WarGames and the Great Hacking Scare of 1983

James W writes "Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of WarGames and Christopher Knight has written a retrospective about the film and its impact on popular culture. In addition to discussing how the movie has held up over time, WarGames was responsible for what Knight calls the Great Hacking Scare of 1983. Some examples mentioned are 'one CBS Evening News report at the time that seriously questioned whether parents should allow their children to access the outside world via their personal computers at home. A magazine article suggested that computer modems be 'locked up' just like firearms, to keep them out of the reach of teenagers. I even heard one pundit proclaim that there was no need for regular people to be able to log in to a remote system: that if you need to access your bank account, a friendly teller was just a short drive away. And Bill Gates once declared that the average person would never have a need for more than 640 kilobytes of memory in a personal computer, too.'" 2008 is also 25 years after the real-life prevention of a WarGames-style nuclear incident.

It Was Close

[Doc Ruby]

I was pretty close with some people who had actually hacked into some of those military systems back then. Like Strategic Air Command and others - some people were even showing off evidence they'd hacked the Shuttle's robotic Space Arm. We all watched _Wargames_ together, and were impressed with how basically accurate so much of it was.

Sure, the voice synth following the kids around was fake, and the exploding monitors when driving the AI into a paradox was typical Hollywood BS, as well as a couple other details of the action. Like the geek scoring Ally Sheedy. But overall, it wasn't that wrong about the vulnerability of those systems to any halfway-determined, fairly clever crackers. Of which there were more than just my friends: 1983 was the height of the Cold War, and the Russians still had budgets to spend.

In fact, the public portrayal of our private hobby convinced several of my friends to get out of the game for good, right after seeing the movie. And I've heard that a lot of the cracks portrayed stopped working shortly afterwards.

I just expect that today's even more complex, widespread and lethal systems are just as vulnerable. While not to the same elementary tricks, today's crackers have progressed along with those defending. We really have to be sure that there are a lot of human consciences in the loops, absolutely required to accept passing on an order that could kill or harm millions, maybe billions of people - maybe indeed destroy the world. If there's any lesson to learn, it's that the hairtrigger to extinction itself is the greatest risk, no matter how much those with their fingers on it would like to believe that the safety is engaged.

it certainly cost me

[thermian]

The day after my parents saw that movie my modem was taken away, never to return.

Apparently they were genuinely afraid that I might start a war inadvertently by logging into the wrong computer by mistake.

Ok, so I had, um, well, logged into a mainframe that sort of didn't belong to me, but I was a kid, and this was the eighties, it was still harmless fun back then, more likely to see you employed then arrested. Nowadays for the same thing I'd be sent to prison.

Now that's scary.

Effect on hacking, BBSes etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing the movie did was launch a boom of pre-teen and teenage boys (like myself) buying modems, "war-dialing" and hacking into systems. A ton of people surged into the BBS "modem world" after that movie, including myself with my old trusty Hayes-compatible 300 baud modem hooked up to my Commodore 64 and television set. Half the boards were run by teenagers, and almost all of them had a hacking section. There were a lot of Feature Group B (950 numbers) floating around back then so people didn't have to pay for calls, nothing I ever did - from my house. I didn't get interested in hacking until the late 1980s, went to 2600 meetings, traveled to a few cons and I knew a number of people in the Legion of Doom as well as the Masters of Deception and other groups. Coming into the early 1990s you had groups who really had total control of Bell companies, the then-popular x.25 protocol networks, as well as having penetrated major Internet points more than you'd think, not to mention major software/hardware companies.

The thing that really killed all of this was not government persecution. It was the carrot, not the stick - in 1994, a number of hackers began to get good jobs, by 1995 most hackers had good jobs and by 1996 pretty much every hacker had a good job. I went from being broke in 1996 to making $60 grand a year in 1997 without a college diploma.

