A thief can't rob a yard sale these days without a computer-savvy sidekick. At least that's how they play it in the movies. In the latest big heist film - Ocean's Twelve, due out December 10 - Eddie Jemison plays George Clooney's hacker buddy. Yes, the character exists mostly to move the plot, but Jemison studied for the role. "I thought he was making this up,"Jemison says of Steven Soderbergh's script. "Two redundant servers packed in titanium cases using a closed-loop system? But it's right." Wired asked computer scientist Avi Rubin to fact-check some of cinema's famous hacks.
Ocean's Twelve
The Hack: Livingston Dell (Eddie Jemison) strings a wire between two buildings and sends a robot through a window to turn off a security alarm.
The Reality: "Well, robots play soccer now, so that's possible," Rubin says, "assuming they don't set off any motion detectors."
Geek Cred: Medium (Robots are cool, but they aren't exactly subtle.)
The Italian Job (2003)
The Hack: Lyle "The Napster" (Seth Green) invents a "kick-ass algorithm" to change the color of streetlights on demand.
The Reality: "It's unlikely that the LA traffic system is accessible from a public network," Rubin says. "But if a buddy on the inside wrote the algorithm and inserted a back door - sure."
Geek Cred: High (Bonus points for Lyle appearing on Wired's cover.)
Mission: Impossible (1996)
The Hack: Jack Harmon (Emilio Estevez) accesses an embassy's surveillance system from a laptop in an elevator shaft, then dies.
The Reality: "Not many security systems are centrally controllable from a single computer," Rubin says. "Plus, embassy systems are usually proprietary and don't use open standards."
Geek Cred: Medium (Why kill the genius in the first half hour?)
Sneakers (1992)
The Hack: Carl Arbogast (River Phoenix) and a team of security experts steal a chip that can crack and control the nation's power grid and air-traffic control system.
The Reality: "That's hokey," Rubin says. "Even if all of these systems were using the same encryption function, there's no such thing as a master key."
Geek Cred: High (Encryption. Biometrics. Not bad for 1992.)
Die Hard (1998)
The Hack: Theo (Clarence Gilyard Jr.) cracks security to open a vault and help a group of terrorists take over an office building.
The Reality: "I don't remember any explanation of how they did it," Rubin says. "They just stuck little black boxes all over the place and suddenly they were in control."
Geek Cred: Low (Real geeks show their work.)
- Steve Knopper
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Best Supporting Hackers
