reloaded:
Zion is going to be annihilated by the 250,000 sentinels, programmed to destroy humanity, in a matter of hours. Only The One, Neo, can avert this impending danger. But he is himself haunted by the visions of Trinity being killed by an agent. So, Neo wants to reach the source, to get the answers to his queries. But for that he must first find and rescue the Keymaker.
The trio (Trinity, Morpheus and Neo) saves the Keymaker from the Twins and Agents. Neo reaches the source door, while Trinity hacks into a nearby backup power station to prevent a destructive security system, at the source, from being triggered by the Keymaker’s keys. Keymaker gets killed while opening the door. Neo enters it and meets the Architect, who provides him two options: to save Zion or save Trinity from being killed, which will lead to a total wipeout of Zion.
He chooses Trinity and somehow, using his “The One” skills, saves her. The fight ensues and Neo defeats the sentinels that attack Nebuchadnezzar, but breaks out to everybody that Zion will be destroyed in 24 hours and the prophecy of The One is false.
Inspiration:
The hacking shown in the movie is so perfect that UK’s Scotland Yard Computer Crime Unit and the British Computer Society have warned the public not to practice such hacking techniques at home. In the scene where Trinity needs to hack the power grid, she uses a Nmap version 2.54BETA25 to locate a vulnerable SSH server and hacks it using the SSH1 CRC32 exploit from 2001. Go check out this, super cool, reel-life real-hack.
Swordfish:
The movie revolves around a hacker, Stanley Jobson, who’s incarcerated for infecting the FBI’s Carnivore program with a powerful virus. Now, when he’s out, an anti-terrorist group called Black Cell, Headed by Gabriel Shear, coerces him to program a worm that’s potent enough to steal $9.5 billion from the government reserve fund. Stanley had lost legal possession of his daughter to his wife, due to his felony. Now to get his daughter back, he needs money to go to the trial. So he accepts the offer and the movie proceeds.
Inspiration:
Well, hacking into main frames of the big banks is not that easy. But a hacker who is hell-bent on hacking them, can surely figure out a way of doing that. This movie deals with anti-terrorist groups, but anybody who steals an amount this big needn’t be doing good deeds. Any terrorist group or a group of robbers can hire highly proficient hackers to work for them and transfer big moolah to their accounts. The movie’s got a load of inspiration for that.
Die Hard 4.0:
This film deals with a gang of cyber terrorist who create a “fire sale” (called that because everything must go). The terrorist wanted to show that everything that has a computer or computer chip can be hacked and controlled. The leader of the terrorists, Thomas Gabriel, is an ex-NSA expert computer hacker who was fired for his research that demonstrated America’s vulnerability to cyber-warfare. John McLane is called to apprehend the hackers who have helped the terrorists out by programming the hacking code for them. John heads out to find Matthew Farrell, one of the hackers who helped the terrorists and lives in the same city. Both battle the villains and foil their vicious plan to wreck havoc in America.
Inspiration:
This film has a few cool hacking scenes. But most relevant, to real life is when they take control of the traffic lights. They change them to red or green at will. This can inspire hackers that plan an organized robbery. While escaping the police, the robbers can change the traffic lights behind them. Police departments can keep special hackers, to use this technique for catching the escaping criminals. Farrell also shows his Nmap skills.
Movies like Italian Job andHackers also show traffic light hacking scenes.
Office Space:
Portraying the life of an ordinary IT worker back then, this film deals with the working life in a software company. Peter Gibbons is really pissed off working for Initech. He’s worried about the layoffs taking place in his company. His two best friends get scrutinized, but to his amazement he’s promoted. His friends, along with him, to avenge this scrutiny, decide to plant a virus program in the company’s account system that will divert a fraction of pennies into a fake account they control. But due to an error in decimal places, the program transferred $300,000 to that account. This causes a series of events that lead to burning down of the company, Initech.
Inspiration:
Talk about inspiration, this movie gives you the details. How many of the workers have been sacked? Have been pushed around by their lousy bosses? This is a way to avenge all the humiliation. Just plant a virus in the accounting system of your office. You have the access and just need to get through a little bit of security. Hire a hacker to do this job for you.
The Net:
Angela, from Cathedral Software, gets a CD from a fellow worker that contains a program permitting entry to government and military computer systems. She learns that some goons have developed a virus called The GateKeeper System, which is illegitimate protection software. Knowledge of this fact endangers her life, as the goons want the CD containing the entry software. Following this, Angela’s identity is changed and she is listed as “Ruth Marx,” a prostitute convicted of various felonies. Her each move is watched and every detail of her identity, like medical records and birth records are deleted and replaced with Ruth Marx’s. She somehow battles it out to get her identity back and defeats the malicious villains.
Inspiration:
This is a possibility today, as the whole world is relying on computers to store their sensitive info. Government info is difficult to hack, but not impossible. With a bit of help from insiders, a person with criminal intent can change somebody’s identity, and replace it with somebody else’s. (It’s a possibility if that person has very few acquaintances.) Moreover, that program the goons installed over defense computer to gain access to it is a simple thing today.