Another interesting thing is 2600 was founded in the year TAP died, 1984. TAP had come out of YIPL, a magazine of Abbie Hoffman's old Yippies. TAP meetings and 2600 meetings basically came out of the new left of the 1960s. I look at the whole hacker movement from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s as an interesting historical social movement. It is kind of like the US labor movement, which was also bought out by money (in the late 1940s).

Re:Movie wasn't that good

[Mascot]

I was affected by it because of how realistic it was, obviously accepting the things they did to make it actually watchable.

We're talking acoustic modem, with realistic soundbit (from what I remember). Social engineering and research to figure out passwords, not just staring at a screen for 10 seconds before magically punching in the correct one. Back doors. Phreaking (dunno if the portrayal was accurate, but phone booths around these parts fell victim to something not too far removed from what was shown in the movie).

I agree with the article, the movie works even today. It's only a few years since I last watched it myself, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Re:It Was Close

[morgan_greywolf]

In fact, the public portrayal of our private hobby convinced several of my friends to get out of the game for good, right after seeing the movie. And I've heard that a lot of the cracks portrayed stopped working shortly afterwards

You mean like the old "using a paperclip to short the receiver against the coin slot on a payphone to make a free call trick"?

Yeah, I know. I was there. AT&T bastards.

Re:It Was Close

[elrous0]

On the DVD commentary track, director John Badham talks about how they used several technical advisers from a specific phreaker club (in Michigan I think) to handle the film's technical details and hacker culture. They did a good job. It is easily the most technically accurate of the hacker films (not that it has much competition, really). And it has a good story too. Holds up amazingly well even today (wish they would release an anamorphic DVD of it, though).

Well the US military follows that doctrine

[Sycraft-fu]

Humans are always in the loop when it comes to weapons systems. Even things like modern planes. Humans don't actually trigger bomb releases anymore. It's far too complicated and there's a lot involved in guided weapons. It's all programmed in prior to the mission. Ok so what does the pilot do then? They consent to release. When they activate the trigger it doesn't drop the bomb, it just enables the plane to drop it when it is time.

That is, of course, unnecessary in a technical sense. The plane could simply drop at the programmed location. However it is part of the doctrine that a human always has the final call. Should the pilot decide something is wrong, they don't press the trigger and the bomb won't drop.

So at this point at least in the US, it is very much a system where humans are always in the loop. Machines may do the actual work, but there is always a human with their finger on the trigger who has to make the decision to fire.

Re:Movie wasn't that good

[hvm2hvm]

Actually all I liked was the line at the end of the movie: "Strange game, the only winning move is not to play" or something similar. It's obvious, simple and not a major breakthrough but coming from the computer and put in that context it felt so right. It just struck something in me, something very few movies can do these days.

The rest of the movie was similar to the movies for children that they make today like spy-kids and others (OK, maybe a bit better): some kid that can do anything and that is not believed by elders because he's so immature and inexperienced so he has to take matters into his own hands.

Re:It Was Close

[businessnerd]

I was actually watching this movie recently. I was really surprised (and pleased) at how well this movie holds up technically. The only technical aspect that I disagreed with was the human-like response of Joshua and its self-awareness. Something that was highly improbably then, and even today, but maybe the future. Anyhow, you can chalk that up to making the story more compelling and the computer more interesting.

But the parent post brings up an interesting point. There are not a lot of technically accurate hacker/computer movies out there. The movie Hackers is a prime example of a completely inaccurate movie. The only other hacker movie I've seen that comes close is Takedown (essentially the Kevin Mitnick story from the perspective of the guy who caught him), but this is based on real events, so it's not quite the same. Furthermore, I've read that the events in the movie differ from Mitnicks account of things and there is a lot of embellishment and artistic license. But I'm rambling.

