This is the movie. Computers, hackers and viruses in feature films

As Sergey Lukyanenko wrote in one of his novels, “Cinema is a mashed porridge, generously flavored with the sugar of special effects, which you don’t need to chew. Open your mouth – and swallow…”. And yet, we like watching movies – after all, it’s a great way to relax after a hard day at work. Some people have different opinions, but personally, I really like Hollywood blockbusters, the plot of which includes hacking some top-secret system or computer viruses. Because in such cases, even the most dashing thriller usually turns into a funny comedy.

Of course, we are not talking about such universally recognized masterpieces as “Hackers” from 1995, the “Matrix” franchise or “Tron”. But there are plenty of other films in the history of cinema in which computer technology plays an important, if not decisive, role. For example, the thriller “Network” with Sandra Bullock as beta tester Angela Bennet. At the very beginning of the film, Angela suddenly discovers a cunning computer virus while playing Wolfenstein 3D. It must be said that “Wolfenstein” itself has a destructive power no worse than an atomic bomb – at one time I sat at this game for several weeks in a row, almost failing my session at the institute. But the film is not about that: in the course of further development of the plot, the heroine receives from her colleague a floppy disk with a Trojan created by a mysterious hacker group. As soon as you insert the disk into the computer, the malware starts doing dirty deeds: it destroys databases, changes records on remote servers, and is probably even capable of burning a toaster in the neighboring apartment. A real cyber weapon, if you don’t seriously think about how the Trojan manages to penetrate all the world’s networks and systems in an instant, and in the era of dial-up and Windows 95.

Apparently, the scriptwriters of “Network” learned about the principles of the Internet from the stories of Hollywood costume designers and lighting technicians: in the movies, the World Wide Web acts as some kind of magic wand with which you can instantly change reality. Need a new identity? A couple of clicks – and now you are a completely different person! Well, and hackers are shown in this movie epic as real technological wizards, capable of doing literally everything. Hack NASA systems, change the date of birth in official databases? No problem! And they do these tricks with extraordinary ease, comparable to playing Tetris. They would try to correct a typo in SNILS with the same ease…

To be fair, it should be said that Network also showcases cutting-edge technologies for its time, such as online dating. In search of a romantic adventure, Sandra Bullock meets the man of her dreams online (who, of course, turns out to be an evil agent of a mysterious hacker group). She also orders pizza online. If it had been delivered by a courier with a thermal backpack on an electric bike, Network could rightfully be called a prophetic film. But alas.

Or, for example, the legendary action movie “Swordfish Password”, which shows a unique technology for hacking the US Department of Defense server in 60 seconds – it is almost impossible to describe, you have to see it. It is noteworthy that the main character, a super-hacker hired to hack government systems, is called Stanley Jobson: the scriptwriters are probably subtly hinting at something. By the way, another mega-hacker in this movie is called Torvalds – in general, the only thing missing for a complete set is Gates and Tsuckerovich.

A separate aesthetic pleasure is provided by a network worm with a graphical interface borrowed from the Windows 95 screensaver. Moreover, this malware penetrates systems like a ninja, accompanying its triumphant march with animation from the best video games of the 90s. Apparently, the director decided: people will never believe in the danger of a virus if it does not glow and spin on the screen to rhythmic music. And the movie itself instills in the viewer a simple idea: if you are cool enough, you have a computer and a shabby leather jacket, you can hack anything. Banks, government networks, surveillance systems open before you like supermarket doors. To do this, you only need to put on a concentrated expression on your face and poke your fingers into the keyboard at a fairly high speed.

Another memorable film in this series is Enemy of the State with Will Smith, which tells the story of a conspiracy and a government system of total surveillance. The most striking thing about this thriller is the surveillance technology shown: according to the filmmakers, any object around us — from a regular video camera to a toothbrush — can be part of a global system of secret surveillance. In this film, every corner of the city is crammed with sensors, cameras, and satellite systems that can count the number of hairs on the top of your head and guess what the main character had for breakfast. Forgot your mobile phone at home? No problem — your jeans have already sent a report to the CIA.

