Zander is my response to the way Hollywood, for decades now, have depicted hackers. Now we all know that nobody likes seeing their profession of choice splayed out on the big screen completely incorrectly. At any given moment, somewhere in the world, there is a nurse, car mechanic, or federal official poking their significant other sharply in the ribs (I’m sure not for the 1st or 1000th time), pointing at the screen and declaring shenanigans on some process or procedure their fictional equivalent is illustrating. I honestly don’t know how our police force (from Wildlife Ranger to Federal Agent) can even go to a movie or watch TV since 98% of the time they are portrayed as fumbling morons – I mean seriously, on screen most of them don’t even handle their weapons correctly…

Anyway, back to Zander. If you search for the “Best Hacker Movies of All Time,” even on IMDB, you will get a list that includes (way at the top) Hackers (1995), Antitrust (2001) and Swordfish (2001) – zomg I can’t help but laugh at the idiotic dance Hugh Jackman does as he is “hacking” a system with about 16 monitors all showing some weird 3D cube blob that he is manipulating physically… uuugh… Granted these are all older films, but typically the #1 on the list is WarGames (1983) which is an AWESOME film that actually DOES show hacking correctly, and it is even older – so we know Hollywood can get it correct when they start out with a “real concept” in mind. The truly interesting item behind WarGames is that it was presented during a time when most people did not have home computers, so the story-telling concepts within were very foreign to most of their audience (and yet they wrote it correctly), whereas back in the 2000s everyone typically did have a home computer and Hollywood mucked it all up (and the same holds true today). I have my theories behind all this but once again, let’s get back to Zander…

I am a long-time engineer, specifically software, and considered inside several industries as an expert in video game technologies and computer science. I’ve been following the Hacker / Phreaker / Demoscene since computers became available on the market – Zander is my hacker story.

Most folks assume Hollywood films are created the way they are because ‘real’ Hacking is boring…

Well, it doesn’t have to be 🙂