![]() ![]() It was easier for me than it would have been for other people. But it’s because I had a better knowledge of what the DoD systems were like. There were hacks into various places I shouldn’t have been. I guess you never did break into a military system?ĭSL: Unfortunately, that’s one thing that can’t be discussed. VB: So you’re a model for David Lightman. That got changed to breaking into Norad and taking control of the system. As we look back on the talk about space-based weapons, it looks silly now. In the real world, hackers used command prompts that had no visualization tools. It didn’t have all of this ridiculous 3-D virtual reality and other nonsense. I would still argue that, even to this day, War Games had the most accurate representation of real hacking than any other hacker movie. They added the speech synthesis of the war computer. VB: How much of the events were pretend and how much real?ĭSL: Like Hollywood does to things, when they made it into a movie, they made it cute. But what did come out was a screenplay that had space-based weapons systems. That wasn’t reflected in the movie at all or even the original screenplay. They had an idea about doing a Stephen Hawking character with a protégé in the story. They knew someone at the William Morris Agency who was a friend of mine. VB: How did they know about you in the first place?ĭSL: That was coincidental. It was easy to get in if you found a modem.ĭSL: I got together with the screenwriters Larry Lasker and Walter Parkes in the beginning of 1979. But the front doors were pretty wide open in other organizations. So you had to find back doors to get into DoD computers. ![]() The Department of Defense had strong defenses. It was about finding things you could break into. That was more of a trick to start the hack. VB:What were some real-life events that led to the movie and to your participation in it?ĭSL: “War dialing,” where you used the computer to randomly dial numbers in search of a computer to hack, was pretty common. The command for the Blue Cube, which was broken into in War Games, was at the place where I went for meetings. I went to Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association and Association of Old Crows meetings. I was in the United States Strategic Institute in high school. Unlike in the movie, where David Lightman doesn’t know so much about the Defense Department and was much more into video games, I was into the military. That was very different, about doing cute tricks. VB: What got you into computers, going online, and into the world of hacking?ĭSL: Hacking was a natural migration. They influenced me to go into hacking, even though most of what they said was wrong. Popular Science and the Andromeda Strain had a big impact on me. In 1975, when Popular Electronics had the first kit PC on its cover, I got very excited. VB: Tell me about your early years and how you became a techie.ĭSL: It started, like a lot of people in the 50 and over crowd, with ham radio. I caught up with him again in front of the faux Trevi fountain at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas under a cheerful but fake blue sky. I first met Lewis in 1994 when one of his friends described him as a “walking encyclopedia.” Now 50, he’s a clean-tech executive living in China and just starting writing the Zero Day Defense blog. David Scott Lewis, the one-time hacker who was the model for Broderick’s David Lightman character, spoke about the movie on stage on Saturday at the Defcon conference. Twenty five years later, the movie is still credited for creating the public’s impression of the life of hackers. The movie told the story of how a kid found a back door into a military computer and accidentally set off a nuclear confrontation and launched the careers of actors Ally Sheedy and Mathew Broderick. “ War Games” was the seminal geek hacker movie that inspired many a young cyber sleuth when it debuted in 1983. Hear from CIOs, CTOs, and other C-level and senior execs on data and AI strategies at the Future of Work Summit this January 12, 2022. ![]()
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