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Hacking with machine gun fire? How could you possibly hack without it?
"Our webs are down, sir. We can't log in!" "Which webs?" "All of them!" "They've penetrated our code walls. They're stealing the internet!" "We'll need to hack all IPs simultaneously." — Penny Arcade, " Brains With Urgent Appointments "
A 16-year old geek will always be able to hack into any computer system within two tries.
—Hollywood Rule Book, Vanity Fair
The Big Bad has launched the world's most potent virus and you've got 10 minutes before he destroys every computer in the world! Quickly, hack into his Master Computer and delete the virus! What, you don't know how to hack? Never mind - the computer is state of the art, which apparently means Extreme Graphical Representation, easy to guess Highly Visible Passwords, and a Viewer Friendly Interface. Instead of exploiting security flaws, you guide a little 3D version of yourself through a fiery maze that somehow represents the firewall. It's nothing like real hacking, although either way, you may have to use Rapid Fire Typing. That last part also means that any AI or robot that can directly interface with a computer is automatically the greatest hacker in the universe that can instantly take over any system no matter how secure, because it doesn't need to type.
Hollywood Hacking is when some sort of convoluted metaphor is used not only to describe hacking, but actually to put it into practice. Characters will come up with rubbish like, "Extinguish the firewall!" and "I'll use the Millennium Bug to launch an Overclocking Attack on the whole Internet!" - even hacking light switches and electric razors, which is even sillier if said electric razor is unplugged.
Of course, with computers, this could also fall under much the same heading as And Some Other Stuff; If the thought of popular TV shows, movies, or books showing kids how to make bombs in their kitchen gives Moral Guardians the shivers, imagine what the thought of said works showing them how to use those horrible demon machines in their rooms to hack bank accounts, crack Pentagon secrets or steal a copy of the screenplay for the upcoming Twilight movie would do to those same Moral Guardians.
In Video Games the Hacking Minigame is an Acceptable Break From Reality based on the Rule Of Fun ... mainly because who wants to sit there and exploit security flaws when you could use a green tank to shoot stuff?
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- In Cowboy Bebop, Ed hacks via a school of cute, tiny fish nibbling on screenshots of web pages.
- Mahou Sensei Negima (the manga, at least) has Chachamaru attempt to hack into the school's computer system, which are represented by pixellated sharks. A student uses an artifact to transport herself into cyberspace and fight them, Magical Girl-style.
- This must be a parody of something (maybe itself), since it clashes with the realistic attack vectors (SYN flood, etc.) used in the hacking attempt. In fact, most of the attacks and techniques used are actual hacking techniques, but visualized in absurd ways (a DOS attack is a tuna, etc.)
- She's chanting Unix shell commands, real iptables syntax involved.
- Ritsuko Akagi in ep. 13 of Neon Genesis Evangelion connects a terminal to the core of the Magi System and hacks away a virus that's trying to get the Magi System to blow up Nerv's HQ. And 'connects a terminal' really means 'dig her way through the cabinet and plugs some wires direcly into its pulsating core'. Of course there's a countdown involved.
- The idea was that the virus had made the normal interface useless, and they had to use emergency input, while simultaneously revealing the semi-organic nature of the Magi.
- Made fun of in Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series where Kaiba's computer claims to be so advanced it makes hacking look like a boring video game. Said computer also points out how Kaiba seems to be pressing the same keys over and over prompting the latter to claim he learned how to hack by watching old episodes of Star Trek.
- In Dennou Coil, even the least eye-catching examples of hacking look suspiciously like Hermetic Magic and Instant Runes (the more visual ones? They involved rockets). In this case, though, it's justified in that a) they're not using the internet at all, but rather Augmented Reality technology and b) the Augmented Reality subculture in the series is dominated mostly by preteen children, the exact sort of people who would try to make hacking as flashy as possible.
- Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has, in Lagann-hen, Lordgenome's head hacking into the Cathedral Terra in this way. Nobody cared about how unrealistic it was in this case because a) It's Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and b) It was hilarious.
- Both used and averted in Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex: firewalls are represented by spheres with shiny, meaningless glyphs on them. But when the characters hack into them, they do it by connecting an intr usion program (which looks sort of like a welding torch) and waiting a while (though it takes only a few seconds of screentime). In one episode, such a software hack was used to distract the target from the Major breaking in and physically connecting to the local network.
- The creators have noted that the cyberspace doesn't really look like that at all, but it's an entertaining visual representation for the audience's benefit.
Fan Fic
- Averted in the Leverage/Iron Man crossover "Nerds of the Earth, take note!", which centers around a lovingly described spot of hacking which screws not once with the suspension of disbelief.
Film
- TRON. Kevin Flynn talks about hacking into the system, and the film predates Neuromancer.
- Averted, since Flynn was simply using a hacking program in the first case, and using Alan Bradley's password to falsify a password for a back door. The former was exciting because it was from the perspective of the software, and even actuarial programs are badass in cyberspace.
- 1980s movie Weird Science had a hacking scene in which military security systems resembled wormholes from Star Trek.
- Batman And Robin. Wallbanger.
- Averted in The Matrix, when Trinity uses some genuine hacking programs and techniques to identify a viable target from a command line (with plenty of Rapid Fire Typing, but in short bursts), and then uses a (fictional) "SSHnuke" program to attack a secure connection. This is actually pretty well done, and while the program she uses to make the actual attack does not exist, it's a similar idea to a "real" attack on a remote computer. Not only that, but in the timeframe of the simulated reality (the turn of the century earth) SSHv1 really had an exploitable remote vulnerability. Of course, the less said about the rest of the Matrix's relation to real computers, the better, but at least their hacking simulated computers inside a giant simulation is a realistic simulation.
- To anyone who is curious, Trinity uses a genuine hacking program called "nmap"
- The fact that that SSHnuke isn't a real program might be Fridge Brilliance: Highly skilled hackers often have a personal library of programs/exploits they've written themselves.
- This is also seen in the movie Swordfish to a degree, when Hugh Jackman's character creates a worm to hack into a bank and steal the money for John Travolta's organization. This film features large amounts of Rapid Fire Typing and Viewer Friendly Interface. Also, as he is first hired, the hacker is able to break into a government network in only 60 seconds through extreme Rapid Fire Typing.
- While receiving oral sex.
- War Games invented the whole tapping-a-few-keys-and-saying-"We're-in" shtick, and set the general form of how every movie hacker is portrayed. Although to be fair it was more accurate than most for it's time.
- When War Games came out, the concept of "computer security" barely existed. Between that and easily phreaking out old analog phone systems, it was often as easy as hooking up an acoustic coupler, letting a wardialer run for an afternoon, then trying out obvious passwords until you could log into something. Um, Or So I Heard. So, pretty darn accurate for its time.
- Sneakers, by comparison, is a near-total aversion.
- Hackers, of course. The entire movie basically.
- Jurassic Park has Lex dealing with a pretty wonky UI as she boots up a UNIX system. Good thing she doesn't need a password.
- Live Free or Die Hard is the subject of the Penny Arcade strip quoted at the top of the page.
- Transformers goes beyond even simple Hollywood Hacking and creates a visual representation and explanation of hacking that is a minor Wall Banger even to someone who knows nothing about the subject.
- Played with in one of Eddie Izzard's stand up routines.
"Hundred bazillion possible passwords... "Jeff"! And I'm in."
"How did you know?"
"Well, he was born in Jeff, on the seventh day of Jefftober... And they're always so swish about it, too..."
- Fortress (1993 film with Christopher Lambert): the genius D-Day sits down at the keyboard of Zed-10, the mad Master Computer. He types the password (which is "Crime does not pay", the motto Zed-10 repeats every now and then) and then he types... "INSTALL D-DAY'S REVENGE VIRUS". No Just No !
