[HN Gopher] Memories of the "Sneakers" Shoot (2012)
___________________________________________________________________
Memories of the "Sneakers" Shoot (2012)
Author : ColinWright
Score : 273 points
Date : 2022-01-07 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| crmd wrote:
| It warms my heart that this thread is at the top of HN today. RIP
| Sir Sidney Poitier and long live SETEC Astronomy!
| cobrabyte wrote:
| My all-time favorite movie. RIP, Mr. Poitier.
| [deleted]
| VonGuard wrote:
| Their headquarters is the Fox Theater, now fully renovated and
| open, in Oakland.
| bcl wrote:
| Shameless plug for my side project - Sneakers HQ
| https://movielandmarks.com/#lm-1036
| taylorius wrote:
| Cattle mutilations are up...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Heh, I used say that line to people. Most do not get it. But
| when they do... awesome.
| pengaru wrote:
| My perception of Akroyd's character completely changed after
| hearing some of his recent podcast interviews when he was
| peddling his vodka brand.
|
| Either he's a conspiracy theory nut irl, or he still hasn't
| broken character since filming Sneakers.
| thedevelopnik wrote:
| Nah he's that crazy. Ghostbusters was pretty close to a
| possible documentary for him.
| aksss wrote:
| > The messenger arrived with a big envelope. I opened it. It said
| Sneakers. My heart sank. It sounded like a bad teen comedy about
| a hapless junior-high basketball team that is saved when they
| recruit a girl point guard who's a great shot.
|
| XD
| jzellis wrote:
| I still wanna get some old Cray XMPs and use em as office
| benches. RIP Sidney as well. A great actor and, by all accounts,
| a great man.
| thakoppno wrote:
| I hope he finally gets those two round-trip, first-class tickets
| to Athens, Lisbon, Madrid and Scotland and Tahiti.
| qzw wrote:
| But Tahiti is not in Europe.
| acheron wrote:
| I want peace on earth and goodwill towards men.
| cwillu wrote:
| <mutters something about a phone number>
| computershit wrote:
| We are the United States government. We don't do that sort
| of thing.
| cobrabyte wrote:
| You're not even faced the right way!
| rjsw wrote:
| It is part of a European country.
| b3morales wrote:
| > It's a technology movie that still isn't outdated even though
| it was released 20 years ago and features cradle modems.
|
| This is a great point. I guess it's because they kept it
| realistic. Except for the box itself (of course) and maybe the
| voice-activated mantrap, there wasn't really any crazy futuristic
| spy tech. It was all plausible for the time, so it hasn't been
| invalidated by the actual future.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The social engineering in the movie is pretty much the same
| stuff everyone talked about in DEFCON conferences even a decade
| or two later...and really, still topical today (phishing.)
|
| I think The Box was pretty realistic. It absolutely looks and
| acts the part of an FPGA type device.
|
| Finding a "shortcut" through computationally expensive
| encryption is plenty realistic (look at all the wifi attacks,
| for example), and while they keep saying "any encryption", it's
| pretty clear they're talking about DES, which the NSA was
| pushing everyone to adopt.
|
| Remember how in the film the crew realizes that the NSA wants
| The Box to be able to snoop on the FBI et al? What did the NSA
| almost mandate be used for encrypting everything government
| related?
|
| Everyone strongly suspected right from the get-go that the key
| size for DES was far too short...to allow the NSA to brute-
| force it. We now know they turned out to be right.
|
| DES was published in '77 and almost immediately strongly
| criticized.
|
| According to Wikipedia:
|
| > Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes first conceived the idea
| for Sneakers in 1981, while doing research for WarGames.
|
| Doesn't seem like much of a coincidence that work on the
| Sneakers script started not long after DES was published and
| almost immediately viewed as a joke by the crypto community.
|
| I think Sneakers was a lot more realistic and well-researched
| than people give it credit.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| > _I think Sneakers was a lot more realistic and well-
| researched than people give it credit._
|
| Given that the screenwriter worked on it for nine years
| (something I just learned via this article) it sounds very
| plausible that he thorougly did his homework
| evgen wrote:
| > it's pretty clear they're talking about DES, which the NSA
| was pushing everyone to adopt
|
| Nope, this was filmed in the mid-90s. Public-key encryption
| was the new hotness and DES was very old skool by this point.
| Since the 'A' in RSA was one of the technical advisors you
| can be fairly certain that the intended suggestion was that
| Janick's little black box could do linear time factorization
| of composite primes and recover the private key for a given
| public key. The story may have been in development for almost
| a decade but not the specific McGuffin used in the film.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Even then, the box: "an ASIC implementation of a newly
| discovered crypto attack" complete with a massive white board
| full of linear algebra is about as good a muggufin as you can
| ask for in any computer adjacent movie.
| myself248 wrote:
| The only thing I don't love about it is the macguffin-ization
| itself. An algorithm is an idea and could've been
| communicated, published, spread around the world in the blink
| of an eye.
|
| Some years ago I wrote down a sketch of a sequel based on
| this exact idea, but the paper is encrypted and the key is
| sharded, and much of the plot revolves around trying to
| convince the trusted people who hold the shards that the
| researcher is actually dead and they should unseal the
| document, while the adversary tries to convince otherwise.
| MPSimmons wrote:
| I'd read that.
| deanCommie wrote:
| In a traditional definition of "algorithm", maybe.
|
| But think about a machine learning model or a neural
| network. The kind of breakthrough that will break RSA might
| not be describable in a research paper (sure, the science
| would be, but the science for neural networks took decades
| before it was able to be applied practically)
| sv123 wrote:
| One of my all time faves, was thinking about this moving this
| morning when I saw the news abut Sidney Poitier. Setec Astronomy.
