CyberWire Daily - Hacker Movies Then vs Now [Threat Vector]

Episode Date: November 27, 2025

We dive into a nostalgic yet revealing journey through classic hacker films, from WarGames to The Net and beyond, to assess what they got right, what they wildly imagined, and what those stories say about culture, fears, and cyber reality today. David Moulton, Senior Director of Thought Leadership for Unit 42  talks with Ben Hasskamp, Global Content Leader at Palo Alto Networks, who has been writing deeply on this intersection of media, tech, and risk. Together, we’ll examine how cinematic depictions of hacking have shaped public perception, influenced policy, and sometimes eerily foreshadowed modern cyber threats. Expect a blend of film critique, security insight, and cultural reflection. Join the conversation on our social media channels: Website:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Threat Research:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/LifeatPaloAltoNetworks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/unit42/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@paloaltonetworks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/PaloAltoNtwks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ About Threat Vector Threat Vector by Palo Alto Networks is your premier podcast for security thought leadership. Join us as we explore pressing cybersecurity threats, robust protection strategies, and the latest industry trends. The podcast features in-depth discussions with industry leaders, Palo Alto Networks experts, and customers, providing crucial insights for security decision-makers. Whether you're looking to stay ahead of the curve with innovative solutions or understand the evolving cybersecurity landscape, Threat Vector equips you with the knowledge needed to safeguard your organization. Palo Alto Networks Palo Alto Networks enables your team to prevent successful cyberattacks with an automated approach that delivers consistent security across the cloud, network, and mobile.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠http://paloaltonetworks.com.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to the CyberWire Network, powered by N2K. Welcome to Threat Factor, the Palo Alto Network's podcast, where we discuss pressing cybersecurity threats and resilience and uncover insights in the latest industry trends. I'm your host, David Moulton, Senior Director of Thought Leadership for Unit 42. It's like finding out like the one thing protecting, you know, Fort Knox is like an unlocked screen door. Like, you know, to get into, like, the Whopper system is a little ludicrous. So, like, that was a little bit implausible. Today I'm speaking.

Ben Hascam, global content leader for Palo Alto Networks, and the author of the Control Alt delusion series, which revisits hacker films. Ben has spent years examining the stories that we tell about technology and how they reflect, distort, or anticipate real risk. Today we're going to talk about how classic hacker movies stack up to modern reality, their technical accuracy, their lasting cultural impact, and what we can learn today from their triumphs and delusions. Ben, welcome to ThreatVector. I've been looking forward to having this conversation. It's a little different, a little lighter, and a lot more fun than some of the real serious topics that we jump into on Threat Vector.

Yeah, no, I'm excited to be here. I know we talked about this a long time, so I'm happy to be here with you. So start us off. Tell me how this whole idea began. control out delusion series and then why did you choose old hacker films as something that you wanted to examine through today's lens yeah i mean i think you know when i started here i had an idea to launch a thought leadership hub for executives and um we did that under perspectives and one of the mandates that i was given was you know hey we should do like a letters from the editor uh type of thing

And I, you know, embarrassingly enough said, like, well, I'm not really an expert in cybersecurity. There are people that are way smarter than me, like posting things. But then I thought I was like, well, I do have a film background. And I had just watched the net and thought like, is there, oh, yeah, I'd say no notes, but we'll get into that later. And I just thought, like, well, could we revisit these movies with a bit of like a cybersecurity lens on them? them to say, do these movies hold up in any sort of way? So I pitched the idea to some executives here and they essentially were like, yeah, if you want to put your name on that, go for it. And I got my yes and I ran out of the room. Yeah, don't sell past the clothes, as I say. No, I love it on

on YouTube. Sometimes you'll see like a fighter pilot grading fighter pilot scenes and what's real and what's not. And it's always fascinating to get that lens. And I think you've brought a little bit of that spirit to, you know, what we're going to talk today or talk about today with the, you know, how hacker films have maybe shaped or warped or sometimes foretold some cybersecurity realities and impacted our culture. You know, from my lens coming into this about a decade ago, this industry, to today I see how powerful movies. and television shows are at moving the public's perception of, you know, what we think of as as hackers or cybersecurity. And I'm really interested to get into where you see these films really hitting or missing for us. Yeah, and I think that's like a great point of the public

