Information Security News: Re: Hollywood hacks impress experts

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>

Amusing article. Follow the link for the entire thing and to avoid my
snide remarks!

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/6800620.htm
Hollywood hacks impress experts
SECURITY TECHNOLOGY BECOMES MORE REALISTIC IN FILM
By Tamara Chuang
Orange County Register

 | Sometimes Hollywood's knack for exaggeration misleads the movie-going
 | public, Gibson said.

 | ``I actually had one of my field agent contacts tell me that FBI
 | management is upset because they can't track down hackers like they do
 | in the movies,'' Gibson said.

[...]

 | Gibson tries not to think about inaccuracies in movies. He goes to be
 | entertained.

 | ``There is definitely a trade-off between accuracy and entertainment,''
 | he said. ``This isn't a computer seminar.''


  http://grcsucks.com/

  Stating Patricia McNeill : "Gibson is masterful at stirring up an
  emotional response in the people who come to his site, and then
  manipulating these people into believing exactly what he wants them to.
  The tragedy is that these people come to him looking for facts and
  information, and come away thinking that they have found some! Gibson
  tries to present himself as a selfless source of public information, yet
  his entire site is full of emotional manipulation, misinformation, and
  misdirection. This man is nothing more that a self-promoting braggart."

Perhaps Gibson is jealous that HE isn't writing these movie segments
as seen in Swordfish? Let's take a look at some of his lingo!

http://grc.com/np/np.htm

"does not suffer from this serious shortcoming since it continuously
and affirmatively induces NanoProbe reflections from the host system"

"Our NanoProbe packets are able to (benignly) penetrate a user's
stealth firewall to verify the presence of the system hidden behind.
Since our NanoProbe packets are able to bypass stealthing, we are able
to "grade" the level and quality of the user's stealthing technology."


http://grc.com/r&d/nomoredos.htm

"If a client's ACK fails the GENESIS validation, it is tested again
using the previous random-mix value to see whether the packet was
generated under the influence of that immediately preceding random
value."

Sounds like Gibson qualifies to write future bad hacking scenes.



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