| twic wrote:
| Hmm: https://find-and-update.company-
| information.service.gov.uk/c...
| madrox wrote:
| A scene was shot right next to my muni stop at Embarcadero and
| Folsom. I'd think about this movie every day, if for no other
| reason thinking about how they made that area look like no
| traffic existed.
| pier25 wrote:
| One of my favorites movies. It has this brilliant blend of
| thriller with humor and the music by James Horner is fantastic.
| Although I generally hate comedies, it's probably one of the few
| movie that makes laugh, even though I know it by heart.
| perardi wrote:
| I have an extreme nostalgic attachment to Sneakers.
|
| I went to a summer camp for kids interested in computers _(was it
| called Cybercamp? who knows, this was in like 1999, Google was
| barely even a thing yet)_ at Illinois State University for
| several years in a row when I was in junior high and high school.
| And every year, to cap it off, they'd gather us in an auditorium
| to watch Sneakers.
|
| So this movie is now inextricably linked up with, well,
| _adulthood_ for me. We were staying in college dorms, and working
| in real computer labs, and going to head shops with the computer
| science kids who were the camp counselors...such good times for a
| nerdy kid from the boonies. The movie just felt sophisticated to
| a hillbilly like me--I mean, Sidney Poitier and and Robert
| Redford having a cocktail party after pulling off a heist, all
| set to a minimalist jazz soundtrack? So urbane.
| BTCOG wrote:
| Not as popular or liked, I also like The Net (Sandra Bullock) as
| a cheesy, guilty pleasure hacking movie. Didn't see it mentioned
| here.
| jmuguy wrote:
| Loved some of the quirky application props they had, like
| "Mozart's Ghost". I definitely remember making some Visual
| Basic programs that had a little pi symbol in the bottom corner
| of the screen. I don't think I even knew how to program, was
| just making UIs that did nothing.
| Angostura wrote:
| One thing I don't think anyone has mentioned so far. I _really_
| like the musical score. James Horner jumping on pianos as is his
| wont - but really fun music
| parenthesis wrote:
| Branford Marsalis, too.
| thatoneguy wrote:
| I got immense joy out of working in Google's original SF office
| that was right above where the "handoff" scene took place and
| it's funny in the movie how there's a long hill of dirt in the
| shots that look out towards to the bay as that's where a MUNI
| line is now.
|
| Also, in case anyone is wondering, the acoustic modem in the
| movie they use to make an "untraceable satellite call" is an
| Atari 830. Finally acquired one during lockdown last year while I
| was building an in-home dial-up ISP because I never really
| understood how they worked...it looks just as cool in person as
| in the movie.
| [deleted]
| Legion wrote:
| River Phoenix asking for Amy Benedict's phone number will always
| be one of the smoothest moves in cinema.
| packetslave wrote:
| Yep, he was smooth enough that he got her weapon totally wrong
| ("Um, the young lady with the... Uzi?" ... nope, she's holding
| an MP5) and STILL got her phone number!
| parentheses wrote:
| poitier!
| MR4D wrote:
| Great read, and a nice way to honor Sidney Poitier. RIP.
| owlbynight wrote:
| I grew up about a mile away from the federal reserve they hacked
| in this movie, and other than the X-Files, Sneakers is the only
| media I've ever heard my small hometown of Culpeper, Virginia
| mentioned in. So Sneakers has always held a place in my heart.
| But it's also the best hacking movie ever made, in my opinion.
| [deleted]
| aksss wrote:
| Ha, I made a point to visit Culpeper specifically because of
| the TV show Turn (and the book it's based on, _Washington's
| Spies_ ).
|
| I guess the Culpeper spy ring in the Revolutionary War was
| named for this town that George Washington had surveyed in his
| younger years.
|
| I happened to be road-tripping through VA and NC, saw it on a
| map and thought, I can't _not_ go there.
| crmd wrote:
| You might enjoy this brochure which explains how the FedWire
| Culpepper Switch worked:
|
| http://coldwar-c4i.net/Mt_Pony/culpsw01.htm
| aksss wrote:
| Wow, new to me. Fascinating, thanks!
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| What a great read. I wished more actors took pen to paper to talk
| about their times behind the cameras.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't think I have to say many words to emphasize how much this
| movie has shaped my life. I've had this nick since I was 13 or
| 14.
| bttf wrote:
| Great read.
|
| > Years later I ran into Phil at the symphony. I asked him I how
| he was able to come up with such a great script. He blushed and
| said he had worked on it for nine years. I know spending a long
| time writing something doesn't guarantee success. But not giving
| up on a good idea almost always does.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| This is a highly encouraging comment, and just what I needed
| today.
| Minor49er wrote:
| I recently watch a copy of it on Laserdisc. I love this movie
| dwighttk wrote:
| Stephen Tobolowsky's podcast is a great listen if you liked that
| short article https://tobolowskyfiles.com/
| caymanjim wrote:
| One of the best things about Sneakers is that it doesn't play
| down to its audience. There's little to no expository dialog.
| There are flashbacks that drive the plot, but no flashbacks or
| other artificial constructs that explain technology or terms.
| Everything is presented smartly, and the writers and director
| trust the audience to understand what's going on.
|
| It manages to be specific about technical things without feeling
| aged, even now.
|
| I might be biased since I'm an old 80s phone
| phreak/cracker/hacker, but I can think of few other examples that
| capture what things were really like, with social engineering
| proving as (or more) valuable than hacking, dumpster diving, and
| a group of people driven more by geeky interest than profit
| motive (although not entirely, of course). The only other hacking
| film that comes close is War Games, but only the first half.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Who posted in the PTP thread?
