Sure, it has some of the old retro fun, like acoustic-coupled modems. But the fundamental premise (and thus the film's dramatic tension) is still fresh.
The protagonists are a motley group of computer hackers, ne'er-do-well pranskters who find themselves unexpectedly in possession of a mysterious electronic box. Because they're hackers, they figure out what it does - it's a universal decryptor, able to break the encryption used to protect any site - government, banks, electric power grid*.
The rest of the film is about how the box gets taken by a shadowy organization that is clearly Up To No Good, and how the group uses their skillz - believably - to get it back.
Back In The Day, those of us at Three Letter Intelligence Agency loved this film. We even had a theory about what it did; the clue was a remark from the Russian Attache character that they use a different coding scheme, and the box wouldn't work against them - it was only useful decrypting American's data. We thought that it would factor large prime numbers, allowing you to break the RSA encryption that is at the heart of X.509**.
The most striking thing was how NSA wanted this so bad that they sent a field team to recover it***. The revelations about massive NSA data collection programs targeting American citizens has made this fresh again. In fact, that's why we watched it. If anything, it's more relevant now than it was in 1991.
If you haven't seen this, you're in for a treat. If you have seen it, you too will likely be struck at the film's staying power. Highly recommended.
* If only our grid were protected as well as shown in this film.
** Sorry, just a short diversion into crypto-geeking. However, the assumption is that it's not feasible to factor large primes; if someone figures out how to do this then you would indeed be able to decrypt pretty much everything, or masquerade as pretty much anyone. Just like in the film.
*** We all laughed and laughed about this. Now I wonder.
8 comments:
I vote for this and 'Three Days of the Condor'
But, I'm old fashioned and only play a geek in the innerwebs!
gfa
I want a Winnebago. :D
Pen testing, before Pen testing was cool.
Huh, hadn't thought about that movie in years... now I've gotta go get it again...
Ratus, your comments are two for two.
Still my favorite infosec movie... possibly the only good one.
I still remember when I first saw it. Unlike every other movie relating in even a tangential way to the geometric intersection of what you do for a living, what Chris Byrne does for a living, and what I do for a living, the only really implausible things in it were:
1. Decrypting an ncurses interface being the only thing you need to do in order to break into systems
2. The NSA operating that openly in San Francisco. (Not that I necessarily assume that they couldn't do it...but I know that if they _did_ do it, they'd all be carrying ID from some agency that _isn't_ prohibited by law from doing it.)
Compared to what even novelists (let alone filmmakers) usually get wrong about our common profession? It was amazing.
"I want Peace on Earth, and goodwill towards men." -- "We are the United States Government! We don't DO that sort of thing!"
I worked in security (x509, SSL, PKI, etc.) for several years, and Sneakers was instrumental in building the interest that led to that career.
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