September 13, 2024 • 59 mins
HACK THE PLANET! If you're old enough to remember, you were scared of them. Hackers came out of the woodwork in the 1990s and were represented in just one movie; Hackers! Join Dr. Benjamin and Derrick as they reminisce about their knowledge of the early hacker culture and how it was survival for some while talking about some seriously fun characters in this episode of Movie RX!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello and welcome to MovieRx, where I prescribe
entertainment, one movie at atime.
I am your host, Dr Benjamin PhD.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
What does the PhD stand for?
Hello and welcome to MovieRx,where I prescribe entertainment
one movie at a time.
I am your host, dr Benjamin PhD.
What does the PhD stand for?
Praising hackers?
Dudes, ha ha, ha ha.
Oh man, I love doing 90s movies.
(00:36):
It's so much fun.
Gotta go back to saying dudesall the time.
So today, joining me from theleft or midwest, not politically
, but very literally the left ormidwest, I have again today,
derrick.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Welcome derrick it's it's allowed to be both is.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Is it allowed to be both?
Okay, I'll take it.
Oh yeah, totally yeah yeah, theleft or midwest, in every way
possible.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We have the left or Midwest.
Yes, exactly, that's why it'sbetter out here.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
See, that's what I'm talking about.
Okay, so it's been a minutesince I saw this movie.
If I'm being totally honest, Idon't know if I have watched it
since the first time.
I rented it on VHS.
When it first released, Icompletely forgot Angelina Jolie
(01:29):
was in it.
It came out when I was in thethick of learning how to build
computers.
Today we're talking abouthackers.
So now this is something thathas a lot to do with you and
your in in your work.
Uh, so a little bit.
So I'm tell me if I'm jumpingthe gun a little bit here, but
(01:51):
this movie have anything to dowith, uh, kind of the, the realm
of work that you ended upworking in um, I mean you know
the, like the movie itself?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
no, I mean sort of, but you know it.
So I, I work in cybersecurity.
I've been in cybersecurity forthe last 10 years in a number of
different capacities.
I started as a penetrationtester.
I was the guy that like brokeinto places that, like you, paid
to break into places before,like the, the actual bad guys
(02:24):
did it.
So, um, I mean the associationwith hackers and hacker culture
and cyberpunk culture, uh, itdefinitely did kind of go hand
in hand.
But I mean, am I, am I showingup looking like serial killer
every day for, uh, for my job?
I mean, uh, well, maybepost-covid, but I mean not
(02:46):
before that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I love it.
So basic movie info on this oneunited arts put this movie out
in 1995.
Uh, it's directed by lanesoftly, also known for backbeat
and k-packs.
Uh, stars johnny lee miller,which has done surprisingly
little other than this movie,angelina jolie, which has done
surprisingly larger amountssince this movie, and, uh, it's
(03:13):
also got jesse bradford.
But I really feel like thatthere is so much that needs to
be said about so many otherpeople that are in this movie.
Like there's so many names thataren't mentioned, like Matthew
Willard and, uh, I mean the, theguy who, oh, what, who was he?
Uh, the the, the guy he played.
He played, uh, uh, in shortcircuit.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
He was Ben oh her pants are blazing for you.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Newton C.
Yeah, we played ben in shortcircuit and he ends up as the
fisher stevens.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, Icouldn't ever remember his name.
And then, uh, um tin tin fromthe crow got another one from
laurence mason yep, yeah, andthen uh, oh god, there's just.
This movie is just stacked withpeople um yeah, and like
surprising people in here.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I mean you've, you've even got Penn Jillette in.
This is like the security guardguy Mark Anthony in my
rewatching Cause when I watchedit the first time.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I didn't give a shit but the one that caught me the
most off guard was Penn PennGillette being in it.
You know his.
His daughter's name is Moxiecrime fighter.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Of course it is.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Do you know what my dog's name is?
Moxie crime fighter.
I named.
I named my dog after hisdaughter because that's just a
badass name.
I'm just saying yeah, but yeah,penn Jillette's in here.
I mean Mark Anthony, holy shit,man, there's just tons of
people in this movie.
I mean, granted, we're probablynot going to talk about all of
them, but yeah, really good,really really good cast,
(05:01):
especially at the time, the IMDBdescription on this one.
I'm not going to give anyindication what I think about
this one, I'm just going to getyour thoughts on it.
Teenage hackers discover acriminal conspiracy with plans
to use a computer virus thatwill capsize five oil tankers.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I mean sure they're not wrong.
I mean, yeah, like surfacelevel, I'd say that that is
probably an appropriate TLDR.
There's a whole lot more tounpack there, but okay.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
But it works.
I mean, they're not wrong.
They are correct in theirsynapses.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I suppose they have so many characters that you
could put on the front of amovie box.
So I mean, I guess I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Visually it's laughable, as any
technologically intelligentperson will tell you.
Honestly, though, but how canyou actually show hacking on
screen and make it interestingor exciting to watch?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Hacking is not a spectator sport Like this is,
you know, like somebody is likeworking in the field.
This is a thing that I'vetalked about countless times
over multiple drinks with peopleat like Def Con's where, like,
hacking is not a spectator sport, it is boring as whale shit.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I mean because it's just code, so you have to do
something.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You have to do something to make know
entertaining for a non-technicalaudience, which is, which is
why you get all of the like, the, the generic shapes, uh, in in
their os's where they're flyingthrough towers of information.
That's an air quotes.
I hate doing air quotes but Ihave to say that I'm doing air
(06:41):
quotes.
You.
You know the, the like, all ofthose stupid like they make.
They make hacking.
Look like it's an OS, it's soweird.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It very like.
Yeah, it's very matrix ask, butI mean so many, so many tech
movies of the nineties got stuckin this trap.
You know like Johnny mnemonicdealt with it, lawnmower man
dealt with it.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, uh, you know, like the matrix totally
dealt with it.
Uh, you know, like it, it wasdefinitely a thing.
Even, uh, the little girl injurassic park when she was doing
her hacking thing, like it's aunix system, it's so great, you
know.
And then there's the uh, well,in the net, the net was I would
say actually then it was, it wasprobably the closest I would
(07:28):
say to to the actual thing.
But it was it was only becauseof the physicality in it, like
because she was physically goingfrom place to place and and you
know things like that.
But I mean, we'll get in.
We'll get into that more alittle bit later, but the music
in this movie was holy shit,awesome great yeah, the whole
soundtrack would have would havebeen broken without stereo mcs
(07:51):
connected, though I'm justsaying like that that that blase
mid-90s.
I mean you have to have that,that I don't care sound coming
from the music, otherwise it'sjust not going to work Right.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Oh yeah, no, like club kids from the mid nineties
absolutely loved this fuckingsoundtrack.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh shit, yeah, and well I mean, and it's just, it's
banging Like there's no waythat you can listen to the
soundtrack without without justat least swaying a little bit
with a little Bob in your head.
You know, like the typical the.
I don't know if you realizethis, I'm gonna get up on my
microphone already.
I'm gonna kind of get up onthis for everybody who danced in
(08:33):
the 90s, danced like nervousseventh graders at a high school
dance.
I'm just saying yeah, the only.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Thing swaying and bobbing, yeah, but the
difference is, though, is thatthe club kids that were doing
that, they were also likechomping on a shitload of mdma
and they were high as shit.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, the seventh graders.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
At that time they weren't high as shit.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Not yet, no, not yet now, the story in this movie was
the compelling thing and in away, I think it's because they
had kind of humanized hackers alittle bit during a hacker scare
, because the mid-90s really waswhen that started to become a
thing, when people startedbecoming more aware of people
(09:20):
finding control of thingsthrough computers.
And I don't even mean like youknow, I don't even mean like big
important things, like justsimple things where people were
like, oh my God, they're goingto learn my email password and
they're going to send my boss anasty email.
You know, like that, like thatshit.
I mean, you can like, in thisday and age, you can totally
(09:41):
send your boss a nasty email andjust say my email got hacked
and then you're fine.
But uh, but I mean, during thehacker scare, hackers were this
mysterious, like almost likephantoms that were out there yes
and yeah they were nobody everknew where they were yeah, they,
they just.
They just appeared out ofnowhere at a computer terminal
(10:04):
and then just messed with youand then they disappeared, all
like it was so weird.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Some of that I mean so much of that got so fucking
sensationalized because peopleare scared of shit that they
don't understand.
And you know what they sure ashell don't understand.
Technology, and you know whatthey sure as hell don't
(10:39):
understand.
Technology, common people,especially back in the minute,
uh, but they, they got scared.
Right, you have the the whole,like there be dragons.
They didn't understand what thefuck was going on and so they
were like terrified of oh my god, a hacker's gonna fuck with my
shit.
Uh, not realizing that, likeback in the 90s, it was fucking
hard man uh like you know likescenes that they have from like
(11:00):
in the, in the movie wherethey're talking about like the
manuals that you had to have of,like you know, dod code books
or, uh, you know like networksand stuff that they came up with
and shit like that.
I mean, yeah, you had to havelike big ass phone books that
like told you how to do thingsor like remembered phone numbers
.
Uh, you actually had to work atthis shit.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
They didn't have like automated programs where you
could just point, click, pwn,like you can do now yeah, that's
really what most people'simaginations of hacking was was
like, yeah, like nuke 95 kind ofshit.
You know right, exactly thewind nukers and and and all of
that kind of stuff, packet, uh,packet sending programs and
(11:41):
whatever um well and know, likemovies, like war games, didn't
do us a whole lot of favors.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Like war games was fairly accurate, but it was also
like you know, oh shit, here'sthis dumb high school kid that,
like butt, fucked his way intonuclear war.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
You're right.
In the mid nineties, theyalmost had to romanticize what
hacking was in order in order toaddress it at all.
Yes, in order to address it atall yes, and also to make
compelling movies because I'msorry like watching Crash and
Burn go through a hackingcompetition in the context of
(12:17):
the real would have been boringas fuck.
Definitely not as cool.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
As somebody that has sat through plenty of capture
the flag competitions, I, youknow, like I've I've
participated in plenty of likeCTFs and all it is is a lot of
big sweaty nerds with jolt colasnext to them doing a shitload
of typing.
Um, and I, I know I'mgeneralizing and I know that if
there are other people in myfield listening to this they are
probably going to come at me,but I, I know they're going to
(12:45):
agree with you.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I promise you they're all good.
Half of them are going to belike yeah, I'm one of those fat,
sweaty nerds, and the otherhalf is going to be like yeah,
there's dude, there's a lot offat, sweaty nerds.
So I mean, no, I think, I thinkthat you're probably pretty
safe, but yeah, no, the the.
A lot of this movie, a lot ofthis movie's character, comes
(13:06):
from the characters.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Oh, absolutely, yeah, Totally.
It's an ensemble movie.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
We're going to start off with the first one, dade.
Now I do have a soundbite forDade, so we'll start off with
that here.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The defendant, dade Murphy, who calls himself Zero
Cool, has repeatedly committedcriminal acts of a malicious
nature.
This defendant possesses asuperior intelligence which he
uses to a destructive andantisocial end.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Now, in that little bit, the way that they're
talking about this guy, it's a10-year-old kid, right the kind
of language that she's using.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Destructive and antisocial behavior.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
He's 10.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
What the fuck.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
What the fuck are you talking about?
Destructive and antisocial.
He was having fun, like come on, and that was in 1988.
So yeah, I don't even knowwhere to begin with that.
First off, with the way that wetalk about people in in the
court system, like uh it well,in any kind of system really,
(14:14):
the way that we talk aboutpeople, the kind of language
that we use, is important in theway that we paint people and,
uh, they were.
They were using the kind of thekind of language that you would
use to describe a heinouscriminal.
Correct For a 10 year old thatmade a computer virus and fucked
up like fifteen hundred andseven computer systems.
(14:35):
But I mean, but what did he do?
He hurt computer systems at atime where people didn't know
how to fuck up computer systemshurt computer systems at a time
where people didn't know how tofuck up computer systems.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Well, it, yeah, he, he fucked up computer systems
that uh, controlled, uh, youknow, things like the other, the
stock market as an example, uh.
So like, yeah, you know, he, he, you know.
You could say, yeah, all he didwas crash some computers.
Yeah, but he crashed somecomputers that cost a lot of
people some fucking money right.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But I mean, are we really going to talk about this
kid like like he's, you know,charles manson?
No, he's not.
No, he's not a batman villain.
No right, he's not a, you knowyeah, like he's not a.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
He's not a batman villain.
He was a bored 10 year old thatdid some dumb shit right.
You and I grew up in the middleof nowhere.
We did some dumb shit at 10.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
We did lots of dumb shit.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yes, yeah.
So some of that might have beenconsidered destructive and
illegal.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Right and and, but I mean antisocial, I did.