- Clear And Present Danger averts this with a reasonably realistic social/exhaustive attack, trying various permutations of birthdates (although they type each manually). It isn't even quite swordfish: they get down to having to mash together digits from different family members. (In a final blow to the Hollywood Computing, they even use "dir /w" to list the disk contents, even if the display is a little viewer-friendlier than normal.)
- Independence Day, with extra bonus points for hacking into an alien computer, and figuring out its display well enough to send a visual Take That to the invaders.
- Justified, in that they earlier stated that quite a bit of modern technology was based on captured Alien equipment from the Roswell crash.
- Disclosure features Demi Moore and Michael Douglas going head to head in a 3D-VR library world with avatars of themselves deleting files and whatnot. Lame, even for 1994.
Literature
- The Demon Headmaster: The only thing preventing access to the Prime Minister's computer is a weak password, and to hack it, you just need to tell the computer "knock, knock" jokes. Apparently, it takes the combined power of the brightest minds in the country to figure this out.
- The very grandfather of this trope is William Gibson, who wrote the whole graphical hacking trope into his novel Neuromancer. He later admitted to basing it off teenagers playing arcade games, and that he had never used a computer before he wrote Neuromancer. Oddly enough this gives it a timeless (if vauge) quality that accurate specifics would never have. He later tried a computer, to find it "disappointing." Eventually, Gibson broke down, and seems to be as addicted as the rest of us, having recently switched from keeping a blog to posting to Twitter.
- In Tom Clancy's Net Force, people use VR to demolish code or bypass filters, such as killing viruses by turning them in nasty rats in a city, or passing firewalls by shooting them in a Wild West duel. It's a lot more fun than sitting at a command prompt and getting carpal tunnel, according to the personnel.
- In the Warhammer 40000 novel Soul Drinker, a mechanized tech adept connects via a mechanical implant to an ancient relic... and uses it to hack the sentient circuitry inside at the speed of thought, as the technology was so advanced that they couldn't keep up otherwise. According to the description, the relic is so amazed at having the first of four
firewalls gene-encoders broken through (and therefore light up on the grip) that the second one falls soon after.
- Averted by Salander and her co-hackers in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. Larrson clearly did the research and gives pretty realistic depiction of how hacking is done. Especially subverted in that even though Salander is one of the top hackers in the country, she still has serious trouble gaining access to police networks.
- He would have been better off leaving it to our imagination. His very elaborate description of hacking a laptop assumes that the laptop is already rooted and running the hacker's program, the mirroring program that he transfers for weeks is trivial and could be transferred in a fraction of a second, and the latency of a local HDD read and a data transfer from an Internet server is so wildly different that no one could fail to notice (ignoring ISP outages, Wi Fi interference, etc...) It's not Hollywood hacking, but it's still silly.
- Completely averted in Catherine Jinks's young adult Evil Genius series. The protagonist, Cadel Piggott, is a Heroic Sociopath Teen Genius, but his hacking always takes a good deal of thought and planning, at least a couple of days to weeks to break into the system, and there's tons of mentions of Trojan Horse programs, backpacking on other programs, and a couple of backdoors.
- Averted and played straight at the same time in Daniel Keys Moran's Continuing Time series. The equivalent of the Internet is so information-dense and complex that it's impossible for a human to directly interact with it. Hackers (known as Players) write custom interfaces known as Images that act as data collection agents, filters and personal avatars. The way a Player interfaces with their Image is specifically supposed to look like Hollywood Hacking (depending on the Player) so that they can do anything at all online without being overwhelmed with data. The best Players write Images that are effectively AIs and capable of operating independently without their Player. With Daniel being a consultant in Real Life, he uses other concepts realistically with plenty of added Rule Of Cool.
