For the past two years the geekiest cops in the US have headed to Palm Harbor, Florida, for the Department of Defense’s Cyber Crime Conference. It’s mostly a sober business – this morning the 600 or so special agents, investigators, and prosecutors heard a detailed review of how Wichita police used Microsoft Word to track down serial killer Dennis Rader (“BTK”). Upcoming presentations include “Malware Mitigation in Criminal Investigations” and “DoD Incident Handling Policy.” But for now they’re getting a break. Johnny Long, a security researcher at Computer Sciences Corporation and author of Google Hacking for Penetration Testers, is giving a talk on how Hollywood portrays hackers.
It’s a tough crowd, but Long knows how to play them. A scene from Swordfish gets things going. “This guy is über,” he deadpans, watching Hugh Jackman on the big screen behind him. “Not only does he memorize the program to crack DES, he types it in manually in less than 60 seconds, while he’s distracted.” Long tactfully leaves unmentioned the fact that the distraction is a blow job.
Next up: the 1995 Sandra Bullock vehicle The Net, in which our heroine accomplishes the technically impossible task of telnetting to an email account. Now Long owns his audience – they’re cracking up. But one movie nails it: the 1998 conspiracy thriller Enemy of the State. Given that the main villains are a cadre of rogue NSA agents who tap phones, cancel credit cards, and hack into -satellites while they attempt to kill Gene Hackman and Will Smith, it may seem an odd favorite for law–enforcement types. But Enemy of the State gets the details right. The mood and surveillance equipment, not to mention haircuts and aloha shirts, are light-years ahead of, say, Hackers or NetForce.
That’s why the movie’s screenwriter, David Marconi, is here. With curly hair pulled back in a ponytail and a soft-collared shirt open to reveal a smooth chest, Marconi is out of place in a room full of people who look like they’re wearing Brooks Brothers even when they’re in Gap. But he seems sincere, especially when he describes the difficulties of trying to understand the covert world. (Before writing the script, he read James Bamford’s NSA history The Puzzle Palace. He also met the daughter of a retired NSA deputy director in a Hollywood bar. She ended up with a role in the film.) He says he often felt like he was “looking in through smoky glass. How much was true or a plant designed to mislead me, I can only guess.”
The next evening, about 40 people turn out for an extracurricular screening of Enemy, including a pleasant thirtysomething woman eating popcorn. She’s not NSA, but like many people here she won’t say who she works for. This is the kind of reticence that Marconi was talking about, and she knows it. “There are days I’d really like to come home and tell my husband, ‘You wouldn’t believe what happened today,’” she says. “But you can’t. You can’t if you want to do the work.” Maybe her husband should watch the movie.
- Robin Mejia
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Hollywood Undercover
