Baud boy, baud boy, what'cha gonna' do?

Matthew Broderick was l33t* years before Trinity ran Nmap and pulled off an OpenSSH sploit. Seriously, it's not that hard to run a port scanner and download a canned exploit. David Lightman (Broderick's character) put real effort into his gear. Plus, the Matrix sequels were philosophical silliness dolled up with CGI to arouse drowsy neurons. WarGames explored some similar themes with better plot and better acting as summed up in David Lightman's "Is it a game... or is it real?" vs. Neo's "Whoa."

The movie's hacking premise rests on the tools in chapter 18 of AHT3. Wardialers also featured in the non-fiction account of computer espionage, The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage, by Cliff Stoll.

More recent examples of what can be done with a laptop, modem, and free time can be found in this SCADA presentation. (The author is from New Zealand. If you look closely at some of the photos you can see hobbits.) The presentation also debunks a few myths about the Ultimate Doom (UD) that could be caused by messing with SCADA systems. While UD isn't impossible, the most common examples of potential UD cited in news stories are significantly overblown.

*This is the only time leetspeek will appear on this web site. I promise.