Week 8 Journal Entry

Nathan Guman

CYSE 201S Cyber Security and Social Science

Week 8 Journal Entry

Watch this video and pay attention to the way that movies distort hackers.

Hacker Rates 12 Hacking Scenes In Movies And TV | How Real Is It?

After watching the video, write a journal entry about how you think the media influences our understanding about cybersecurity

Seeing a man sitting at a computer, typing furiously, and saying things like “I’m hacking into the mainframe” is a classic Hollywood trope. Almost never accurate, these depictions often confuse people and lead to alienation of the average person from the cyberworld. People end up thinking hacking is some form of magic reserved for super nerds. I think this idea is one which contributes to the lack of diversity and people willing to go into cyber-career fields. Another trope in Hollywood which is damaging is the cyber loser-hacker. The character is in some messy basement somewhere, only eating cold pizza and using technology to spite the world.  This trope stripes dignity out of what is a growing and important professional field.

On the other hand, I appreciated what the video said about credential stuffing. Hollywood can enlighten people to real threats and real vulnerabilities. The video also mentioned how they used a real-life vulnerability in a real-life software suite found only one year before the movie was released. This kind of attention to detail and real-world examples can help demystify cybercriminality and more simply explain how simple stealing information can be.

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