As far as I'm concerned, thismovie shows that hacking is
anything but antisocial,especially because of the way
that they have to do things.
We'll kind of leave some ofthat, because all of that stuff
ties in later, like in into sometalking points that we have
later on.
But like, right, uh, the nextone we got.
(15:53):
We got kate acid burned.
What.
What do you think about kate?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
pissed off rich kid uh so like the, the way that the
way that she is portrayedamongst the uh, the group is
that she is like the alphahacker amongst their particular
tribe there.
But I mean, her mom is thismillion dollar author, she lives
(16:18):
in a really nice fucking houseand she decided that she was
going to slum it with the, withthe hackers, and do some shit.
I mean like, yes, pulls offsome really interesting stuff,
(16:41):
but at the same time she justreally strikes me as like bored
form of protest instead ofactually like a love of
technology and wanting to likepick things apart and see how
shit works under the under thehood and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Right, but she still, she still seemed knowledgeable,
very yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, I mean she was going to be good at it.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Like you're going to have to be knowledgeable in what
you're doing, right, yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, she wasn't a poser.
You to have to be knowledgeablein what you're doing Right.
Yeah, yeah, she wasn't a poser,you know, yeah, definitely not a
.
You know, definitely not aposer, not a tourist.
You know she knew what she wasdoing.
It just it wasn't.
I don't know.
You know just something aboutthe way that that character was
written.
I don't know if it was like thewriting or I don't know if it
was the delivery of it.
She's almost like she chose itrather than doing it out of
(17:28):
necessity.
Correct, yes, and for a lot ofuh, for a lot of people that get
into uh, you know, get intohacking, uh, you know it's, it's
more like a calling than uh,than it is like.
You know, something that I justwoke up one day and decided I
was gonna fucking do because ifyou have any sort of like
normalcy in your head, you won'tdo it right.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Well, I mean, that's a perfect example with dade.
Uh, I mean, dade was a 10 yearold kid that was vastly more
intelligent than a, than atypical 10 year old, yes, and?
And he just understood it, andso it just seemed natural to him
that.
Oh well, I'm curious about thisbecause I understand it even
though I'm 10, and I'm going topursue my knowledge of it and
(18:09):
whatever happens happens, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
It becomes.
It becomes almost like acompulsion to where they're.
You know.
They're like, well, I foundthis vulnerability or I
shouldn't be able to do this, soI'm going to fucking do it.
Or you know, this is I'm goingafter particular pieces of
information.
Information should be free, soI'm going to go ahead and do
this, like they.
It's almost like a differentinterpretation of like, right or
(18:34):
wrong, or it's that compulsion,you know, kind of a kind of a
thing.
Like the other, the scene wherethey've got Joey in the, the
Narcotics Anonymous, you knowkind of group there right, where
he's trying to say you know,I'm, I'm not an addict, I'm not
an addict, no-transcript, rightaddiction for what it is that
(19:06):
they're.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
They're doing like they can't stop themselves, they
can't help themselves, rightwhen this movie would have been
I mean the idea, the idea oftechnology addiction is.
I mean, it's still somethingthat people have a hard time
grasping now.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Uh, right in 2024.
We definitely have fuckingissues of it now right, whereas
in.
Like back in the mid 90s, youwere like what, why?
What are you addicted to?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
yeah, your game boy.
Like oh right, you got a gameboy color and so you play it
twice as much now, like come onexactly but uh, but no, I mean,
yeah, I guess it kind of makessense that as as a compulsion,
then yeah, it would be verysimilar to an addiction Treating
.
It would be difficult, though.
Oh yeah, and that's an argumentthat I make all the time with.
(19:48):
Uh cause, like you know, I workwith families.
Mm-hmm, if I'm on a visit andI'm documenting a visit and
there's and there's a familythat is, you know, using tablets
or computers or or whatever,I'm always afraid that that's
going to come back on the family.
Um, because case managers andand you know, uh, lawyers and
(20:09):
judges like to do that.
They like to say, well, you'renot spending time with your
family, you're spending time ontechnology.
Say, well, you're not spendingtime with your family, you're
spending time on technology.
Um, and it's like a lot of thetime, I have a hard time not
being trying not to be in inthat and be like look, you think
(20:30):
this is a problem because yougrew up in an age when that
wasn't a thing.
But it's like this is the worldthat we're going into.
If they don't have the time tospend with technology and they
don't have the time to spendwith technology and they don't
understand it, then they areleaving themselves at risk.
They're giving kids laptops andtablets at school now, like
it's yeah it's just a thing.
so, as as much as they as theyreally are hard on people about
(20:53):
technology and how much they'readdicted to it and how much
they're dependent on it, they'realso, there's also this, this
compulsion to, uh, to judge ittoo far and say that something
that is just strictly normal youknow what is normal use for
technology is addiction.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And I think it's a balancing act, right?
Uh, you know it's a, it's abalancing act and I think trying
to figure out, uh, you knowwhen you're talking about, you
know, addiction to technology,it depends.
Uh, you know, you could, youcould say any sort of, uh, you
know what, what is it that makesaddiction a bad thing?
Right, it's not the, it's notthe addiction, it's not the
other, the consuming, the thingthat happens to be, whatever it
(21:37):
is that you're addicted to allthe time.
It's the impact that it has onyour life, right?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So they may be spending that time on a phone or
a tablet or something alongthose lines, but if it doesn't
have a negative impact on theirlife, then it's fine.
It's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Right or the lives of people around them.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's not that big of a deal, or the lives of people
around them.
Exactly Same could be said oncomputer hacking.
You could say that somebody hasan addiction to their computer
or a compulsion to theircomputer to do particular things
, but if it doesn't have anegative effect, then it's not
that big of a deal.
Or if they're, some of us,lucky ones that have been able
to turn it into a career, thenthat addiction is absolutely
(22:16):
fine, because now we make money,which in a capitalist society,
yay, money you know like.
So we just figured out how tomake the scam work.
But then you've got guys likeKevin Mitnick, where you look at
his story and the entire timethat he's doing, the various
things that he was doing thereduring his particular reign when
he was on the other side of thelaw.
(22:37):
Uh, there are several timeswhere you're like kevin dude,
just knock it, the fuck off likestop knock it off.
Like you know, this is a badidea.
You know where this leads.
Stop fucking around.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And he did it anyway that is addiction yes, exactly
um, so, jumping into the nextone, I I kind of took four
characters and then just like,like, just put them all into one
line, and that serial killer,nikon, phantom freak and joey.
Uh, joey forgot a handle, didhe?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I know, no, no, he yeah.
He never got an official handle, he's just joey just joey.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
So serial killer, nikon phantom, Phantom Freak and
Mr no Name.
What do you think of those guys?
Me personally.
I think that it's all aboutserial killer.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Oh, dude, yeah, Like those guys, like they absolutely
steal the movie.
Those are like the three dudes,especially serial killer Nikon
and Phantom Freak.
Like those guys are like the,you know the, those, the, the
three dudes, especially, uh, youknow, serial killer Nikon and,
uh, phantom freak, like those.
Uh, those guys are like thesupport, they're the backbone of
the whole freaking movie andespecially serial Right, I mean
(23:46):
just fucking Matthew Lillard,that that dude, holy shit, you
know, uh, just the way that heplayed that role was just
fucking great, just the way thathe played that role was just
fucking great.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
As soon as he appears on screen in any movie that he
is in, you are instantlyattracted to whatever it is that
he's doing.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And that's what I love about Matthew Lillard.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yes, like whether it's him as Shaggy, which I hate
the Scooby-Doo movies, but himas Shaggy I loved, right.
You know him in Scream.
I loved Him in I meaneverything.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Everything that that man has done.
I'm feeling woozy here.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's great.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
But no, it's just, it's his delivery.
You know it's the way that hedelivers.
You know with particular, withthe particular characters, and I
mean with the way that heplayed Serial.
You know with the particularcharacters and I mean with the
way that he played Serial, youknow, also known as Emanuel
Goldstein.
You know, like the way that heplayed that particular character
was fucking great.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
That's wasn't that Crunch.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
No, you know.
So Emanuel Goldstein is apseudonym for the guy that
publishes the 2600, the hackerquarterly Calling him Serial
Killer is a reference to thehacker Cap'n.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Crunch oh, okay, okay , yeah, because I knew that
Serial Killer was kind of a nodat Cap'n Crunch.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yes, yeah, yeah, calling him Serial was a nod to
Cap'n.
Having his name be EmanuelGoldstein, that's a nod to 2600.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Nikon, nikon and Phantom Freak.
Do those have any pop cultureto real world?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So Nikon, the big thing for him was the
photographic memory or theeidetic memory, the, uh, the
eidetic memory, uh, that's.
That's actually I don't want tosay it's a common thing, but it
is something that, uh, that youdo find quite a bit in.
Uh, you know in that, you knowin the hacker culture, or people
that work in cyber security orpeople that work with technology
, uh, they, you know the, theability of being able to just
(25:49):
fucking polaroid head their waythrough.
You know books or bits of codeor anything along those lines.
You know they can, they canwink at something and they've
just got it stuck in their brainforever.
Um, so I mean, that's, that'skind of a reference there.
And then freak, you know the,the, the phantom freak, all of
his shit was based off of aphone.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Freaking the phone freaking yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, uh, you know which.
For you know, for normal peoplethat have social lives and shit
, uh, phone freaking was a wayof being able to hack phone
systems back in the day and youknow there were several things
that he did that are legitimate.
You know phone freakingtechniques.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Real things, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
You know there were things that were actually done.
So I mean, that was yeah, thatthat was kind of like his
superpower was uh was being ableto do phone freaking.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
That was something that I was always kind of
surprised that they allowed tobe in movies, that they made a
movie and that they allowed himto do as many of those things
and show it.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Some of those things they glossed over.
Uh, you know, like they theymade them look very simple in
the movie they're they're not.
As for some of them they're not.
As for some of them they're notas easy to actually pull off.
Like when he's got the taperecorder with the DTMF tones
that he's playing into thepayphone For younger kids,
Google, what a payphone was,anyway.
But when he's playing the tonesinto the handset and he's
(27:11):
getting his five bucks worth ofphone calls that he's able to
make, he's getting his fivebucks worth of phone calls that
he's able to make.
Yeah, that was a thing.
But trying to get those tones inthe first place was actually
kind of a pain in the ass.
Trying to get that, especiallyoff of a micro recorder.
It wasn't as easy as they madeit look like in the movie Now,
(27:38):
with him doing the other, whenhe's in holding and he's to get
to the, the little plunger thingtill he gets the operator.
That was a thing.
You know, like that was, thatwas totally a thing that you
were able to do, um, but I meanyou were just able to do that.
I mean you, you could pick up apay phone and if an operator
picked up as long as she wasn'tfeeling like, you know, like, as
long as she was feeling helpful, uh, she would go ahead and
make like a phone call, likethat you know like they had the
(28:00):
ability of doing that kind ofstuff well, because what was it
costing?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
it was costing a quarter, you know, right, like I
mean, if they helped somebodyout that they said, oh, I got
disconnected, it was.
It was 25 cents that they werecosting somebody.
Um, which, in the grand schemeof things, one call for 25 cents
isn't really a bunch.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Now, I'm sure after this movie that probably became
a bit of a nightmare uh, yeah,yeah, you know once, uh, you
know like people did start toabuse that, and I mean I, I know
from personal experience like,yeah, it got abused and the uh,
the operators, they started toshut that shit down to where we
had to find other ways to uhlike either scam free phone
(28:40):
calls or find other ways to, youknow, get messages across.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Right, if it was a kid and they just simply told
them I'm, I need to get ahold ofmy parents and I don't have any
money, then they'd just do itLike I mean, so it's like as a
kid, you're like, well shit, allI have to do is just say that I
don't have any money and I needto call my parents Like of
course.
Who's going to say no?
Like yeah, yeah, that's not athing.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Oh yeah, no, you just you figure that kind of stuff
out, or you know, I mean, thatwould be, that would be an
example of like socialengineering.
Right, you know, you figure outa way to like pull at the
heartstrings and you figure outhow you can manipulate the
operator on the other side.
Which a lot of that, a lot ofstuff was done with, you know,
with with that, that kind oftechnique.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Right, and that is something I think that is in our
talking points.
Yeah, the last character thatwe have is the plague the lamest
villain ever.
Yes.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Oh, her pants are blazing for you, newton crosby.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Her plants are, her pants are blazing for you.
Newton crosby, as said by theplague in 1984.
Um now, uh, the plague seeingthis guy again.
It was weird, uh, I I didn'trecognize him as the same guy.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
It takes you a minute , yeah, it takes you a minute to
realize who that is.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, the whole first time because I watch.
I generally watch these moviestwice before I get on and do an
episode.
