8 Ridiculous Examples Of What '90s Movies Thought Hackers Were Like

With the rise of popularity of the internet, the '90s had a love affair with hacking, the act of breaking into computer systems or modifying existing programs using code. No, hacking is not staying logged in to Facebook and your friend writes "I love Kenny G's music" as their status update. That's just negligence. Movies, television shows, and even the news got hacking wrong time and time again.

Hacking is cool, but the process is exceptionally boring to watch. It's always a person, sitting in front of a computer, for hours, writing lines upon lines of code. There is nothing interesting about real-life hacking. So what do you do in a situation where you want to put something that's boring on the big screen? You make it sexy and flashy and end up getting everything wrong about hacking in the first place. So here are the most ridiculous times Hollywood got hacking wrong during the '90s.

Hack The Gibson! (Hackers)

Hackers is a terrible movie I can't stop watching because it contains a lot of computer and hacking history but presented in the most fictitious way possible. One of the most memorable scenes is when Crash Override, Acid Burn, and company hack the Gibson. What's frustrating about this scene, for anyone with a basic understanding of computers or the history of coding, is that viruses in this scene are based on real ones, just bastardized.

The Cookie Monster virus is based on a program created in the late 60s, which was popular at Brown University; in addition, at that time, it had no relation to Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. The Rabbit virus's real-life counterpart was allegedly first spotted in 1969 at the University of Washington Computer Center. The program replicates itself, taking up space, which clogs up and slows down computers. The history behind Rabbit isn't entirely known. There's an account by Bill Kennedy in 1988 that says he saw someone create it in 1974. The origins of the Rabbit virus come off as urban legend.

Michael's Phone Program Is More Advanced Than What We Have Now (Brainscan)

In the 1994 horror film Brainscan. Edward Furlong plays Michael, a troubled teen who starts playing a new VR game where he kills people. However, the focus of the movie isn't what's in question--nor is it the fact Michael's father is completely absent during the entirety of the film. Michael programmed and created numerous programs, which work together, in order to have a 1994 computer accomplish something 2018 phones still have a problem with: voice recognition.

Michael's assistant, Igor, is a computer program that can make phone calls, block incoming calls, and never fails to recognize the commands from his "master." While we have programs and tech like that now--Echo, Google Home, Siri--none of them work as well as Igor. Why is Michael sulking in his bedroom? He's programmed one of the greatest tech-utilities for its time.

Hacking Is Like Storming A Castle In First Person (Masterminds)

You probably missed out on the angsty, adult Home Alone action/comedy Masterminds, so I'll let you in on a secret. Yes, the finale of the movie features a chase on ATVs. Early on in the film, Ozzie (Vincent Kartheiser) does some hacking, which involves a form of onion routing, followed by hacking presented as a 3D computerscape--something you'll be seeing a lot of in the '90s. Ozzie makes his way into a castle and dodges demons and traps, and frankly, it's absurd. Actual hacking is more exciting that what Masterminds thinks it is. Also, actual hacking isn't accompanied by Stabbing Westward songs.

Nothing About This Scene Makes Sense (Independence Day)

Imagine you meet someone new, and you speak English, a Latin-based language. However, they only speak Urdu, which is not Latin-based, and you do not know at all. A conversation between you two--in your own languages--would be fruitless and go nowhere. During the tail end of Independence Day, Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith's characters fly to the alien mothership and transmit a virus to the alien's ship, which infected the invader's computers. Taking the example from earlier, humans, within the span of a few days, created a program that can speak "English" as well as "Urdu," with having limited to no understanding of the language. Also, they transmitted it with a Mac. You have to believe in giant leaps of logic to think this can work under any circumstances.

Hacking Is A Resident Evil Puzzle (Johnny Mnemonic)

Hacking gets really weird in Johnny Mnemonic, a movie about a man who carries data inside his head. During one scene, the titular character puts on a VR headset in order to touch segments on a 3D pyramid to gain access to Hotel Beijing's computer. Once again, hacking is presented as a 3D computerscape, rather than someone coding in a room. The complex problem of coming up with the correct code is presented as a puzzle, and in a sense, a hacker is trying to solve a puzzle, but this metaphorical, over-simplification of what goes into gaining access to another computer system is extremely frustrating.

It's A Literal Game Of Chess (The Double O Kid)

Many times, cinema has depicted the battle between two hackers, like the "Hack the Gibson" sequence in Hackers. The competition between hackers can be seen like a metaphorical game of chess, trying to outsmart each other. Corey Haim's 1992 direct-to-video classic The Double O Kid takes that idea literally. Hacking is presented as a game of chess on a computer between Haim's character and the film's villain, played by Wallace Shawn. There is nothing about this sequence that happens in real life, especially a back-and-forth between hackers, unless they're in a IRC chatroom making fun of each other.

More Digital Maps To Explain Onion Routing (Goldeneye)

If you're watching a movie about hacking, at some point, a hacker will over-explain onion routing while we see a map of the world, with a line bouncing between cities. If you've ever used a Tor browser, then you've done this--sans map. Onion routing, which also uses layered encryption that gets peeled away with every relay, doesn't have any fancy digital maps while it's working. We see this in Goldeneye and a plethora of other movies that feature hacking, as the audience just can't be told, "I'm relaying through a whole bunch of different cities so it's harder to trace me."

Newman Gets Schooled By A Kid Who Knows Unix? (Jurassic Park)

Jurassic Park is a classic film that isn't without its flaws. One of those being the hacking within the film. As your probably remember, Nedry (Wayne Knight) created a virus that shut down a lot of the systems across the dinosaur-inhabited park. It's so effective that even the park's chief engineer can't undo the damage. However, a young girl just happens to know the kind of obscure operating system the computer runs on.

Knowing how an operating system works is one thing, but would this system give complete control to everything inside the park? Also, would someone who has never used one of the computers attached to that network know how to navigate through it so easily? The answer is no to both. And yes, this technically isn't hacking, but Jurassic Park presents it that way, so we're calling it like we see it. If you want to relive when John Arnold found out the system was hacked by Nedry, check out the Jurassic Systems website.

Honorable Mention: This Is Madness (Swordfish)

Ok, so Swordfish isn't from the '90s, but it's impossible not to at least discuss what happened early on in the 2001 movie. In this scene, Gabriel (John Travolta) is testing Stanley's (Hugh Jackman) hacking abilities by breaking into the Department of Defense's server. While Stanley is doing this, he has a gun to his head, receives fellatio from a woman, and must do it in 60 seconds. If you've never seen this movie, please take a moment to watch the insane scene for yourself here. Nothing happening in that moment of Swordfish is reality. It's all complete bonkers and pushes the silly Hackers-movie stereotype of hacking.

from GameSpot http://ift.tt/2HXKVdo