Live Action TV
- In possibly one of the most ridiculous evil plots known to man, you've got Bowser/King Koopa's hacking related world domination plan in the Mario Ice Capades. The gist of it? From within a video game, he plans to use a virus in a NES console, to hack a computer, and apparently take over the world (in an extreme version of Everything Is Online). This is then compounded by the program's host saying that an evil computer virus will 'release all the evil forces stored up in the computer'. Yes, it's actually a real TV show.
- In an episode of NCIS, Lab Rat Perky Goth Abby hacks into The Immortals by storming the castle. On a more realistic note, when looking for a password in the same game, she has to use a program to find it, as as it turns out The Password Is Not Swordfish.
- A rare example of realism: Japanese live action Bloody Monday featured a teen hacker using real UNIX applications, GNOME Desktop components and lot of Python, while the fancy 3D graphs were limited to the government agents' computers.
Tabletop Games
- In Shadowrun, you can use Matrix-representations of yourself to blast/claw your way through visual representations of security programs and firewalls, or you can hack normally (which is impossible to do - you need to be a child genius to actually use code, sorta like Cypher from the Matrix.)
- Sorta the reverse, actually. Behind the pretty G.U.I., Shadowrun hacking works more or less like plausible hacking with radically advanced computer technology and nigh-unlimited computer resources. The "normal" hackers are using semi-magical abilities which let them bypass all that and hack things instinctively, with some significant downsides. They'de be the real Hollywood Hackers, since if they claim to be "Spoofing the Firewall to Brute-Force the TCP/IP Kernel," it would actually work!
- Also, Shadowrun (depending on version you're using) actually based things on real life — you actually are using hacking tools. Never been a hacker, but often times you're just using a program to repeatedly issue various commands to basically break the program you're interacting with. The security programs in Shadowrun are coded to recognize when they're under attack and retort with basically the same thing. The difference being that buffer overflows in a living creatures tend to have more serious consequences.
- Steve Jackson Games will probably never stop referring to GURPS Cyberpunk as "the book seized by the US Secret Service". The book does have rules for "realistic" (if almost 20 years out of date) hacking, but most of that chapter is devoted to Neuromancer-style cyberspace hacking.
Video Games
- Bioshock: Do you want to hack into a robot, a computer or even a vending machine? Play "Pipe Dream"!
- Remember that this is all alternate technology, and that electricity could have been replaced by fluid. Or the fluid is used to carry the charge (because a lot of automation is needed to keep Rapture going after the hundreds of citizens slaughtered or turned into Splicers in the Civil War, and any kind of trading link with another country for conventional wire is banned on pain of death because they have all been declared "oppressive"). So in fact playing the minigame could be the equivilent of rewiring on a very small scale.
- Dreamfall: hacking is represented by a rather ludicrously simple matching-up-symbols game.
- Mass Effect is even worse: Just see This Penny Arcade Strip.
- The PC version, for the record, has a slightly better version which at least mimics the interface of the player's "omni-tool". It still falls under this trope.
- The Internet and network levels in Shadow the Hedgehog. Firewalls are represented as actual fiery walls.
- System Shock 1 & 2: particularly the first game, which features Cyber Space.
- Sly Cooper does this whenever Bentley is hacking a system. This is probably one of the more reasonable stunts in the game. Of course, the games are pretty Troperrific already, and this editor always thought that was just how Bentley imagined it, not how it was actually happening.
- The eclectic rhythm game/shoot-em-up Rez.
- The game Uplink from Introversion is intentionally designed to play like Hollywood Hacking. You have programs that can figure out a password for you and disable firewalls and so on automatically, though later on you can wipe mainframes and other computers by going to the DOS-like command prompt after hacking in and have to use realistic commands to delete everything (and not just by typing in "delete everything").
- Mega Man Battle Network. Despite the fact that passwords do indeed exist, and essentially work as locked doors with plot device keys, most "hacking" is done by sending a program with a gun somewhere, sometimes via the internet, to shoot something. Particularly ridiculous in the first level of the second game, where an automatic gate lock is hacked by going on the internet and pushing a button guarded by a conveniently sleeping security program.