So I ask the Slashdot audience - What other computer/hacker/technology movies out there actually measure up on a technical level?

same basic computer hacks as today

[peter303]

I saw War Games on AMC Tuesday night and hadnt seen it for years. The ancient computers brought back nightmares of the limitations of that time. However, many of the tricks then-very-skinny Matthew Broedrick used to hack computers are still relevant. He systematically scanned ports, looked up personal info on people for password clues, used social engineering to fleece information. The strangest thing was him physically going to the library to do research. People use online search now.

Re:I'm still amazed at

[oraclejon]

He said "best quote ever by an end user,"

While the asexual reproduction quote is pretty good, I still think the best overall quote is a toss up between:

General Beringer: Goddammit, I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd do any good!

and this exchange:

Stephen Falken: General, what you see on these screens up here is a fantasy; a computer enhanced hallucination. Those blips are not real missiles. They're phantoms.
McKittrick: Jack, there's nothing to indicate a simulation at all. Everything is working perfectly!
Stephen Falken: But does it make any sense?
General Beringer: Does what make any sense?
Stephen Falken: [Points to the screens] That!
General Beringer: Look, I don't have time for a conversation right now.
Stephen Falken: General, are you prepared to destroy the enemy?
General Beringer: You betcha!
Stephen Falken: Do you think they know that?
General Beringer: I believe we've made that clear enough.
Stephen Falken: Then don't! Tell the president to ride out the attack
Colonel Joe Conley: Sir, they need a decision.
Stephen Falken: General, do you really believe that the enemy would attack without provocation, using so many missiles, bombers, and subs so that we would have no choice but to totally annihilate them?
[Over the intercom they hear there's one minute and thirty seconds to impact]
Stephen Falken: General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one!

The sole reason I couldn't have a modem

[logicassasin]

My mother was all set to buy a modem for the Atari 800XL I was getting for christmas that year. After she walked out of the theater, the modem was cancelled until I was 18. My mother and teachers felt it was for the best as I was one of a handful of kids they figured would attempt to copy the movie.

I did, secretly, get a 2400baud modem that I used with my Atari ST during my sophmore year in high school. I hit a few BBS's but that's about all you COULD really do back then.

Re:Ugh...

[GaratNW]

The rest of the quote:

Well, it didn't - it took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem. - 1989 speech on the history of the microcomputer industry.

Just so there's no real room to misinterpret his intent. He admitted that the _microprocessor_ limitation was hit a lot sooner than anyone expected.

Re:Lies!

[samkass]

or "I proposed funding that was crucial to the creation of the World Wide Web"... I mean seriously, read some of his speeches discussing shopping, paying bills, banking, emailing, etc., becoming commonplace on an "information superhighway". It's there in the Congressional Record from the early 80's. That's back when I was still on my Commodore 128 which I eventually got a 300 baud modem for. So yes, Gore's speeches, bills, and advocacy helped make the internet what it is today.

I honestly doubt you'd be making your comment on a site called "Slashdot" if Gore had never been born.

Re:It Was Close

[corbettw]

People didn't learn that lesson too quickly. Broderick used that same trick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, three years later.

Re:phreaking

[Mascot]

Yes, I know. But obviously he didn't request a ready trunk that way, he did it with a piece of metal. I don't know if what he did was in fact a workable exploit at the time, but I do know phone booths around here were prone to something similar (ie, not sound based). Anyways, my point was that while it may not have been entirely accurate, the fact was you *could* fool phone booths in much the manner that was portrayed in the move.

Lots of other small details were dead on. For those like me, with some interest in computers, a movie that actually got some things right was amazing. The movie *as a whole* is a different matter.

Even looking back now, how many other mainstream movies are there that gets even a single thing about this stuff right. I can't think of anything except the scenes in Wargames and the ssh root exploit in The Matrix (Reloaded, I think it was).

Re:Lies!

[stewbacca]

Actually, to Gore's credit, he was the single leading proponent of the Internet being infused into classrooms around the nation. Because of his efforts, even the most poor schools in our country have practically the same access as our best. This accomplishment is not to be belittled, but it is also a far cry from taking credit for "creating" something that already exists.