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I love Sneakers, but you have to admit that the central MacGuffin
| is nonsense. A magic literal black box that decrypts literally
| anything when you touch a solder plate...um ok. If the film
| itself were poorly done, this would be ridiculed to no end.
| nitrogen wrote:
| It's kind of fun to imagine "what if" in these situations.
| Like, what would it take for such a box to be real? It doesn't
| seem all _that_ far off from a low pin count bus, or from a
| modern game console mod chips that spike the voltage outside
| normal ranges at just the right time. You could extend that
| idea and wonder if a single contact would be sufficient, given
| the right out-of-spec, no holds barred, analog waveform, to
| both read from and write to an arbitrary circuit.
|
| Maybe the single contact is just for establishing a common
| ground level, and all the magic happens with ultra-high-
| angular-resolution wireless beamforming. Like, just imagine
| what you could do with a bidirectional 2D beamforming array
| with the same resolution as a cell phone camera sensor.
| Angostura wrote:
| Quantum Blockchain - that's all you need to explain it.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| Considering who the consultant on the movie was I think they
| had a pretty good idea that it was bogus.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1409687/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
| Ansil849 wrote:
| And Hackers had Emmanuel Goldstein, and Wargames had Willis
| Ware as consultants.
|
| But all three were still Hollywood films, which means they
| mixed in a heavy dose of nonsense alongside some technical
| accuracy. Doing it 'knowingly' doesn't particularly matter.
| packetslave wrote:
| and "The Fast and the Furious" had Craig Lieberman but they
| still overrode him and put in dialogue / plot-points that
| he TOLD them were bull, but sounded good coming out of the
| actors' mouths.
|
| Movies are well-known for sacrificing technically accuracy
| for story/plot/stupid reasons.
| thakoppno wrote:
| The scene depicting the NSA tracing the phone call also seems
| very dubious from a technical standpoint.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| Yes, exactly. And them knowing which relay points the NSA had
| tracked. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great film, but I
| feel like because it's a great film overall, technical-minded
| folks sweep all the technical bullshit in it under the rug.
| Whereas a film that everyone can agree is hot garbage, like
| Swordfish, gets ridiculed for having ridiculous crap in it,
| while Sneakers is (rightly so, I think) given a pass.
| naasking wrote:
| I think the the shear volume of technical garbage plays an
| important role here. Artistic license lets you skip and
| fudge some technical details that would detract from the
| story if you covered them properly, but you can only take
| that so far.
| nullc wrote:
| Long distance phone tracing used to require calling from
| switch operator to operator while the circuit was active, --
| the only unrealistic part is their visualization of the trace
| progress and the era-inappropriateness of that kind of
| tracing.
|
| One could imagine knowing trace progress if one imagined
| they'd also compromised the transit exchanges well enough to
| see if someone was accessing the service console.
| myself248 wrote:
| RIP Sir Sidney Poitier KBE, 1927-2022.
| ISL wrote:
| Particularly poignant for today:
|
| > I sat listening, but my predominant thought was "Damn, Sidney
| Poitier is a handsome man."
| brk wrote:
| Loved Sneakers when it came out, it was one of the few
| computer/technology movies that seemed to make an effort to get
| things right. Or, at least as close to right as you can in a
| movie.
|
| Side story, the article mentions the Universal backlot and the
| tour buses that come through. Years ago I was working with
| Universal on a security project. I'm being driven around with my
| sales guy on a golfcart. We're in the back seat, facing
| backwards, with a guy from Universal, and my sales engineer in
| the front seats. The driver and my SE are dressed super casual,
| the sales guy and I both have sport coats and are dressed just
| well enough to look "important". Tour bus comes by with the
| driver doing their spiel and I see a few people looking at us
| trying to figure out who we are. I wave to the bus and smile, a
| couple of people point, and then about 30 people all point their
| cameras at us and start snapping pics. It's worth mentioning that
| the overall makeup of the group looks like a lot of people here
| on vacation from other countries. I can only imagine those people
| going back and looking at their pics and trying to figure out who
| they took pictures of.
| illwrks wrote:
| Love that anecdote :D
|
| I used to work at a film marketing agency, which involved going
| to private screenings of films before general release.
|
| On one film we were working on, a colleague and I attended a
| screening of a close-to-finished film. I was tasked by the
| agency with taking notes on anything of importance that might
| be usable from a marketing perspective. There were a crowd of
| others at the screening also, another agency and random people.
|
| Throughout the film I was checking my watch (for timestamps)
| and taking notes. Afterward when milling about in the lobby it
| turns out the director was sitting just behind me and he was
| getting more and more worried and nervous as I continued to
| check my watch and take notes...
|
| It was only his second film, a rehash of an older classic one,
| and he thought I was one of the journalists who were also at
| the screening and would slate the film... I often get a smile
| thinking of the panic and dread that must have went though his
| head every time I checked my watch. It was a good film though
| and went on to do well.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This is the film that inspired me to learn how to move slowly
| enough to defeat motion detectors.
| Legion wrote:
| Robert Redford. Sidney Poitier. David Strathairn. River Phoenix.
| Mary McDonnell. Timothy Busfield. Dan Ackroyd. Donal Logue. Ben
| Kingsley. James Earl Jones. Stephen Tobolowsky.
