Another WarGames movie to produce fear against Hackers…

Let me tell you about a movie years ago, called WarGames. It was released in the time where computers and the international basic structure of the Internet was first becoming what it is today.

There was this movie, where a kid – refered to as a “hacker” – accidentally logged into a secret government server and unknownly almost starts an international nuclear war thinking its just apart of a game.

When this movie was released it was a box office hit and overnight the term “hacker” became something feared and not what it was used to be.

Traditionally a “hacker” was refered to as a person who would take a peice of techonology – mainly a computer, pull it apart, modify it, “hack” it up & generally make it do other things other than it was originally programmed to do.

Hollywood had almost overnight changed a definition in the dictionary worldwide. A “Hacker” was no longer someone who was modifying a computer and making it do different things, it became the term for a person who would use a computer and break in and destory systems, get into computer systems they had no right to get into and the worst fear since there was very minimal security back in the 1980’s with the internet, you could theoretically start a nuclear war…

Now theres this new movie, another movie remade called WarGames: The Dead Code.

Based off the entirely same storyline as the first WarGames movie but with some minor modifications. Kid accidentally accesses and controls a government military system, almost starts a world war & yet again does everything to stop it and succeeds.

Now as a person who could be refered to as a “Hacker”. I do break security and hack into systems and such… Although I do get paid to do almost all of it. But I do not hold the ability to hack into a government computer system, nor do I have the ability to remotely hack into a computer system (without to much help) – I could loosely be refered to as a “hacker” in some sort of way.
(Generally most of the “Hacking” I do, is mostly based around XP and Vista account passwords…)

Now public fear has previously caused a reasonbly low level hacker become one of the most well known hackers and reveered hackers in current history… Kevin Mitnick, a hacker that liked a challenge and found it. He hacked into Digital, years ago – and for his victory he took a trophy, some basic meaningless code.

He was caught, captured and released. He wanted to protect himself, he went on the run and used Hacking and “Social Engeering” to stay one step ahead away from the FBI. When he was recaptured, he was realised just how scared the general public were of anyone referred to as a “Hacker”.

He was in court, the District Attourney stated that if Kevin Mitnick would be able to access a touch tone telephone he could be able to start a nuclear war…
Kevin couldn’t believe what he said and laughed and figured the judge would think this is an insane statement and would pass it off as mere fantasy. Instead the judge believed him and placed Kevin in solitary confinement.

Kevin was released years later, jaded and stunned. He now runs a very successful computer security firm but it was years before the government let him near a computer or even hold a mobile phone, something so common in todays society.

The original WarGames had a devastating effect on real people, has changed the way people perceive really smart and intelligent people who are really interested in computers and technology and turned them into people you should fear because they steal your private information and give you viruses…