Not long ago, I used to run an entertainment review site that commented on television, movies, and PC games. That site was a lot of fun but has been retired just about a year now. Maybe someday the site will be resurrected as it was very popular due tot he subject matter. Anyway, I was watching a movie the other night that had such bad hacking ‘skills’ displayed that it was laughable. I thought that it would be a great idea for a post on my now defunct movie site but then I remembered that I could just post it here! So with that said I present to you my list of the best and worst hacking films of all time!

Best

Wargames (1983): The top of the list! What can you say about this movie other than marvel at it’s greatness. What’s that you say? You’re not convinced it’s the best… well then your probably under 40. For those of us that were around during that time, the accuracy of the equipment and methods used were 100% spot on. It completely represented the aura of the time. If you buy the DVD that has the director’s comments, you’ll find that they purposely used a hodgepodge of older computer equipment so it would accurately represent what a teenager would be able to afford or scrounge up during that time. Incredible accuracy, especially the part showing how to jack a pay telephone with a soda can pull tab. What’s a pull tab? Go away kid, ya bother me!

Tron (1982): Even though this film came out in the 80’s, it feels like a late 70’s film. I don’t know why. Basically it’s about a hacker that is transported into the digital universe inside a computer, and must survive combat as a cyber gladiator in order to stop the villainous Master Control. It wanes a little in places, but make no mistake this was a groundbreaking adventure at the time. The graphics, while dated now, were extremely cutting edge at the time and wowed movie audiences lucky enough to see it on the big screen.

Pirates of Silicon Valley (1999): Not so much a hacking film as a corporate espionage film… involving computer companies. Fantastic tale from start to finish. My only gripe is that it does leave out some key information. For instance, the only reason Bill Gates got in to see the higher up’s at IBM was that his mother served on the same board of directors for a charity that the IBM chairman served on. She got the wheels rolling on the meeting. It also makes Bill Gates out to be some rebellious drop out who risked everything to start his company. Truth is, Bill was a multi millionaire by the time he went to college thanks to a generous trust fund from his grandparents and parents, who were also very wealthy. So was Paul Allen, who knew Bill from their grade school days at one the most exclusive and expensive private schools in Seattle. They weren’t hurting for anything… unlike Jobs and Wozniak. Still the historical bend of this movie makes it one of the best biopic films for computer nostalgia nerds.

Worst

Sneakers (1992): Some of the hacking was OK, but the social commentary peppered throughout by Robert Redford made this film unwatchable. If you want to blame Republicans for everything, watch a Michael Moore movie. If you want to make a hacking movie, leave your left wing garbage out and just make a damn hacking film. Is that too much to ask there, Bobby? The story revolves around two college buddies who take different paths in life. One becomes an “ethical” hacker, and the other...well, he is not quite so noble, although rich. The underlying message is that capitalist greed is bad but being broke, running from the FBI, and working in a run down, abandoned warehouse is morally superior. Some great plot twists and comic scenes ruined by over the top political grandstanding make this a movie I would only watch if it were free… and beer was free.

The Net (1995): Ugh. The only saving grace of this movie is Sandra Bullock. Technology at that time was emerging at a great pace. This thing called ‘Internet’ was finally taking off and the filmmakers and writers took a lot of poetic justice to portray what they thought computers might be able to do in the 2 months between shooting the movie and releasing it. It had it’s moments but the whininess of Bullock and the whole portrayal of the security software hack made it almost unwatchable. A good MST3K candidate.

Swordfish (2001): This movie’s tagline should tell you just how unrealistic the hacking is: "Log on. Hack in. Go anywhere. Steal everything." Yeah, it’s that easy. If you watch the movie, you'll realize that's exactly what the filmmakers believe. John Travolta is a villain who’s grand scheme is to steal billions from the U.S. government through, you guessed it… hacking. The entire premise of the plot is that in the vast, computerized world of modern finance, $9.5 billion could slip through the cracks so that a clever hacker could, with hacking, transfer it to his own account unnoticed. Heck, I could use a new car… I’m gonna hack a few grand right now using my Hollywood generated CGI screens with 3d hacking tools where the mouse moves even though your hands are busy typing! It might have fooled the unwashed masses, but we know better.

This is going to be the shortest post on this board, and one of the most embarrassing!

I ‘inherited’ a file full of string values that contained over 10,000 entries. Problem was, they were all lower case. I wasn’t about to sit there and manually capitalize the first letter of each word in the list so I thought, “Hey… just write a quick function in the program that does it for you. It should only take a few lines, right?” Well, not for me.

I started working on a function that read in each line, searched for the first character and capitalized it. But how would you account for some words that should not be capitalized like ‘de’ as in “Cul de Sac” or initials or abbreviations? The more I thought about it, the more complex the function got. I started worrying that I was missing something… Well, I was.

Like I said, it’s kind of embarrassing, but while Googling to try and make sure I covered all my bases, I came across this gem on the MSDN site:

myString = System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.TextInfo.ToTitleCase( myString );

I couldn't believe it. It takes care of all automatic capitalization of the first letter of a word or string of words... Ugh! Oh well, I hope at least it saves some developer an hour of headaches!

Before IIS7, the main method for allowing users to download files of a protected type (exe, zip, etc.) meant writing a function based off the Stream method and writing the file out based on individual name. Thankfully with IIS7+ there is a much easier way.

