Does any movie depict hacking accurately?

[Elok]

Watched "Live Free or Die Hard" the other day--fun, if over-the-top silly. But I had to laugh when Justin Long knew how to open the most secure area of a top-secret facility using some sort of credit card and his 1337 h4><><0r sk1llz. Especially the part where the door is opened by drawing some sort of weird polyhedron on a number pad. Of course, I don't know anything about hacking or even comp sci, so for all I know that's accurate, but I doubt it.

And there are other examples. GoldenEye comes to mind; has anyone ever actually told a computer to "send spike?" WTF does that mean? Oh, and Transformers. Don't even know where to begin with Transformers.

[Solver]

Most depictions of hacking and programming in movies are totally ridiculous. Even aside from the fact that you don't hack into a super-secure system you hadn't encountered before within 2 minutes.

The most commonly used trick in movies is to open up the command prompt and run some basic commands (I often see pings and traceroutes) to get lots of info on the screen. Sometimes they just output pure garbage on the screen, like what you get if you try to view a binary file as text. In reality, if you're looking to crack an executable, you'll probably be looking at its code in a hex editor / debugger but hex code isn't commonly shown on the big screen, neither is assembly or, in fact, any code in a real programming language.

I enjoyed this link which lists a bunch of commonly seen computer inanities in movies/TV.

[MarkG]

best movie on hacking: swordfish

[Dinner]

The Jason movies all had the hacking with a machete thing down pat.

[PLATO]

I want Hollywood OS

[Wraith]

If it's just the hacking side, then it'd have to be Wargames.

Wraith
"Remember you told me to tell you when you were acting rudely and insensitively? Remember that? You're doing it right now." -- Jim Sting ("Wargames")

[alva]

[Riesstiu IV]

IMO "The Matrix" is about as accurate as it gets when it comes to hacking. *inhales paint thinner*

[Kuciwalker]

WarGames was actually pretty accurate. In some ways frighteningly so.

[rmsharpe]

I think we're all forgetting a little movie called Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Why has no one mentioned the Macbook-with-a-dildo Independence Day sequence? I don't know much about hacking, but I'm pretty sure that's how it works.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Originally posted by Riesstiu IV
IMO "The Matrix" is about as accurate as it gets when it comes to hacking. *inhales paint thinner*

You're closer than you think. See http://www.securityfocus.com/news/4831 - they actually use a real network scanner tool in The Matrix Reloaded, and exploit a vulnerability that actually existed. The details are embellished a bit, but it *is* as about as accurate as it gets in any film that I've seen with hacking in it.

[Tuberski]

Hackers

ACK!

[Thue]

Believe it or not, The Matrix had one of the best depictations.

[Pekka]

No accurate hacking movies out there. WarGames comes closest with actual method of wardialing, which in itself isn't hacking per se, but at least it didn't invent stuff as to what hacking is, with 3D objects flying around and "hack the first module" kind of weird crap.

Or tracing in command prompt.

but sadly I'd say WarGames as well. Sadly, because it might be the closest one. Says a lot about the other movies made.