The worlds of cinema and computing are more connected than many people think. Many films have been influenced by computer-related themes, but this particular one created an entire generation of hackers who were amazed by the adventures of a young man and his computer.
When you are young and haven't entered university yet, the factors that can lead you to choose a particular career are varied. Whether it's because of a family member, an acquaintance, or because something related to it inspired you, the truth is that during adolescence most of us change our minds several times, and many times we end up studying something we never imagined years before. But certain events, when very important and of great magnitude, become decisive. Just as after a great campaign in a world championship of a certain sport it is normal for many young people to turn to that sport, when a movie or TV series is very successful, everyone wants to achieve the same in real life.
WarGames
That is what happened with WarGames, a film that has achieved cult status and whose recognition increases over the years. It was directed by John Badham, released in 1983, and starring Matthew Broderick (as David Lightman), Ally Sheedy (Jennifer), and John Wood as Dr. Stephen Falken.
David is a very intelligent and talented young man with computers, but his lack of dedication to school causes problems with his grades, something unacceptable in his strict family. To avoid problems with his parents, he often alters the grades his teachers give him thanks to his periodic infiltrations into the school computer system. He also once gets plane tickets for himself and his girlfriend without paying a cent.
Over time, his knowledge reaches ever higher levels, thanks to his contacts with the incipient hacker community of the time, who communicated through the old BBS systems. This is how he learns to use blue boxes to make his hacking calls at no cost, along with several other techniques shown in the film.
At a certain point, he begins infiltrating video game development companies to test their games and have some fun. To do this, he calls phone numbers in his city, trying them one by one, and when he finds one that gives a 'modem signal', he stores it. This technique was widely used by hackers of the time, and in honor of this film it was later called 'wardialing'.
He would then call the numbers with modem connections and log into systems to test games, using various tricks to obtain usernames and passwords. On one occasion, during a visit to a video game company, David asks permission to go to the bathroom, and on the way he passes by the developers' computers, where he sees sticky notes on the monitors with access data.
In other workstations there are no sticky notes, but the name of the person working there is visible, and David notes them down to try later. This type of activity was later called 'Social Engineering', and it refers to the way hackers obtain information that one almost certainly uses for their passwords from their habits and customs, from the trash one throws away, etc.
Until, after much trying, he comes across a NORAD computer (the Department of Defense computer center), although he doesn't know it because he is greeted by a system that invites him to play Chess, Poker, or Global Thermonuclear War, among others. Obviously, he chooses the latter, but the system asks him to authenticate, and David tries for several days without success. This becomes an obsession, until while listing the 'games' available on the system, David sees one called 'Falken's Maze', so he begins investigating and discovers that physicist (and heuristics specialist) Stephen Falken is the one who developed the systems.
Falken's Maze
So, after searching Falken's entire life in libraries, scientific papers, and everything within his reach, David realizes that the key to logging in is Joshua, the name of Falken's deceased son. Now David manages to start a game of Global Thermonuclear War without knowing he is challenging the computer, which believes it is facing the Russians and unleashes a nuclear escalation that cannot be stopped.
Of course, this is not because David lacks talent; the problem is that the computer has been programmed to work that way to prevent last-second regrets from stopping defensive nuclear attacks. At this point, the film becomes incredibly prophetic: in September of that same year, the famous 'autumn equinox incident' occurred, in which Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov saved the world by refusing to launch missiles in response to a supposed attack from the Americans.
Apparently, the satellites that took measurements were affected by the position of the autumn sun at a given moment and interpreted those thermal values as those produced by a missile, actually five missiles. The Russian systems raised the alarm and theoretically a counterattack should have been launched from Moscow, but Petrov, who was in charge, decided to wait. He astutely considered that no one could start a nuclear attack with only five missiles, and luckily he was right. That pragmatic thinking could almost be said to have saved the world.
Returning to David and his adventures, when things begin to get complicated and the Pentagon realizes what is about to happen, it is not difficult for them to find David by tracing the calls the computer has received in recent days.
WarGames was a film that clearly was ahead of its time in several aspects: it introduces social engineering, security problems, the Internet, or phreaking and blue boxes in the scene where David calls from a phone booth for free by making sounds with a soda can. Also, as we already mentioned, it anticipates by a few months the autumn equinox incident, a coincidence that gave the film even more fame, and related to the incident it also has a moralizing tone, as it argues that it is wrong to leave certain decisions to a computer. Perhaps at times the film becomes somewhat fanciful (How can you believe there is no way to stop the 'game' once started?) but you have to consider that in 1983 little was known about computing, and these topics were seen almost as science fiction.
It is in this that the film was again innovative, as it was the first time a film dealt with computers. Before 'WarGames', you could only see computers in space movies. In fact, in Superman 3 from the same year, Richard Pryor becomes a programmer by taking an overnight course, and then is able to develop a system that modifies the weather and unleashes a hurricane over Colombia.
You see how those movies were more naive, so the great merit of 'WarGames' is having opened everyone's eyes and shown us an introduction to hacking. The film was a huge success, grossing over $75 million in its first months, launching Matthew Broderick to fame, and unleashing a fever for modems and BBS.
Just months after the film's release, the famous attacks of the Chaos Computer Club on NASA systems occurred, and it was the last straw: the FBI began a hunt against several of the most famous hacker gangs, which ended with their dissolution and the imprisonment of several of their members.
Those of us who were teenagers at the time and saw the film ran to our Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum and never looked at them the same way again; after seeing David in action, we all wanted to be hackers, change our school grades, or call for free from a phone booth. Truly 'WarGames' has been a breeding ground for hackers.