perception, you know, that it is probably the most digestible medium for, you know, the broader audience to sort of glean like what is cybersecurity like and how is a hack performed and we'll get into the delusion part a little bit more later. But I think that's like a great point that it is like that's the medium that people digest this stuff. Yeah. So you've written several of your of your essays on films like war games, the net hackers. When you first propose a series, you know, in the back of your mind, was there a movie? that you felt absolutely had to be included because you thought that one was going to be particularly prophetic

or maybe you thought it was especially delusional? I think, you know, when the series launched, the net came to mind, you know, just because that was the impetus for this. The one that I really wanted to do, the one I think that maybe affected me the most when I was especially younger was war games. That was one that I thought, if this series works and people enjoy it, the next one I have to do is war games.

I was very impressionable when I saw this, and I thought, you know, how, frankly, how easy it was for David Lightman and war games to hack. So, you know, and then to sort of working for cybersecurity company now to sort of like go back and, you know, well, it's not really like that. but I still love it. So I think the net and war games were the first two that I thought, man, we have to do these. Yeah, sometimes when I watch a television show and especially like a police show and they have the footage and they say enhance, enhance, enhance.

And it keeps getting more and more clear. And somebody's worked with images a bunch in my life, you know, my background in design. I'm going, that's not how that works. There are no more pixels. Like you can only sharpen so much. And then the same thing, I think, what you're talking like, you know, click, click, click on the keyboard. I'm in.

And it's a little ridiculous. But, you know, it works for the scene but not for reality. Ben, what was it that drew you specifically to war games? You know, you mentioned that was one that was close for you. You know, that had to have been the first, you know, call what you will, the cybersecurity movie I saw as a kid. I think, you know, this statute of limitations has run out on this. So I'm happy to share this is that when I was in high school, I hacked, if you will, into my school system and changed my grade.

Doing the, yeah, this is a real story. Doing the essentially what he did of uncovering the password, not through hacking. So I do hacking in quotes. not through hacking per se but sort of I was maybe more of a social engineer and I took

what I was doing at a time in high school directly from war games that I was like wow is this you know something that you know could actually be done turns out it could be done this is however many years ago now 20 plus years ago

so I think I'm okay you know I did get caught and had to do a you know some time if you will brief suspension, but no, it's all right. But I think like that was to me this very, this kid who kind of was on the outside looking in and he saw the, you know, the early stages of the internet sort of as his playground and was doing it to do really kind of like powerful things.

Nothing nefarious and nothing kind of what we, you know, have come to see what. hacking is nowadays because if you look at war games like what he is doing is pretty harmless now the consequences were pretty dire but i think for me like that directly impacted my life in terms of serving you know like a one-week suspension or whatever it was that gave me that i was like wow this is like such like an impactful movie in my in my life so again that's i i had to i had to throw it in there and be irresponsible if i didn't absolutely so you went back you watch war games, are there any elements that, that surprised you, you know, positively, in terms of their technical plausibility?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the concept of, you know, war dialing when he's, you know, trying to get into the, I think it's the games computer system, you know, the concept is kind of is still relevant today with like robocalling and things like that. like that still works uh like i said this that the backdoor password idea and concept um you know that it works in this uh scenario i think it moves into the implausibility like a little bit like the the hack itself um he finds the game administrator and finds out his son's name is Joshua and is like you know he literally the line in the movie is like it can't be that simple and he types in Joshua and is like he's into the system um so i think like you know it's it's like

finding out like the one thing protecting fort knocks is like an unlocked screen door like it you know to get into like the whopper system is a little ludicrous um so like that was a little bit implausible. I'm still unsure why the game system was connected to, you know, the defense system at all. And I've seen this movie probably 20 times. And I think, you know, the other element of it is like, this was sort of early stages of, you know, artificial intelligence and machine learning. And I think like where the climax of the movie, when he's, you know, they're playing tic-tac-toe and it's learning. you know, how to play the game

and realizing that there's a stalemate and then they play thousands of tick-decktoes and seconds, and then the machine finally comes to the conclusion, like, well, this is pointless. Like, the only winning move is not to play the game. Like, I'm not sure an AI system would do that, just suddenly give up and say,

wow, you know what, this is kind of futile. So that was, that, you know, I think at the time was very compelling in terms of watching a movie of, like, a computer's like, wow, like we can't win let's just stop and like let's get along um i'm not sure that would ring true today but again really really great in the moment talk to me about how the portrayal of joshua and its logic compared to some of the more modern adversarial a i or autonomous systems that we see today yeah i think we you know at its core joshua's logic was to win the game uh it

