
Mr. Robot Killed the Hollywood Hacker - danso
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603045/mr-robot-killed-the-hollywood-hacker/
======
bitwize
Hackers killed the Hollywood hacker. (Hackers as in people, not _Hackers_ the
film.) Dominic Sena, in his director's commentary for _Swordfish_ , stated
that the people who were likely to complain about the inaccuracy of the
hacking shown in his movie were nerds who ultimately didn't matter. In this
era where the internet response can make or break a film or TV show, the nerds
_do_ matter and directors go the extra mile to please them. This started
before _Mr. Robot_. Think _Tron: Legacy_.

~~~
darkarmani
> This started before Mr. Robot. Think Tron: Legacy.

Think The Matrix:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U)

Using nmap to find a vulnerable ssh server for the SSH CRC32 attack.

~~~
craigyk
No, humans as batteries was a stupid plot device. Still a neat movie, but
instantly disqualified as a classic because of that unforced error.

~~~
colordrops
It actually wasn't stupid. As implied in the sequels, the "real world" either
worked differently than our world, or was another level in the simulation
itself, since Neo was able to stop the machines using some sort of magic
ability. So perhaps humans contained some special force or other essence that
the machines harvested.

Even without that, batteries are a store of energy, not a source, and perhaps
the machines had discovered some unknown laws of nature that involved
intelligent biological creatures being the only way to store or transform some
sort of energy currently unknown to man. That is no more or less far fetched
than the machines and ships using some sort of antigravity capabilities to
fly.

There are plenty of ways to explain the technology in the matrix that isn't
completely ridiculous.

~~~
user837387
>>As implied in the sequels, the "real world" either worked differently than
our world, or was another level in the simulation itself, since Neo was able
to stop the machines using some sort of magic ability

Or maybe the implants he had worked as transmitter/receivers and he was
picking up on the chatter between the machines. It could be part of the reason
why he could control so much of the virtual world. Maybe all implants had some
form of wifi and Neo's was just unusually strong. Why the wifi? So that they
could be switched to a different pod without loosing their connection to the
matrix.

One can just keep going and going with alternative explanations.

~~~
rusk
Yeah I wasn't thinking he'd gained some kind of _Jedi-like_ powers in the real
world. Just presumed he'd attained something like 'root' access and just hit
the machines' kill-switch.

------
drawnwren
I'd argue that Mr. Robot just perpetuates the Hollywood Hacker stereotype.
Sure, the logistics of hacking have moved closer to the truth, but it was
unable to escape the moralistic 'greater good' story arc of most hacker
movies. It seems like, given the distribution of breakins and news articles
about discovered hacks, there are very few morally motivated hackers and when
those hackers do surface - their hacks take the form of much broader less
targeted attacks than those of the show. i.e. It's a lot more of grab Xtb of
data and then find the weak passwords than everyone has weak passwords.

~~~
drvdevd
Yes. The story arc _matters more_ than technical detail. And the moral tropes
_are_ boring.

I've come to realize that I actually care less about the technical
inaccuracies than I do about a good plot. I don't expect the general public to
know a lot about hacking, and I don't care that much. Sometimes it can
contribute to the plot (e.g.: prison SCADA systems being easy to break), but
often it isn't that important, if it's not too ham-handed.

I care more about a good story. So yeah, the story arc matters, the dialogue
matters (the conversations, the attitudes of the characters) -- all the basic
elements of a good film/tv show/movie matter _first_. Which is why I stopped
watching Mr. Robot at the beginning of season 2. I just didn't care about the
characters or story any more.

Maybe it gets better? Personally, if you're looking for a good story,
involving technology and morality, I can't recommend West World enough.
There's some "hacking" involved and the show over all is _genius_. Just my
$.02.

[edit] I'll add that the article does bring up the point of the societal harms
technically "dumb" plots can cause -- making computing/hacking seem like magic
for example. This is an interesting point, but I still think this is less
important than a good plot. The potential social benefits of good writing
outweigh everything else, if you ask me.

~~~
lotso
>I care more about a good story... Which is why I stopped watching Mr. Robot
at the beginning of season 2. I just didn't care about the characters or story
any more...Personally, if you're looking for a good story, involving
technology and morality, I can't recommend West World enough.

Interesting. The same critique you have of Mr. Robot, I have of Westworld:
plot lines that are irrelevant, huge loopholes, and characters that don't
develop and that I don't care for.

~~~
thegeomaster
You've said exactly my thoughts.

Watching Westworld, I often find myself frowning upon a certain line of
dialogue which sounds forced or 'off' in some way, or a scene which looks like
it's meant to be emotional but just doesn't make me feel the sentiment. I also
liked the daring, weird shots and cinematography in Mr. Robot. Sadly, in
Westworld, there is less of this, as the director has opted for a more
'textbook' approach to filming and editing.