|
| There may exist movies with better casts than Sneakers, but there
| don't exist many.
| rsync wrote:
| "Hurlyburly"[1] Sean Penn Kevin
| Spacey Robin Wright Penn Chazz Palminteri
| Garry Shandling Anna Paquin Meg Ryan
|
| One of my favorite movies.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurlyburly_(film)
| pmarreck wrote:
| I've never heard of this movie. Why is its rating so
| mediocre?
| rsync wrote:
| It's very much like Glengarry Glen Ross.
|
| Very limited sets, almost no action, brilliant dialog.
| pmarreck wrote:
| I love Glengarry so that's a pretty spot-on
| recommendation, I'll check it out
| hindsightbias wrote:
| I miss the comedic dramas with ensamble casts back in that day.
| Today, they're all CGI, shoot-em-up, gratuitous explosions.
|
| Another unappreciated example, The Man with One Red Shoe. Tom
| Hanks, Dabney Coleman, Charles Durning, Carrie Fisher, Lori
| Singer, Jim Belushi, Edward Herrman, David Ogden Stiers, Tom
| Noonan, Irving Metzman, David Lander.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Ardy bekko. Inyo. See far ogle.
|
| That had always stuck in my head since seeing it. Good movie.
| LargeWu wrote:
| Glengarry Glen Ross: Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Alec Baldwin,
| Jack Lemmon, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris, Jonathan Pryce.
| dhimes wrote:
| RIP Mr. Poitier :,(
|
| EDIT: Sir Sidney
| thedevelopnik wrote:
| If you're gonna call him Mr., then you call him Mr. Tibbs.
| aksss wrote:
| The cast list in True Romance always shocks people unfamiliar
| with it. A different generation of greats though. Val Kilmer,
| Dennis Hopper, Chris Walken, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, Christian
| Slater, Patricia Arquette, James Gandolfini, Jack Black
| (deleted scene), Samuel Jackson, and more.
| sneak wrote:
| Two of my favorites!
|
| There's also Glengarry Glen Ross, another of my top-all-time:
|
| Al Pacino; Jack Lemmon; Alec Baldwin; Ed Harris; Alan Arkin;
| Kevin Spacey; Jonathan Pryce
| incidentist wrote:
| Rabe is an excellent playwright -- I'll have to check this
| out. Movies adapted from stage plays are great places to
| find good dialog, in general. Other examples: A Thousand
| Clowns, Angels in America.
| jmuguy wrote:
| I absolutely love Sneakers. Whenever folks talk about Hackers or
| the Matrix or any movies or shows that feature tech I argue that
| Sneakers is the best movie about hacking. I feel like a crazy old
| man ranting about it to some of my younger coworkers. It makes me
| sad that my handle (mother) on a lot of gaming services is much
| more likely to elicit a comparison to Danzig than Dan Aykroyd's
| character.
| [deleted]
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Please read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Sneakers was the best technically, but Hackers captured the
| spirit of hacking during the time the best. Wargames is
| inbetween those. I'd argue Weird Science and Ferris Bueller are
| at the same level as the Matrix as far as the hacking content
| goes.
| runjake wrote:
| Having been actually hacking in the time when WarGames came
| out, it portrayed exactly how it was for me and my sphere of
| young hackers (sans the NORAD visits, of course).
|
| I found Sneakers great, too. Great story, and the TTPs
| (techniques and tradecraft) were mostly spot-on. Has anybody
| else been to NewHackCity West (in the bay area, now defunct,
| AFAIK) and remember the sign out front? :)
|
| Maybe I'm not giving it a fair shake, but Hackers looks
| awful. I never saw Hackers completely, only scenes and such,
| but it never interested me and seemed silly and outlandish,
| as if it were written by some Hollywood outsider who was
| trying to be as imaginative against stereotypes at the time
| as possible. It doesn't resonate with me at all (from the
| scenes I've watched).
| kloch wrote:
| > sans the NORAD visits, of course
|
| You didn't prank call NORAD?
| twox2 wrote:
| I think you should give Hackers a chance... it is silly and
| full of hollywood tropes, but it definitely captures the
| hacker culture of city hacker kids in the 90's. I also
| think the film pays homage to well known hackers from the
| 80's and 90's, all the handles of the characters in the
| movie are named after real people and there are even
| references to the types of textfiles/books we all shared at
| the time. If you can suspend your disbelief it's great.
|
| But I do have a soft spot for the movie. It was filmed in
| the HS I went to (thought I attended a few years later) -
| there's a scene where one of the characters was redboxing
| on one of the school payphones, and I got to do that from
| the same phone as a student in that school - how cool is
| that?
| ryandrake wrote:
| I never really got why Hackers was always lumped in with
| Wargames and Sneakers. The vibe of Hackers always seemed
| way different, with all the "cool dudes wearing
| sunglasses" and skateboards and flamboyant outfits and
| EDM music. I mean I like the movie, but it was less of a
| realistic "computer hacking" movie and more of a "too-
| cool people partying" movie, much more like Swordfish.
| runjake wrote:
| Yeah maybe I'm just being old and grumbly.
|
| Although the vast majority of our crews were
| skaters/BMXers, we were much more low key and much less
| flamboyant.
|
| It was at a time when the feds were just starting to take
| some hacking incidents seriously. At that point in time,
| if you got caught, you'd usually just get a stern talking
| to by some authority figure, be it a local cop and/or one
| of the heads of the org you infiltrated.
|
| I may give Hackers a watch this weekend and try to
| appreciate it for what it is. I was already adulting by
| the 90s, so while I was still on the field, I didn't pay
| much attention to 90s hacker culture, except for who was
| getting arrested or informing.