It's very simple. You know, the thing with AI is it's not evil. There's no malice. It, you know, this computer was like, I am trying to win the game. That's all I'm trying to do. And so if you think about it like this, like if you tell advanced AI, like your job is to eliminate all of my spam emails. Well, you know, it might logically conclude I will just get rid of all of your emails and, you know, or shut down your entire system or close off the internet to you. And it's like, there I did it. You're welcome. And it's like, well, no, that's not really what I meant, but to the AI, it's like, well, I won the game. You wanted me to stop this. I stopped it. You know, you're welcome. I think.

You know, Joshua was playing chess by the rules, was playing the game by the rules. Now, faster than anyone could play chess, was doing it better than anyone could play chess, where I think today AI is changing the rules of the game constantly. You know, it's not like they're, you know, they're not playing by the rules. Like, hey, would you like to play chess AI? and the adversarial AI that we're playing against, it's constantly changing. And, you know, it's like Joshua's logic was so simple

to win the game where now the logic behind AI is, you know, I don't want to say nefarious, but it's not confined to the rules of the chessboard, if you will. Right. So when we were talking about putting this together, I think you had just written about the net and, you know, how in there, there's this idea of your identity is erased and you're just gone. And, you know, I kind of laughed at like, yeah, just because you're removed from the internet doesn't mean that you're removed from reality and people still remember you. And that kind of buzzed around my head of like, you know, how do you go about pulling off the,

the trope in this movie but this is a really important cultural movie where people were sensing what it was

to be fully online how important was the net in shaping our early perceptions of the internet and you know

was it was it a little dark was it a little melodramatic you know in a way that was perhaps Perhaps more Hollywood than reality?

Yeah, it was. You know, I remember, I saw this movie in the theater with my dad. So it was 1995. Summer of 95. We just got in our first computer in the winner of 94. By the way, what was your first computer? Let's go back. It was, you know, it was the new, it was the Macintosh.

I don't remember that, you know, Apple Macintosh type. Okay, yeah. It was, but it was the big desktop, right? It was enormous. And it was, I mean, it probably took us two, three hours to set it up. You know, the 28-8 modem. Sure.

We didn't, we had AOL, and then we used Gofer. Do you remember Gofer? I don't. It's like this, it's this like hierarchical internet. So you search in like folders almost. So your guide, it's almost like a guided internet. You know, you're just sort of going from folder to folder. Oh, and it took forever to load like a page.

So it was very much you were controlled by what you could see. It was very limited in what you could see. And so I think when I saw the net in the theater to go from this hierarchical folder clicking to like she's ordering pizza was crazy to me. You know, I do want to touch on your point, too, of, like, you can't, like, deleting somebody, you know, entirely. Like, this is my dad, we walked out of the movie theater, and he was like, it is ridiculous that Sandra Bullock lives next door to you and you don't know who she is. Like, how is that possible? How would, nobody would, you know, nobody would know you. I actually just rewatched the movie last night.

And there's a scene because her mom doesn't know who she is. because she has dementia. And so she calls her mom because she's at a care facility. And she's like, mom, can you explain to them who I am? I'm your daughter. I'm Angela Bennett, you know,

and the mom can't do it. And I'm yelling at the TV. Like, ask anyone else who works there. Like, you've checked in several times to see your mom. Pay the bills. People know who you. Yeah, exactly.

Like, you, like, what are you doing? So just these things in terms of, like, logic are, fundamentally flawed, but also it was like this cultural, like, alarm bell, if you will. Like, I think people saw, oh my God, like the internet can, I can not only order a pizza, but somebody can, you know, delete my identity. Now, we've come to know that as it's not profitable to really delete somebody's identity. And I think, you know, identity theft now has moved into, you know, whatever. the, you know, the financial incentive is to do that. So I think at the time it was ludicrous.

