Hollywood takes us to the world of imagination and dream. That means mothing is impossible in films; imagination becomes reality and dreams come true. Movies are always mirrors of the future. But when it comes to cyber terror or cyber war, reality seems to surpass imagination. Cyber terrors occur first, movies are runners up.
Die-hard 4.0 starring Bruce Willis is one that reflected what had happened already in reality. The story is relatively rather simple compared to how complicated the term cyber sounds to us. The scene started with a massive attack by hackers on computer networks that connect cities and companies. Terrorists took control of traffic, telecommunication, financial services, and power, messing up all network systems. To keep dominance, they killed hackers who could catch up with them and normalize the chaos. Bruce Willis, representing analog tendencies, worked with a genius who knew everything about computers and network systems.
The lesson the movie embraced was that information networks are so fragile that hackers in some level can ruin a world where people absolutely rely on computer networks. The movie Chaos also depicted what’s going on in real life. It was about a criminal who could break into online banking systems to take 100 dollars a day from a random account. The criminal repeated the act and transacted the money to his account. The total amount he stole from accounts reached one billion dollars. Moviegoers thought at the time that the scenario could happen in reality. In theory, a hacker can attack a huge number of bank accounts at a time.
Fire Wall, shown in 2006, told us about a loophole of the cutting-edge computer world. Traditional gangs took an easy route to break down a firewall, a wall that protects the computers from intrusion. They just kidnapped a family of a high-ranking official who worked for a computer security company. The story showed how easy it was to nullify the wall.
There was a movie casting a question about how computer programs could put a person in danger by switching one’s information with a different person’s. Sandra Bullock found herself that the whole information about her such as name, social security number and driver’s license had changed and was switched with a strange person’s. If a villain has an ability to change his information with a billionaire’s, he can be just like Sandra Bullock.
The film Sneakers shown in 1992 was a story about an extraordinary hacker who took out money from the-haves’ accounts, only to donate the money to charities. Korean films joined Hollywood a little bit late. Monopoly in 2006 was a Korean version of illegal withdrawal of five trillion Won from 100 million accounts. Critics once said that the scenario gave motives to hackers who can be potential criminals. Swordfish followed the case. The rascals justified themselves as safeguards protecting the world from terrorists. In order to collect the money for the campaign for terrorism, they robbed the banks in ways of cyber attacks. Movie watchdogs criticize that movies sometimes beautify hackers as characters who are smart and sexy, thus giving wrong inspiration to young hackers.