Not to say that Westworld isn't an enjoyable show, just that I too just can't
seem to like it better than Mr. Robot.

~~~
tdumitrescu
I feel like "emotional but just doesn't make me feel the sentiment" scenes are
an intentional specialty of westworld. There are enough "false" endings to
emotional scenes (e.g., the beachfront scene in the final episode of s1) that
the viewer is trained to question the authenticity of any emotion expressed by
the hosts. You could say that that's really the crux of the whole series, and
still an open question. The best modern successor to Philip Dick in that
regard.

------
tomelders
If I ever directed a movie with a hacking scnene, it would be half an hournof
someone just staring a a screen before copy pasting something from stack
overflow.

~~~
maxt
This is as glamorous as it gets I think. Throw in repeated yelling at the
screen and many WTF moments and we have hacking to a tee

------
serg_chernata
I'm a huge fan. What I would like to add is that in my experience the show has
also helped the general public better understand some common practices and
dangers. In particular the episode where Darlene drops a bunch of infected USB
sticks in the police station parking lot. It's nice for people to understand
that some mysterious hacker doesn't specifically need to target them as an
individual. They're not safe just because they're not very popular or active
online.

~~~
danso
I love his narration of the password cracking, such as how his psychiatrist's
password is "Dylan_2791" \-- her favorite singer and her birthyear backwards.
To me, that feels like what the average person would consider "good"
obfuscation, because they can't imagine how fast a brute force attack works
inside a narrow space.

Or how he tracks his psychiatrist's lover's identity by checking her (the
psychiatrist) Instgram checkins, faking a reason to borrow the man's phone,
then phishes his security questions and brute forces the password in minutes
("He's too old to have a complicated password, it had to be a combination of
these things").

------
minimaxir
An interesting example of the change of perception in hacker culture is the
difference in the video games Watch Dogs (released 2014) and Watch Dogs 2
(released last month). Watch Dogs 1 features a cyberpunk, grindark Chicago
where an unlikeable hacker fights against Big Brother government survellience.
Watch Dogs 2 takes place in sunny San Francisco, and features younger hackers
having to infiltrate places such as not-Google and not-SpaceX to fight back
against corporate data collection (yes, big data is the villain!). The second
game also features more real life technologies, companies (not-Google, not-
SpaceX) and ripped-from-the-headlines sidequests, including one where the main
hacking group leaks a Ubisoft video game trailer...

As a whole, the game was much better received. Although, Watch Dogs 2 has
Hacker Vision, which lets you see people and objects through walls. The game
makes no attempt to justify how that works.

~~~
talmand
Many games from UbiSoft do this. At first each game tried to justify the
existence of such an ability, these days they don't even try. In Far Cry 4, if
you see them mark them with the camera; if you don't see them, inject a
magical leaf drug that marks them. In other games just make your eyeballs glow
and you see more than you could possibly know.

~~~
minimaxir
Assassin's Creed was the first and atleast _attempted_ to justify it in
universe. As essentially hereditary magic.

~~~
talmand
That one actually sort of made sense, considering if you go along with the
technology described.

------
ocschwar
I'm a huge fan of the hacker angle, but I really deplore their use of the Mad
Genius trope.

In real life, when people are as tormented by schizophrenia and PTSD as Mr.
Robot is, their talents are of no use and of no threat to anyone. We're
surrounded by such people in every city, and the only threat they pose is to
themselves.

~~~
Rebelgecko
I agree that it's an overused trope, but don't think it's fair to say that
schizophrenia keeps people from accomplishing impressive things (eg TempleOS)

~~~
sedachv
People like Terry Davis and Yayoi Kusama are outliers. Can you name any other
schizophrenics that have accomplished impressive things? The only reason they
are able to keep working is a lot of support from others over the years to
help them overcome the negative effects of their mental illness - Davis'
family made sure he received hospital treatment and now he lives on Social
Security Disability; Kusama has been living full-time in a mental hospital for
the last several decades.

~~~
palunon
>Can you name any other schizophrenics that have accomplished impressive
things?

John Forbes Nash Jr. ?

~~~
sedachv
Take a look at Nash's publications:
[http://www.ams.org/notices/199810/milnor.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/199810/milnor.pdf)

After his first hospitalization in 1959 Nash only wrote two more papers in the
60s. Nash's schizophrenia definitely put a stop to his work.

------
dghughes
I'm not a fan of the character's narrative ramblings it seems conspiracy
theories and paranoid rants are far too common these days.

Suspension of disbelief is one thing but when characters who are experts have
to explain to each other what they should already know to me a real groaner in
TV and movies.

One character on Mr. Robot at the security company didn't know what a rootkit
was, really?

~~~
celticninja
It's a large security company, filled with middle managers, I find that
entirely plausible. I'm a junior developer in a large organisation and some of
the PMs that I work under don't understand the tech we use.

~~~
btreesOfSpring
You're comment reminds me of that Anomaly comic about the manger and the pie
chart[0].