I do it one just for the sheerpleasure of watching it and then
one for analysis, and the firsttime I watched through it the
whole time I'm sitting theregoing who the fuck is that guy?
And and just before sittingdown for the second one, I
(30:22):
pulled up IMDB, took a look andI was like Jesus Christ, there
is no way that I didn't catchthat that was him, except that
there's no reason to like right.
Everything about him iscompletely different, and it's
not just because of the changein years, like his mannerisms,
the way he stands, the way hecarries himself, the way he
(30:42):
talks.
I mean, of course, he's notdoing a really offensive
bastardized Indian accent.
But aside from that, like just Ithe the force in his voice as
he talks, the confidence and allof that stuff.
It's just a completelydifferent character and he pulls
it off, oh yeah, and, and hepulls it off in a very
(31:06):
believable way.
I think this would probably bethe first time in television or
movies that that it was everinsinuated that somebody who is
knowledgeable in computers tothe point of being a hacker
could be hired to do that job.
You know, I think this is thefirst time that that would have
been presented on screen.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Trying to think Well yeah, well no, because this came
out in 95.
When did Jurassic Park come out?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh, it would have been.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I believe Jurassic Park was like 93, I think,
because newman, you know the, uh, the, you know the.
Well, yeah, he's not newman inthe movie, he's newman on
seinfeld.
But the, the, the, the fatbastard with the, uh, oh, that
guy was a hacker, yeah yeah,that's right.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh, and so was uh so was well, I mean, to a much
lesser degree, samuel L Jackson.
I mean, he wasn't a hacker, hewas a programmer.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Well, yeah, no, he was a developer, he was an IT
guy, yeah, but Nedry was ahacker as far as that movie was
concerned.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I guess, and it did come out.
Yeah, but still like acorporate hacker.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean the way that they, the way
that a lot of people look atthat kind of stuff is know thy
enemy Right.
So I mean you.
You know the culture, you knowthe attacks, you know how it
works.
Cool, we're going to have youon our side, like I'd rather
have you with me than against me.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Right, and I think that was, I think that was a
really good way to do that.
I mean, granted, of course it'sgoing to raise questions about
the dangers of doing such athing.
You know a bank, a corporatebank, hiring a hacker to be
their cybersecurity?
I mean, if he's in theslightest way corrupt, then
(32:53):
you're screwed Like youliterally let him in.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
So I mentioned earlier that I was going to get
on a soapbox at some point aboutthe term hacker and I think
that is actually a pretty goodopening for where that's going
to be.
So popular culture puts anegative context on the word
hacker.
Context on the word hacker.
(33:21):
Okay, uh, a hacker is simplyjust somebody that makes a, a
tool or a piece of code or anapplication or something along
those lines, a computer, youknow.
Whatever it makes, it dosomething that it's not supposed
to do.
That's it, that's all they are.
Okay, you know, and that thatcould be.
You know you could see somebodythat did like game mods back in
the day, like if you were a pcgamer and uh, and people that
did mods to, uh, you know, totheir pc games back in the day,
(33:41):
that could be considered hacking.
It wasn't originally designedto do that.
You know, if you were playingwcw and if you figured out a mod
to bring in wwe characters, youknow, into that particular
world, that's hacking.
You're making that game dosomething that it's not
originally designed to do.
That's that is hacking in andof itself.
(34:02):
So it has no like morality tothe term, if you will right.
There is no, there is no goodor bad when it comes to hacking.
It's what you do with it.
You know then, and that's wherethat's where you wind up
running into just attackers,right?
So if you're talking about abank hiring a hacker, okay,
(34:23):
that's not a bad thing outsideof the gate.
It depends on the ethics of thatparticular individual and what
they're going to do with theinformation that they have.
I mean, technically I'm ahacker, right, you know I was.
I was hired to break intosystems.
But I was hired to break intosystems legally and with a uh,
(34:43):
you know, with a rules ofengagement document and like
people paid me money, like thepeople that the bank paid me
money to break into the bank,Right, Uh, you know, like that,
you know that, like we wereallowed to do that.
There was consent to do that aspart of the vulnerability
exercise to show them how theyneeded to like, shore up their
(35:04):
shit and to be able to protectthemselves.
But now, if I did that withouta rule of engagement document,
if I did that without thepermission of that particular
organization, well, now I'm abad guy.
I'm still a hacker, but now I'moperating as a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Right.
So intentionality is reallykind of the difference between a
hacker and just a maliciousperson.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Yeah, because that's the main point of the whole
thing is that they're allhackers.
The Plague is a hacker, thegroup with Dade and everybody
else, the tribe there.
They're all hackers.
Hackers, they're just doing itin different ways.
You know, one one guy is uh,one guy's doing it to try to, uh
, you know, fuck money out ofthe other, these oil guys, and
(35:48):
then the other guys they're justdoing it for, like,
technological exploration andfun right curiosity a lot of the
time.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yes, joey, the whole reason why this movie has story
is because joey was justexploring yeah, he was curious
at what was going on in a uhgibson supercomputer right and
he and, and he came acrosssomething that he shouldn't have
had, and you know all thisother stuff, and yeah, when they
when they have the reference tothe uh the hacker manifesto in
(36:17):
the uh the movie, and it's.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
You know, my crime is a crime of curiosity, that's,
that's it, right there right.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
The thing with the rest of them is that it's really
more just their own sillylittle benefit, like acid, acid
burn and well, uh, kate and dade, when they're like, when they
first tv station yeah, the tvstation thing, yeah, I mean he,
he just wanted to watch someouter limits like, and he was,
he was taking, he was takingbullshit like hatred, shit off
(36:46):
the air to put outer limits on,and I think that that's a
service more than anythingpersonally no shit, right,
exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, you know she's wanting to watch some some sort
of like you know women's libnonsense and he's wanting to
watch outer limits.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
God damn it right, so I mean not if there's anything
wrong with women's lib.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Don't come after me.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, don't, don't come at derrick, we're just
creating a narrative here, uh,but I mean seriously, though,
like I mean neither one of those.
And and it was just, it was uh,uh.
Public access tv.
You're not hurting anybody.
Nobody watches public access,not even in new york.
So no, no, like you're, you'remessing with maybe 30 people
(37:23):
maybe, maybe, 30 people, andeven then, who says that you're
not making those people happier?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
by making them watch outer limits.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
So, uh, outer limits was a pretty good show.
For any of you any of you thatare listening that don't know.
It was a pretty good showanyway, um, but yeah, so I mean,
intentionality is importantthere.
I think that was really themajority of these of the
characters in this movie is thatthey would just do it all for
whatever it is that they happento be interested in.
One wanted to watch what hewanted to watch on TV, another
(37:54):
one just like.
I mean, I don't even know whatthe freak was into Like when he
was doing this thing.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
He was using it for phone calls, you know.
I mean, there was a part inthere when Dade first shows up
to the high school and the firsttime that he talks to Freak and
Freak, looks at him and goes doyou mind?
I'm on the phone with Venezuelahere.
Right, yeah, that he talks tofreak and freak, looks at him
and goes do you mind, I'm on thephone with Venezuela here.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Right, yeah, like he's, not he's not fucking
around, he's.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
he's talking to Venezuela and he's not paying a
dime.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Right.
So like I mean there's, there'sreally not.
I guess I just don't.
Yes, I know that it's not didthat, that you know somebody
wouldn't be able to feed theirkids, or something.
I get it, but but again it'sthat's.
That's not their intention.
(38:43):
Their intention is not to hurtpeople.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
No, most of the time it was about the challenge, it
was about the, the being able todo it.
It's like the.
It's like the Jeff Goldblumquote from Jurassic park.
You know, you, you, you, uh,you.
You took more time deciding ifyou could instead of deciding
whether or not you should do it.
I'm probably paraphrasing andhorribly butchering that, but I
mean that's actually reallyclose.
(39:07):
Yeah, I mean for them, I meanthat's, that's what it is.
A lot of times it's like youknow all right, I'm just curious
, curious.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Let me see if I can pull this off now.
Right, something that I didwant to make sure to talk about
is is, um, that I really, Ireally appreciated, especially
at the time.
Nobody has ever really done agood job of showing what hacking
is in real life as far as youknow visuals and all of that
stuff.
But one thing that these guysdid a really good job on was the
physicality and hacking at thetime.
(39:39):
Um, it was it.
It was physically demanding tobe a hacker.
It was also like getting intosystems and things like that.
It was also at times theatrical,I mean, you'd, you'd have to
play a part sometimes, um, youknow that kind of stuff it there
(39:59):
was more real world work thananybody realized.
I mean it's not like somebodywould get on a computer in you
know a grade school inCalifornia and you know, and
instantaneously be able to pulleverybody's information off from
a, from a bank in Wisconsin.
You know, I mean there therewould have to be some work that
(40:20):
would go into that.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
There was?
Yeah, there was.
There was definitely a lot morework that went into it.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, he was putting in lines uh in in on uh the
computer on the computers and uhuh in the office when uh cereal
cereal was in under her desk.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, where he's got the implants.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, he had an inline implant.
And then he climbs out fromunder the desk and walks away
with his underwear was half offhis ass and he's walking away.
I mean that kind of stuff, evenfrom the very beginning, when
he calls the TV station and he'slike, hey man, you know, I mean
I'm, I've got this boss.
That's really, you know, up my,up my craw for whatever you
(41:03):
know, Mr Kawasaki.
Yeah, I need you to help me outand you know, I got a.
I got a, I got disconnectedfrom the system and I got to get
back in there to get someinformation.
You know, can you help me out?
And, and you know, just give mea phone number.
Do you know anything aboutcomputers like that?
(41:24):
That should have,instantaneously for any any
security person, been like uh,I'm not talking to you anymore,
like because, yep, you know, doyou know anything about
computers that would that was?
It's always important toestablish whether somebody that
you're about to just pull oneover on knows anything about
what it is that you're trying todo.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Um, yeah, exactly, yeah, it's part of the again
there was a lot of acting.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
That was a part of that.
Like you said, pull on theheartstrings of those, those uh
phone operators and shit likethat it was.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
It was more demanding yeah, so much of hacking back
in like the the mid 90s.
Back in that time period wouldhave been been really dependent
on social engineering.
I mean, that is totally the waythat you would have been able
to get it done.
Even if you were the smartestcoder in the world, you would
have still been extremelydependent on social engineering
to a certain degree to be ableto bullshit your way through
(42:10):
operators, bullshit your waythrough gatekeepers at
particular companies, to be ableto get certain pieces of data
that wasn't on the Internet,because you barely had an
Internet back in 1995.
And you sure as shit didn'thave something like LinkedIn, to
where you can scrape all of theinformation that you want to
know about a particular companyand get all of the details that
(42:32):
you need.
No, you had to actually workfor this shit.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
And that was the whole point.
Like, the whole point was tofind the information, I don't
know.
I just really appreciated howthis movie showed that hacking
was really.
It wasn't as simple as justgetting on a computer.
No, I mean, granted, there wasa very important thing that was
said at Dade's 10-year-old thinghe wasn't allowed to touch a
(42:58):
computer or a touchtone phoneuntil his 18th birthday.
Like, and that's there's goodreason for that, because a real
malicious hacker will know whatto do with either of those
things that they can fucksomething up well, but if if you
notice though, in the the, thespecifics, they said touchtone
phone.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
They didn't say shit about a rotary phone nope, no
phone, he could have stillsocial engineered.
You know, he could have stilldone social engineering.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
He just had to get a rotary phone and talk to
somebody I also like how youhave in here on your on your
talking points, the ugly redbook that doesn't fit on the
shelf.
The dod rainbow books yes,those are real.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, oh yeah, no, they're.
Yeah, they're totally fuckingreal.
Yeah, those are, you know those.
There are Easter eggs allthrough this fucking movie.
You know of legitimate thingsin hacker culture and in
cyberpunk culture.
There are, there are littleEaster eggs, little nods to all
sorts of legitimate shit, and,yeah, those rainbow books that
(43:56):
he pops out with.
I mean there are, there arelittle Easter eggs, little nods
to all sorts of legitimate shit,and, yeah, those rainbow books
that he pops out with.
I mean those, those are allreal things.
They were, uh, they were veryreal and very legitimate in that
, uh, that particular timeperiod.
Uh, yeah, the, the big red bookthat doesn't fit on a shelf.
Yeah, that was um, uh, dodsecure lines, if I remember
correctly.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
You guys.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Okay, cool, just you know, it went quiet for a second
.
I'm paranoid at this point.
I'm like oh shit.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
No, you're good, DOD Rainbow Books.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
The technical advisors that they got on this
movie.
I mean, they actually talked tothe technical consultants that
they have.
They're legitimate hackers,actually part of the culture.
Uh, you know, that wereconsidered, you know, leet as
they, uh, as they say in themovie, uh, you know they.