| twox2 wrote:
| In my experience the movie did a pretty good job of
| capturing the fun of being a "hacker kid" growing up in
| NYC in the 90's.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Did you ever swim in the pool on the roof?
| twox2 wrote:
| Only when it sprung a leak. Funny enough, there were a
| few of us that would go hang out on the roof. The stairs
| were gated, but it was the kind of gate you could reach
| your arm through and open on the other side. It's a big
| school though, and in reality there was a pool on the
| ground floor... so the pool on the narrative would fall
| apart in real life :D
| ffhhj wrote:
| Curious on your thoughts about Mr. Robot.
| metabagel wrote:
| Hackers is just really fun and light-hearted. There's
| something wholesome about the affection which the young
| hackers have for one another. Also, first Angelina Jolie
| movie, to my knowledge. The technical aspects are laughably
| absurd, to the point of being enjoyable (for me).
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > Sneakers was the best technically
|
| How so? In terms of technical accuracy, Wargames is vastly
| more accurate (everything down to the old paperclip trick to
| get free phone calls, a very old school fone phreaking trick)
| than Sneakers, or Hackers for that matter.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Probably because Sneakers features more social engineering.
| That would be my guess. Wargames features realistic war
| dialers and such, but it also features WOPR, a 1980's
| computer that can speak and learn and reason like a human.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > but it also features WOPR, a 1980's computer that can
| speak and learn and reason like a human.
|
| While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt anything,
| at the touch of a power probe.
|
| Both films have nonsensical MacGuffins as their central
| element, but Wargames has vastly more technically-
| accurate methodology sprinkled throughout the film.
| bostik wrote:
| > _Sneakers features a box which can decrypt anything_
|
| Not "anything". Merely the standard encryption used [and
| sold] by their own government.
|
| The allusion to NSA being an arm of nation-state
| industrial espionage apparatus is quite muted, but it's
| there.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt
| anything, at the touch of a power probe.
|
| > Both films have nonsensical MacGuffins
|
| Sneakers came out in 1992 and in 1999, EFF and
| distributed.net brute-forced a DES key in under 24 hours.
| If that's what a bunch of randoms could do in 1999 with
| commodity hardware, the NSA almost certainly had ASIC,
| FPGA, or supercomputer based tools to provide nearly the
| same functionality much, much earlier.
|
| If you pay attention to the talk around The Box - the
| concept is that the mathematician found a "shortcut"
| through western encryption algorithms. That's a very
| accurate representation of plenty of crypto attacks. For
| example, a bunch of WiFi attacks are nearly as magical as
| The Box.
|
| The film eventually reveals that it's the NSA that wants
| the box...to spy on other government agencies. Also
| rooted in truth; the NSA created DES with intentional
| weaknesses, mandated its use for the government and
| pushed its use in private sector.
| mandevil wrote:
| I think you have a serious misunderstanding of the DES
| story: the NSA made changes to the S-box without
| explanation in the 1970's, and everyone was suspicious at
| the time, but then 15 years later two researchers
| "discovered" differential cryptanalysis, and realized
| that the changes the NSA made actually protected it
| against this form of attack. So instead of weakening it,
| the changes the NSA made protected it against a then
| unknown (in UNCLASS) attacks.
|
| The NSA did push to reduce the key size from 64 to 48,
| which is why the eventual standard was to the always
| bizarre 56 bits.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Both films have nonsensical MacGuffins as their central
| element
|
| Sneakers automatically decrypting something is a conceit
| of the movie to show what the device can do (find primes
| to break encryption), even if the way they go about
| showing it is silly. If you had more time and an
| understanding audience, you could replace that with a
| scene where they try out the encryption breaking on
| files, etc, and the movie works the same for the most
| part if you explain why it's important. It's all
| understood technology, explained with the limitations of
| the time.
|
| Wargames rests on an AI which we still can't make and
| aren't sure how to make or if it's necessarily possible
| to make. The movie falls apart entirely if it's not a
| learning computer. The conversing audibly is a conceit to
| make it more approachable as a film like in Sneakers, but
| that's not the largely problematic part.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > While Sneakers features a box which can decrypt
| anything, at the touch of a power probe.
|
| That is more reasonable to me than Skynet. Due mainly to
| things like the Clipper Chip[0] and other efforts made by
| the government[1].
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars
| Ansil849 wrote:
| > That is more reasonable to me than Skynet.
|
| Have you heard of RYAN [1]? Or LAWs [2]? Skynet is here
| in full force, while strong crypto remains unbreakable.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2020/11/warga...
|
| [2] https://www.livescience.com/ai-drone-attack-libya.htm
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| The computer parts of Wargames were good, but the military
| parts were hilariously silly. When that movie came out, I
| was working in the missile business at the time. It was a
| good popcorn movie, but that's it. The hype of being a
| serious movie was advertising. The only bit of the military
| part they did right was the interior of the Launch Control
| Facility, the room where the two officers turn their keys.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| I just watched this on Youtube [1], and was surprised to
| see the actors in the scene were John Spencer (from The
| West Wing) and a (very young) Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde
| in Reservoir Dogs). According to Wikipedia, this was
| Madsen's 2nd role ever.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-T_uhQ0iE4
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| The whole bit with the "farmhouse" cover for it is
| nonsense. The actual facilities were clearly marked,
| fenced, and heavily guarded, with the usual "Use of
| deadly force authorized" signs. Every local knew where
| they were, as did the Soviets.