The work of satellite tracking systems is shown in a very peculiar way in this film. It turns out that satellites are able to keep an eye on the hero at such a level of detail that they allow you to see the license plate of his car even on a rainy evening through the clouds. Want to hide under a bridge? Sorry, the satellite has already switched to infrared mode and sees you better than you see yourself in a mirror. Perhaps such capabilities would make satellite surveillance ideal if they existed outside the wild imagination of scriptwriters.

On top of that, the film makes viewers believe that the secret services are able to hack absolutely any security system and find out anything about a person, simply by connecting to some magical server where all the data in the world is stored. Perhaps this will prompt someone to install ten antiviruses on their laptop and cover their webcam with a callus bandage, but Will Smith will not let you lie – it will not help!

Much has already been written about the cinematic masterpiece called Die Hard 4.0. In this series of the popular franchise, Bruce Willis has reached a new level: now his hero John McClane fights not just bad guys, but an entire army of hackers!

The hackers in Die Hard 4, by the way, are endowed with superpowers that are even cooler than Harry Potter's. If in the real world even Windows takes half a day to update, then in the world of Die Hard the villains simply open their laptops, press a couple of buttons, and everything that can be starts to explode and burn. At their request, power grids, transport systems, financial markets collapse – and in a matter of minutes. But even seasoned cybercriminals are not able to destroy civilization if there is someone like Bruce Willis in the world who can simply turn off your server with a shot from a pistol, or smash your laptop with a powerful blow of his fist. The film, of course, leaves a lot of questions – from where to find such hackers to why publishers have not yet released an illustrated manual “How to become McClane in the world of IT.”

As for malware in movies, the funniest thing about it is that it is shown in “Independence Day”. From a technical point of view, this is really the real “bottom”: if you believe the plot, a slapdash Trojan penetrates alien spaceships and disables them. It must be that aliens from distant stars hired an administrator from an ad who installed Windows on their onboard computers, which is why the starships got hopelessly lost on the outskirts of the galaxy. Moreover, having committed this sabotage, the alien IT specialist, apparently, also disabled Windows Defender and UAC on the computers of the alien invaders. There is no other way to explain the victory of the human mind over the inhuman logic of the scriptwriters shown in this blockbuster.

Among the films that critics praise for the credibility of the hacker attacks shown, in addition to the series “Mr. Robot”, the spy detective “Blackhat” is also often noted. The film was released in 2015, and, curiously, it shows the operating principle of a Trojan that is suspiciously similar to Stuxnet of 2010 – true, the real Stuxnet attacked Iranian centrifuges for enriching uranium, and the movie one – the cooling system of a nuclear power plant. And, although the computer technologies shown in “Cyber” do not cause rejection, questions arise about the plot itself: if movie hackers are able to easily manipulate stock quotes and earn millions on this, why do they need all these hassles with industrial systems and cooling pumps?

However, the film industry does not live only on Hollywood: in terms of sprawling cranberries, our compatriots can easily give them a head start. Take, for example, the masterpiece of world cinema called “Guardians of the Net” – every frame in it is just a song with a chorus. According to the plot of the film, good hackers catch their evil colleague, who has dug in in banking and stock exchange networks. What is characteristic, they do this with the help of a Chinese laser pointer from AliExpress. During this epic confrontation, everything burns, smokes and explodes, even things that cannot burn, smoke and explode due to the natural laws of nature. I will not reveal the main plot intrigue, so as not to spoil the pleasure of watching this blockbuster – I only recommend watching it with the popcorn put away, so as not to accidentally choke from laughter.

If you watch a dozen feature films about hackers, you can come to the conclusion that almost all directors and screenwriters use the same list of artistic techniques that work without fail:

The article is supported by the team Serverspace.
Serverspace — a cloud services provider that rents out virtual servers with Linux and Windows OS in 8 data centers: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Turkey, the USA, Canada and Brazil. To build an IT infrastructure, the provider also offers: network creation, gateways, backups, CDN services, DNS, S3 object storage.
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