They got a lot of legitimateguys to consult on this movie.
(44:51):
You know, guys that were partof, like, legion of doom and, uh
, you know, and I think I thinkkevin mitnick, uh, you know, was
talked to, was talked to onthis.
Uh, I mean, you, you've gotguys that actually did some shit
where they're like okay, here'swhat you do to make this a
legitimate hacker movie.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Like, some of the technical visuals are terrible,
right, and we know this and webeat it to death.
But there are also other thingsof just talking about the
culture of cyberpunk and theculture of hacking and some of
the legitimate techniques thatwere done and the little nods to
things of the community.
Those are absolutely legitimate.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Like I had said right at the beginning, hacking is
boring to watch, so they had todo something visually just to
make it a little bit moreinteresting.
Ddos attacks are notinteresting to anybody.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Oh God, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
yeah, ddos is bullshit, but uh, if you do a,
uh, if you do it correctlythough, you can cripple a
fucking nation well, I don'teven get me started on freaking
on ddos attacks, because I hadthe day on christmas day I had
my family got together andbought me an xbox one when they
(46:09):
were new and I went home and Ihooked that motherfucker up and
I had a fast internet connectionand I was ready to play some
games.
And you know what I couldn't do?
I couldn't play any gamesbecause fucking lizard squad had
ddos the shit out of xbox and Icouldn't fucking play.
For two days after I got abrand new xbox I was pissed.
(46:29):
But uh, oh, and is that the?
Is that what you have?
Speaker 3 (46:36):
no, that's not the uh .
That's not the uh.
The attack on din uh, that wasuh, okay, okay different.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
No, so uh yeah it was around the same time.
Uh, yeah, it would have beentime.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah, it would have been.
It definitely would have been.
What I have in the other notesis talking about the Mirai
botnet, and Mirai was all of theInternet of Things bullshit
that's out there.
It was mostly security cameras.
They would use defaultpasswords to get into these
security cameras.
They would infect it with thisuh, you know, with their the,
(47:09):
the botnet, with the virus, andthen they would just keep going
from there, you know, and theywould infect other you know
piece of shit iot cameras andcontinue to like take them over.
And then one day they all justdecided, okay, we're gonna send
a bunch of fucking pings, whichis really just like an
acknowledgement.
We're going to send a bunch offucking pings, which is really
just like an acknowledgement.
Right, we're going to send justa bunch of pings and we're going
(47:30):
to DDoS the living fuck out ofthe largest DNS provider in the
country and we're just going tooverflow their systems and we're
going to just wait until thisbitch crashes.
And when that crashes, thattook with them things like
netflix, aws, uh, you know,amazon, like in general, um, all
(47:50):
sorts of like really big shitthat people depend on.
Uh, they, they crashed all ofit.
Uh, there was like 70 differentcompanies that were affected in
this, if I remember correctly,and uh it, it knocked out
everybody for almost an entirebusiness day, cost a shitload of
money.
I was in the middle of teachinga firewall, like a firewall
instructional class, when thiswent down and we couldn't access
(48:14):
the materials that we needed.
So it was me in a room withfour other guys where we're just
like all right, well, I guesswe'll fuck off for the day.
I can't do anything else,because the Internet doesn't
work.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Right, yeah, that's pretty crazy, uh did.
Did they ever figure out whothat was?
Speaker 3 (48:33):
no, they, uh, to my knowledge, they they still don't
know, like who actually isbehind that particular botnet.
There are, there are thoughtsum starts with R, ends with an N
.
They're kind of in the middleof another skirmish right now.
But, yeah, there are suspicionsas to who may be behind it, but
(48:57):
as far as I know, they don'thave like a smoking gun.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Okay, yeah.
Well, I mean a lot of the timewith that kind of shit.
A lot of the time, if theydon't want you to know, you're
not gonna Correct.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yeah, you know, for for a number of reasons they
can't let you know because of,uh, you know, security reasons,
uh, and I mean fuck you gonna doright.
You know most of these places.
If they're from other countries, they don't.
There's no extradition.
Come get me.
Right ahead sanction me, chargeme, come get my ass?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
yep, now I remember that a little bit more.
I mean, it's not um yeah, thelizard squad thing.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
That was funny nothing.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
That lizard squad thing was not funny.
It was not funny, god damn it.
I wanted to play.
I wanted to play fucking.
What was it?
It was destiny was what Iwanted to play.
I wanted to go through afucking raid on destiny so bad,
and I couldn't on my brand newxbox one, because I want to play
because I couldn't evendownload updates it was so my
christmas it was a bad.
(49:56):
It was a bad great christmas,okay.
It just it really sucked, andall because of a bunch of lizard
dicks.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
I hated them guys oh no, I get it, I it.
And the thing with like with aDDoS attack there isn't shit you
can do.
There isn't a goddamn thing youcan do.
Not at all.
That is, it's all upstream towhere, like your internet
service provider, they're theonly ones that can do anything
about it, and most of the timethey can't do shit.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
They don't know.
Yeah, because know yeah they,because they they'd have to know
, they'd have to know everythingabout it in order, in order to
do anything, they got to knowwhere it's all coming from, and
when you have a, when you have addos, specifically distributed
denial of service.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
That means it's coming at you from all sides.
Man, it's a fucking digitalkaki, there ain't shit you can
do about it.
Oh shit, okay, I warned you.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
I warned you, I love it, good stuff.
I mean, I hate it, but I loveit.
So, um, yeah, don't, don't, asas my uh, my producer is just
telling me right now to, to, totell you all please do not
Google Bukake.
Uh, that's, and if you do itit's not my fault.
(51:10):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Yeah, no, not on us, Not on us.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
I'm now.
I'm kind of curious as towhether my producer is telling
me not to tell people to do that, because she did.
No, oh, okay you did.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
No, okay, just making sure.
I'm just making you know you'dthink, at this point it's almost
just become like a regularcolloquial, but you know, you
would think so, but maybe it'sjust because I'm a bad person
maybe it's because we'rehorrible people.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Um so, anyway, now that we're in a wholesome part
of our discussion, sure, uh, Imean, do you, do you have a an
active ingredient from thismovie?
Like I know you said that itkind of influenced you a little
bit into you know, into your,your interests and everything.
But what's your, what's youractive ingredient?
Speaker 3 (51:59):
uh, it's community.
Uh, you know, actually, with uh, with this one, I mean, uh, you
know the, the thing that yourun into with so many people
that are, you know that with uh,with this one, I mean, uh, you
know the, the thing that you runinto with so many people that
are, you know, that are intothis kind of thing.
They get into technology likethis and especially for, like
people like us that are kind ofout here in the sticks right um
it, you, you have a tendency ofbeing isolated.
You know, if you're somebodythat knows how this shit works,
(52:22):
you're kind of isolated andyou're on your own and you don't
have a whole lot of people inlike, in meat space that even
remotely understand what thehell you're talking about, let
alone are going to want to likeparticipate with, with what it
is that you might be doing.
Whereas with the hackercommunity and the cyberpunk
community, you know if you'reable to tap into that, you know
(52:44):
if you find a chat that you canget into or if you find a
message board that, uh, that youcould get into and other people
that are, you know that areconnected in this as well.
You now have community.
You now have friends all overthe fucking world, all over the
planet, of people that you cantalk to and connect with based
off of this particular activity.
(53:04):
Uh, you know the, uh, the, thedefcon hacker conference that
happens every year in vegas.
Uh, it is 30 000 hackers thatdescend on the vegas strip and,
uh, a good chunk of us, we don'tknow each other, like none of
us.
You know, there's a good goodportion of us we're like you
leave there with new friendsevery fucking time and, uh,
(53:24):
there are people who are like Ihave no idea what their names
are or what their real names are.
You know some of these.
I only know them by handle, butyet, because we happen to be in
like a particular talk, orwe're in a workshop together or
we're just at a fucking party,and somebody might, you know,
give me shit about a particularT-shirt that I'm wearing, or
something like that, you might,you know, give me shit about a
(53:45):
particular T-shirt that I'mwearing, or something like that.
And now, now we have a dialoguegoing and we can start talking
about.
You know, what's your opinionon this firewall vendor or what
are you using to, you know to,to be able to do like initial,
initial access for penetrationtests or what, what?
What's your funniest story thatyou have about social
engineering and phishing?
You know things like that.
Like now we have things that wecan talk about, we have people
(54:11):
that we can talk to about this,uh, whereas before you have no
one.
You know, like your, yourpossibility of being able to
find somebody that to connect tophysically.
Uh, you know, on thatparticular subject you didn't
have, and now, because of youknow movies like hackers.
You know movies like hackers.
You know you have people that,uh, that you can go with the end
of that movie.
When they get everybody youknow together, right, they get
(54:32):
the army of hackers, uh, youknow to to go after the bad guys
, like that's exactly what I'mtalking about.
Yeah, exactly, hack the planet.
You know, uh, where they goteverybody to you know everybody
around the world to be able tochime in and like help out.
That got everybody to you knoweverybody around the world to be
able to chime in and like helpout.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
That's, that's the community I'm talking about.
That's awesome, I dig that andI and I definitely feel that a
little bit um.
I mean, granted, when I watchedthis movie the level of hacking
that I had anything to do withwas very um, it was very
juvenile.
Uh, I mean, I I didn't reallydo hardly any of the the the
nifty shit that they kind of didon here.
I was more of just the computer, a computer nerd Like I liked
(55:12):
building computers and buildingsystems and things like that,
and but I I had other friendsthat were interested in the same
things, that were more intothat hacker stuff, and so just
kind of like it still.
It still allowed me to kind ofbe a part of that with them,
because they needed hardware tobe able to do their fun shit
(55:34):
with exactly I was the guy thatknew the hardware.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
You know everybody's got a specialty.
You know, like we were talkingabout freak earlier, his
specialty was phones.
You know, yeah, exactly, youknow everybody's got their their
particular thing.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
I mean, for for me it was definitely social
engineering yeah, and because ofthat I think that everybody has
their own little thing tocontribute to their own little
groups.
Um, yeah, so I definitely seethe community thing in there.
For me, though, the activeingredient in this for me was it
kind of taught me that youmight have a gift that could be
used for personal gain, but itdoesn't mean that it has to.
(56:10):
You can use your gift to helpothers, even to combat malicious
people that have those samegifts.
But it kind of brings me backto the RTD thing the right thing
to do.
So, yeah, I mean, that's reallyjust kind of what it enforced
with me was that kind of thething with Ian Malcolm.
You know you were so focused onwhat you should, what you could
(56:32):
do, you didn't stop to thinkwhether you should.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Right, yeah, Then it becomes you know that, yeah,
that becomes an argument ofethics.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Right.
Um, so I got I guess I got anethical lesson out of this.
Uh, really was, was kind of mything.
So, um, derek, thanks again.
As always, it's fuckinghilarious and fun.
Um now, uh, go ahead and go andplug your socials and all your
fun shit uh, yeah, so, um, yeah,music nerd.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
So you know, if you want to listen to any sort of
like loud, angry nonsense, youcan find me on YouTube at Deke
the Gnome, the spelled T-H-A,because I was bored, and you
know, if you want to listen, youknow again, more loud, angry
nonsense.
(57:23):
You know the.
The band that I've beeninvolved with is Mortal Desire
D-E-Z-I-R-E.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
Because you know, spelling is hard.
Well, I mean, just ask JohnDavis.
I mean, korn is spelled with aK, you know.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Oh, yeah, yeah, and I mean good, good luck trying to
transcribe for that guy.
I mean, you know, when he doeshis.
Can you imagine, you know, likethe sign language people?
You know, can you imagine beinga signer at one of his shows
when he busts into like hiscrazy scatting and they're just
like I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
I don't know what the fuck he's doing at this point.
I mean, how exactly do you signa?
I don't know how to sign that.
Right, that's awesome, that'sawesome.
Now, if you have a movie that'sbeen medicine for you and you'd
like to be on the show, you canemail me at contact at
movie-rxcom.
You can also leave a voicemailor text me at 402-519-5790.
(58:24):
If anxiety is keeping you frombeing on the show.
You can write me a couple ofparagraphs about a movie and I
can read them on air.
Remember, this movie is notintended to treat, cure or
prevent any disease, and we'llsee you at the next appointment.
So Thank you.
Hello and welcome to MovieRx, where I prescribe
entertainment, one movie at atime.
I am your host, Dr Benjamin PhD.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
What does the PhD stand for?
Hello and welcome to MovieRx,where I prescribe entertainment
one movie at a time.
I am your host, dr Benjamin PhD.
What does the PhD stand for?
Praising hackers?
Dudes, ha ha, ha ha.
Oh man, I love doing 90s movies.
(00:36):
It's so much fun.