[0] [http://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/277232_700b.jpg](http://img-9gag-
fun.9cache.com/photo/277232_700b.jpg)

------
dsugarman
“I’ve been in this game 27 years. Not once have I come across an animated
singing virus.”

Maybe not, but you're damn right I've rickrolled hackers trying to access our
servers and steal user data.

~~~
bitwize
The "animated singing virus" was probably Leonardo Da Vinci, which was based
on the real-world panic surrounding the "Michelangelo" virus in 1992.
Michelangelo displayed on the infected machine's screen a still image of the
artist Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco, much like the fictional Leonardo
virus displayed a solarized Vitruvian Man. Some viruses of the era (early 90s)
did feature animation, such as making the on-screen text slowly disappear or
"rain down" the display like the _Matrix_ intro.

~~~
Scuds
The Michelangelo virus in 'Hackers' sang "Row-Row-Row Your Boat"

------
_nato_
David Mamet once lamented that the computer has taken over the horse, in
films. Where once the hero would jump onto their ride to go fight justice, now
we have her pulling out the keyboard.

~~~
VikingCoder
"injustice"

~~~
MichaelApproved
"for justice" also works.

~~~
cr0sh
..."for great justice" works best.

;)

------
Renevith
Disappointed that nobody has mentioned Blackhat yet. Although it was a
terrible movie overall, the computer hacking parts were astoundingly accurate.

When the character needs to elude a police escort that can track his ankle
bracelet with their smartphone, he tricks them into letting him have the phone
for a sec and surreptitiously drops the update frequency in the tracking app
to 24 hours.

When he needs to hack into the NSA, he uses insider knowledge of an employee's
name/email and their boss's name/email to write a plausible spearphishing
email with a 0-day PDF attachment.

I think there is also some good command-line activity on screen, though it's
been long enough that I don't remember.

~~~
mhomde
Luckily they listened to Kevin Poulsen that was technical adviser :) It's very
unfortunate that the movie was otherwise so poor. Michael Mann is one of my
long time favorites. A hacking movie with the mood and grittyness he's famous
for could and should have been awesome.

Not sure exactly where they were wrong, I think I found bot the plot
uninsteresting as well as the characters. Also Hollywood tendency of casting
jocks and models as hackers :/

~~~
Renevith
Yeah, I also struggled to figure out how it went wrong. Mann of course is a
strong director, and the actors are (otherwise) quite good as well. Try
Hemsworth in Rush, or Wei Tang in Lust, Caution if you want to see either of
them really shine.

Though as you mentioned they weren't quite cast to type. And in Wei's case
acting in a second language probably doesn't help. Still the whole thing
really underperformed.

------
up_so_floating
I couldn't get past the second episode, or whenever the lead character met the
idiosyncratic band of misfit hackers. These individuals seemed extremely
cliche and unlike any hackers I have ever met in real life. The terminal input
might have been valid, but the people doing the typing seemed out of place.

------
qwertyuiop924
>Sneakers ridiculously featured a universal key that can break all crypto

That's not ridiculous at all: go back and re-watch the film. If the MacGuffin
did what the film said it did, it would effectively act as a universal key.

~~~
svachalek
Yeah I was wondering if I remembered it wrong. I thought what they figured out
was an efficient algorithm for factoring primes, which is effectively a
universal key. AFAIK Shor's algorithm is pretty much just that, and
handicapped solely by the lack of a [known] sufficiently-sized quantum
computer to run it on.

~~~
logfromblammo
It was a combination of an algorithmic improvement and ASIC hardware, to
attack and recover encryption keys from vulnerable schemes in minutes, rather
than billions of years. The algorithm might have also required a hardware
instruction not typically provided by commercially available chips.

As a MacGuffin, it is still entirely plausible. But the actual use of any such
magic box would never be visually exciting enough for Hollywood.

"Ok, so I ssh in to the box, feed it the hash, let it run for 450 hours, and
then we get the result and spend Satoshi's Bitcoins into accounts we control."

"Does anything blow up?"

"No."

"Blinky lights at FBI headquarters?"

"No."

"Car chases?"

"No."

"Break in to a secured building?"

"No."

"So who's going to watch this movie?"

"How about we just get some laser pointers and some cats while we wait?"

------
phantom_oracle
The dramatic "typing frantically" is what bothers technical people.

Smart coders design elegant solutions that don't require frantic typing (and
the same would apply to elegant hack-scripts).

Seeing an online gamer crank at WASD is more in-line with "hack faster by
typing more".

