EPISODE 124 - Hackers

[FisterRoboto 7499]

2) In regards the most commonly used passwords by HDTGM and Jason's denial that "secret" is not among the top used, I direct you to the Ashley Madison hacked list of passwords, in which 3,522 users listed "secret" as their password (see link for top 100 passwords)http://arstechnica.c...s-all-the-rest/

True, but compare that to some of the passwords that the crew said were more popular:

 

"12345" - 48.4k (almost 14x times more than "secret")

"password" - 39.4k (a little over 11x more than "secret")

 

Even the ever-classy "pussy" and "696969" ranked higher than "secret," (which was only just above "asdfghjkl").

 

Other interesting tidbits:

 

"love" was only used in the phrase "iloveyou," which accounted for 3.6k passwords

"god" wasn't used at all.

A lot of first names were used (including my own real first name). They're mostly common men's names, so I'm guessing it was the user's first name, which is probably dumber than anything else in this list.

 

The only worse password is:

 

[Artoria 1]

I am another person who can't be objective about this film - it was a seminal part of my teenage years and in my opinion every frame is perfect - except for the Lorraine Bracco / Fisher Stevens pairing...

 

I wanted to share my Jonny Lee Miller theory. I am convinced that JLM's character in Hackers is actually his Sherlock Holmes character from Elementary. He's a child genius who gets into computers early and gravitates towards antisocial behaviours / social groups. After the events of Hackers, him & Kate break up, he moves to the UK and becomes a heroin addict (Trainspotting), then sometime later gets clean, moves back to New York and sets himself up as a consulting detective, as portrayed in Elementary. It all fits!

[FisterRoboto 7499]

I wanted to share my Jonny Lee Miller theory. I am convinced that JLM's character in Hackers is actually his Sherlock Holmes character from Elementary. He's a child genius who gets into computers early and gravitates towards antisocial behaviours / social groups. After the events of Hackers, him & Kate break up, he moves to the UK and becomes a heroin addict (Trainspotting), then sometime later gets clean, moves back to New York and sets himself up as a consulting detective, as portrayed in Elementary. It all fits!

If that's the case, is there a much better British version of this movie that we should have been watching instead?

[RyanSz 3140]

 

The only worse password is:

 

This might have it beat.

 

 

Though with this password you're probably less likely to get ants.

[PWGmark92 9]

I'm glad somebody else noticed that Marc Anthony was in this movie. Before re-watching it again last night, I hadn't seen this movie in nine years(which I saw in my HS freshman CS class). I was shocked he was in it. I'm pretty sure this was his first acting gig.

 

Anyways, about the character he played, why didn't they give him any more to do? He thought that the 'Hacker Manifesto' was cool AND was seen dancing(and possibly tripping on E?) at Acid Burn's party. Was he secretly a hacker as well? It would have been interesting to have a scene where he discreetly meets up with the other hackers and forms a secret alliance with them. Instead, he essentially disappears after the party scene only to be a background character during the climax of the movie.

 

Also, this movie was obsessed with those round lens sunglasses that automatically make anybody wearing them into a hhhuuugggeee douche.

[RyanSz 3140]

Marc Anthony had been in a couple things prior to this, most notably Carlito's Way and would follow this up as one of the main antagonists in The Substitute. It was weird that he just disappeared part way into the movie after they established him as a lenient kind of agent, was anything mentioned in the oral history about his part?

[joel_rosenbaum 1269]

Nevermind (was posted above).

[taylor anne photo 11311]

Gdi y'all all did such an amazing job of covering what the crew missed (including mentioning how they need to do Johnny Mnemonic next... I WAS AT THAT INTERRUPTION FISTER!) that I've got basically nothing to add.

 

[FisterRoboto 7499]

Gdi y'all all did such an amazing job of covering what the crew missed (including mentioning how they need to do Johnny Mnemonic next... I WAS AT THAT INTERRUPTION FISTER!) that I've got basically nothing to add.

 

NICE! I went to high school in the North Dallas area, so I was madly texting all my friends. It was in Richardson or something, right?

 

I went to his one for Roar when he was down here for Fantastic Fest, and it was amazing.

