better not feel like a little game of chess ...?
In 1983 The Cold War was at its best, and Ronald Reagan, then president of the USA, referring to the now defunct Soviet Union as "Evil Empire." Expressions like "Star Wars" had become popular, and reflected a concern for the development experienced by military technology. The computer began to become popular thanks to machines like the beloved Spectrum, although personal computers themselves were still an exotic extravagance, and not used to meet in private homes, whether it was not that of anyone connected professionally with the computer. Internet was still a product of science fiction is beginning to establish the scientific basis. The same science-fiction, however, began to turn their eyes to the esoteric world, exploring its possibilities. War Games was one of the first incursions of the same gender.
War Games, directed by John Badham was probably the first film starring a hacker, and create the stereotype that would cut out these characters in the film. The film also draws on nuclear psychosis at the time. Matthew Broderick, one of his first starring roles, plays a madcap teenager, a fan of computers and video games that is about to trigger World War III.
note below reveal plot details.
The film begins with an introduction, in which we see two Yankee army officers receiving the fateful order to launch missiles against the Soviet Union. However, one of them hesitated at the prospect of committing genocide, and refuses to obey the order. Then the credits, while the image jumps to a meeting of staff. We learned that last scene was for a pop quiz that has resulted in a resounding failure: most of the officers it refused to obey the eviction order. The conclusion reached is that the human factor is a problem that has to be removed from the chain of command. It was therefore decided to replace the officers in charge of launching an artificial intelligence system that will obey the orders of the President and the General Staff did not stop to think. Note the detail that the film sibylline considered devoid of remorse to the latter. The military, let it clear from the beginning, nothing comes up well in this film.
The action jumps to introduce the protagonist, David (Matthew Broderick) at the time of receive a failing grade in biology, something that does not seem to worry too much. In effect, then we see how the juvenile offender falsifies his notes using his home computer, and step impress his girlfriend with his knowledge and his contempt for the law. Our protagonist then sees an ad for a videogame company, and with the intention of seeing them before anyone schedules a random telephone tracking of phone numbers in the area, with the intention of locating the company computer. One of the machines that scan detected on your answers with a list of games, so that our protagonist is sure to have located their prey.
To invade the system, David finds out who was the developer of the system, a Professor Falken and after investigating details of his life, guess the password. Then asks you run a program called "thermonuclear war." The problem is that the computer that has contacted is not a video game company, but the artificial intelligence system that now controls nuclear missiles, and the program has asked to run is a strategy game, but the program which calculates the most appropriate military response to a possible Soviet attack. David breaks the connection before they can reach you. The next day the news is brown which has got, but when destroying tests, the computer will call back to inform you that the game is, and will continue until there is a winner.
Clearly, the FBI just catching David, and bring him to the military where is the computer of yore. But when he was Assistant Professor Falk is doing him good cop, David takes an oversight to sneak into the computer again, and find out the current direction of the teacher, who was officially dead. Then he manages to escape, disguised in a group of tourists and later, accompanied by his girlfriend, shows up at the teacher (John Wood ) and manages to convince him to help them.
Professor Falken and David are presented in the complex control, and manage to convince the military that's all a fantasy and not to allow cyber counterattack. But at the time the computer takes the initiative, running a brute force attack against the code of missile launching. In a race against time to stop the machine before I get the code, she is forced to play a game of noughts and crosses herself. The machine begins to test combinations that always end in a draw, going into a loop. When you get the code, instead of launching missiles, begins to evaluate all possible conflict scenarios in search of a favorable strategy, Always reaching a final result of "push". Finally, finding no favorable solution, program execution aborts with a phrase that became famous thanks to this movie: "Strange game. The only way to win is not playing. " End of spoiler.
details of this film to consider:
The way the hacker played by Matthew Broderick manages to sneak onto computers. Unlike other imaginative techniques used by pirates of fiction, Broderick's character in a consultation event sneak a post-it in which a user forgets the password is no longer recorded, and in another test (and succeeds) using the user name of the child. Precisely this kind of carelessness (leave the password written in an accessible place, or use a password easy to tell from someone aware of the privacy of the user) are responsible for a large number of malicious attacks in real life.
also the tactic of calling random phone numbers looking for a response from a computer was used by the hackers of the pre-Internet era, combined with tools like the mythical "bluebox" . In fact, the technique described in the film was renamed as "wardialing" hereafter due to the impact that produced it.
The scene where the protagonist escapes camouflaged among a group of tourists on a tour by a high security military bunker may seem laughable. However, this type of guided tours for morbid tourists actually existed at the time of the film, but do not know if they having got today (would not surprise me, really).
Although the film it may seem even a little gullible today to actually caused quite a stir, and even some panic at the time it premiered. In short, a good movie to see first hand the fear of atomic force at the time of the Cold War, and distrust that prevailed then to something that today has become ubiquitous, the world of computers.
This article was originally written for the site Mondofriki.com, and published on 24/04/2007
0 comments:
Post a Comment