WarGames: 25 Years Later

2008-09-16 08:43

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/09/15/wargames_25years_later/ By David Konow Tom's Games September 15, 2008 "Shall We Play a Game?" In the late spring of 1983, a little-know movie hit the big screen and introduced audiences to a new world of technology filled with things that audiences had never heard of before: Hackers. Artificial intelligence. Supercomputers. Firewalls. Backdoor passwords. War dialing. Defcon. And of course, an interesting simulation called Global Thermonuclear War. When "WarGames" arrived during the height of the Cold War, it combined cutting edge computer technology with a modern military thriller. The concept was simple enough: a bright high school student accidentally accesses a military supercomputer supercomputer called WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) and begins playing what he thinks is a game. Except it's not, and soon he discovers that the "game" he's playing may very well trigger World War III with the Soviet Union. Directed by John Badham ("Saturday Night Fever," "Blue Thunder") and starring Matthew Broderick as the iconic high school computer whiz David Lightman, "WarGames" became a sleeper hit and took American audiences, largely unfamiliar with computers and high-tech, by storm. Consider how Broderick's character had an IMSAI 8080 microcomputer that he connected to a modem via an acoustic coupler. "WarGames" was a blockbuster film about computers before the phenomenon of the personal computer, arriving before Apple's famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial for the Macintosh. Few movies have been as influential as "WarGames." The popular hacker conference Defcon was named after the movie's "DEFCON" system at NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command). The terms "war dialing" and "war driving" are derived from "WarGames," specifically Lightman programming his computer to dial every number in Sunnyvale, Calif., in order to find what he thinks is a new computer game company (it's actually NORAD's computer system WOPR). The hacker magazine "2600" was launched the following year after the movie's release and was named in honor of the 2600-Hz tone used by famous hacker and phone phreaking pioneer John "Captain Crunch" Draper, who served as a technical advisor for "WarGames." In fact, screenwriters Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes spoke with a number of hackers and security experts and would later write "Sneakers," another high-tech thriller released in 1992. In addition to being a box office smash, grossing approximately $80 million in the summer of 1983, "WarGames" became instantly relevant like no other film at that time. "Wired" magazine referred to the movie as "Silicon Valley's 'Jaws'" in that it frightened the masses about the dangers of hackers and AI-controlled weapons. In fact, the movie immediately caught the attention of former President Ronald Reagan; reportedly, "WarGames" spooked some legislators in Washington, D.C., who began to wonder if something like the movie's plot could really happen. And in fact, later that year the infamous hacker group known as "the 414s" broke into several computer systems, including a U.S. Department of Defense computer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (you know, where they perform top secret nuclear weapon research). The incidents led to Congress passing several anti-hacking laws. [...] __________________________________________________ Register now for HITBSecConf2008 - Malaysia! With a new triple-track conference featuring 4 keynote speakers and over 35 international experts, this is the largest network security event in Asia and the Middle East! http://conference.hackinthebox.org/hitbsecconf2008kl/

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