Tag Archive for: Examples

10 Classic And Absurd Examples Of Computer Hacking In Movies


As long as you can leave the realm of reality firmly behind you, “Swordfish” is both wildly entertaining and utterly absurd. With such Hollywood glitz in the form of John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Don Cheadle, and the captivating presence that is Halle Berry, you wouldn’t think twice about tuning in if you found it when browsing through Netflix. That is, of course, unless you have already endured even five minutes of it. 

As a hacking movie, “Swordfish” gets almost everything wrong. It’s riddled with the amateur errors we now expect in Hollywood blockbusters, from misspelled technical terms (algorythm!) to code lines obviously repeating over and over during hacking scenes that the audience is supposed to be taking seriously. 

The absurdity peaks when Jackman’s character effortlessly deciphers unbreakable 512-bit encryption keys in a snap, an impossible feat in reality. Scriptwriting intelligence doesn’t end there, either. At one point, Travolta’s government operative character forces Jackman into hacking the Pentagon while receiving the unwanted attention of a female and a gun pointed at his head, which he does, of course, just in the nick of time.

John Travolta received a Razzie Award nomination for his eccentric performance. In fact, he managed to get himself nominated for two separate movies that year. However, if you’re one for over-the-top acting and action sequences, you may well enjoy this ridiculous movie. That is provided you can put aside its disregard for complex hacking techniques.

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Opsec examples: 6 spectacular operational security failures


Every day, most of us leave trails of online breadcrumbs behind us, disconnected pieces of data that a determined sleuth could connect to learn about our activities and perhaps break through our veil of anonymity. The struggle to prevent attackers from putting these puzzle pieces together is known as operational security (opsec).

Most of us don’t think too much about all this: nobody’s trying to track us down, and if they did, the consequences wouldn’t be too worrisome. But there are those for whom the stakes are much higher. Would it be so bad if someone recognized the handles of your anonymous social media accounts as the name one of your big work projects or the subject of your senior thesis? It might be if you were the director of the FBI. Does it matter if the selfies you upload to social media have location data embedded in them, or if your fitness tracker sends anonymized data about your jogging route to its manufacturer? It might if you’re a soldier on a secret military base or in a country where your government swears it hasn’t sent any troops.

Hackers and cybercriminals—of both the freelance and state-sponsored variety—are generally quick to exploit any failures in opsec made by potential victims. That’s why it’s perhaps surprising that these malicious actors often themselves fail to cover their online tracks, whether due to arrogance, incompetence, or some combination of the two. You can view these incidents as morality plays in which the bad guys get their comeuppance, but maybe it’s better to think about them as cautionary tales: you might not be spying for the Chinese government or running an online drug market, but you could fall into the same mistakes that these cybercriminals did, to your peril.

All roads lead back to Dread Pirate Roberts

For a few years in the early 2010s, the Silk Road was source of fascination and frustration for computer security researchers and law enforcement alike. An underground marketplace where users could trade cryptocurrency for drugs, weapons, and other illegal goods and services, it brought the idea of the “dark web,” along with knowledge about Tor and bitcoin, into the consciousness of regular people….

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What would be some examples of Operations Security within a Computer Network?

I was thinking along the lines of no usb devices plugged into machines (MP3, Memory Sticks), No software installed on computer that hasn’t been properly inspected by network management.

Appreciate any help, will give best answer as soon as I get my answer :)