|
| Handling your issue .38 that way would get you a
| reprimand.
|
| And, of course, the military _never_ ran exercises with
| the real equipment, or without telling the crew.
| fenomas wrote:
| Speaking of phreaking, I always loved how Sneakers wasn't
| afraid to be understated. The David Strathairn character
| mentions that he got in trouble for helping some people
| make free phone calls, and has perfect pitch and the
| nickname "Whistler", and... no more is said. People who get
| it, get it.
| deanCommie wrote:
| ...As someone from Vancouver (90 minutes from the
| Whistler ski resort), I didn't make the connection until
| JUST NOW.
| pmarreck wrote:
| Hackers also had that early-90's "before it was cool" techno
| soundtrack vibe.
| wwweston wrote:
| Halcyon On and On is an evergreen awesome track.
| namdnay wrote:
| I love the soundtrack but it wasn't exactly "before it was
| cool". Music for the Jilted Generation was already number 1
| in the UK
| pmarreck wrote:
| Ha! The US story was completely different, there. I was
| very jealous of the UK music scene for years. Then
| Deadmau5 and Skrillex showed up and suddenly... a niche
| interest became a mainstream one circa 2010.
|
| Just look at Winter Music Conference attendance as a
| gauge... it was basically an underground scene for its
| first 2 decades... https://www.npr.org/templates/story/st
| ory.php?storyId=125237...
|
| We're talking about a country where Disco Demolition
| Night was a huge thing:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night And
| the backlash persisted for _decades_. Also, this is so
| effing American, sigh (everything from media preying on
| rock-fan fears that "disco is taking over," to using
| explosives to "blow up" the records, to it starting a
| riot, to the not-very-hidden homophobia and masculine
| insecurity, to...)
|
| But me? I've been into this stuff since listening to
| Kraftwerk in the 80's on one of the first Walkman
| knockoffs in the high school cafeteria! I never cared how
| cool (or not) it was, I just loved the beats.
|
| And yet, interest in dance music has been the butt of
| American media jokes in movies and elsewhere for a long
| time.
|
| Related: I was once in New Orleans not long ago and asked
| a bartender where the electronic music venues were and he
| goes, "you don't LOOK like a f_g..." (sorry about
| language, but that's literally what he said, sigh) At
| least in New Orleans, that music is TIGHTLY associated
| with a certain orientation and NO ONE outside of that
| orientation listens to it. It's weirdly rigid. But I
| digress
| namdnay wrote:
| What's interesting is that the 90s Ibiza/UK electronic
| scene had its roots in young brits listening to 80s
| Detroit and NYC techno . What goes around comes around
| jkingsman wrote:
| While I completely agree with you, as a very minor point, The
| Matrix Reloaded features Trinity correctly using nmap to find
| an exposed SSH server, and then correctly using SSHNuke to
| exploit an era-appropriate CRC vuln --
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PxTAn4g20U
| jmuguy wrote:
| Yeah its probably not fair to compare them really, because I
| think Hackers (and Wargames) are great too. Just in terms of
| the movie itself (and cast... I mean my god) its great.
| excalibur wrote:
| Obviously not a movie, but Mr. Robot deserves a mention here
| anyway for the highly realistic hacking supporting its less
| realistic plot.
| ffhhj wrote:
| Mr. Robot is more about mind hacking (Elliot) and society
| hacking (Whiterose and other powerful figures), along with
| Fight Club, Who Am I, and 23 [1998].
| bena wrote:
| I wouldn't say Hackers captured the spirit, but more like
| captured an aspirational desire. Everyone wanted to be a
| slick William Gibson cyberpunk inspired digital cowboy. Truth
| is, there were way more Dan Aykroyds than Jonny Lee Millers.
| wcarss wrote:
| I feel Wargames is often underrated.
|
| It was one of the very first movies about the topic (1983),
| and yet it balances being an entertaining blockbuster with
| very realistic depictions of many kinds of hacking, from
| waiting around for a port-scanner, to patiently shoulder
| surfing an administrator, to dumpster diving and just doing
| research on your opponents, plus many others. It even bases
| the overall plot on AI-training-set-poisoning! To this day
| that topic remains pretty far out of the public consciousness
| as a concern, but it's probably gonna be a pretty big deal.
|
| It also captures a core hacker cultural feeling of "curious
| grey-hat teenagers having fun exploring" versus "large
| powerful entities getting very mad at the wrong people over
| their own failures to implement basic security safeguards."
|
| It even manages to stuff a nuclear deproliferation + broad
| antiwar morality play in there, and through all of this,
| there's not a single crazy imaginary hacking visualization!
| It's a great hacker movie.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| Sneakers is one of the few hacking-related movies that I can
| really enjoy, because it doesn't come off as pretentious the
| way that others do (to me, at least).
|
| It was unapologetically nerdy; it doesn't try to "be cooler
| than it is". The filmmakers didn't feel compelled to include a
| scene filmed in a nightclub (like Swordfish or all 3 Matrix
| movies). They didn't feel compelled to gussy up their
| characters in absurd costumes (like Hackers or, again, all 3
| Matrix movies). The plot and the characters were interesting
| enough on their own.
|
| The result was that I never felt like they were talking down to
| me or pandering to me. As a side benefit, I'd argue that
| Sneakers has aged much better than other hacker movies have.
| hammock wrote:
| They had an advantage because the movie is mostly about
| social engineering (which requires acting), and less about
| actual hacking (computer screens and such which are less
| exciting to watch on a silver screen).