[Lando 2019]

Like so many others who grew up nerdy in the 90s this movie set me into nostalgia mode as well. I would have been 15 when this came out, but probably wouldn't have seen it until I was 16 or so, but it made me want to be an elite hacker. I was never a hacker, maybe a script kiddie at best. I remember when you had to get onto the internet via either Compuserve, Prodigy or AOL and which one you picked was dependent on which one had a local number to dial into and I remember having to be mindful of your hours or you would get overages (and I remember getting in trouble for going over). I remember finding a "hacking" page that had a secret AOL chat room (I think it was just 31337 or 1337, it was really not that hard to figure out) and just lurking, it was mostly just a script kiddie social hangout chat room. I also remember finding an enhanced AIM chat program that would let you do more things including flooding someone with chat requests to boot people before they would know what was going on.

 

 

Just waxing nostalgically.

[PaulSchmidt 4]

First note is that I believe the green stick thing being eaten was a licorice. Like one of these:

 

The second thing I wanted to bring attention to was that the computer monitor that Penn Jillette is monitoring displays, in HUGE letters, the password (GOD) that Joey entered. That is some horrible security to display a top secret password on a wall sized monitor because it was entered by someone, somewhere. It seems like the showing of the used password is the only notification of someone accessing the computer. Also it is left up on screen for a very long time. It pops up when Joey breaks in which notifies Penn, Penn looks into the breach, calls Fisher Stevens, Fisher gets out of bed and travels to the computer/Penn, Fisher skates in and states"Never fear...I is here." and sits down to catch the hacker. In that time the monitor is unchanged and Joey has only clicked a couple of things and started to download the Garbage file.

 

 

 

To go even further into this absurd portion of the movie:

Joey is only clicking through lists, as we can see on his monitor. Penn says then hacker is making a workload of 10 users. He must be clicking very hard.

 

When Joey opens the Garbage file it shows a strange video of flying code that mesmerizes the boy. I hadn't watched this movie in years and so forgot what happened, but I began to think that there was going to be some kind of Chuck/Intersect mind download about to happen. But, no. Not at all.

[PodPoncho 15]

A few notes:

 

Lorraine Brocco not noticing Fisher Stevens leaving the near the end of the film makes no sense. There's a few instances in this movie where people have TERRIBLE peripheral vision - the scene where Angelina Jolie and her original boyfriend making out while the hackers are looking at her awesome computer comes to mind. Also, Fisher Stevens was arrested on a Plane by Agent Gill - how much time had passed? I assumed that he pretty much put on a disguise and left ASAP.

 

Phreak near the beginning of the movie says he's calling Venezuela, but he has a Puerto Rican flag on his bed. It was also very rude of Dade to ask where the principal's office was to the one guy have a phone conversation, and when turned down just gives up and asks no one else?

 

When talking about Angelina Jolie's laptop, Dade mentions something about the high framerate to which Angelina Jolie responds that it has a PCI bus. The PCI bus does nothing to increase graphics frame-rate, it's just the slot where you would plug in a graphics card or sound card. Not surprisingly, a lot of the "techno babble" makes absolutely no sense.

 

Great episode!

[jarrycanada 2483]

Paul_draws, Penn had the password on the screen, but at least he didn't have it on a posted note on the side of his computer monitor like some people do..

 

[taylor anne photo 11311]

NICE! I went to high school in the North Dallas area, so I was madly texting all my friends. It was in Richardson or something, right?

 

I went to his one for Roar when he was down here for Fantastic Fest, and it was amazing.

Yeah it was! I didn't get to go to the one directly after where he did Roadhouse 2 but Johnny Mnemonic was a fantastically horrible movie which made the whole experience so awesome! It was my third interruption that he's done but one of them was in San Francisco during Sketchfest back in February.

 

I always highly recommend anything that Doug puts on cause it's always a good time!

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Paul_draws, Penn had the password on the screen, but at least he didn't have it on a posted note on the side of his computer monitor like some people do..

 

To be fair though, in that movie, Sandra Bullock is clearly a homely, freakish recluse with no friends or anyone coming to see her, except for the pizza delivery person, who I imagine has to pass the box through a grating of some sort, TMNT-style. I mean, for God's sake, she's Dennis Miller's side piece. His SIDE piece!