Gotta go back to saying dudesall the time.
So today, joining me from theleft or midwest, not politically
, but very literally the left ormidwest, I have again today,
derrick.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Welcome derrick it's it's allowed to be both is.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Is it allowed to be both?
Okay, I'll take it.
Oh yeah, totally yeah yeah, theleft or midwest, in every way
possible.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
We have the left or Midwest.
Yes, exactly, that's why it'sbetter out here.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
See, that's what I'm talking about.
Okay, so it's been a minutesince I saw this movie.
If I'm being totally honest, Idon't know if I have watched it
since the first time.
I rented it on VHS.
When it first released, Icompletely forgot Angelina Jolie
(01:29):
was in it.
It came out when I was in thethick of learning how to build
computers.
Today we're talking abouthackers.
So now this is something thathas a lot to do with you and
your in in your work.
Uh, so a little bit.
So I'm tell me if I'm jumpingthe gun a little bit here, but
(01:51):
this movie have anything to dowith, uh, kind of the, the realm
of work that you ended upworking in um, I mean you know
the, like the movie itself?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
no, I mean sort of, but you know it.
So I, I work in cybersecurity.
I've been in cybersecurity forthe last 10 years in a number of
different capacities.
I started as a penetrationtester.
I was the guy that like brokeinto places that, like you, paid
to break into places before,like the, the actual bad guys
(02:24):
did it.
So, um, I mean the associationwith hackers and hacker culture
and cyberpunk culture, uh, itdefinitely did kind of go hand
in hand.
But I mean, am I, am I showingup looking like serial killer
every day for, uh, for my job?
I mean, uh, well, maybepost-covid, but I mean not
(02:46):
before that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
I love it.
So basic movie info on this oneunited arts put this movie out
in 1995.
Uh, it's directed by lanesoftly, also known for backbeat
and k-packs.
Uh, stars johnny lee miller,which has done surprisingly
little other than this movie,angelina jolie, which has done
surprisingly larger amountssince this movie, and, uh, it's
(03:13):
also got jesse bradford.
But I really feel like thatthere is so much that needs to
be said about so many otherpeople that are in this movie.
Like there's so many names thataren't mentioned, like Matthew
Willard and, uh, I mean the, theguy who, oh, what, who was he?
Uh, the the, the guy he played.
He played, uh, uh, in shortcircuit.
Speaker 3 (03:35):
He was Ben oh her pants are blazing for you.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Newton C.
Yeah, we played ben in shortcircuit and he ends up as the
fisher stevens.
Yeah, yeah, that's right, Icouldn't ever remember his name.
And then, uh, um tin tin fromthe crow got another one from
laurence mason yep, yeah, andthen uh, oh god, there's just.
This movie is just stacked withpeople um yeah, and like
surprising people in here.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
I mean you've, you've even got Penn Jillette in.
This is like the security guardguy Mark Anthony in my
rewatching Cause when I watchedit the first time.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I didn't give a shit but the one that caught me the
most off guard was Penn PennGillette being in it.
You know his.
His daughter's name is Moxiecrime fighter.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
Of course it is.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
Do you know what my dog's name is?
Moxie crime fighter.
I named.
I named my dog after hisdaughter because that's just a
badass name.
I'm just saying yeah, but yeah,penn Jillette's in here.
I mean Mark Anthony, holy shit,man, there's just tons of
people in this movie.
I mean, granted, we're probablynot going to talk about all of
them, but yeah, really good,really really good cast,
(05:01):
especially at the time, the IMDBdescription on this one.
I'm not going to give anyindication what I think about
this one, I'm just going to getyour thoughts on it.
Teenage hackers discover acriminal conspiracy with plans
to use a computer virus thatwill capsize five oil tankers.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
I mean sure they're not wrong.
I mean, yeah, like surfacelevel, I'd say that that is
probably an appropriate TLDR.
There's a whole lot more tounpack there, but okay.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
But it works.
I mean, they're not wrong.
They are correct in theirsynapses.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
I suppose they have so many characters that you
could put on the front of amovie box.
So I mean, I guess I guess.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Visually it's laughable, as any
technologically intelligentperson will tell you.
Honestly, though, but how canyou actually show hacking on
screen and make it interestingor exciting to watch?
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Hacking is not a spectator sport Like this is,
you know, like somebody is likeworking in the field.
This is a thing that I'vetalked about countless times
over multiple drinks with peopleat like Def Con's where, like,
hacking is not a spectator sport, it is boring as whale shit.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I mean because it's just code, so you have to do
something.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
You have to do something to make know
entertaining for a non-technicalaudience, which is, which is
why you get all of the like, the, the generic shapes, uh, in in
their os's where they're flyingthrough towers of information.
That's an air quotes.
I hate doing air quotes but Ihave to say that I'm doing air
(06:41):
quotes.
You.
You know the, the like, all ofthose stupid like they make.
They make hacking.
Look like it's an OS, it's soweird.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It very like.
Yeah, it's very matrix ask, butI mean so many, so many tech
movies of the nineties got stuckin this trap.
You know like Johnny mnemonicdealt with it, lawnmower man
dealt with it.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
You know, uh, you know, like the matrix totally
dealt with it.
Uh, you know, like it, it wasdefinitely a thing.
Even, uh, the little girl injurassic park when she was doing
her hacking thing, like it's aunix system, it's so great, you
know.
And then there's the uh, well,in the net, the net was I would
say actually then it was, it wasprobably the closest I would
(07:28):
say to to the actual thing.
But it was it was only becauseof the physicality in it, like
because she was physically goingfrom place to place and and you
know things like that.
But I mean, we'll get in.
We'll get into that more alittle bit later, but the music
in this movie was holy shit,awesome great yeah, the whole
soundtrack would have would havebeen broken without stereo mcs
(07:51):
connected, though I'm justsaying like that that that blase
mid-90s.
I mean you have to have that,that I don't care sound coming
from the music, otherwise it'sjust not going to work Right.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Oh yeah, no, like club kids from the mid nineties
absolutely loved this fuckingsoundtrack.
Speaker 2 (08:11):
Oh shit, yeah, and well I mean, and it's just, it's
banging Like there's no waythat you can listen to the
soundtrack without without justat least swaying a little bit
with a little Bob in your head.
You know, like the typical the.
I don't know if you realizethis, I'm gonna get up on my
microphone already.
I'm gonna kind of get up onthis for everybody who danced in
(08:33):
the 90s, danced like nervousseventh graders at a high school
dance.
I'm just saying yeah, the only.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
Thing swaying and bobbing, yeah, but the
difference is, though, is thatthe club kids that were doing
that, they were also likechomping on a shitload of mdma
and they were high as shit.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yes, yes, yes, yes, the seventh graders.
Speaker 3 (08:56):
At that time they weren't high as shit.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Not yet, no, not yet now, the story in this movie was
the compelling thing and in away, I think it's because they
had kind of humanized hackers alittle bit during a hacker scare
, because the mid-90s really waswhen that started to become a
thing, when people startedbecoming more aware of people
(09:20):
finding control of thingsthrough computers.
And I don't even mean like youknow, I don't even mean like big
important things, like justsimple things where people were
like, oh my God, they're goingto learn my email password and
they're going to send my boss anasty email.
You know, like that, like thatshit.
I mean, you can like, in thisday and age, you can totally
(09:41):
send your boss a nasty email andjust say my email got hacked
and then you're fine.
But uh, but I mean, during thehacker scare, hackers were this
mysterious, like almost likephantoms that were out there yes
and yeah they were nobody everknew where they were yeah, they,
they just.
They just appeared out ofnowhere at a computer terminal
(10:04):
and then just messed with youand then they disappeared, all
like it was so weird.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Some of that I mean so much of that got so fucking
sensationalized because peopleare scared of shit that they
don't understand.
And you know what they sure ashell don't understand.
Technology, and you know whatthey sure as hell don't
(10:39):
understand.
Technology, common people,especially back in the minute,
uh, but they, they got scared.
Right, you have the the whole,like there be dragons.
They didn't understand what thefuck was going on and so they
were like terrified of oh my god, a hacker's gonna fuck with my
shit.
Uh, not realizing that, likeback in the 90s, it was fucking
hard man uh like you know likescenes that they have from like
(11:00):
in the, in the movie wherethey're talking about like the
manuals that you had to have of,like you know, dod code books
or, uh, you know like networksand stuff that they came up with
and shit like that.
I mean, yeah, you had to havelike big ass phone books that
like told you how to do thingsor like remembered phone numbers
.
Uh, you actually had to work atthis shit.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
They didn't have like automated programs where you
could just point, click, pwn,like you can do now yeah, that's
really what most people'simaginations of hacking was was
like, yeah, like nuke 95 kind ofshit.
You know right, exactly thewind nukers and and and all of
that kind of stuff, packet, uh,packet sending programs and
(11:41):
whatever um well and know, likemovies, like war games, didn't
do us a whole lot of favors.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Like war games was fairly accurate, but it was also
like you know, oh shit, here'sthis dumb high school kid that,
like butt, fucked his way intonuclear war.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
You're right.
In the mid nineties, theyalmost had to romanticize what
hacking was in order in order toaddress it at all.
Yes, in order to address it atall yes, and also to make
compelling movies because I'msorry like watching Crash and
Burn go through a hackingcompetition in the context of
(12:17):
the real would have been boringas fuck.
Definitely not as cool.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
As somebody that has sat through plenty of capture
the flag competitions, I, youknow, like I've I've
participated in plenty of likeCTFs and all it is is a lot of
big sweaty nerds with jolt colasnext to them doing a shitload
of typing.
Um, and I, I know I'mgeneralizing and I know that if
there are other people in myfield listening to this they are
probably going to come at me,but I, I know they're going to
(12:45):
agree with you.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I promise you they're all good.
Half of them are going to belike yeah, I'm one of those fat,
sweaty nerds, and the otherhalf is going to be like yeah,
there's dude, there's a lot offat, sweaty nerds.
So I mean, no, I think, I thinkthat you're probably pretty
safe, but yeah, no, the the.
A lot of this movie, a lot ofthis movie's character, comes
(13:06):
from the characters.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
Oh, absolutely, yeah, Totally.
It's an ensemble movie.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
We're going to start off with the first one, dade.
Now I do have a soundbite forDade, so we'll start off with
that here.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
The defendant, dade Murphy, who calls himself Zero
Cool, has repeatedly committedcriminal acts of a malicious
nature.
This defendant possesses asuperior intelligence which he
uses to a destructive andantisocial end.
Speaker 2 (13:41):
Now, in that little bit, the way that they're
talking about this guy, it's a10-year-old kid, right the kind
of language that she's using.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Destructive and antisocial behavior.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
He's 10.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
What the fuck.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
What the fuck are you talking about?
Destructive and antisocial.
He was having fun, like come on, and that was in 1988.
So yeah, I don't even knowwhere to begin with that.
First off, with the way that wetalk about people in in the
court system, like uh it well,in any kind of system really,
(14:14):
the way that we talk aboutpeople, the kind of language
that we use, is important in theway that we paint people and,
uh, they were.
They were using the kind of thekind of language that you would
use to describe a heinouscriminal.
Correct For a 10 year old thatmade a computer virus and fucked
up like fifteen hundred andseven computer systems.
(14:35):
But I mean, but what did he do?
He hurt computer systems at atime where people didn't know
how to fuck up computer systemshurt computer systems at a time
where people didn't know how tofuck up computer systems.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Well, it, yeah, he, he fucked up computer systems
that uh, controlled, uh, youknow, things like the other, the
stock market as an example, uh.
So like, yeah, you know, he, he, you know.
You could say, yeah, all he didwas crash some computers.
Yeah, but he crashed somecomputers that cost a lot of
people some fucking money right.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
But I mean, are we really going to talk about this
kid like like he's, you know,charles manson?
No, he's not.
No, he's not a batman villain.
No right, he's not a, you knowyeah, like he's not a.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
He's not a batman villain.
He was a bored 10 year old thatdid some dumb shit right.
You and I grew up in the middleof nowhere.
We did some dumb shit at 10.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
We did lots of dumb shit.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Yes, yeah.
So some of that might have beenconsidered destructive and
illegal.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Right and and, but I mean antisocial, I did.
As far as I'm concerned, thismovie shows that hacking is
anything but antisocial,especially because of the way
that they have to do things.
We'll kind of leave some ofthat, because all of that stuff
ties in later, like in into sometalking points that we have
later on.
But like, right, uh, the nextone we got.
(15:53):
We got kate acid burned.
What.
What do you think about kate?
Speaker 3 (15:57):
pissed off rich kid uh so like the, the way that the
way that she is portrayedamongst the uh, the group is
that she is like the alphahacker amongst their particular
tribe there.