- Also, in the third level of the first game, a malfunctioning metroline is repaired by a kid sending his program onto the internet and having it shoot some stuff another program put there.
- In the third game's Bonus Dungeon, the only way to progress is to "hack the security system". If you accept, you are faced with three completely immobile towers with huge HP that have to be destroyed at the same time in one hit. Fail and it's instant One Hit Kill.
- Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident, hosted by the Lego site and actually quite entertaining. Hacking is represented by a turn-based strategy game, with different programs representing both your own units and enemy units.
- UPDATE: The Nightfall Incident seems to have been taken off of the Lego site about a few years ago (Probably around late 2006/7), and the only mirror of the game that is easily accessible doesn't seem to work. For shame.
-
Right here That one's gone, too...
- Then how about this one?
- The old Commodore 64 classic Paradroid had you hack via a minigame.
- Another C64 classic, Hacker was explicitly based on Hollywood Hacking.
- In Fallout 3, hacking computers is done by opening up a key-log of recent entries and picking out complete words. The game then responds with the number of correct letters in that word- you get five guesses, hopefully getting closer each time, then the computer locks you out and usually sets off an alarm.
- Of course you can just press B and exit to reset the whole thing, which is usually smarter.
- Ratchet And Clank have come up with an entertaining variety of combinations for hacking into things - usually involving a mini-game, a handheld gadget, and little glowy dots.
- The mostly-forgettable Bethesda game Delta-V features "hacking" as a glorified recreation of the Death Star run (and a bloody hard one at that).
- In the Brotherhood of Nod ending of Command And Conquer, Nod hacks into GDI's Kill Sat via a virtual reality interface. Within the virtual world, a successful hacking requires dodging laser fire from a forest of turrets, then moving through a small hole that constantly changes shape. Two of the hackers are electrocuted by GDI's defenses.
- Sam And Max, to get past a firewall in Reality 2.0, change the color of their De Soto. Seriously. After they're past it, they engage in some mild hacking as a means of laundering money into Bosco's bank account to pay for that episode's uber-expensive item.
- In My Sims Agents, you can hack certain devices to get information. How? Simple, you use the remote to guide an icon through a scrolling maze under a time limit. Deviate from the light path, and your time runs out faster. Also, if you run into an icon at an intersection, it changes the route the path takes, which may be a longer way.
- Dystopia subverts this. Just like any other Cyber Punk work, it uses Extreme Graphical Representation as you move around and fight in Cyber Space, but when you get to actual hacking, you get to enter commands one at a time.
- Cracking a nanofield in Iji is accomplished by maneuvering a little square on a grid of flashing squares to reach the opposite corner. Maybe the nanobots are just giving Iji an Extreme Graphical Representation or something.
- In the TRON level of Kingdom Hearts II, Sora and the gang help Tron defeat the MCP in a similar way (granted, they're in the computer). However, this is averted, but by creating having Merlin create a magic computer program!
- Hilariously averted in this preview of Portal 2. Whatley tries to hack a password by truing each password in alphabetical order. Slowly.
- Averted in Deus Ex. where a hacker character will spend their time twiddling their thumbs while cracking software does it's magic. have fun.
Webcomics
Web Original
- Broken Saints averts this by way of having a real hacker on-board as tech advisor.
- lonelygirl15 averts the Extreme Graphical Representation, but features plenty of hacking by Rapid Fire Typing.
- A "leaked" version of Michael Bay's script for The Dark Knight (It's fake) contains a hilarious version of this quite close to the Penny Arcade example.
Bruce: We Hack the internet.
Alfred: Hack the internet?
Bruce: Yes, hack the internet.
General: Nobody's ever hacked the internet before.
Bruce: Well, there's a first for everything.
General: Okay, I like it, but which one of the internets do we hack?
Bruce: All of them.
Western Animation
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