|
| The pandering comment is funny to me though, because every
| single Robert Redford character has the same humblesmug,
| morally superior talk-down-while-encouraging-his-students
| "cool professor" vibe to me.
| luma wrote:
| The other factor is that the central plot element (not
| really a spoiler here) involves a system for finding prime
| factors of large numbers which, 20 years later, would still
| be ground-breaking technology and would almost certainly
| have several 3 letter agencies chasing after you.
| basementcat wrote:
| Leonard Adleman (the "A" in RSA) was a technical
| consultant for the film.
|
| https://molecularscience.usc.edu/sneakers/
| ecairns wrote:
| I studied computer science at the University of
| Washington in the mid 90s. One of my professors there
| would tell a story about how Adleman was notorious for
| answering email days or weeks later, but one time he sent
| him an email asking a question about the movie and got a
| response five minutes later.
| tootie wrote:
| There's a decidedly cheesy B movie call The Travelling
| Salesman about a crew of computer scientists who prove
| P=NP and sit around a conference table trying to decide
| what to do with the proof. It's fairly accurate without
| ever actually trying to posit what the proof looks like.
|
| https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1801123/
| hammock wrote:
| I mean there are plenty of time travel or space travel
| movies you could say the same thing about.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| Given our current understanding of mathematics and
| physics, it is much more plausible that a mathematician
| (or small team) could achieve a breakthrough advance in
| prime factorization than that an inventor (or small team)
| could achieve time travel or an FTL drive. Plausibility
| is not essential in speculative fiction, but it improves
| the sense of being grounded, and tends to make ideas age
| better.
| tootie wrote:
| There's a Korean movie from a few years back called The
| Host. They have an all-time great hacking scene. Guy calls
| his friend who works for the phone company to get him in
| the office then they scour the desks in the evening for
| anyone who wrote their password on a post-it.
| [deleted]
| gibolt wrote:
| For someone who hasn't seen it, how does it compare to Mr.
| Robot? (Season 1)
| supercheetah wrote:
| If you aged the cast of Mr. Robot by a couple decades so
| that they're middle aged, and transported them and their
| memories back in time to the early 1990s, and the whole
| crew was focused on just one hack, that's pretty much the
| movie Sneakers.
| enobrev wrote:
| If you google "Sneakers streaming", there are several
| services that are streaming it for a price. There are
| surely other ways to watch it as well. It's definitely
| worth a watch. I love both (as well as The Matrix and
| Hackers), all for different reasons.
| packetslave wrote:
| $4 to rent on all the major streaming platforms.
| ABSOLUTELY worth it.
| deanCommie wrote:
| tl;dr: I love Sneakers, and I love Hackers, and I love The
| Matrix, for entirely different reasons, and I don't think
| your criticism is warranted.
|
| I hear what you're saying, but I'm a completely uncool nerdy
| software engineer, and I *ADORE the Hackers and Matrix
| aesthetics.
|
| Both are not set in the real world, remember. Hackers is a
| semi-idealized Generation X view of disruption and techno
| (technology AND music)-fueled youthful exuberance.
|
| And the hackers in the Matrix were hackers that saw through
| the Matrix, and literally hacked their reality to know kung
| fu, gunplay, and change the world around them.
|
| When done right (and Swordfish is a good example of when it
| isn't), it can be a hyper-stylized love letter to the
| concepts. Not all cinema needs to be "realistic" and
| "grounded".
| laumars wrote:
| Not seen Sneakers but i will watch it now based on your
| recommendation.
|
| For me, one of the biggest underrated hacking movie is
| Antitrust. Nobody ever seem to talk about it.
| packetslave wrote:
| I LOVE Antitrust. Tim Robbins' performance as "totally not
| Bill Gates, wink wink" is wonderful. I'll admit I wasn't
| quite able to suspend my disbelief enough to buy Ryan
| Phillippe as a geek, though. He's just too... himself.
| tootie wrote:
| Techies love it for the accuracy but it's also just a really
| fun, high quality movie with an all-star cast. Robert Redford
| and Sidney Poitier are worth the price of admission if the
| movie was about typewriter.
| hooande wrote:
| Antitrust is a cult classic to people of a certain
| generation. It's a terrible movie, but I love it. The hacker
| character was a pretty boy in glasses (Ryan Phillipe) instead
| of a total nerd. And Tim Robbins is the worst Bill Gates
| ever. I need to watch it again some day
| dylan604 wrote:
| My first thought on the "mother" handle would be the computer
| from Alien(s) before Dan Akroyd.
| pcarolan wrote:
| Same. I was 14 at the time it came out and I can still remember
| how I felt walking out of the theater. Everything I love about
| the movies was there and it inspired me to want to lean more
| about computers.
| sybercecurity wrote:
| I think that Sneakers was, at its heart, a heist movie and
| generally heist movies need to have a technical element and be
| generally believable. There was the "crew" and each member had
| their expertise.
|
| It's strange how Sneakers never got the nerd love like Wargames
| and Hackers did. Maybe because the cast were older, established
| actors and not young people?
| bredren wrote:
| I think the exposure is low in comparison to those other
| films. I'd attribute it to branding and the understated
| style.
|
| I haven't heard "Sneakers" used to describe anything computer
| / security related when it came out or today. Sneakers are
| shoes.
|
| It also lacks whiz bang effects and violence delivered in The
| Matrix. (It's good for other reasons too)
|
| That said these are great reasons to like the film then and
| today.
|
| (Unless you were in charge of the studio at the time it was
| released.)
| slantyyz wrote:
| > I haven't heard "Sneakers" used to describe anything
| computer / security related when it came out or today.