[KennyPorter 2]

 

I had to make this and post it. I can't stop laughing. June is the best.

[tankd0g 0]

I have to say I was pretty disapointed with this episode of my favorite podcast. This was one of the most anticipated ones for me and I feel like you guys maybe left this on in the background while you were doing something else instead of giving it the attention it deserves. Not one of you remembered that the company was called Elligson Mineral and the computer was The Gibson, even though they repeat it so many times it starts to lose all meaning. Paul didn't pick up on the fact that the other kids on the roof who fell for the prank were all obviously younger than Dade, because it was the first day of school and they were freshmen. The only child ass showing in the film was that of Joey, I think Jason imagined a whole scene where a naked 11 year old Dade was arrested, when in fact we never see him get taken down by the non-uniformed cops who never identify themselves. For some reason Paul remembers Burn's sweet new P6 laptop as a modem.

 

I was really hoping to hear mention of Marc Anthony as a sympathetic FBI agent and undercover perv at the high school party, there has got to be some interesting background information there. Or how about the way Agent Dick Gill is incapable of traveling in a poice car without hanging his head out the window like a basset hound. And how the hell did the agents know where to go in Grand Central Station after they came opon the coupled phones. (and why did the "hackers" even do the hack from the same station as the hacked phones) Why does 19 year old Angelina Jolie look like she's a different species than 25 year old Angelina Jolie? In 1995 when we didn't know her name, we all refered to her as "The elf girl" from Hackers.

 

These are points my friends and I rip on when we watch this movie.

 

And how about that soundtrack? This movie introduced me to The Prodigy and Orbital in high school.

 

You guys leaned pretty hard on the costume design, and while it was out there I knew people who had the same outfit as Dade, and plenty of people in my high school looked like every other character besides Kate (who I think was trying to look like a fashion model and it was probably Jolie's idea).

 

This movie is highly stylized, in the same way that CSI or NCIS is stylized. Hacking is sitting in front of a computer, figuring shit out, peeling back the layers. It looks boring as shit to someone observing, you can't make a movie out of that. The whole movie would have been that scene where Joey is downloading the garbage file.

 

When we were screwing around with this stuff in the 90s, it was an adenaline rush, your hands are shaking, you're trying to find something useful and get out of there before you get caught or maybe you're already caught and the cops are going to be knocking on your door in the morning. I've had nights where I was tearing up printouts and throwing out disks just like Phreak. Kids were getting busted all the time, but there weren't really laws in place to charge them with, so you got a stern talking to from someone who didn't even understand what it is you did. They got a lot of things right in this movie. Dumperster diving for user accounts, social engineering to get modem numbers, piggy backing phone lines. They obviously had to dress it up with something a little more visually exciting for the uninitiated.

 

Hacking in the 90s was really easy, companies were just getting connected and they were relying on security through obscurity. I had free internet for 3 years from my local university, and all I had to do was know the phone number of their modem bank and notice that they set their default password to be the same as the faculty member's username. The only thing unbelivable about the hacking in this movie is that a high school in 1995 would have a Macinosh controlled sprinkler system.

 

I think most people who were in high school in the 90s and played with computers love to hate this movie, I know I do.

 

P.S. "What is it's mission?" kind of saved the episode.

[tankd0g 0]

If that's the case, is there a much better British version of this movie that we should have been watching instead?

 

It was called Trainspotting.

[tankd0g 0]

 

It was only in the payroll department of his office that he was declared dead. It would only fuck him up for a payroll cycle or two before it was cleared up. Before this, Kate fucked up his credit and gave him a criminal record that would be really hard to fix. Dade signed him up for sex ads.

 

If it was really only in the payroll department of the FBI, a federal entity who presumably has a line to the IRS, they could have continued the game. I think he was dead at the IRS. So, no more paying taxes, at least he's got that going for him, which is nice.

[FisterRoboto 7499]

If it was really only in the payroll department of the FBI, a federal entity who presumably has a line to the IRS, they could have continued the game. I think he was dead at the IRS. So, no more paying taxes, at least he's got that going for him, which is nice.

