Hacker shit. Some lone genius passing through systems intended to be secure for militaries and governments. It’s not about details being stupid, that’s to be expected. It’s about the very fact of power imbalance.
Random characters challenging militaries and governments and just “quickly finding” some qualified assistance in doing that. And winning. You don’t. You are an amateur and they are professionals. And if you want to do that, you are likely already under personalized surveillance.
That last thing is a trope from a free society where some people on the top are bad. And fighting them you can find help and learn, because in some sense you are protected, and guaranteed privacy and safety. There are no such free societies on our planet right now. The closest you can get is probably to join Hezbollah or some mafia, that is, well-established powerful organizations.
On the contrary, Luke Skywalker taking a lucky shot at a vulnerability that a team of engineers and military men, all of which were high-level Imperial defectors, with support from many planets of what is the Star Wars alternative of Western Europe and North America, had found by analyzing space station’s stolen blueprints, using computers and what not, is realistic. Similarly to the Empire (at that moment with kinda democratic Senate and all) being fine with anyone on the way being murdered trying to contain such high-value corpus of information.
Again, I love Star Wars so much. A lot of the materials written in AotC and RotS time describe very well, in my modest opinion, how the real world oppression really works and how you can’t really escape evil or defeat it. The best you can do is survive till that evil dies on its own, but the realistic best is planting the seeds for that time.
In general everything showing fighting your enemy as something easy, impressing upon audience that if it didn’t work out in a month, then you just give up and do something more pleasant, deceiving yourself.
At the same time the sheer extent to which personal brilliance and hard work and persistence can change the world is often downplayed in movies. Drastic changes made by characters are attributed to magic or being in some unlikely situation. But the whole reason for previously described power imbalance is that professionals perpetuate their knowledge and understanding every day, and if one’s persistent, one can beat them.
Yes, I like fiction about justice and fighting evil.
In Criminal Minds, there’s a super hacker that can basically infiltrate any system at will and do impossible things (like simultaneously scanning every street cam to find a specific license plate). Government supercomputers with elite security are no match for her.
Okay, I get it. This is a work of fiction and she’s basically a mechanism to speed up the plot.
In one episode they find some kid’s password protected laptop. The super hacker goes “oh no, I can’t hack that. It’s running Anti-Hack OS! We need the password”. The password ends up being plain text password that a brute force dictionary attack could break in seconds.
I was thinking of the Bothan pilot in Wraith Squadron books (SW again, the less consistent part of it). 12 X-Wings drop out of hyperspace approaching a planet. One of the pilots is able to spend no more than 5 minutes to find out some pretty specific shit from governmental archives of that planet, listen to encrypted communications of the Imperials, whatever.
It’s worse than the Elder Wand in HP.
In one episode they find some kid’s password protected laptop. The super hacker goes “oh no, I can’t hack that. It’s running Anti-Hack OS! We need the password”. The password ends up being plain text password that a brute force dictionary attack could break in seconds.
Well, that’s right. Thinking to install Anti-Hack OS is something only that kid can do. The govt is too stoopid.
On the contrary, Luke Skywalker taking a lucky shot
Man that’s like the ONE THING that I totally give star wars a pass for. It wasn’t a lucky shot. The design flaw was there, yes, but the targeting computer was never going to work. Red leader had a lock and it still didn’t work. Wedge Antilles, the best non-Jedi starfighter pilot in the galaxy, expressed strong doubt at least two or three times. Luke had to use the force to destroy it, there was no other way. If you can suspend your disbelief to accept the existence of the force, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story. Fucking masterpiece!
Luke Skywalker taking a lucky shot at a vulnerability that a team of engineers and military men, all of which were high-level Imperial defectors, with support from many planets of what is the Star Wars alternative of Western Europe and North America, had found by analyzing space station’s stolen blueprints, using computers and what not, is realistic.
I’m guessing you haven’t seen Rogue One. The architect of the death star was sympathetic to the rebellion and deliberately created the vulnerability of the reactor that needs only a single hit with a blaster to blow up the entire megastructure, sent a message to the rebellion explaining said flaw and instructing them to aquire the designs of the death star to identify where the reactor is so that they can exploit the flaw.
Having been involved in large (software) projects this seems quite plausible that someone near the top could intentionally leave a backdoor in there and have it go unnoticed into live testing, especially with the mix of disciplines needed in constructing such a megastructure
Hacker shit. Some lone genius passing through systems intended to be secure for militaries and governments. It’s not about details being stupid, that’s to be expected. It’s about the very fact of power imbalance.