First, I would recommend that all files meant for internet user download be maintained in a separate virtual directory. For example, if your site was called www.mysite.com, the downloadable files should be in a directory like www.mysite.com/userdownloads. Once the files are in place, you need to do the following:

1)  Open the IIS 7.0 (or later) Manager on the server

2)  Select the site and click on "Handler Mappings"

3)  Select "Add Module Mapping"

4)  Enter the fields on the window:

     a)  Request Path:   where are the files to be found don't put a leading slash.  Example: "userdownloads/*.exe" to allow all files in the userdownloads directory ending in .exe to be downloaded when the request is for any executable file within the virtual path that you would have defined earlier.

     b)  Module:  StaticFileModule - this will handle requests containing your request path and return the file to you.

     c)  Executable:  don't enter anything.

     d)  Name:  whatever you want to call it:  "ClientSide Executables"

5)  Click on "Request Restrictions" and click on the checkbox and ensure that "File" option is selected.  (This will only apply to files)

6)  Click on the "Access" tab.  Ensure that "Script" is selected.

7)  Click on "OK" to close this window

8)  Click on "OK" to close the main Handler screen.

9)  Your handler should now appear in the list with the other handlers. 

10)  Test it out by opening a browser and accessing an executable file.

For our latest software venture, we needed to create a tree view listing of all the countries that we were going to support. Naturally, we created an XML input file that was formed like this:

   1: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

   2: <Countries>

   3:   <Country Name="Argentina" value="http://buenosaires.en.craigslist.org">

   4:   </Country>

   5:   <Country Name="Australia" value="http://sydney.craigslist.com.au">

   6:       <Region Name="Adelaide" value="http://adelaide.craigslist.com.au" />

   7:       <Region Name="Brisbane" value="http://brisbane.craigslist.com.au" />

   8:       <Region Name="Cairns" value="http://cairns.craigslist.com.au" />

   9:       <Region Name="Canberra" value="http://canberra.craigslist.com.au" />

  10:       <Region Name="Darwin" value="http://darwin.craigslist.com.au" />

  11:       <Region Name="Gold Coast" value="http://goldcoast.craigslist.com.au" />

  12:       <Region Name="Melbourne" value="http://melbourne.craigslist.com.au" />

  13:       <Region Name="Newcastle" value="http://ntl.craigslist.com.au" />

  14:       <Region Name="Perth" value="http://perth.craigslist.com.au" />

  15:       <Region Name="Sydney" value="http://sydney.craigslist.com.au" />

  16:       <Region Name="Tasmania" value="http://hobart.craigslist.com.au" />

  17:       <Region Name="Wollongong" value="http://wollongong.craigslist.com.au" />

  18:   </Country>

  19:   <Country Name="Austria" value="http://vienna.en.craigslist.at">

  20:   </Country>

  21: ... and so on...

The problem was that XML requires a root element (in this case, Countries). This meant that just blindly loading the XML left us with a single root node (Countries) with all the individual country information (Country) listed below that. We wanted to start our TreeView with the Country listings as root elements.

The solution was to create a reader function that would skip the root element found in traditional reader samples, like the example on Microsoft’s MSDN site. We created a function here that does just that.

   1: private void OnFormLoad(object sender, EventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     try

   4:     {

   5:         XmlDocument dom = new XmlDocument();

   6:         dom.Load("CountryList.xml"); 

   7:         treeView1.Nodes.Clear();

   8:         AddTreeViewChildNodes(treeView1.Nodes, dom.DocumentElement);

   9:         treeView1.Refresh();

  10:         treeView1.CollapseAll();

  11:     }

  12:     catch (XmlException xmlEx)

  13:     {

  14:         MessageBox.Show(xmlEx.Message);

  15:     }

  16:     catch (Exception ex)

  17:     {

  18:         MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);

  19:     }

  20: }

  21:  

  22: private void AddTreeViewChildNodes(TreeNodeCollection parent_nodes, XmlNode xml_node)

  23: {

  24:     foreach (XmlNode child_node in xml_node.ChildNodes)

  25:     {

  26:         // Make the new TreeView node.

  27:         TreeNode new_node = parent_nodes.Add(child_node.Attributes["Name"].Value);

  28:         // Recursively make this node's descendants.

  29:         AddTreeViewChildNodes(new_node.Nodes, child_node);

  30:         // If this is a leaf node, make sure it's visible.

  31:         if (new_node.Nodes.Count == 0) new_node.EnsureVisible();

  32:     }

  33: }

The code is deceptively simple… It’s only 3 lines of recursive C#. You can always change the text that is displayed by manipulating the child_node.Attributes["Name"].Value line. It’s important to call treeView1.Refresh() when the function is complete to ensure all of the boxes and nodes are fully drawn.

What we’re left with is a nice TreeView control that has each country listed as a root element, despite what the XML says.

BTW: If your wondering how we did the 3 state checkbox, that information will be provided in a later post.

eSource Development has announced that they will be coming out with 2 brand new software titles this month. One is built on our popular eMail Scraper™, the other is a full featured website walker.

Craigslist Companion™ will feature some of the same email scraping capabilities of eMail Scraper, as well as a watcher program that runs in the background and searches for new listings based on your geographic selections and search criteria.'

Look for our BETA version out next week.

The second program is eSource WebWalker™. It is a full featured website crawler that allows you to specify a URL and have all of the codes, sitemaps, URL’s, and complete file breakdown within seconds. The results can then be exported to XML or HTML. eSource WebWalker™ will also feature an SEO tool that will let you see the top number of Google search results based on the keywords you enter. You can then see on the results page the exact location, count, and type of keywords used that makes them get top Google Rankings.

Look for BETA versions of both software to be available next week.