| Sneakers are shoes.
|
| How about "sneakernet"? I believe it predates the movie
| though, and that shoes are optional.
| addingnumbers wrote:
| > It's strange how Sneakers never got the nerd love like
| Wargames and Hackers did.
|
| From where I was standing it did. A BBS in my toll-free range
| was reborn as "SETEC Astronomy". I used a variation of
| "myvoiceismypassport" as a password for longer than I should
| admit.
|
| On the other hand, "hack the Gibson" was a back-handed taunt
| to mock users who were more into hacker "fashion" and
| leetspeak than software and tinkering.
|
| War Games was neither diminished nor elevated in comparison
| to Sneakers, in my circles it just stood alone with unique,
| unassailable charm.
| eichin wrote:
| "We're the US Government. We don't _do_ that sort of thing.
| " is up there with "and I... was never here" in
| "catchphrases that give you an excuse to do a James Early
| Jones accent"...
| eichin wrote:
| Oh, and "My vOicE is mY passp0rt Verify ME" is always
| good when a voice "authentication" system is in need of
| mocking...
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Try it with google assistant.
|
| "Hey google - My voice is my passport"
|
| >> "Hello, Martin Bishop..."
| munificent wrote:
| Sneakers gets plenty of nerd love in all the social circles
| I'm in. Like you note, it's right up there with Wargames,
| Hackers, and the Matrix.
| qzw wrote:
| Seconded. One of my favorite movies, period. The story was
| great and the cast was not only star-studded but stellar across
| the board. The hacking was not overdone and served the story
| rather than just inserted for fan service. It's one I never get
| tired of rewatching.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Right? god, what a cast. I remember coming back to some years
| after I first saw as a kid and realizing just how absolutely
| stacked it was. Hell even has super early career Donal logue
| iszomer wrote:
| One of the best films portraying Robert Redford's work. Crazy
| how all the scenes they were filmed in were easily recognizable
| as SF Bay area locations, such as their office above the
| current FOX theater in Oakland, the San Mateo Bridge, and the
| Embarcadero building that is now one of Google's San Francisco
| locations. I couldn't place the main villain's headquarter
| location but I imagined it to be somewhere in Hayward's
| industrial park areas.
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| I worked in downtown Oakland office building during the time
| of this filming and walked by one filming location, and
| remember how they faux prettied up the outside of the Fox
| Theatre adjacent to the office you refer to. This was pre-
| renovation Fox, it was more or less boarded up at the time.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I still tell people that if they want to see a fun fantasy
| computer movie, see Hackers. It's hilarious.
|
| ... but if they want to see a hacking movie, see Sneakers. The
| real people trying to break into your company and rifle through
| your shit look a lot more like the ones in that movie than the
| ones in the other movie.
| myself248 wrote:
| I've always just said Hackers is a comedy whether or not they
| knew they were making a comedy.
|
| Sneakers is a drama and might as well be a documentary except
| for two scenes, which I'll accept would've bored audiences to
| tears if they weren't graphicalized.
| lostgame wrote:
| I love the idea that Hackers is actually self-aware, but I
| think it's more of a 'The Room' situation; where
| retroactively we can view it as a comedy and find some
| appreciation for an otherwise almost inexcusably awful
| piece of film.
|
| I would've been like...10(?) when it came out, so having
| seen it for the first time only a couple years ago (I'm 32
| now) - it was just a hilarious experience I could never
| imagine having been taken seriously, even when it was made.
|
| It seems to be a movie about hackers made by people who
| have never actually used a computer.
| nullc wrote:
| It was regarded as awful nonsense in my social circles
| when it came out.
|
| I'm perplexed by the people in the thread saying it was
| good at the time. So bad it's funny is the most it ever
| could have got.
| queuebert wrote:
| Hackers is to hacking what Hamilton is to Hamilton.
| slantyyz wrote:
| I had a video game store when Hackers came out, and one of
| my regulars, a kid, came in and said he wanted to get a
| modem so he could start hacking just like in the movie.
|
| I don't know that anyone walking out of Hamilton wants to
| be Hamilton.
| mmazing wrote:
| A few years back at DEFCON it was supposed to be the movie
| during movie night.
|
| I showed up and at the last minute it was changed to something
| else. Cue my immense disappointment. :(
| pmarreck wrote:
| One of my favorite movies.
| birriel wrote:
| "I leave message here on service, but you do not call." XD This
| line was referenced in "Halt and Catch Fire." Good stuff.
| anaphor wrote:
| They referenced the movie on Stranger Things as well with a
| line similar to the one River Phoenix's character says: "It's
| fascinating what 50 bucks will get you at the county recorder's
| office"
| awestley wrote:
| RIP Sidney Poitier
| duxup wrote:
| The main speech from the film still rings true (SPOILERS)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0UB3LD2EoA
|
| Soundtrack was AMAZING.
| jdofaz wrote:
| Sneakers is in my Blu-ray collection, when I need to test a
| microphone or something I often say my voice is my passport,
| verify me. Not too many get the reference but that's ok
| skibble wrote:
| My memory of this is hazy, but when I was younger Apple had a
| feature where you could log in with your voice. Really! It
| would have been either OS 7 or OS 9, probably OS 9. I'm almost
| positive this is either _the_ phrase you had to say, or at
| least one of a few options. I don 't imagine it was in any way
| secure, especially compared to the likes of Touch ID or Face
| ID, but it felt pretty cool at the time.
| dantheman0207 wrote:
| You're right! https://youtu.be/lXzD_oTL4XA
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-07 23:00 UTC)