TV Shows - False Portrayal of Hacking

When someone hears the word "hacking", often times they think of an individual slumped over a computer for hours, bashing the keyboard nonsensically, with large strings of green text rolling down the screen. Another common misconception of hacking is posting a Facebook status when a friend forgets to logout on your computer. This is due to the fact that many TV shows, such as NCIS or CSI portray hacking as typing a few keys, and opening a backdoor into the NSA's database. However, this thought process is very mislead, and there is much more to hacking than is depicted on such TV shows.

When I think of TV shows and hacking, a specific episode of NCIS stands out in my head. There is a YouTube video entitled Two Idiots One Keyboard that shows the two main technologists, Abby and McGee, attempting to stop a firewall breach. The first few seconds of the scene shows many windows rapidly opening and closing on Abby's computer. This would not happen. If a true backdoor was used and the firewall was breached, some systems may trigger alerts, but windows would not rapidly open and close like that.

The scene also shows Abby and McGee typing on a screen with the flashing windows, without a terminal or any other sort of typing interface open. They are literally typing into nothing. In order for commands to work, a terminal must be open, or some other interface that accepts commands.

The proceeding 30 seconds aggravates me to no end. It shows Abby and McGee both typing on a single keyboard. This is virtually impossible. In order for two individuals to use the same keyboard, they would have to know exactly what the other person was doing in order to not mess up any commands being sent to the system. At the speed they were typing, it is literally impossible.

There is also several scenes of McGee "hacking" other federal databases with a few keystrokes. Granted this technically is possible, given the confidentiality of the targeted databases, it most likely would not be that easy. He would have had to find an exploit in the database, figure out how to leverage the exploit to his advantage, and then actually execute the attack, the first two steps alone taking potentially several hours to several days.

Despite all of the aforementioned technological fallacies in NCIS, there is one TV show that I have seen that is shockingly accurate; the very well-known Mr. Robot. There are several scenes showing the main character, Elliot, running commands in a Linux terminal. Not only did I recognize many of these commands, he ran the exact commands that would be used in the given situation. The technological accuracy in Mr. Robot is impeccable, and truly shows how much the writers cared for the topic.

Hacking, and technology in general, in TV shows must be taken with a grain of salt. Most of the time, they are horrifyingly inaccurate, and doctored to no end. Such a false portrayal embeds a misguided view of technology in the viewer, leading to an unfounded basis of knowledge.