I mean, it was like, how could this even happen? But also people saw the power of, of the internet. And I think today we sort of see it's very, because she says at one point, you know, it's so easy for them to do this because our whole lives are online. And now this is 95. Like this is before social media. This is before we've actually, like, she ordered the pizza but didn't have to pay for it, right? This is like, so her credit card information's not in there. It's, but she's talking to people online. She's giving out information online.

And the movie was aware enough of that because when they were making it, I think they, they, I read some story that this was one element of it that, like, In order to get back at her, they were going to wipe out her identity for some. She was like an advertising executive. There's like a whole oral history on it. You should read it. It's pretty good. And they went back to the director and said, the writers were like, listen, like this, an advertising executive who's manipulated online by these guys. Like, this doesn't really work.

But what if we just focused in on the identity part of it and like them manipulating her to do all these things? and one of the writers tells a story that he was like, yeah, we pitch it to the director and he just tore his rotator cuff playing tennis and he was on all these pills and he wasn't really with it and he just looked at us

and was like, yeah, that sounds good, do it. And so they ran with it. Oh, man. Sometimes you get lucky that somebody's a little loopy. Sometimes you get lucky. But I think, you know, it's, the digital identity is, it did show us then and it's true now.

Like the digital identity is fragile. And the systems we trust, a lot of the times, can, you know, turn on us in the wrong hands. Yeah. And I think that you're right at the model of deleting somebody and exploiting them individually is no, there's no profit there in comparison to, you know, stealing that identity and turning it into a synthetic and selling it or using it to, you know, grab other credit cards or other open loans, those sorts of things. things certainly seem like it's more likely that you'd want to be quiet if you stole the identity that you had done that. And in this case, it kind of went the other direction. But it did make for some interesting cinema, some entertaining cinema.

You know, it's been, what, 30 years? What do you think the next most single enduring cinematic legacy is? I mean, it has to be digital paranoia. You know, it's still resonant with, you know, everyone knows somebody who is like, I'm not on social media. I don't buy anything online with credit cards. You know, my father-in-law, he still pays his bills by check and is like, I'm not paying any bill online. So it is, no matter how secure, you know, we can say a system is, there's people still have that digital paranoia out there of, like, what this was and what it could be.

You know, I think in 1995, people's experience being online was, like, really primitive. And it's, you know, think about war games even. It's like black screen, green text. Right. But, like, the net was this mainstream movie with a major movie star at the time.

You know, she's coming off speed. It's huge. This is her next big thing. And it really made this. You know, we talked about this at the top, that it's like Hollywood made this like mainstream the internet as a powerful tool, but also like as sort of a dangerous tool that people, you know, are even to this day, are still afraid of 30 years on.

Well, let's, let's talk about hackers for a minute. Yes, let's do it. Cult, cyber movie. You know, this is, this is, this is, this film has, has cult status amongst tech audience. I'm sure there's a good size Venn diagram with Threat Vector listeners who are also fans of or at least aware of hackers.

Maybe it's been a minute because that one was what? Was that 95 as well? 95. So that was, yeah, the net was July 95, I believe. And then Hackers was September 95. So kind of that like Armageddon Deep Impact like Hollywood was doing. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, Ben, from your writing, which scenes deserve the need to be re-evaluated?

Okay. I think as we get through talking about hackers, I want to say the top of this, like, I love hackers. It was, when I first wrote about it and posted about it, I think it got the most engagement. People were excited about it. People had their own stories about it. So I want to get that. out of the way. Having said that, it's the most delusional movie we've done so far in terms of like, in terms of like substance and style. Like it's, it's ridiculous at times. I'm not saying

it's not entertaining, but, you know, to say like which scenes deserve to be re-evaluated, we need a full another podcast episode to do it. But I think when they hack the Gibson, which is the film's supercomputer, for those of you who haven't seen it, they're not looking at lines of code. They're literally flying through like a psychedelic 3D cityscape. And like towers are pulsating

and there are these data streams that are shimmering. And, you know, it's, it's, I don't understand like how they thought that made sense. But it, you know, again, we talk about war games and it's a black screen and green text and the net where she's typing a lot and flashes of code and things like that. And hackers, it's like, well, we're going to do something completely different.

