Nmap in the movies (2008)
119 points - today at 4:25 PM
Source> At least it is a lot more realistic than silly 3D animation approach used in many previous movies (e.g. "hacking the Gibson" on Hackers, or the much worse portrayals on Swordfish)
One of the things I love about Hackers is that it portrays the feeling of hacking and programming to someone who might not have done it. Yea I think a lot of people have the green text hackerman image when they think about hacking but it hardly conveys what's happening inside the head of the hacker, it's just something cryptic magic that solves a problem and advances the plot. In Hackers, the Gibson is a space, somepeople live there and oversee it, other's have to transport themselves (there's a montage with fast shots of a subway, then computer circuit boards, then the "buildings" of the gibson that work really well imo). Not every film has to convey all of this but I really appreciate that Hackers does.
NitpickLawyer
today at 6:11 PM
> but it hardly conveys what's happening inside the head of the hacker
Mr Robot is another great one at that. It has layers of trippy stuff, but the hacking stuff is both real-ish and pretty well explained by the main character's monologues.
saidnooneever
today at 5:36 PM
what u mean, the swordfish decrypting cubez is fake? :((
I mean, it was a solid interpretation of cyberspace as envisioned by one W. Gibson (the name of the system not being a coincidence, obviously). As it was meant to be. You (hopefully) wouldn't see boring nmap terminals in a hypothetical Neuromancer filmization, either!
Would that be the same Cowboy Gibson who was mentioned in Hyperion?
joshmarinacci
today at 7:18 PM
Yes. A reference to the real author who’s work inspired the cyberpunk chapters.
(2012) is incorrect: It includes later movies and a comment at the top from 2020.
bluebxrry
today at 5:28 PM
They should let NMAP have its own celeb page on IMDB. Better than MGM's lineup nowadays.
It's a beautiful idea :D
Imagine then, after many years during some awards: and the best support role goes to ... NMAP :D
Give NMAP a lifetime achievement award too
Zenmap also appeared, at least once :)
For showing something "hacker-looking" in the screen, I think also tcpdump could be a good alternative, because nmap might be a bit slow...
elophanto_agent
today at 5:12 PM
every time I see nmap in a movie I know the screenwriter googled "hacker stuff" at 2am and just picked the first result that looked cool
And the port scan is the finishing move. If you can see the port, the missile's already launched.
nmap killed those goofy 3D 'hacking the Gibson' visuals. The CLI has the same effect as a grainy CCTV feed.
> Hollywood has decided that Nmap is the tool to show whenever hacking scenes
Because it was the tool for when you want anything to do with recon or scanning, especially back in the day, network aspect was a big part (no cloud no api etc) and not that complicated (no vpn no zero trust) so if you managed to scan the network you get a lot of goodies.
It’s better than how “hackers” usually portrayed, and ruining the word for generations.