~~~
sirtastic
I don't know about this. Co-workers and myself can run console commands so
quick that for moments at a time (esp with console text scrolling, deploying,
etc) it looks like we're hacking. I've heard more than one sales/project
manager who's hovering mention it looks like Hollywood hacking. The part that
looks like BS in Hollywood hacking to me is the green "matrix" text.

~~~
cr0sh
I'm anything but fast at my typing, etc. I've never been that way, but I've
also experienced the "soul crush" of taking down a production system because I
was doing things too fast, not paying attention, and then BAM - bye-bye
production DB - so since that time I take a more cautious, think-before-
hitting-return attitude (it was the early 90s, I was 18, blah-blah - we
eventually got things back to normal, and somehow I kept my job).

That said, I once worked with a guy who could type, switch windows, desktops,
etc - at what seemed like lightning speed. I mean, when he was at it and "in
the groove" \- his screen, fingers, etc - were a blur of frantic activity. In
some ways, it even reminded me of "hollywood hacking". He was expert at what
he did, though - more often than not, his solutions and designs were spot on,
and even these "quick fixes" or whatever - would work right first time out the
gate.

~~~
spdionis
Definitely when I get "in the groove" my typing, editing and code navigation
are at least 3x faster. That's why I know it always pays off to learn all the
hotkeys and optimize my workflow in the software I use.

When at normal speed the increase in productivity may seem minimal, but after
a while, when you get that groove moment, the benefit compounds.

Another way to see it is that the less time and effort you spend on actually
doing the thing the less it stays in the way of your mental process.

~~~
richforrester
Same - but with building simple sites.

I'm a designer first and foremost, have been for well over a decade. Started
coding (Basic) a decade before that.

However, circumstances have led to me being more than that. I'm a copywriter,
social media manager, web developer. Content manager, product designer and
manager. This means a TON of switching tasks.

But sometimes, I have to do something small, like spend a couple of days
launching a WordPress site. Switching between the mockup PSD and the template
files, the various browser tabs where I have the CMS open, the FTP client,
etc.

I've always loved keyboard shortcuts and all the tiny little hacks, hidden
double clicks and ctrl+alt+right-clicks that made this go faster.

And when people watch when I'm plugged in like that, "magic" is the word most
people use to describe what I'm doing. (Even some medium level devs do!)

Not boasting btw. Just happy about life in the industry. We're lucky fucks.

------
strictnein
The new Bourne movie didn't get the message, unfortunately. Some of the worst
hacking nonsense ever.

~~~
mdc2161
> Use SQL to corrupt their databases!