He was actually in the Secret Service, which, at the time, was part of the US Department of the Treasury (jut like the IRS).

[EllenM 943]

I have to say I was pretty disapointed with this episode of my favorite podcast. This was one of the most anticipated ones for me and I feel like you guys maybe left this on in the background while you were doing something else instead of giving it the attention it deserves.

 

 

Not one of you remembered that the company was called Elligson Mineral and the computer was The Gibson, even though they repeat it so many times it starts to lose all meaning.

 

 

You guys leaned pretty hard on the costume design, and while it was out there I knew people who had the same outfit as Dade, and plenty of people in my high school looked like every other character besides Kate (who I think was trying to look like a fashion model and it was probably Jolie's idea).

 

This movie is highly stylized, in the same way that CSI or NCIS is stylized. Hacking is sitting in front of a computer, figuring shit out, peeling back the layers. It looks boring as shit to someone observing, you can't make a movie out of that. The whole movie would have been that scene where Joey is downloading the garbage file.

 

When we were screwing around with this stuff in the 90s, it was an adenaline rush, your hands are shaking, you're trying to find something useful and get out of there before you get caught or maybe you're already caught and the cops are going to be knocking on your door in the morning. I've had nights where I was tearing up printouts and throwing out disks just like Phreak.

 

Kids were getting busted all the time, but there weren't really laws in place to charge them with, so you got a stern talking to from someone who didn't even understand what it is you did. They got a lot of things right in this movie. Dumperster diving for user accounts, social engineering to get modem numbers, piggy backing phone lines. They obviously had to dress it up with something a little more visually exciting for the uninitiated.

 

 

The only thing unbelivable about the hacking in this movie is that a high school in 1995 would have a Macinosh controlled sprinkler system.

 

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

The lights of the buildings at the end spelling out their names? COMPLETELY believable.

 

I saw a video on Cracked a while back (although there are probably similar ones elsewhere as well) that showed why real hackers would be terrible in movie situations, where they did the typical "They're coming to get us! We've only got 60 seconds!" thing, but of course they didn't make it in time, because their tech guy wasted all that time getting their action figures and other bullshit out on their desk first.

[JustinFink 60]

A couple things:

 

A. The main character owns more than one life jacket as a fashion accessory

 

B. In most movies where the main character has a special ability and moves into a new environment, there is usually a really satisfying moment where their abilities are put on display and affection is won from his/her peers. In Hackers, we are to believe that moment was when he gets the high score in a video game? Or is it when he can correctly identify a series of books? His assumption to be an Elite is never really warranted.

 

C. When he reveals that he is Zero Cool, a legend amongst hackers I take it, the others don't question him in the slightest bit, they just believe him even though the secret service is after all of them and he, coincidentally, JUST moved to New York days before all this happened

 

D. There is a moment when whatever his name is giving crap to Joey as Joey is rattling off potential hacker handles. The joke is that Joey's attempts at finding a cool handle are weak and totally lame. EVERYBODY'S handle in this movie is totally lame.

[Cameron H. 23786]

Not one of you remembered that the company was called Elligson Mineral and the computer was The Gibson, even though they repeat it so many times it starts to lose all meaning.

 

Yes! How could they not mention such an obvious and rich vein of comedy.

 

 

Then again, they only have so much time to record these things. I can only assume they figured that if they had opened the Pandora's Box that is "Elligson Mineral" and "The Gibson" this could easily have turned into a six-part episode.

 

But seriously guys, can we stop talking about Hackers now? This place is seriously starting to bum me out.

[DeathToMikeyBay 130]

Hackers is the Lord of the Rings of computer hacking movies, in that every cliche of the genre can be traced back to it.

 

Angelina Jolene looks an awful lot like a certain Star Trek Enterprise character.

 

Wait a minute...2 Jolenes?

 

Angelina Jolene Blalock????!!!!! O_O

 

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

 

 

 

Top 3 sideburns + pixie bowl cut hairdos:

 

1. Anne Hathaway - Interstellar

2. Jolene - Enterprise

3. Jolene- Hackers