Random Most Ridiculous Movie Hacking Scenes (14 items)

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  (#14) WarGames

  • Matthew Broderick, William H. Macy, Ally Sheedy, Michael Madsen, Dabney Coleman, Maury Chaykin, John Spencer, Barry Corbin, John Wood, James Tolkan, Art LaFleur, Jason Bernard, Michael Ensign, Eddie Deezen, Alan Blumenfeld, Dennis Lipscomb, Drew Snyder, Kent Williams, Stephen Lee, Frances E. Nealy, Michael Adams, Tom Lawrence, Stack Pierce, William Bogert, Billy Ray Sharkey, Juanin Clay, Joe Dorsey, Jesse D. Goins, Irving Metzman, John Garber, Lucinda Crosby, Charles Akins, David Clover, Paul V. Picerni Jr., Brad David, Erik Stern, James Ackerman, Frankie Hill, Gary Bisig, Edward Jahnke, Susan Davis, Glenn Standifer, Duncan Wilmore, Howie Allen, Martha Shaw, Gary Sexton, Jim Harriott

  What's Gettin' Hacked? The grading records at David Lightman's Seattle high school.

  How Long Does It Take? 53 seconds.

  What's His Hacking Style? This young hacker, played by a charming Matthew Broderick, tries to impress his crush by dialing into the school's computer system in order to alter their grades. While the scene is filled with '80s phone and computer sounds, it isn't over the top or unrealistic in its portrayal of a teenaged home hacker using his personal rig to mess around with vulnerable operating systems and databases.

  WarGames is hailed as one of the few films to get hacking in its early days right, and its release in 1983 caused the US government to assess its own technological weaknesses.
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  (#1) Swordfish

  • Halle Berry, John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, Don Cheadle, Vinnie Jones, Sam Shepard, Drea de Matteo, Tim DeKay, Tate Donovan, Natalia Sokolova, William Mapother, Zach Grenier, Camryn Grimes, Timothy Omundson, Rudolf Martin, Carmen Argenziano, Angelo Pagan, Gary Rodriguez, Ilia Volok, Margaret Travolta, Nick Loren, Kirk B. R. Woller, Scott Burkholder, Jonathan Fraser, George Marshall Ruge, Jeff Ramsey, Marina Black, Anika Poitier, Leo Lee, Denney Pierce, Dean Duval, Tait Ruppert, Dana Hee, Joey Box, Craig Braun, Kevin F. Sherry, Alex Morissen, Russ Cootey, Chic Daniel, Cory Parella, Mark Riccardi, Shawn Woods, Mark Soper, Laura Lane, Andrew Lakey, Astrid Veillon, Sam Travolta, Tim Storms, Ryan Wulff, Craig Lally, Corinne Chooey, Kerry Kletter, Mark Donnell, Debbie Evans, Sierra Farber, Travis Rosario, Ann Travolta, Jonathan Pessin, Mimi Fletcher, Debbie Entin, Rusty McClennon, Brenda Eimers, Tom Morris, George A. Chase, Jason Christopher, Richard Householder, Michael Arias

  What's Gettin' Hacked? The world's best hacker, Stanley Jobson, has one minute to infiltrate the Department of Defense's secure server while being... distracted.

  How Long Does It Take? 1 minute, 7 seconds.

  What's His Hacking Style? Stanley is forced to hack into the Department of Defense's server with a trigger to his head and a woman unzipping his pants in a slightly nonconsensual manner. While bad guy Gabriel, played by John Travolta with blond highlights and a soul patch, and his cronies watch, Stanley sloppily and nonsensically smashes his fingers against the keyboard of the strangely shaped laptop he's been given while strings of numbers and letters scroll across the screen.

  While the data sequence may look technical, professional hackers who've analyzed the scene say it's a massive mess.
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  (#12) Jurassic Park

  • Samuel L. Jackson, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Wayne Knight, B. D. Wong, Ariana Richards, Richard Kiley, Miguel Sandoval, Bob Peck, Joseph Mazzello, Martin Ferrero, Whit Hertford, Gary Rodriguez, Robert 'Bobby Z' Zajonc, Jophery C. Brown, Cameron Thor, Gerald R. Molen, Dean Cundey, Christopher John Fields, Greg Burson, Brian Smrz, Laura Burnett, Brad M. Bucklin, Tom Mishler, Adrian Escober

  What's Gettin' Hacked? Lex, with the moral support of her brother Tim, is trying to hack into Jurassic Park's security system in order to save Alan and Ellie from a team of velociraptors. 

  How Long Does It Take? 57 seconds.