But I mean, her mom is thismillion dollar author, she lives
(16:18):
in a really nice fucking houseand she decided that she was
going to slum it with the, withthe hackers, and do some shit.
I mean like, yes, pulls offsome really interesting stuff,
(16:41):
but at the same time she justreally strikes me as like bored
form of protest instead ofactually like a love of
technology and wanting to likepick things apart and see how
shit works under the under thehood and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Right, but she still, she still seemed knowledgeable,
very yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, I mean she was going to be good at it.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Like you're going to have to be knowledgeable in what
you're doing, right, yeah?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, she wasn't a poser.
You to have to be knowledgeablein what you're doing Right.
Yeah, yeah, she wasn't a poser,you know, yeah, definitely not a
.
You know, definitely not aposer, not a tourist.
You know she knew what she wasdoing.
It just it wasn't.
I don't know.
You know just something aboutthe way that that character was
written.
I don't know if it was like thewriting or I don't know if it
was the delivery of it.
She's almost like she chose itrather than doing it out of
(17:28):
necessity.
Correct, yes, and for a lot ofuh, for a lot of people that get
into uh, you know, get intohacking, uh, you know it's, it's
more like a calling than uh,than it is like.
You know, something that I justwoke up one day and decided I
was gonna fucking do because ifyou have any sort of like
normalcy in your head, you won'tdo it right.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Well, I mean, that's a perfect example with dade.
Uh, I mean, dade was a 10 yearold kid that was vastly more
intelligent than a, than atypical 10 year old, yes, and?
And he just understood it, andso it just seemed natural to him
that.
Oh well, I'm curious about thisbecause I understand it even
though I'm 10, and I'm going topursue my knowledge of it and
(18:09):
whatever happens happens, yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:11):
It becomes.
It becomes almost like acompulsion to where they're.
You know.
They're like, well, I foundthis vulnerability or I
shouldn't be able to do this, soI'm going to fucking do it.
Or you know, this is I'm goingafter particular pieces of
information.
Information should be free, soI'm going to go ahead and do
this, like they.
It's almost like a differentinterpretation of like, right or
(18:34):
wrong, or it's that compulsion,you know, kind of a kind of a
thing.
Like the other, the scene wherethey've got Joey in the, the
Narcotics Anonymous, you knowkind of group there right, where
he's trying to say you know,I'm, I'm not an addict, I'm not
an addict, no-transcript, rightaddiction for what it is that
(19:06):
they're.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
They're doing like they can't stop themselves, they
can't help themselves, rightwhen this movie would have been
I mean the idea, the idea oftechnology addiction is.
I mean, it's still somethingthat people have a hard time
grasping now.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Uh, right in 2024.
We definitely have fuckingissues of it now right, whereas
in.
Like back in the mid 90s, youwere like what, why?
What are you addicted to?
Speaker 2 (19:26):
yeah, your game boy.
Like oh right, you got a gameboy color and so you play it
twice as much now, like come onexactly but uh, but no, I mean,
yeah, I guess it kind of makessense that as as a compulsion,
then yeah, it would be verysimilar to an addiction Treating
.
It would be difficult, though.
Oh yeah, and that's an argumentthat I make all the time with.
(19:48):
Uh cause, like you know, I workwith families.
Mm-hmm, if I'm on a visit andI'm documenting a visit and
there's and there's a familythat is, you know, using tablets
or computers or or whatever,I'm always afraid that that's
going to come back on the family.
Um, because case managers andand you know, uh, lawyers and
(20:09):
judges like to do that.
They like to say, well, you'renot spending time with your
family, you're spending time ontechnology.
Say, well, you're not spendingtime with your family, you're
spending time on technology.
Um, and it's like a lot of thetime, I have a hard time not
being trying not to be in inthat and be like look, you think
(20:30):
this is a problem because yougrew up in an age when that
wasn't a thing.
But it's like this is the worldthat we're going into.
If they don't have the time tospend with technology and they
don't have the time to spendwith technology and they don't
understand it, then they areleaving themselves at risk.
They're giving kids laptops andtablets at school now, like
it's yeah it's just a thing.
so, as as much as they as theyreally are hard on people about
(20:53):
technology and how much they'readdicted to it and how much
they're dependent on it, they'realso, there's also this, this
compulsion to, uh, to judge ittoo far and say that something
that is just strictly normal youknow what is normal use for
technology is addiction.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
And I think it's a balancing act, right?
Uh, you know it's a, it's abalancing act and I think trying
to figure out, uh, you knowwhen you're talking about, you
know, addiction to technology,it depends.
Uh, you know, you could, youcould say any sort of, uh, you
know what, what is it that makesaddiction a bad thing?
Right, it's not the, it's notthe addiction, it's not the
other, the consuming, the thingthat happens to be, whatever it
(21:37):
is that you're addicted to allthe time.
It's the impact that it has onyour life, right?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
So they may be spending that time on a phone or
a tablet or something alongthose lines, but if it doesn't
have a negative impact on theirlife, then it's fine.
It's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Right or the lives of people around them.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
It's not that big of a deal, or the lives of people
around them.
Exactly Same could be said oncomputer hacking.
You could say that somebody hasan addiction to their computer
or a compulsion to theircomputer to do particular things
, but if it doesn't have anegative effect, then it's not
that big of a deal.
Or if they're, some of us,lucky ones that have been able
to turn it into a career, thenthat addiction is absolutely
(22:16):
fine, because now we make money,which in a capitalist society,
yay, money you know like.
So we just figured out how tomake the scam work.
But then you've got guys likeKevin Mitnick, where you look at
his story and the entire timethat he's doing, the various
things that he was doing thereduring his particular reign when
he was on the other side of thelaw.
(22:37):
Uh, there are several timeswhere you're like kevin dude,
just knock it, the fuck off likestop knock it off.
Like you know, this is a badidea.
You know where this leads.
Stop fucking around.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
And he did it anyway that is addiction yes, exactly
um, so, jumping into the nextone, I I kind of took four
characters and then just like,like, just put them all into one
line, and that serial killer,nikon, phantom freak and joey.
Uh, joey forgot a handle, didhe?
Speaker 3 (23:10):
I know, no, no, he yeah.
He never got an official handle, he's just joey just joey.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
So serial killer, nikon phantom, Phantom Freak and
Mr no Name.
What do you think of those guys?
Me personally.
I think that it's all aboutserial killer.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Oh, dude, yeah, Like those guys, like they absolutely
steal the movie.
Those are like the three dudes,especially serial killer Nikon
and Phantom Freak.
Like those guys are like the,you know the, those, the, the
three dudes, especially, uh, youknow, serial killer Nikon and,
uh, phantom freak, like those.
Uh, those guys are like thesupport, they're the backbone of
the whole freaking movie andespecially serial Right, I mean
(23:46):
just fucking Matthew Lillard,that that dude, holy shit, you
know, uh, just the way that heplayed that role was just
fucking great, just the way thathe played that role was just
fucking great.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
As soon as he appears on screen in any movie that he
is in, you are instantlyattracted to whatever it is that
he's doing.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
And that's what I love about Matthew Lillard.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Yes, like whether it's him as Shaggy, which I hate
the Scooby-Doo movies, but himas Shaggy I loved, right.
You know him in Scream.
I loved Him in I meaneverything.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Everything that that man has done.
I'm feeling woozy here.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's great.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
But no, it's just, it's his delivery.
You know it's the way that hedelivers.
You know with particular, withthe particular characters, and I
mean with the way that heplayed Serial.
You know with the particularcharacters and I mean with the
way that he played Serial, youknow, also known as Emanuel
Goldstein.
You know, like the way that heplayed that particular character
was fucking great.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
That's wasn't that Crunch.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
No, you know.
So Emanuel Goldstein is apseudonym for the guy that
publishes the 2600, the hackerquarterly Calling him Serial
Killer is a reference to thehacker Cap'n.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Crunch oh, okay, okay , yeah, because I knew that
Serial Killer was kind of a nodat Cap'n Crunch.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yes, yeah, yeah, calling him Serial was a nod to
Cap'n.
Having his name be EmanuelGoldstein, that's a nod to 2600.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Nikon, nikon and Phantom Freak.
Do those have any pop cultureto real world?
Speaker 3 (25:26):
So Nikon, the big thing for him was the
photographic memory or theeidetic memory, the, uh, the
eidetic memory, uh, that's.
That's actually I don't want tosay it's a common thing, but it
is something that, uh, that youdo find quite a bit in.
Uh, you know in that, you knowin the hacker culture, or people
that work in cyber security orpeople that work with technology
, uh, they, you know the, theability of being able to just
(25:49):
fucking polaroid head their waythrough.
You know books or bits of codeor anything along those lines.
You know they can, they canwink at something and they've
just got it stuck in their brainforever.
Um, so I mean, that's, that'skind of a reference there.
And then freak, you know the,the, the phantom freak, all of
his shit was based off of aphone.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
Freaking the phone freaking yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Yeah, uh, you know which.
For you know, for normal peoplethat have social lives and shit
, uh, phone freaking was a wayof being able to hack phone
systems back in the day and youknow there were several things
that he did that are legitimate.
You know phone freakingtechniques.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
Real things, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
You know there were things that were actually done.
So I mean, that was yeah, thatthat was kind of like his
superpower was uh was being ableto do phone freaking.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
That was something that I was always kind of
surprised that they allowed tobe in movies, that they made a
movie and that they allowed himto do as many of those things
and show it.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Some of those things they glossed over.
Uh, you know, like they theymade them look very simple in
the movie they're they're not.
As for some of them they're not.
As for some of them they're notas easy to actually pull off.
Like when he's got the taperecorder with the DTMF tones
that he's playing into thepayphone For younger kids,
Google, what a payphone was,anyway.
But when he's playing the tonesinto the handset and he's
(27:11):
getting his five bucks worth ofphone calls that he's able to
make, he's getting his fivebucks worth of phone calls that
he's able to make.
Yeah, that was a thing.
But trying to get those tones inthe first place was actually
kind of a pain in the ass.
Trying to get that, especiallyoff of a micro recorder.
It wasn't as easy as they madeit look like in the movie Now,
(27:38):
with him doing the other, whenhe's in holding and he's to get
to the, the little plunger thingtill he gets the operator.
That was a thing.
You know, like that was, thatwas totally a thing that you
were able to do, um, but I meanyou were just able to do that.
I mean you, you could pick up apay phone and if an operator
picked up as long as she wasn'tfeeling like, you know, like, as
long as she was feeling helpful, uh, she would go ahead and
make like a phone call, likethat you know like they had the
(28:00):
ability of doing that kind ofstuff well, because what was it
costing?
Speaker 2 (28:04):
it was costing a quarter, you know, right, like I
mean, if they helped somebodyout that they said, oh, I got
disconnected, it was.
It was 25 cents that they werecosting somebody.
Um, which, in the grand schemeof things, one call for 25 cents
isn't really a bunch.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
Now, I'm sure after this movie that probably became
a bit of a nightmare uh, yeah,yeah, you know once, uh, you
know like people did start toabuse that, and I mean I, I know
from personal experience like,yeah, it got abused and the uh,
the operators, they started toshut that shit down to where we
had to find other ways to uhlike either scam free phone
(28:40):
calls or find other ways to, youknow, get messages across.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
Right, if it was a kid and they just simply told
them I'm, I need to get ahold ofmy parents and I don't have any
money, then they'd just do itLike I mean, so it's like as a
kid, you're like, well shit, allI have to do is just say that I
don't have any money and I needto call my parents Like of
course.
Who's going to say no?
Like yeah, yeah, that's not athing.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
Oh yeah, no, you just you figure that kind of stuff
out, or you know, I mean, thatwould be, that would be an
example of like socialengineering.
Right, you know, you figure outa way to like pull at the
heartstrings and you figure outhow you can manipulate the
operator on the other side.
Which a lot of that, a lot ofstuff was done with, you know,
with with that, that kind oftechnique.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
Right, and that is something I think that is in our
talking points.
Yeah, the last character thatwe have is the plague the lamest
villain ever.
Yes.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Oh, her pants are blazing for you, newton crosby.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Her plants are, her pants are blazing for you.
Newton crosby, as said by theplague in 1984.
Um now, uh, the plague seeingthis guy again.
It was weird, uh, I I didn'trecognize him as the same guy.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
It takes you a minute , yeah, it takes you a minute to
realize who that is.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, the whole first time because I watch.
I generally watch these moviestwice before I get on and do an
episode.
I do it one just for the sheerpleasure of watching it and then
one for analysis, and the firsttime I watched through it the
whole time I'm sitting theregoing who the fuck is that guy?
And and just before sittingdown for the second one, I
(30:22):
pulled up IMDB, took a look andI was like Jesus Christ, there
is no way that I didn't catchthat that was him, except that
there's no reason to like right.
