The art of the hack: perception vs reality
A computer exploit is not as 'fast and furious' as portrayed on TV and film.
Overlapping browser windows. Flashing lights. A taunting, robotic voice. Maybe an electric shock or two.
TV and Hollywood have given audiences a very unrealistic image of hacking.
“My grandmother and everyone over the age of 60 watches NCIS, so they think they know,” said Dr. Charlie Miller, Senior Security Engineer at Uber Advanced Technologies Center. “But no one outside our field knows what a computer exploit is or what it really looks like.”
A computer exploit or hack is “a piece of software, a chunk of data, or a sequence of commands that takes advantage of a bug or vulnerability in order to cause unintended or unanticipated behavior to occur on computer software or hardware.”
That means a hack can be a single sentence of code – sometimes taking mere seconds, more often than not months – and either way, not very camera-worthy. (Grandmother would not be impressed.)
Software vulnerabilities also have a fairly straightforward explanation.
“Our developers are people. They’re going to make mistakes,” said Dr. Miller in his keynote address at the recent NG Security Summit in Phoenix. “They’re going to have bugs in their software, and some of these bugs are going to have security implications.”
Those bugs are Dr. Miller’s particular passion. His work as a computer hacker for the National Security Agency and computer security teams for Twitter and Uber ATC earned him the distinction “one of the most technically proficient hackers on Earth” from Foreign Policy. He has found countless vulnerabilities in Apple and Android products, and is famous for being able to compromise an iPhone by simply sending a malicious text message.
At the NG Security Summit, audience members were left feeling “a bit freaked out” as Dr. Miller discussed his latest work in automotive security. It took Dr. Miller and his colleague Chris Valasek over a year, but they remotely hacked a Jeep, ultimately controlling the radio, brakes, wipers, transmission and even the steering of the target vehicle. These demonstrated vulnerabilities led to a recall of 1.4 million Chrysler automobiles in 2015.
Compare Dr. Miller’s success to the teenage hackers on an episode of Pretty Little Liars on ABC Family (now Freeform) earlier that same year.
The faceless villain ‘A,’ who has been stalking four teenage girls for the entire series, hacks into their van’s on-board computer, causing the vehicle to swerve and crash. “A” performed his hack in seconds, and the girls’ boyfriends — who also know a thing or two about computers — hijacked a local traffic camera to track the van’s movements with the click of a mouse. The whole scene took less than two minutes.
TV hacking, you see, has commercial breaks.
GDS Group hosts experts to help experts. We strive to provide an atmosphere for our attendees that enables them to confidently lead their companies through major transformation projects. For information on upcoming events, view our Technology Summits and Executive Events. To remain current on our activities, visit GDS Group on LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter.