  What's Her Hacking Style? The 3D visualizations on the computer Lex digs into in order to reengage the system are laughable by today's standards. The UNIX system computer, though, really existed, and there is a 3D filing system called a fsn. The fsn never really caught on, but its interface is similar to what viewers see here. While the jury is out on whether or not this scene depicts a true hack, it is probably the most realistic of Jurassic Park's computer sequences, and the one that inspired legions of young girls to become computer programmers.
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  (#9) Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

  • William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, Catherine Hicks, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Nichelle Nichols, Grace Lee Whitney, Jane Wiedlin, Jane Wyatt, Vijay Amritraj, Walter Koenig, Majel Barrett, John Schuck, Michael Berryman, Brock Peters, Joe Lando, Mark Lenard, Madge Sinclair, Robert Ellenstein, Raymond Singer, Robin Curtis, Phil Rubenstein, Nick Ramus, Stephen Liska, Alex Henteloff, Kirk R. Thatcher, Judy Levitt, Viola Kates Stimpson, Everett Lee, Marty Pistone, Teresa E. Victor, Eve Smith, Jeff Lester, Tony Edwards, Michael Snyder, Bob Sarlatte, Joe Adamson, Monique DeSart, Joe Knowland, Scott DeVenney, Mike Timoney, John Miranda, Greg Karas, David Ellenstein, Thaddeus Golas, James Menges, Richard Harder, Newell Tarrant, Mike Brislane, Joseph Naradzay, Tom Mustin, Jeffrey Martin, Donald W. Zautcke

  What's Gettin' Hacked? A 1986 Apple Macintosh that is somehow able to converse with computer files from 2286 containing the chemical formula for the famous Star Trek material transparent aluminum.

  How Long Does It Take? 23 seconds.

  What's His Hacking Style? Scotty acts like a bit of a fumbling idiot here with this quaint Apple model that's 300+ years older than his day-to-day equipment. He tries to verbally command the computer to no avail, then tries to speak into the mouse, until he's patronizingly instructed to use the keyboard. He then launches into a two-finger typing technique that rapidly accelerates and magically enters the correct commands to engage a series of screen pop-ups and data about the transparent aluminum. Cut him some slack, though. The '80s were a weird time for technology.
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  (#4) Superman III

  • Richard Pryor, Christopher Reeve, Margot Kidder, Annette O'Toole, Robert Vaughn, Pamela Stephenson, Jackie Cooper, Annie Ross, David Winning, Marc McClure, Gavin O'Herlihy

  What's Gettin' Hacked? Programmer Gus, played by comedy legend Richard Pryor, hacks his company's financial system in order to siphon off unaccounted for half-cents from paychecks.

  How Long Does It Take? 34 seconds.

  What's His Hacking Style? Gus infiltrates the system with ease by using the command "OVERRIDE ALL SECURITY." Considering he works for a multinational corporation named Webscoe, this seems a little unrealistic. It only takes a few keystrokes for him to amass the extra funds. He then employs a bulky stylus with a long, curled cord to work some touchscreen wizardry.
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  (#10) Firewall

  • Harrison Ford, Paul Bettany, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Alan Arkin, Virginia Madsen, Robert Patrick, Mary Lynn Rajskub, Carly Schroeder, Robert Forster, Jimmy Bennett, Ty Olsson, David Lewis, Eric Keenleyside, Brenda Crichlow, Ona Grauer, Kett Turton, Vince Vieluf, Zahf Paroo, Ken Tremblett, Beverley Breuer, Matthew Currie Holmes, Andrew McNee, Jennifer Kitchen, Kevin Mundy, Vincent Gale, Candus Churchill, Elizabeth Thai, Levi Woods, Finn Michael, Richard Hendery, Pat Jenkinson, Lovena Fox, Joe Richards, Susan Skemp, David Wills, Gail Ann Lewis, Joani Bye, Sue Leonard, Marcus Mosely, Catherine St. Germain

  What's Gettin' Hacked? In order to store images of 10,000 bank account numbers, bank security specialist Jack Stanfield (Harrison Ford) uses his daughter's mp3 player as a storage device. This is a case of hardware hacking.

  How Long Does It Take? 50 seconds to rig the iPod.

  What's His Hacking Style? Firewall, a 2006 film that Ford may or may not even remember making at this point, centers around a group of high-end crooks targeting Jack for a large-scale scheme. Jack uses an iPod to transfer the bank account numbers demanded by his adversaries, explaining, incorrectly, "10,000 songs, 10,000 account numbers. It doesn't know the difference." This fast-and-loose logic does neatly sum up the half-baked tone of this scene.

  From there, Jack and the man in charge of the plan, Bill, exchange jargon about "OCR programs" and various types of data while one of Bill's henchmen makes sure the iPod is ready for the file dump.

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