Everything about him iscompletely different, and it's
not just because of the changein years, like his mannerisms,
the way he stands, the way hecarries himself, the way he
(30:42):
talks.
I mean, of course, he's notdoing a really offensive
bastardized Indian accent.
But aside from that, like just Ithe the force in his voice as
he talks, the confidence and allof that stuff.
It's just a completelydifferent character and he pulls
it off, oh yeah, and, and hepulls it off in a very
(31:06):
believable way.
I think this would probably bethe first time in television or
movies that that it was everinsinuated that somebody who is
knowledgeable in computers tothe point of being a hacker
could be hired to do that job.
You know, I think this is thefirst time that that would have
been presented on screen.
Speaker 3 (31:26):
Trying to think Well yeah, well no, because this came
out in 95.
When did Jurassic Park come out?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
Oh, it would have been.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
I believe Jurassic Park was like 93, I think,
because newman, you know the, uh, the, you know the.
Well, yeah, he's not newman inthe movie, he's newman on
seinfeld.
But the, the, the, the fatbastard with the, uh, oh, that
guy was a hacker, yeah yeah,that's right.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Oh, and so was uh so was well, I mean, to a much
lesser degree, samuel L Jackson.
I mean, he wasn't a hacker, hewas a programmer.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Well, yeah, no, he was a developer, he was an IT
guy, yeah, but Nedry was ahacker as far as that movie was
concerned.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
Yeah, I guess, and it did come out.
Yeah, but still like acorporate hacker.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean the way that they, the way
that a lot of people look atthat kind of stuff is know thy
enemy Right.
So I mean you.
You know the culture, you knowthe attacks, you know how it
works.
Cool, we're going to have youon our side, like I'd rather
have you with me than against me.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Right, and I think that was, I think that was a
really good way to do that.
I mean, granted, of course it'sgoing to raise questions about
the dangers of doing such athing.
You know a bank, a corporatebank, hiring a hacker to be
their cybersecurity?
I mean, if he's in theslightest way corrupt, then
(32:53):
you're screwed Like youliterally let him in.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
So I mentioned earlier that I was going to get
on a soapbox at some point aboutthe term hacker and I think
that is actually a pretty goodopening for where that's going
to be.
So popular culture puts anegative context on the word
hacker.
Context on the word hacker.
(33:21):
Okay, uh, a hacker is simplyjust somebody that makes a, a
tool or a piece of code or anapplication or something along
those lines, a computer, youknow.
Whatever it makes, it dosomething that it's not supposed
to do.
That's it, that's all they are.
Okay, you know, and that thatcould be.
You know you could see somebodythat did like game mods back in
the day, like if you were a pcgamer and uh, and people that
did mods to, uh, you know, totheir pc games back in the day,
(33:41):
that could be considered hacking.
It wasn't originally designedto do that.
You know, if you were playingwcw and if you figured out a mod
to bring in wwe characters, youknow, into that particular
world, that's hacking.
You're making that game dosomething that it's not
originally designed to do.
That's that is hacking in andof itself.
(34:02):
So it has no like morality tothe term, if you will right.
There is no, there is no goodor bad when it comes to hacking.
It's what you do with it.
You know then, and that's wherethat's where you wind up
running into just attackers,right?
So if you're talking about abank hiring a hacker, okay,
(34:23):
that's not a bad thing outsideof the gate.
It depends on the ethics of thatparticular individual and what
they're going to do with theinformation that they have.
I mean, technically I'm ahacker, right, you know I was.
I was hired to break intosystems.
But I was hired to break intosystems legally and with a uh,
(34:43):
you know, with a rules ofengagement document and like
people paid me money, like thepeople that the bank paid me
money to break into the bank,Right, Uh, you know, like that,
you know that, like we wereallowed to do that.
There was consent to do that aspart of the vulnerability
exercise to show them how theyneeded to like, shore up their
(35:04):
shit and to be able to protectthemselves.
But now, if I did that withouta rule of engagement document,
if I did that without thepermission of that particular
organization, well, now I'm abad guy.
I'm still a hacker, but now I'moperating as a bad guy.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
Right.
So intentionality is reallykind of the difference between a
hacker and just a maliciousperson.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Yeah, because that's the main point of the whole
thing is that they're allhackers.
The Plague is a hacker, thegroup with Dade and everybody
else, the tribe there.
They're all hackers.
Hackers, they're just doing itin different ways.
You know, one one guy is uh,one guy's doing it to try to, uh
, you know, fuck money out ofthe other, these oil guys, and
(35:48):
then the other guys they're justdoing it for, like,
technological exploration andfun right curiosity a lot of the
time.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Yes, joey, the whole reason why this movie has story
is because joey was justexploring yeah, he was curious
at what was going on in a uhgibson supercomputer right and
he and, and he came acrosssomething that he shouldn't have
had, and you know all thisother stuff, and yeah, when they
when they have the reference tothe uh the hacker manifesto in
(36:17):
the uh the movie, and it's.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
You know, my crime is a crime of curiosity, that's,
that's it, right there right.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
The thing with the rest of them is that it's really
more just their own sillylittle benefit, like acid, acid
burn and well, uh, kate and dade, when they're like, when they
first tv station yeah, the tvstation thing, yeah, I mean he,
he just wanted to watch someouter limits like, and he was,
he was taking, he was takingbullshit like hatred, shit off
(36:46):
the air to put outer limits on,and I think that that's a
service more than anythingpersonally no shit, right,
exactly.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
Yeah, you know she's wanting to watch some some sort
of like you know women's libnonsense and he's wanting to
watch outer limits.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
God damn it right, so I mean not if there's anything
wrong with women's lib.
Speaker 3 (37:01):
Don't come after me.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Yeah, don't, don't come at derrick, we're just
creating a narrative here, uh,but I mean seriously, though,
like I mean neither one of those.
And and it was just, it was uh,uh.
Public access tv.
You're not hurting anybody.
Nobody watches public access,not even in new york.
So no, no, like you're, you'remessing with maybe 30 people
(37:23):
maybe, maybe, 30 people, andeven then, who says that you're
not making those people happier?
Speaker 3 (37:29):
by making them watch outer limits.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
So, uh, outer limits was a pretty good show.
For any of you any of you thatare listening that don't know.
It was a pretty good showanyway, um, but yeah, so I mean,
intentionality is importantthere.
I think that was really themajority of these of the
characters in this movie is thatthey would just do it all for
whatever it is that they happento be interested in.
One wanted to watch what hewanted to watch on TV, another
(37:54):
one just like.
I mean, I don't even know whatthe freak was into Like when he
was doing this thing.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
He was using it for phone calls, you know.
I mean, there was a part inthere when Dade first shows up
to the high school and the firsttime that he talks to Freak and
Freak, looks at him and goes doyou mind?
I'm on the phone with Venezuelahere.
Right, yeah, that he talks tofreak and freak, looks at him
and goes do you mind, I'm on thephone with Venezuela here.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Right, yeah, like he's, not he's not fucking
around, he's.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
he's talking to Venezuela and he's not paying a
dime.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Right.
So like I mean there's, there'sreally not.
I guess I just don't.
Yes, I know that it's not didthat, that you know somebody
wouldn't be able to feed theirkids, or something.
I get it, but but again it'sthat's.
That's not their intention.
(38:43):
Their intention is not to hurtpeople.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
No, most of the time it was about the challenge, it
was about the, the being able todo it.
It's like the.
It's like the Jeff Goldblumquote from Jurassic park.
You know, you, you, you, uh,you.
You took more time deciding ifyou could instead of deciding
whether or not you should do it.
I'm probably paraphrasing andhorribly butchering that, but I
mean that's actually reallyclose.
(39:07):
Yeah, I mean for them, I meanthat's, that's what it is.
A lot of times it's like youknow all right, I'm just curious
, curious.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Let me see if I can pull this off now.
Right, something that I didwant to make sure to talk about
is is, um, that I really, Ireally appreciated, especially
at the time.
Nobody has ever really done agood job of showing what hacking
is in real life as far as youknow visuals and all of that
stuff.
But one thing that these guysdid a really good job on was the
physicality and hacking at thetime.
(39:39):
Um, it was it.
It was physically demanding tobe a hacker.
It was also like getting intosystems and things like that.
It was also at times theatrical,I mean, you'd, you'd have to
play a part sometimes, um, youknow that kind of stuff it there
(39:59):
was more real world work thananybody realized.
I mean it's not like somebodywould get on a computer in you
know a grade school inCalifornia and you know, and
instantaneously be able to pulleverybody's information off from
a, from a bank in Wisconsin.
You know, I mean there therewould have to be some work that
(40:20):
would go into that.
Speaker 3 (40:22):
There was?
Yeah, there was.
There was definitely a lot morework that went into it.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Yeah, he was putting in lines uh in in on uh the
computer on the computers and uhuh in the office when uh cereal
cereal was in under her desk.
Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yeah, where he's got the implants.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Yeah, he had an inline implant.
And then he climbs out fromunder the desk and walks away
with his underwear was half offhis ass and he's walking away.
I mean that kind of stuff, evenfrom the very beginning, when
he calls the TV station and he'slike, hey man, you know, I mean
I'm, I've got this boss.
That's really, you know, up my,up my craw for whatever you
(41:03):
know, Mr Kawasaki.
Yeah, I need you to help me outand you know, I got a.
I got a, I got disconnectedfrom the system and I got to get
back in there to get someinformation.
You know, can you help me out?
And, and you know, just give mea phone number.
Do you know anything aboutcomputers like that?
(41:24):
That should have,instantaneously for any any
security person, been like uh,I'm not talking to you anymore,
like because, yep, you know, doyou know anything about
computers that would that was?
It's always important toestablish whether somebody that
you're about to just pull oneover on knows anything about
what it is that you're trying todo.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Um, yeah, exactly, yeah, it's part of the again
there was a lot of acting.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
That was a part of that.
Like you said, pull on theheartstrings of those, those uh
phone operators and shit likethat it was.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
It was more demanding yeah, so much of hacking back
in like the the mid 90s.
Back in that time period wouldhave been been really dependent
on social engineering.
I mean, that is totally the waythat you would have been able
to get it done.
Even if you were the smartestcoder in the world, you would
have still been extremelydependent on social engineering
to a certain degree to be ableto bullshit your way through
(42:10):
operators, bullshit your waythrough gatekeepers at
particular companies, to be ableto get certain pieces of data
that wasn't on the Internet,because you barely had an
Internet back in 1995.
And you sure as shit didn'thave something like LinkedIn, to
where you can scrape all of theinformation that you want to
know about a particular companyand get all of the details that
(42:32):
you need.
No, you had to actually workfor this shit.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
And that was the whole point.
Like, the whole point was tofind the information, I don't
know.
I just really appreciated howthis movie showed that hacking
was really.
It wasn't as simple as justgetting on a computer.
No, I mean, granted, there wasa very important thing that was
said at Dade's 10-year-old thinghe wasn't allowed to touch a
(42:58):
computer or a touchtone phoneuntil his 18th birthday.
Like, and that's there's goodreason for that, because a real
malicious hacker will know whatto do with either of those
things that they can fucksomething up well, but if if you
notice though, in the the, thespecifics, they said touchtone
phone.
Speaker 3 (43:15):
They didn't say shit about a rotary phone nope, no
phone, he could have stillsocial engineered.
You know, he could have stilldone social engineering.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
He just had to get a rotary phone and talk to
somebody I also like how youhave in here on your on your
talking points, the ugly redbook that doesn't fit on the
shelf.
The dod rainbow books yes,those are real.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Yeah, oh yeah, no, they're.
Yeah, they're totally fuckingreal.
Yeah, those are, you know those.
There are Easter eggs allthrough this fucking movie.
You know of legitimate thingsin hacker culture and in
cyberpunk culture.
There are, there are littleEaster eggs, little nods to all
sorts of legitimate shit, and,yeah, those rainbow books that
(43:56):
he pops out with.
I mean there are, there arelittle Easter eggs, little nods
to all sorts of legitimate shit,and, yeah, those rainbow books
that he pops out with.
I mean those, those are allreal things.
They were, uh, they were veryreal and very legitimate in that
, uh, that particular timeperiod.
Uh, yeah, the, the big red bookthat doesn't fit on a shelf.
Yeah, that was um, uh, dodsecure lines, if I remember
correctly.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
You guys.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
Okay, cool, just you know, it went quiet for a second
.
I'm paranoid at this point.
I'm like oh shit.
Speaker 2 (44:27):
No, you're good, DOD Rainbow Books.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
The technical advisors that they got on this
movie.
I mean, they actually talked tothe technical consultants that
they have.
They're legitimate hackers,actually part of the culture.
Uh, you know, that wereconsidered, you know, leet as
they, uh, as they say in themovie, uh, you know they.
