21. Look at you, hacker!

You are listening to the Ericade Radio Network. Time for another episode of Amiga Flashback, the show that takes you back to the 80s and 90s. Look at you, hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, hunting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?Hacking in games is the subject of today's show. It doesn't matter if it's just a minor plot, or the whole story is about hacking. If it's hacking, and if it's retro, it will be considered. So ladies and gentlemen, please start your command lines.

I hack stuff for money. Yep, that's right, I'm a pen tester. So I actually do have a clue on how it's done. But this does not matter today. We're all about computer games and hacking right now. Fictational hacking can be stupid. Or actually fairly plausible. If it's the latter, I am willing to include the game in today's show. So all games here are at least not totally out there when it comes to telling you how it's done.But I have taken huge liberties with what I consider plausible because it's a story and it's a game. In order to run this podcast hacking simulation you will need to install suspension of disbelief version 18.17 or later. In short the stories told here are so compelling within reason of course that even huge flaws in how hacking is done can be accepted as the correct way to do it.Yeah, yes accepted I guess.

Hacker is a graphic adventure. It was made by Activision and released in 1986. It's made to have you thrown in without a clue of what's happening or what to do. According to C64vicky.com, this is most of the manual for the game. Other computer games often have lengthy instructions to explain how the game is played. Hacker is not like other computer games.We have told you how to load the program. Everything else is up to you. A real life hacker would proceed by trial and error. And that is how you play this game. The only tip we'll give you is this. Don't play hacker like a standard adventure. You will get further, faster if you just try things out instead of trying to decide what the next most logical step would be. So start hacking.As soon as you get into the Magma corporate network, a piece of really cool hardware is yours to command. It's a robot that can go through underground tunnels to different places in the world. This robot can now assemble information from spies that believe that you're representing the corporation. And then you get a whole document of illegal activities that you hand over to a governmental agent.So the verdict? I love that the game forces you to experiment, but it's mostly hacker style in spirit. It's mostly a mix of technical savvy and social engineering, but it truly has the right feeling to it. I give it 6 out of 10 Mitnicks. Well, when all is said and done, relax, sit down in your chair, and it's Miller time.

The next game up is Uplink, released in 2001 for the PC. First, a shout out to Coreos from Retro Spirit, that's Retro.gg for suggesting this one. Yeah, as I said, it was released in 2001 and I have of course played it, so it's a perfect choice for this episode. Alright, I have played all the games I'm talking about here.You are an agent of the kind that takes various jobs, that could be hacking a network that the buyers want you to because it's their enemies. It could include sabotage, stealing data, leaking information, framing people irregardless of the guilt, or why not laundering money. The interface is very well done and it looks like, how should I say this, an overly Hollywood-esqueKali Linux. Yeah I know, Kali did not exist back then, but it's a very nicely represented graphical interface if I say so. The whole thing loses a bit of realism by being, you know, so graphic. Many hacking tools in reality are text based and runs typing in a console. Maybe it's hacker style a light as well.You really need to build up your reputation to get some serious moolah. But the fact that you have to learn how to cover your tracks, by itself that's amazing. This makes it feel so much more real. The IP addresses are fake, they can often look like 666.666. You know, it's like a Klondike 555 of IP address. So sweet, that is a game to love and cherish.So the verdict? It's feeling near to perfect. You see, it balances out the idea of making a career and actually doing the dirty work. I will give it 9 out of 10 fancy beers.

Okay, yeah, well. Talk about a dark foreshadowing.Because of course it gets hacked. Xerxes is the artificial intelligence that answers the question. If the last AI we built went on a murderous rampage, wouldn't it be better if we made the next one dumb as a brick? System Shock 2, yeah, that's a game we have spoken about earlier, you know, in the Good Games Bad Endings episode of this podcast. So no more about that.But the AI getting hacked made the whole attack against the von Braun go from a bad defense situation to a total success for the intruders. You see, root access is not something you want Shodan's mad experiments to have on your ship. Dumb AI means defenseless AI, so there. The game itself has a very cyberpunk approach to hacking as a skill, but it's not very well done.So I will not delve into this. So okay, the verdict. The hacking trope of System Shock is not very believable, but then again, a game that has telekinesis as its main skill is hard to really see in that way. It's a great game, but the hack feeling not so good. However, the plot device of Xerxes being a total Windows ME security device, that is something I like.It gets 4 out of 10 gibsons.