And so I think, like, that scene was just this Hollywood hacking trope of, you know, it's a Jurassic Park did that a little bit when she, the girl was trying to get the park back online. And she's, like, clicking through different, you know, buildings and folders and things like that. And I'm really like, wow, that's like really cool that you can do that. And that doesn't really make sense. Hackers just blew that out of the water and said, like, we're going to be flying. And it's like we're in this like city that's like a rave and things like that. Like that is not how it works for those of you wondering, even to this day, still doesn't work that way. Maybe one day, maybe Hackers was 50 years ahead of its time.

But the whole scene where they're hacking the Gibson is, I mean, that's as delusional as it gets. Yeah. Earlier, I think you said the word ludicrous. And that's what comes to mind is it was just like, it was just entertainment, right? But I think because of the topic, it ended up being one of those things that sits in people's minds is like, that's what's going on. You know, there's this mystery. We don't know what's going on in that dark room with those hackers. And then you get these pictures.

and that sticks in your memory, right? Like, it's a little easy to remember some of the wild things that come out of a movie like hackers than, you know, a flick of a screen or some binary flowing across, you know, in green and black. What did what did the movie get right, though, in terms of maybe, you know, hacker culture or the mindset? Yeah, it's, I think it's the ethos of the hacker. You know, they directly talk about the hacker manifesto, you know, it's the world of the electron and the switch. What the hackers were doing, I think, at the time, like, they had a mission statement, right? It captured the spirit of the subculture. And, you know, hackers saw the Internet not just, like, as a tool, but it was like this, like, new front.

tier and it was it was kind of the great equalizer to authority you know it was very anti-authoritarianism right you know it's it's it's about hackers having intellectual curiosity um and kind of the belief that information should be free and democratic and and those are all like especially like the early hacker ethos was very much centered around those those concepts that mission statement you know it's it's devolved you know certainly to some extent and and we sort of you know like in in all things we've two roads diverged in a yellow wood type of thing of like okay well i'm going down this path where it's the great equalizer from a financial incentive for me and and you're um and you're an attacker or you know

the great defenders of still being like well this is a great equalizer for for me to defend against you. So the ethos is still there. It's just sort of branched off in ways that, you know, are a bit more nefarious today. But, you know, certainly that mission statement at the time was like, it was real. I mean, the hacker manifest was real.

And they wrote it directly into this movie. And honestly, kudos to them for doing that. So back in September, I ended up talking to Kyle Wilhoit about hacker culture. on threat vector and one of the things that he talked about was there was a point when it wasn't so professional to be a defender or a cybersecurity professional it was a place of curiosity and you'd ask to quote him what if and anything was possible and I think that there's then a moment where things change and that even even in the the beginning you were talking about how you know you were you're looking at this inspiration to

get into the school and uh change a grade right like the intent was like can i do this not um can i shut down the school right and sure maybe you went a little far and changed a uh an a to a b or whatever it was that you did there been but uh like i think that that's one of the things that has also changed it is you know the infusion of of money on both sides the uh the need for risk reduction because of the exposure and um you know maybe hackers in 1995 is just a fun thing to go back to and uh look at how how out of its mind how delusional the movie was uh you know for uh for a forward looking piece do you think a movie like hackers two hackers three Hackers 4 could ever exist, you know, giving in today's world, or would it be a very, very

different type of film? Yeah, I mean, well, you, to go back, I think you hit the nail on the head of just seeing what we could do, seeing what was possible, you know, like it wasn't about changing the grade. It was about, you know, can we do this? And it was almost like, it was about exploration, you know. And I think what hackers did so great was like capturing that rebellious, almost utopian spirit. Where if you do, I mean, if you're making hackers two, three, and four, you know, you, and we'll get into it, I think, some of the later movies and TV shows that, you know, have come out recently and how they kind of capture the hacker ethos and portrayal of them. You know, I think hackers, two, three, and four,

it definitely looks like a bit more nefarious. We might be following the bad guys a little bit more. There might be some sort of gray area where I think when these movies came out, you know, it was black and white. It was, you know, the plague was attacking. I think it was shipping containers. And, and they were fighting back. Where have I heard the shipping container is under attack?

