I typically do not enjoy how hacking is portrayed in entertainment. I almost always groan when I have to watch any hacking scene in a movie or TV show. In fact, I also groan watching different police and medical shows. Sigh, but I still sit down and watch 9-1-1. I just prefer things to be more realistic.

There is one scene that always sticks out when I think about TV hacking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ

I hate it. Two people using a keyboard?!?

Admittedly, I do understand why hacking scenes are typically unrealistic. Sometimes, hacking just isn’t really exciting, visually, at least. And even if it was, would the average person understand? Much of my CTF time is spent eating a pizza, drinking an energy drink, and clacking away at the keyboard while looking at a wall of text. For work, once much of what I need to do is scripted, I just lock the workstation and wander away. Waiting for scripts to complete running, or an assessment to finish, just isn’t exciting. Reviewing those reports is none the better. So I understand why some liberties are taken to make TV and movie hacking scenes a tad more exciting.

However, I feel this can give an unrealistic perspective of what hacking and cybersecurity is. I do feel the depiction is changing for the better, but some people will still choose to believe what they see on television and treat it as reality.