Sir, sir, the robots are revolting! Yeah, I know, they totally are. A little bit of work on their aesthetics could've fixed that, but there we are. You are a human brain connected to some sort of device that Hack 5 could've fought up in an alternate future. It's primitive, but certainly very and extremely useful.When you enter the ship with the robots that now kill humans on sight, you're underpowered and without any access to things. But a good hacker wouldn't want to have it any other way. The robots have numbers between 100 to 999. The higher number, the better robot. As soon as you can, you must hijack a robot and hack it. Doing so starts a mini-game with you and the robot on opposite sides of the screen.where you connect cables in a way that get power over to the robot side. Or maybe it's hackish data, what do I know? The robot has its own cables, the higher number the more cables. The one that gets more power over to the other side wins. If you lose, the robot you control burns out. And if you don't control the robot, it's game over. If you win, then you pwn the robot. It's now yours to control.It wants robots when controlled, cut through anything, but you can only control them for a limited time. So you jump between defense droids, maintenance drones and... drink trays on wheels. I'm not kidding here. This game is hard for real, but the Amiga version was for some reason much easier. The verdict? Well, it's hacking in a way that one day may actually become realistic.That will be a weird time. Tough, but a very nice game. Replayability is so-so. It gets 7 out of 10 calcis.

of the games are not the only ways you can talk about hacking. Hollywood has a history of really bad portraying of hackers in movies, but sometimes they get it right. I have a podcast called IT säkerhetspodden. It's about IT security and in there I actually talk about in one episode about when Hollywood actually did it right and free games comes.to mind. The first one is War Games, the other one is Matrix Reloaded and the third one with its penny shaving magic that would be Office Space. So yeah, Hollywood can do it right and they can do it wrong as well.

to joke about this, don't we? It's of course knocking on heaven's door. I hope I don't get a cease and desist letter for this one. I think it's a parody so it should probably fall under some kind of, what do you say, fair use or something. It's fun. Don't take it so literally.

think about it I would say that war games the movie we're talking about is basically a computer game in itself it has a number of computer games in it if you think about it when the hacker actually uses a dialer a war dialer to call this NORAD computer he has offered five different games if I remember correctly and the top one and the most popular is thermonuclear warAnd that is not a good idea to play because someone may actually believe it's for real. Yeah, that's a great movie by the way. So maybe it's not just about games. Sometimes movies can be nice portraying hackers. And I would say WarGames is kind of accurate as well because they use a real war dialer as I said. It sounds a little bit like you later on used Tone Lock for this purpose in real life. You know...calling and dialing and dialing until you get a computer responding with a modem on the other side.

And another movie, I'm listing those that I had on the podcast and on the IT security podcast It's a matrix reloaded. It's not a good movie It's a really bad one if you ask me But they do portray nmap a real program being used in a way that is close to correct But it's fun to see it because I have seen it so many times in real life So yeah, if it's good enough for Neo and Trinity,

have to admit that I'm not really good with this kind of, you know, financial crimes investigations. So it's a little bit out of my remit. But you know, Office Space, they actually do a real thing called penny shaving. And they do other stuff, salami slicing it's called. Basically they take the roundings of the sons and they're kind of depositing on their own accounts. This is a real attack really, but I wouldn't recommend it. Banks are...kinda good at spotting this.

weird ending of a song. Anyway, this is DJ Demon thanking you for listening to Amiga Flashback, the 21st episode. Lucky 21 I guess. Well, next Saturday a new podcast as per usual. Thanks for listening.