story before right exactly but it was i mean it was it was very black and white and i think you know we're making it today there's some sort of you know gray area and and some sort of you know uh what they call those guys anti heroes and yeah uh it's it's a little bit grayer um but uh you know there might be more of a light on the the defenders if you will i think what hackers did what was great was like everyone saw them as as these bad guys, you know, the hackers as bad guys, they're the FBI's tracking them the whole way and they're fighting against them

or fighting this corporate hacker and he's trying to pin it on them. Like it was, from a storytelling standpoint, really compelling. But, you know, again, the style and the substance of it kind of got in its own way at times. Again, I love hackers.

Everyone, don't put me on blast. I do love it. Don't at you. How have these movies shaped public perception of hackers, over the years, especially as more cyber attacks have occurred. I mean, I think, you know, I don't know if it's a hot take, but I think almost exclusively, you know, these movies, you know, for good or bad,

it is shaping, you know, public perception. It's shaping policy. It's, you know, think about what War Games did and influencing actual policy. you know, with, you know, Reagan and NSDD, I believe, that it's like, this is, he watched the movie and turned to his national security advisor and said, could that happen? And he's like, I don't know, probably. And he's like, okay, we need to do something about this. And, you know, like hackers, I'm not saying the Hacker manifesto wasn't, you know, popular, but it was probably less well known. and then what hackers did was popularize it, right? Then people, you know, this.

So it is like these movies, I don't want to say have a responsibility for shaping the public perception. But like it certainly they have shaped it. And I think they continue to shape it even with movies that are coming out today. Do you see security professionals today who maybe lean into some of these types of narratives, when they're communicating with non-technical audiences, you know, maybe for better or for worse? You know, all of us, all of us have relationships with these movies. I think that's what is so great about it.

It, you know, brings us together, whether you're, you know, an engineer or, you know, a CEO or a CFO, like you, you have seen these movies. You know, you've experienced, you know, what they are. and I think to give Hollywood credit about anything, they really did a good job of, like, simplifying really complex things about cybersecurity. And I think, like, it provides this common ground for technical and non-technical audiences.

I probably am more of a non-technical audience member. So, like, if I'm on a board and somebody was talking to me about, well, this is why I'm non-technical, but like, let's say, you know, like mainframe vulnerabilities, okay? And, you know, identity, security, you know, I'm more inclined to say to them, like, well, explain this to me like I'm five, you know, and, you know, maybe that, you know, the CISO would say to me, well, imagine a scenario like the net where our customer database is held hostage or it's erased, you know, before our quarterly earnings call.

then I'm more like, oh my God, like what do we do to protect this now? So I think like, you know, the movies did a good job of creating that urgency and creating that common ground for us to understand, like, the dangers around it, even if it is through a mellow dramatic lens, I'm okay with that. A number of our guests this year have talked about using storytelling and talking to boards in a way that it gives them a narrative where they can see the first act, the second act, the third act, or they can see the consequences, they understand the stakes that they're up against, as opposed to giving you the, here's the dashboard readout, here's the technical analysis of our firewalls, whatever it might be that. the CISO, a very technical role, might speak to the rest of the security team in. And I think that it's important to say, like, maybe the lasting legacy of some of these films is a common experience and some language and then even be aware that this is a space that you need to be considering, whether it's a, you know, a young kid who's going to go into film school and write about it in the future, right? it made an impression or somebody who's going to sit on a board and accept the risk or fund the control that the company needs or the organization needs to put some sort of risk mitigation in place. I think that those narratives are the kind of things that can be really powerful.

But as you pointed out a couple times, some of them are just crazy and it ends up leaning into this idea of stoking fear and getting into misinformation even. These are older films. I want to jump into some of the content or the TVs and movies and shows that are a little newer. Do you see any that are doing a better job of balancing great storytelling but hitting on a level of realism that maybe these early films, didn't hold themselves to

because they're cinematic you know eat your popcorn, watch a movie walk out going wow in my gut reaction is to say not really the one

the one thing I will call out though is Mr. Robot you know I think Mr. Robot really did a nice job of showing you know audiences

what it was like and how it is now. You know, the act of cybersecurity is still, to this day, and I don't want to get into, you know, an agentic AI conversation on this particular pod, but, you know, it is still largely a person staring at a screen. I'm not positive that's inherently cinematic. So, you know, writers falling back on those tropes of frantic typing and these, like, magical progress bars and the visual metaphors, that still exists today.