Use alphabet to write this comment!

~~~
mhomde
Legendary hacker Hacky McHacky typed swiftly on the IBM M Model keyboard with
the fingers attached to his hands. He hated laptop keyboards, they made his
eyes flash like thumbdrives.

The Model M is a designation for a group of computer keyboards manufactured by
IBM starting in 1984, and later by Lexmark, Unicomp and MaxiSwitch. The
keyboard's many variations have their own distinct characteristics, with the
vast majority having a buckling-spring key design and swappable keycaps.

Hacky's nostalgic reverie about IBM keyboards was suddenly interrupted when a
voice spoke, chillingly close, coming from the other side of the server hall.
"Drop that keyboard McHacky" it said menacingly.

------
anigbrowl
_When hackers hack in Mr. Robot, they talk about it in ways that actual
hackers talk about hacking._

Mr Robot exists as it does because there are now enough people familiar with
computers and the relevant concepts to constitute an audience, rather than due
to any sudden insight on the part of screenwriters (of which I am one). We
_know_ , and have always known, that there's a distinct hacker subculture with
its own linguistic tropes, ethos, etc. etc. and that there's been a big gap
between reality and how it's portrayed in movies.

We also know (or learn the hard way) that there's a big gap between including
enough detail for verisimilitude that will satisfy people who are competent in
a particular field, and what the general public wants to watch - which is why
you'll continue to see shallow or outright stupid portrayals of hacking in the
entertainment industry's output. Why? Primarily [1] because the mass of people
are _just not interested_ in any given field that requires nerd-level
commitment to understand. The larger the budget required for the film, the
larger and more general the audience has to be, and the more accuracy and
authenticity will be sacrificed in favor of spectacle and symbolism, which is
the most reliable method for getting people to fork over their money in the
first place.

Take a recent example from a different context - _Jurassic World_. The 'plot':
capitalists and scientists employ DNA technology to produce a bigger, smarter,
more aggressive dinosaur than has ever existed in nature; said dinosaur
escapes from confinement and menaces everyone in the vicinity, especially the
attractive hero, anti-heroine, and small children that are introduced early in
the story. It's basically _Frankenstein_ only with dinosaurs. Spoiler alert,
the attractive proxy for the family unit survives and the bad dinosaur is
defeated, though not before killing off the most ethically deficient
characters by eating them like ham sandwiches.

Now, any biologists worth their salt would cringe at many scenes (if they
watch such nonsense at all). Any _genetic_ scientists had to suffer through
yet another scene of an annoying smartass mumbling a few meaningless phrases
about 'advanced gene splicing' while screens in the background display
animations of double helixes and molecules. I think they might have mentioned
CRISPR, I'm not sure and have no intention of watching it again to check.

Would _Jurassic World_ have been better if it was more like _Primer_ or _Mr
Robot_ , with in-depth discussions of structural factors and real-world
constraints, and a hard-science approach that admitted of 1 (one) speculative
assumption, from which the rest of the plot flowed organically? Sure,,,if you
wanted to make _Gattaca - Herpetology Edition_. But though _gattaca_ is one of
my all-time favorite sci-fi films, neither it nor _Primer_ will ever appeal to
a mass audience and so films like that will never have the most recognizable
actors or the most astonishing visual spectacles or the same sort of short-
term existential anxieties that would result from having to run or your life
from a creature the size of an apartment building.

People go to Big Movies to allay their quotidian existential anxieties (about
which they often feel helpless) by seeing them safely reflected [2] in
contexts that are outside normal human experience. How far outside is
primarily inversely proportional to the budget and corresponding box-office
performance requirements, while being secondarily proportional to the depth of
the underlying existential anxiety.

Hacking in films has simply been a proxy for magic, in line with Clarke's
observation that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic. Magic serves an important dramatic function as the source of the
_unknowable_ solution to the Intractable Problem with which the story's
characters are presented.Thus, magic and its various proxies (specialist
bodies of knowledge, from hacking to legal procedure to medical knowledge) is
not a black hole which encapsulates the ignorance of the writer (although many
inferior or lazy writers abuse it for that purpose) but a singularity which
offers the possibility of escape from the otherwise-inexorable logic of the
story world; it symbolizes the hope of a future discoverable solution to an
otherwise insoluble problem.

A few examples from popular films may illuminate this. In _Star Wars_ the
insoluble problem is a spaceship that can blow up _an entire planet_. The
magical device is The Force, a limited but still useful psychokinetic ability.
In the _Alien_ films the insoluble problem is an ambulatory disease; the magic
device is an artificially intelligent android that can approach the alien
closely enough to observe a weakness of some kind (but which has to be
temporarily decommissioned first, like Dumbo losing the magic feather). In the
_Terminator_ films, the insoluble problem is nuclear conflagration as the
crystallization of war in general; the magical device is industrial
capitalism's promise of reducing economic inequality (represented by the vast
technological superiority of the Terminators themselves).

To wrap up, _Mr Robot_ hasn't killed the Hollywood hacker at all; it has just
crushed his dreams and forced him into getting a day job, which is the
function that television shows perform relative to movies. You'll still see
hackers in movies, but strictly as lip service to a real and increasingly less
aspirational employment demographic. This might seem like an odd conclusion to
draw, but it's worth bearing in mind that that serial television dramas are
general occupational comedies (I'm using the term 'comedy' in the technical
sense of everything basically going back to normal at the end of the episode,
even if the subject matter isn't funny at all). Consider cop shows; they
follow a nice steady formula with an initial outrage, a bit of detective work,
an uncomfortable moral confrontation, a setback, and finally a little bit of
legal procedure. On the other hand if you watch a movie about cops, they
almost invariably take place at the beginnings or ends of the lead characters'
careers, and the Best Person in the movie almost invariably has to die.

1\. there are other reasons but I don't want to turn this into an essay on
screenwriting.

2\. A few films address this dichotomy as their subject matter, albeit
indirectly. All films have a political dimension insofar as the choice of
subject matter and its portrayal reflect some aspect of their originating
policy which the creators aim to praise or criticize, but relatively few
dramatize the critical process itself; invariably, the subtext of such films
is that critical awareness forces us to choose sides in an ongoing moral
conflict; or put another way, moral agency comes at the price of other kinds.
Generally in these films the lead has to either die or give up the old life
completely in an anti-hero pattern.

~~~
dsacco
Holy shit, this might be one of my favorite comments I've ever read here. That
came out of nowhere. Thanks for writing all of that out.

~~~
anigbrowl
<3

------
qwertyuiop924
Make no mistake though: to the public, we're still wizards.

But would you really want it any other way?

Let's face it: we will forever be viewed as either wizards, or plumbers.

~~~
neilsimp1
Ironically, I think the majority of people would have a lot of difficulty
doing even the simplest plumbing jobs.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
...but they're still looked down upon.