They got a lot of legitimateguys to consult on this movie.
(44:51):
You know, guys that were partof, like, legion of doom and, uh
, you know, and I think I thinkkevin mitnick, uh, you know, was
talked to, was talked to onthis.
Uh, I mean, you, you've gotguys that actually did some shit
where they're like okay, here'swhat you do to make this a
legitimate hacker movie.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
That's awesome.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
Like, some of the technical visuals are terrible,
right, and we know this and webeat it to death.
But there are also other thingsof just talking about the
culture of cyberpunk and theculture of hacking and some of
the legitimate techniques thatwere done and the little nods to
things of the community.
Those are absolutely legitimate.
Speaker 2 (45:30):
Like I had said right at the beginning, hacking is
boring to watch, so they had todo something visually just to
make it a little bit moreinteresting.
Ddos attacks are notinteresting to anybody.
Speaker 3 (45:45):
Oh God, no, no, no.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
yeah, ddos is bullshit, but uh, if you do a,
uh, if you do it correctlythough, you can cripple a
fucking nation well, I don'teven get me started on freaking
on ddos attacks, because I hadthe day on christmas day I had
my family got together andbought me an xbox one when they
(46:09):
were new and I went home and Ihooked that motherfucker up and
I had a fast internet connectionand I was ready to play some
games.
And you know what I couldn't do?
I couldn't play any gamesbecause fucking lizard squad had
ddos the shit out of xbox and Icouldn't fucking play.
For two days after I got abrand new xbox I was pissed.
(46:29):
But uh, oh, and is that the?
Is that what you have?
Speaker 3 (46:36):
no, that's not the uh .
That's not the uh.
The attack on din uh, that wasuh, okay, okay different.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
No, so uh yeah it was around the same time.
Uh, yeah, it would have beentime.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Yeah, it would have been.
It definitely would have been.
What I have in the other notesis talking about the Mirai
botnet, and Mirai was all of theInternet of Things bullshit
that's out there.
It was mostly security cameras.
They would use defaultpasswords to get into these
security cameras.
They would infect it with thisuh, you know, with their the,
(47:09):
the botnet, with the virus, andthen they would just keep going
from there, you know, and theywould infect other you know
piece of shit iot cameras andcontinue to like take them over.
And then one day they all justdecided, okay, we're gonna send
a bunch of fucking pings, whichis really just like an
acknowledgement.
We're going to send a bunch offucking pings, which is really
just like an acknowledgement.
Right, we're going to send justa bunch of pings and we're going
(47:30):
to DDoS the living fuck out ofthe largest DNS provider in the
country and we're just going tooverflow their systems and we're
going to just wait until thisbitch crashes.
And when that crashes, thattook with them things like
netflix, aws, uh, you know,amazon, like in general, um, all
(47:50):
sorts of like really big shitthat people depend on.
Uh, they, they crashed all ofit.
Uh, there was like 70 differentcompanies that were affected in
this, if I remember correctly,and uh it, it knocked out
everybody for almost an entirebusiness day, cost a shitload of
money.
I was in the middle of teachinga firewall, like a firewall
instructional class, when thiswent down and we couldn't access
(48:14):
the materials that we needed.
So it was me in a room withfour other guys where we're just
like all right, well, I guesswe'll fuck off for the day.
I can't do anything else,because the Internet doesn't
work.
Speaker 2 (48:27):
Right, yeah, that's pretty crazy, uh did.
Did they ever figure out whothat was?
Speaker 3 (48:33):
no, they, uh, to my knowledge, they they still don't
know, like who actually isbehind that particular botnet.
There are, there are thoughtsum starts with R, ends with an N
.
They're kind of in the middleof another skirmish right now.
But, yeah, there are suspicionsas to who may be behind it, but
(48:57):
as far as I know, they don'thave like a smoking gun.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
Okay, yeah.
Well, I mean a lot of the timewith that kind of shit.
A lot of the time, if theydon't want you to know, you're
not gonna Correct.
Speaker 3 (49:08):
Yeah, you know, for for a number of reasons they
can't let you know because of,uh, you know, security reasons,
uh, and I mean fuck you gonna doright.
You know most of these places.
If they're from other countries, they don't.
There's no extradition.
Come get me.
Right ahead sanction me, chargeme, come get my ass?
Speaker 2 (49:25):
yep, now I remember that a little bit more.
I mean, it's not um yeah, thelizard squad thing.
Speaker 3 (49:32):
That was funny nothing.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
That lizard squad thing was not funny.
It was not funny, god damn it.
I wanted to play.
I wanted to play fucking.
What was it?
It was destiny was what Iwanted to play.
I wanted to go through afucking raid on destiny so bad,
and I couldn't on my brand newxbox one, because I want to play
because I couldn't evendownload updates it was so my
christmas it was a bad.
(49:56):
It was a bad great christmas,okay.
It just it really sucked, andall because of a bunch of lizard
dicks.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
I hated them guys oh no, I get it, I it.
And the thing with like with aDDoS attack there isn't shit you
can do.
There isn't a goddamn thing youcan do.
Not at all.
That is, it's all upstream towhere, like your internet
service provider, they're theonly ones that can do anything
about it, and most of the timethey can't do shit.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
They don't know.
Yeah, because know yeah they,because they they'd have to know
, they'd have to know everythingabout it in order, in order to
do anything, they got to knowwhere it's all coming from, and
when you have a, when you have addos, specifically distributed
denial of service.
Speaker 3 (50:35):
That means it's coming at you from all sides.
Man, it's a fucking digitalkaki, there ain't shit you can
do about it.
Oh shit, okay, I warned you.
Speaker 2 (50:50):
I warned you, I love it, good stuff.
I mean, I hate it, but I loveit.
So, um, yeah, don't, don't, asas my uh, my producer is just
telling me right now to, to, totell you all please do not
Google Bukake.
Uh, that's, and if you do itit's not my fault.
(51:10):
I'm just saying.
Speaker 3 (51:11):
Yeah, no, not on us, Not on us.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
I'm now.
I'm kind of curious as towhether my producer is telling
me not to tell people to do that, because she did.
No, oh, okay you did.
Speaker 3 (51:28):
No, okay, just making sure.
I'm just making you know you'dthink, at this point it's almost
just become like a regularcolloquial, but you know, you
would think so, but maybe it'sjust because I'm a bad person
maybe it's because we'rehorrible people.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Um so, anyway, now that we're in a wholesome part
of our discussion, sure, uh, Imean, do you, do you have a an
active ingredient from thismovie?
Like I know you said that itkind of influenced you a little
bit into you know, into your,your interests and everything.
But what's your, what's youractive ingredient?
Speaker 3 (51:59):
uh, it's community.
Uh, you know, actually, with uh, with this one, I mean, uh, you
know the, the thing that yourun into with so many people
that are, you know that with uh,with this one, I mean, uh, you
know the, the thing that you runinto with so many people that
are, you know, that are intothis kind of thing.
They get into technology likethis and especially for, like
people like us that are kind ofout here in the sticks right um
it, you, you have a tendency ofbeing isolated.
You know, if you're somebodythat knows how this shit works,
(52:22):
you're kind of isolated andyou're on your own and you don't
have a whole lot of people inlike, in meat space that even
remotely understand what thehell you're talking about, let
alone are going to want to likeparticipate with, with what it
is that you might be doing.
Whereas with the hackercommunity and the cyberpunk
community, you know if you'reable to tap into that, you know
(52:44):
if you find a chat that you canget into or if you find a
message board that, uh, that youcould get into and other people
that are, you know that areconnected in this as well.
You now have community.
You now have friends all overthe fucking world, all over the
planet, of people that you cantalk to and connect with based
off of this particular activity.
(53:04):
Uh, you know the, uh, the, thedefcon hacker conference that
happens every year in vegas.
Uh, it is 30 000 hackers thatdescend on the vegas strip and,
uh, a good chunk of us, we don'tknow each other, like none of
us.
You know, there's a good goodportion of us we're like you
leave there with new friendsevery fucking time and, uh,
(53:24):
there are people who are like Ihave no idea what their names
are or what their real names are.
You know some of these.
I only know them by handle, butyet, because we happen to be in
like a particular talk, orwe're in a workshop together or
we're just at a fucking party,and somebody might, you know,
give me shit about a particularT-shirt that I'm wearing, or
something like that, you might,you know, give me shit about a
(53:45):
particular T-shirt that I'mwearing, or something like that.
And now, now we have a dialoguegoing and we can start talking
about.
You know, what's your opinionon this firewall vendor or what
are you using to, you know to,to be able to do like initial,
initial access for penetrationtests or what, what?
What's your funniest story thatyou have about social
engineering and phishing?
You know things like that.
Like now we have things that wecan talk about, we have people
(54:11):
that we can talk to about this,uh, whereas before you have no
one.
You know, like your, yourpossibility of being able to
find somebody that to connect tophysically.
Uh, you know, on thatparticular subject you didn't
have, and now, because of youknow movies like hackers.
You know movies like hackers.
You know you have people that,uh, that you can go with the end
of that movie.
When they get everybody youknow together, right, they get
(54:32):
the army of hackers, uh, youknow to to go after the bad guys
, like that's exactly what I'mtalking about.
Yeah, exactly, hack the planet.
You know, uh, where they goteverybody to you know everybody
around the world to be able tochime in and like help out.
That got everybody to you knoweverybody around the world to be
able to chime in and like helpout.
Speaker 2 (54:48):
That's, that's the community I'm talking about.
That's awesome, I dig that andI and I definitely feel that a
little bit um.
I mean, granted, when I watchedthis movie the level of hacking
that I had anything to do withwas very um, it was very
juvenile.
Uh, I mean, I I didn't reallydo hardly any of the the the
nifty shit that they kind of didon here.
I was more of just the computer, a computer nerd Like I liked
(55:12):
building computers and buildingsystems and things like that,
and but I I had other friendsthat were interested in the same
things, that were more intothat hacker stuff, and so just
kind of like it still.
It still allowed me to kind ofbe a part of that with them,
because they needed hardware tobe able to do their fun shit
(55:34):
with exactly I was the guy thatknew the hardware.
Speaker 3 (55:38):
You know everybody's got a specialty.
You know, like we were talkingabout freak earlier, his
specialty was phones.
You know, yeah, exactly, youknow everybody's got their their
particular thing.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
I mean, for for me it was definitely social
engineering yeah, and because ofthat I think that everybody has
their own little thing tocontribute to their own little
groups.
Um, yeah, so I definitely seethe community thing in there.
For me, though, the activeingredient in this for me was it
kind of taught me that youmight have a gift that could be
used for personal gain, but itdoesn't mean that it has to.
(56:10):
You can use your gift to helpothers, even to combat malicious
people that have those samegifts.
But it kind of brings me backto the RTD thing the right thing
to do.
So, yeah, I mean, that's reallyjust kind of what it enforced
with me was that kind of thething with Ian Malcolm.
You know you were so focused onwhat you should, what you could
(56:32):
do, you didn't stop to thinkwhether you should.
Speaker 3 (56:35):
Right, yeah, Then it becomes you know that, yeah,
that becomes an argument ofethics.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Right.
Um, so I got I guess I got anethical lesson out of this.
Uh, really was, was kind of mything.
So, um, derek, thanks again.
As always, it's fuckinghilarious and fun.
Um now, uh, go ahead and go andplug your socials and all your
fun shit uh, yeah, so, um, yeah,music nerd.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
So you know, if you want to listen to any sort of
like loud, angry nonsense, youcan find me on YouTube at Deke
the Gnome, the spelled T-H-A,because I was bored, and you
know, if you want to listen, youknow again, more loud, angry
nonsense.
(57:23):
You know the.
The band that I've beeninvolved with is Mortal Desire
D-E-Z-I-R-E.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
Because you know, spelling is hard.
Well, I mean, just ask JohnDavis.
I mean, korn is spelled with aK, you know.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Oh, yeah, yeah, and I mean good, good luck trying to
transcribe for that guy.
I mean, you know, when he doeshis.
Can you imagine, you know, likethe sign language people?
You know, can you imagine beinga signer at one of his shows
when he busts into like hiscrazy scatting and they're just
like I got nothing.
Speaker 2 (58:01):
I don't know what the fuck he's doing at this point.
I mean, how exactly do you signa?
I don't know how to sign that.
Right, that's awesome, that'sawesome.
Now, if you have a movie that'sbeen medicine for you and you'd
like to be on the show, you canemail me at contact at
movie-rxcom.
You can also leave a voicemailor text me at 402-519-5790.
(58:24):
If anxiety is keeping you frombeing on the show.
You can write me a couple ofparagraphs about a movie and I
can read them on air.
Remember, this movie is notintended to treat, cure or
prevent any disease, and we'llsee you at the next appointment.
So Thank you.
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