I think, you know, maybe one other example would be leave the world behind. It's not about hacking. It's not really about cybersecurity. It was about, you know, I guess it was about cybersecurity because it was a hack, but, you know, they didn't show it, per se. They showed the consequences of it. They showed the aftermath of it. you know and that social trust can erode um but i think you know if if if there is one that i'd say yeah pretty good job it it'd be mr robot ben we're coming to the end here but i want to get

i want to get ben's recommendation on your favorite most ridiculous but entertaining scenes uh that you think maybe provoke a great conversation uh or reaction from the audience independent of whether they are possible or ever had been possible. Yeah, I think that, I mean, there's a lot. You know, it's where do we begin type of thing to maybe give people some spoilers, some the movies that we have coming out for future control, all delusion.

We got sneakers coming up. We have disclosure. We have leave the world behind. We're going to do zero day. the one that sticks out for me the most is swordfish Halliberry Hugh Jackman, John Travolta

it might be the most delusional one I've seen yet you know we've got we went from guessing a password with Matthew Broderick to Hugh Jackman writing this like complex worm and like I don't want to get into like, you know, he's got a gun to his head and other things are going on and and he's like, you got 60 seconds to write this worm or I'm going to kill you. And, you know,

he does it. He does, he does this thing. And pretty much everyone who's, you know, who's seen this movie and as an expert in this is like, not only would this take longer than 60 seconds, it would take weeks, if not months. And this is like with a team of people. Right. So I think like, swordfish was to me like the moment that they said we're going to make this sexy and we don't care about like any sort of of logic or realism at all like we're just going to go for it and i know people saw that movie for a bunch of different reasons uh but i think like that one scene if you want if you want to if you want to look it up on youtube it's it's spectacular um or wait until December when we're releasing the swordfish control out delusion.

Yeah, I wasn't working in security at the time. And even an uninformed Dave Moulton at that moment of seeing that movie in that scene, I was just like, no, that's ridiculous. No, I mean, yeah, it is, it is like, and I think people knew that. And people were like, you know, the net did like, is this possible? You know, war games, is that possible? And everyone is like, this is not. This is crazy. Well, Ben, I know you've got the series out there.

I want to ask where listeners can find you out on your socials and, you know, tell them where they can go read Control Alt delusion, and then I'll make sure that we've got that in our show notes. Yeah, Control Altillusion is up on Palo Alto Networks.com slash Perspectives. You can find all the articles there. We got three right now. Like I said, we're going to do the next one coming out is Sneakers, memory of Robert Redford.

You can find me on LinkedIn at Ben Hascamp. Hit me up there. Let me know if there's a movie that I'm missing or that you should recommend to me. But yeah, you can find me there and check it all out. Ben, maybe after you take down the Hollywood grates, it's off to Bollywood and to see what great international films touch on this topic.

we'll have to because this well will run dry at some point so yeah we'll have to tap into other things you know the matrix is still on our radar but we'll definitely have to start taking some some liberties at some point to keep the series going well thanks for an awesome conversation and a little bit of a divergence from our usual our usual topics today a little lighter a little bit different level of fun, talking about how hacker movies have distorted and sometimes foreshadowed cybersecurity. Now, this is a pleasure,

man. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. That's it for today. If you like what you heard, please subscribe wherever you listen. And leave us a review out on Apple Podcast or Spotify. Those reviews and your feedback really do help me understand

what you want to hear about. You can contact me directly about the show. Just shoot me an email at ThreatFector at Palo Alto Networks.com. I want to thank our executive producer, Mike Heller, our content and production teams, which include Kenny Miller,

Joe Benacord, and Virginia Tran. Original music and mixed by Elliot Peltzman. We'll be back next week. Until then, stay secure, stay vigilant. Goodbye. for now. Thank you.