Isn't this analogy great?

~~~
dsacco
I don't think it's fair that plumbers aren't well-respected as a profession,
but you act as though it's inconsistent that people would look down on
something they cannot _currently_ do.

I'm extremely confident that if you trained me, I would be an exceptionally
good plumber. I am extremely unconfident that if you trained me, I would be an
exceptionally good neurosurgeon.

I'll extend that - I am confident that the majority of adults could be trained
to become competent plumbers. I am not at all confident that the majority of
adults could be trained to become competent neurosurgeons.

Some people react to the reality of vastly different education, patience,
effort and talent requirements in job occupations by being condescending.
That's not fun for anyone, but it also doesn't make sense to be smug about
that reaction as though those people are being condescending towards a skill
they fundamentally couldn't learn how to do even with great effort, time and
intelligence. They are being condescending towards a skill that is very low in
terms of the percentile required to do it competently.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
It's not inconsistent, or even necessarily wrong.

But it _is_ funny.

------
grumblestumble
Whatever gains Mr. Robot made in "killing" (i'd say updating, but anyway) the
Hollywood "hacker" trope, they lost twice over with their shoddy portrayal of
mental illness.

------
scandox
Maybe I'm missing something but one of the core technical conceits driving the
first few episodes is that an IP address found inside a "dat" file is
compelling evidence that the person with that IP address was guilty of
something. Of having an IP address that somebody typed into a file? I didn't
get that. As I say perhaps I misunderstood.

I actually believe it would be possible to build a coherent and effective
story around technical ideas but it would require a writer of great skill, who
just happened to have a very technical background.

The way it would work is that the plot would be driven by a technical
obstacle/issue. Instead of focusing on the details of the technical issue, the
key would be to elucidate the conceptual background to it. Obviously, this has
to be done in a way that respects character and which eschews heavy-handed
exposition. Which is hard. It would have to be a much slower burn in terms of
action. I think you'd have a single hack maybe taking an entire season :)

I think though this approach has been successfully used in Film and TV when
representing politics. They manage to show how big issues break down into
specific pragmatic issues and then how those pragmatic issues in turn
feedback.

~~~
0xcde4c3db
> Maybe I'm missing something but one of the core technical conceits driving
> the first few episodes is that an IP address found inside a "dat" file is
> compelling evidence that the person with that IP address was guilty of
> something. Of having an IP address that somebody typed into a file? I didn't
> get that. As I say perhaps I misunderstood.

It's been a while, but as I understood it, the "dat file" was (ostensibly)
part of a professional forensic dump of a filesystem on a compromised server,
and the IP was buried somewhere in the malware itself as the address from
which commands were accepted.

------
mhd
I've just binged through the faux-bitcoin series "Startup", and didn't see a
lot of progress there. Random computers (including a PowerMac G4), keyboard
mashing, bad & dark visuals, assuming that everyone in IT is also a "hacker"
and the usual bad jargon ("He's using bots! They're in the wifi!") and awkward
mistakes (main character has "proficient in Linus" on her CV).

~~~
samstave
link to series please?

~~~
quicklyfrozen
Perhaps it's this one:
[http://www.crackle.com/startup](http://www.crackle.com/startup)

------
wslh
> Sneakers ridiculously featured a universal key that can break all crypto...

If Cory Doctorow had done his homework he would know that Leonard Adleman (the
'A' in RSA) worked in that part: [https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-
science/fm-sneakers.htm](https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/fm-
sneakers.htm)

~~~
throwaway7767
Yeah, that dig is unfair. Sneakers didn't have a universal key that broke all
crypto. They had a device that could break a certain kind of crypto that
happened to be used by the US (in the movie, the Russians state that it
doesn't affect their encryption).

I always assumed the original script called it a DES cracker but the studio
people dumbed it down. But sneakers is unique among hacker movies in that it
needs very little retconning to make sense from a technical perspective.

------
maxt
There's an interesting article on how the movie Wargames[1] influenced the
public consciousness surrounding hacking.

Another movie similar to Mr Robot is Algorithm which I'm surprised nobody has
mentioned:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qpudAhYhpc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qpudAhYhpc)

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-
cybers...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/movies/wargames-and-
cybersecuritys-debt-to-a-hollywood-hack.html)

What annoyed me about Mr Robot is the stereotype / trope of a hoodied punk
teen wielding their talent with a computer which has been done to death
already in other movies (I class Mr Robot as an extended movie with episodes).

Hackers can be anybody infact, and it doesn't help that the hoodied punk
stereotype is perpetuated. Think Stallman, Zimmermann, & Eric Raymond, _not_
Zero Cool or Neo.

~~~
digi_owl
I wrote Mr. Robot off the moment i watched the first preview. Psycologically
troubled, hooded protagonist that blackmails a guy about a pedo exchange
running out of the back room of a restaurant. No matter how accurate the
computing may be, that just got too ham fisted for my tastes.

As for Hackers the movie, i wonder if one best treat it similar to Streets of
Fire[1]. a fable that happens to be set to New York.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Fire)

------
jrnichols
Adult Me, who has not seen the show yet, is hoping that it's as awesome as Max
Headroom was to Kid Me. As a younger human, I greatly enjoyed the
hacking/computer stuff scenes in that show. It was one of the things that made
me more curious about tinkering with things.

~~~
biztos
Having seen much but not all of it, I think it's top-notch TV drama with
excellent writing and acting both.

But I think the computers, however well realized, are just the backdrop. It's
really about questions of identity, morality, and sanity.

Much of the hacking is hacking the self, often through drugs and/or
psychological manipulation.

------
ZenoArrow
I'd say 'temporarily killed'. After the rise of quantum computing and AI in
the public consciousness, I'd expect we'd see a return of the hacker-as-
magician archetype.

