Hollywood’s Take on Security Technology
Security in technology platforms continues to be a matter of grave concern. The birth of new gadgets ensures that many devices, as they get adapted into society, will be just that many more gizmos to play with for purposes both good and bad. It's partly instructive and partly amusing to take a look at how security technology is treated in the film industry.
Hollywood's grasp of computers is notoriously bad; it's about as poorly researched as anything else in movies. It is almost painful for a tech professional to watch a movie whenever "hacking" comes up.
For reference, we'll establish the hideous pile of garbage that was the 1995 "movie" "Hackers" as the low end of the spectrum when it comes to realistic portrayal of computing security in film. As for the high end - we're gratified to say that there are some excellent choices - how about the 2001 film "Hannibal"? It shows mobile phones, Internet searches, and even tazers being used in a realistic way.
Ocean's Eleven (2001) - camera replacement
In the remake, technology was updated from the 1960 original. While the whole story, being about a casino robbery, involves security circumvention throughout, the most prominent plot device involves over-riding the casino's security cameras with a link to a system playing a prerecorded tape. The guards see nothing going on onscreen until the robbers choose to switch it over to show them.
How realistic is this? - It's theoretically possible, but you're gambling on the camera having a plug outside the wall it's mounted on which will fit your connector, then an unobtrusive device to connect it to which will stream the prerecorded video from another location. It would be much simpler to simply have the monitors play a tape from a VCR.
Sneakers (1992) - keypad kick
Sneakers is another recommendation for realistic technology in film - there really are companies who specialize in testing security, for instance. The "Hacker's Jargon File" of Internet fame calls them "tiger teams"! Anyway, at one point Robert Redford is confronted by a numeric keypad on a door he needs to break into, and asks his support team how to get past it. Listening on what looks like a headset device, he nods thoughtfully and listens for several minutes, then simply raises his foot and kicks the door in!
How realistic is this? - 100%, as long as you have a strong foot and a weak door. The lesson here is never trust security just because your lock is "hack-proof" - there's always the structural weaknesses!
Independence Day (1996) - viral upload
Perhaps Jeff Goldblum's most famous "geek" scene, he uses his Apple Powerbook to make a virus which is to be uploaded to the alien's flying saucer's computer system, thus disabling it.
How realistic is this? - OK, we know the movie is an action fantasy not to be taken seriously. But even theoretically allowing for if there was a flying saucer you needed to infect with malware, this is laughable. You have an alien computer system which nobody's ever even seen before, and you're going to port software from Earth technology and have it work on the first try? Sure, that makes a lot of sense, in the world of Windows viruses that can't infect Apple and Linux computers, games that need a specific version of Windows to run, and documents you can't even open because they were written on a version of MS Office five years older than your current version.
Minority Report (2002) - eyeball swap
In perhaps one of the most cringe-inducing plot devices involving computer security, the iris scanners are subverted twice, first by Tom Cruise getting eye surgery to replace his eyes so scanners can't recognize him, and later the removed eyes - in a plastic baggie, no less! - are shown to a scanner on a door to gain access. Yuck!
How realistic is this? - Well, we have biometric security devices, including iris scanners, in use today. Certainly, replacing your eyeballs would stop your being recognized this way. The question of whether two-day-old removed eyeballs would pass the scanner test is a little trickier. Do we have a forensic scientist who's familiar with iris scans in the house who can answer this? We do know that an iris scanner can be fooled by presenting a high-quality photograph of a face, so it could work.
Superman 3 (1983) - bank hacker
Richard Pryor rigs the bank's computer to take all the rounded-off half-cents in the accounting system and dump them into a dummy account to steal them so they won't be missed. All of which accumulated together amounts to millions of dollars. He gets caught anyway.
How realistic is this? - It's been done in real life! The security world calls this "salami slicing", which covers any method of accumulating many small amounts into one big heist. However, it's such an obvious loophole and a famous trick that people get caught doing that, too. Recent examples include one man scamming an online brokerage firm in 2008, four men in Los Angeles, United States, who were rigging petrol pump chips to swipe an extra penny from every sale in 1998, and four executives of a rental-car franchise in Florida, United States, in 1993 who were scraping their customer's accounts. Look for this loophole in your accounting system; somebody could be skimming those loose pennies right now!
Filed Under: Security Technology