Random characters challenging militaries and governments and just “quickly finding” some qualified assistance in doing that. And winning. You don’t. You are an amateur and they are professionals. And if you want to do that, you are likely already under personalized surveillance.
That last thing is a trope from a free society where some people on the top are bad. And fighting them you can find help and learn, because in some sense you are protected, and guaranteed privacy and safety. There are no such free societies on our planet right now. The closest you can get is probably to join Hezbollah or some mafia, that is, well-established powerful organizations.
On the contrary, Luke Skywalker taking a lucky shot at a vulnerability that a team of engineers and military men, all of which were high-level Imperial defectors, with support from many planets of what is the Star Wars alternative of Western Europe and North America, had found by analyzing space station’s stolen blueprints, using computers and what not, is realistic. Similarly to the Empire (at that moment with kinda democratic Senate and all) being fine with anyone on the way being murdered trying to contain such high-value corpus of information.
Again, I love Star Wars so much. A lot of the materials written in AotC and RotS time describe very well, in my modest opinion, how the real world oppression really works and how you can’t really escape evil or defeat it. The best you can do is survive till that evil dies on its own, but the realistic best is planting the seeds for that time.
In general everything showing fighting your enemy as something easy, impressing upon audience that if it didn’t work out in a month, then you just give up and do something more pleasant, deceiving yourself.
At the same time the sheer extent to which personal brilliance and hard work and persistence can change the world is often downplayed in movies. Drastic changes made by characters are attributed to magic or being in some unlikely situation. But the whole reason for previously described power imbalance is that professionals perpetuate their knowledge and understanding every day, and if one’s persistent, one can beat them.
Yes, I like fiction about justice and fighting evil.
In Criminal Minds, there’s a super hacker that can basically infiltrate any system at will and do impossible things (like simultaneously scanning every street cam to find a specific license plate). Government supercomputers with elite security are no match for her.
Okay, I get it. This is a work of fiction and she’s basically a mechanism to speed up the plot.
In one episode they find some kid’s password protected laptop. The super hacker goes “oh no, I can’t hack that. It’s running Anti-Hack OS! We need the password”. The password ends up being plain text password that a brute force dictionary attack could break in seconds.
I’ve never facepalmed so hard.
I was thinking of the Bothan pilot in Wraith Squadron books (SW again, the less consistent part of it). 12 X-Wings drop out of hyperspace approaching a planet. One of the pilots is able to spend no more than 5 minutes to find out some pretty specific shit from governmental archives of that planet, listen to encrypted communications of the Imperials, whatever.
It’s worse than the Elder Wand in HP.
Well, that’s right. Thinking to install Anti-Hack OS is something only that kid can do. The govt is too stoopid.
You’re ok with little planes flying through hyperspace but draw the line at space hacking, lol
Like I said, balance of power and internal consistency.
Man that’s like the ONE THING that I totally give star wars a pass for. It wasn’t a lucky shot. The design flaw was there, yes, but the targeting computer was never going to work. Red leader had a lock and it still didn’t work. Wedge Antilles, the best non-Jedi starfighter pilot in the galaxy, expressed strong doubt at least two or three times. Luke had to use the force to destroy it, there was no other way. If you can suspend your disbelief to accept the existence of the force, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story. Fucking masterpiece!
It would make sense even without the Force, because yes, we’ve seen that the targeting computer doesn’t work.
This is what’s good with Star Wars too, the Force can be replaced with something like stoic philosophy without the rest of the story imploding.
I’m guessing you haven’t seen Rogue One. The architect of the death star was sympathetic to the rebellion and deliberately created the vulnerability of the reactor that needs only a single hit with a blaster to blow up the entire megastructure, sent a message to the rebellion explaining said flaw and instructing them to aquire the designs of the death star to identify where the reactor is so that they can exploit the flaw.
Having been involved in large (software) projects this seems quite plausible that someone near the top could intentionally leave a backdoor in there and have it go unnoticed into live testing, especially with the mix of disciplines needed in constructing such a megastructure
Disney stuff doesn’t count for me.
The “Death Star” novel does.
Wasnt there some 17 year old kid that hacked the FBI some decade ago?
Professional IT security is fairly new.
3 things should match for this to happen like in the movies:
occasion, ability and need.
Two of these can happen at the same time, all three - I dunno.
Opinion on V For Vendetta?
I don’t remember much. When I watched it, the movie seemed stupid. That’s all I remember.
Maybe I’ll re-watch it