~~~
jerf
The attempts to explain quantum computing are often as crap as any other
attempt to explain anything "quantum", but in practice, it doesn't really
change what computing looks like for most people. It means a certain class of
problems can be solved more efficiently, and some problems may be solved that
previously could not be, but it's not that significant to one not versed in
the field.

By contrast, if we ever did get true human-level AI... uh... are quite sure
that "magician" wouldn't be appropriate at that point...? It's not entirely
dissimilar to "demon summoner", though there probably won't be actual
pentagrams involved. Although you never know; just as my UNIX system has an
awful lot of "demons" in it it would only take one AI researcher with a hacker
sense of humor to program in an last-ditch emergency "containment via drawing
a pentagram" routine in the base OS for the successful AIs....

~~~
stcredzero
_By contrast, if we ever did get true human-level AI... uh... are quite sure
that "magician" wouldn't be appropriate at that point...? It's not entirely
dissimilar to "demon summoner"_

I think a lot of "rationalist" guff about super-optimizing AIs is just
recycled crap we used to use religion to deal with. It's one thing to pose a
thought exercise about an entity who can reliably predict what you are going
to do and think 99% of the time. I can see how that's a useful exercise. The
thing is, I think I'm seeing a lot of people go from that to essentially
believing in such imagined entities as prophesied gods-to-be. (Or perhaps
devils.)

Our current notion of such entities is probably as spot-on as Ada Lovelace's
notion of personal computing. Our current notion of such entities is probably
much more inaccurate than 1950's notions of what computing would be like in
the 2nd decade of the 21st century.

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"I think a lot of "rationalist" guff about super-optimizing AIs is just
recycled crap we used to use religion to deal with. It's one thing to pose a
thought exercise about an entity who can reliably predict what you are going
to do and think 99% of the time."

What makes you think those who are interested in AI expect we will be able to
predict the future with 99% accuracy? The closest example I can think of from
sci-fi is Minority Report, but that isn't exactly a pure AI solution, nor
particularly realistic.

The coming impact of AI will be on jobs. You don't need godlike AI in order to
do human work in all its forms. That's the type of change I think will re-
ignite imaginations about AI.

~~~
stcredzero
_What makes you think those who are interested in AI expect we will be able to
predict the future with 99% accuracy?_

I encounter people online and in person who pose logic puzzles involving such
a hypothetical entity. I also encounter people online and in person who engage
in futurist thinking about where humans would fit into a world with such
entities.

 _The coming impact of AI will be on jobs. You don 't need godlike AI in order
to do human work in all its forms. That's the type of change I think will re-
ignite imaginations about AI._

In "The Matrix" and sequel movies, human beings seem to react to machines in a
way analogous to how we have historically reacted to different
ethnic/religious groups. I hope "ignition" isn't apt.

~~~
ZenoArrow
>"I encounter people online and in person who pose logic puzzles involving
such a hypothetical entity."

I'd see that as a valid thought experiment, but one that had very little basis
in reality. The level of invasiveness needed to bring about anything close to
that would make it highly improbable, you'd basically need a swarm of sensors
at the nano-scale covering the entire planet just to have enough raw data to
work with, and the processing power required to interpret that raw data would
be ridiculously high.

>"I also encounter people online and in person who engage in futurist thinking
about where humans would fit into a world with such entities."

You probably do, but considering that there's plenty of online discussion from
the same communities about basic income and suchlike, there clearly are those
who are attempting to come to terms with the expected impact of AI on humans.

>"In "The Matrix" and sequel movies, human beings seem to react to machines in
a way analogous to how we have historically reacted to different
ethnic/religious groups. I hope "ignition" isn't apt."

Ignition?

Aside from that, the changes in our society that AI is due to bring us soon
will be resisted, that's completely understandable, it's happened numerous
times in our past when human work has been replaced by a machine.

Unfortunately, it's not something that can be effectively resisted without
changing centuries of conditioning about the role that new technology plays in
shaping our future. The best we can hope for in the near term is damage
limitation.

------
xrd
I'm very sad that Swordfish was never mentioned in this article. My developer
friends all have a soft spot for the ridiculous world created in that film.

------
shmerl
"Hollywood hackers" differ. Cyberpunk genre can be quite good, so I don't
think it needs "killing" necessarily or even can be killed. It's not that
creators don't know about real hacking. Some may be don't, but others can be
quite aware of it. But as in various science fiction genres, things don't
necessarily always correspond to real ones.

------
wityak
Maybe, but they're still squeezing every ounce of the hoodie-wearing hacker
trope.

------
thewhitetulip
I am seeing a series of changes in our world that I am happy about, this is
one such change. The establishment is getting challenged and in a good
constructive way.

------
herbst
I agree that Mr Robot was above standard. But already in the first episode in
the first few minutes he talks bullshit about Tor :/

------
elorant
The real problem with Mr. Robot is how it's perceived by noobs who think that
using SQLMap or whatnot would give them the ability to hack into any site in a
jiffie. Popularizing specialized themes is a double edged case. At one hand it
makes the general public understand our work and also the dangers modern
technology carries. From the other hand it makes hacking seem cool and easy
which is far from true.

~~~
RUG3Y
I like the social engineering aspect. In that regard, the show is interesting.
They make hacking much more about human security than software and hardware.
And when you think about things that way, the world is a scary place.

------
yolololol
man, so useless.

Of course we've seen the difference between "hackers" in Holliwood movies and
Mr.Robot, thats precisely why this TV serie worked in the first place. Of
course future movies will have to up their acting if they want to compare,
WTF.

Next article "usb 2.0 killed usb 1.0"?

------
mixmastamyk
Can't happen soon enough. I just watched the last season of Arrow on Netflix,
and while I like the actress that plays the computer chick I want to punch
someone in the face at least once an episode over the absurd lines she has to
read.

~~~
minimaxir
Arrow Seasons 3 and 4 are examples where hacking inconsistencies are the least
of their problems.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Not completely false but off-topic.

------
bernardovitch
GPS to send private emails?

------
florinutz
yes hello

------
senior_james
Mr. Robot may be technically correct, but I couldn't get past a few episodes
of the first season.

Comically bad/cliche companies that are polluting the earth, killing innocent
people, and robbing the poor. A closeted gay, masochist antagonist and a smug,
patronizing protagonist that regularly demeans the people around him and feels
they are less intelligent than himself. This was all in the first few
episodes.

I assume the characters and plots have changed since the first season, but not
by much.

I felt like the writers were ignored in high school and used the show as a way
to passive-aggressively get back at their perceived enemies.

~~~
cheald
The thing you need to keep in mind about Mr. Robot is that it's told through
the eyes of an unreliable narrator. Evil Corp is Comically Evil Cliche Corp
because _that 's how Elliot perceives them_, regardless of their _actual_
evilness.

From a certain perspective, Mr. Robot is a critique of the very thing you are
complaining about. Elliot is able to justify doing many things because of the
comic-bookish way in which he perceives his world. He is mentally unstable and
a central theme of the show is that the things you see (through him) may or
may not reflect the reality of his world, and his actions which, while
internally consistent with his reality, may not be as noble or righteous as he
thinks they are.

~~~
stormbrew
The show's heavy lean on the unreliable narrator aspect is what eventually
made me lose interest in it (near the end of the first season). At a certain
point, a narrator can become so unreliable that there's no actual story
anymore. Just increasingly opaque layers of obfuscation.

What I've heard about the second season only made me more glad of my decision
to stop watching.

~~~
hfourm
Totally. I fully 5/5 loved the first season, but it started to go in a
direction I didn't love towards the end.

I couldn't even make it through the first episode of season 2.

~~~
drvdevd
Exactly how I felt.

------
Neliquat
This would be true if the average viewer watched Mr Robot. Pretty much only
geeks tend to. So just more preaching to the choir. Sure its a step forward,
but not a paridigm shift by far.

~~~
burkaman
It was nominated for six Emmys and won two. I don't know who votes for and
watches the Emmys, but I don't think it's geeks.

------
solidr53
/r/itsaunixsystem

------
user5994461
Please. The guy depicted in the movie has nothing from a Hacker.

He's just a dude suffering from schizophrenia. Hackers, for starters, are
playing in the autism-asperger spectrum.

They're utterly opposite and incompatible psychological traits.

~~~
dsacco
Not only are you generalizing about an entire hobby/profession and its overlap
with a particular mental disorder, you didn't even diagnose the main character
of Mr. Robot correctly. He has dissociative identity disorder, not
schizophrenia. The two are similar in some respects but vastly different for
the most part.

------
masondixon
This is the absolute worst show. The terminal screenshots seemed more legit
than normal though.

~~~
cmdrfred
What killed it for me is the "We have to teach her to hack in 24 hours!" bit.
She had to run a script and bounce a network interface. If that's hacking I'm
Captain Crunch.

~~~
sushid
Yes! That was possibly the stupidest part. Why teach her how to manually write
the commands when she can just run a script?

And the whole wiping her fingerprint part was extremely stupid.

------
partycoder
Or the CSI hacker (2 people typing on the same keyboard to hack faster, or
creating a hack on visual basic interface (technically possible, but sounds
really odd))

~~~
VikingCoder
For those who haven't seen it:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ&t=13s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ&t=13s)

In case you need to do it yourself:

[http://hackertyper.net/](http://hackertyper.net/)

~~~
hacker_9
and this [1]! Both still make me laugh after the 100th time. I'd love to have
been in the room when the writers actually thought these scenes up.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU)

~~~
curiousgal
The Youtube comments are surprisingly hilarious!

