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In The Realm of the Hackers | |
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Directed by | Kevin Anderson ACS |
Written by | Kevin Anderson ACS |
Produced by | Franco di Chiera |
Starring | Dan Spielman Nathan Phillips Ernie Gray Suelette Dreyfus |
Narrated by | Robert Menzies |
Cinematography | Kevin Anderson ACS |
Edited by | Uri Mizrahi |
Music by | Al Mullins, Janine de Lorenzo |
Distributed by | Film Australia |
Release date |
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Running time | 55 minutes |
Country | Australia |
Language | English |
Budget | AU$400,000 |
In The Realm of the Hackers is a 2003 Australian documentary directed by Kevin Anderson [1] [2] about the prominent hacker community, centered in Melbourne, Australia in the late 1980s until early 1990. The storyline is centered on the Australian teenagers going by the hacker names "Electron" and "Phoenix", [3] who were members of an elite computer hacking group called 'The Realm' and hacked into some of the most secure computer networks in the world, including those of the US Naval Research Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a government lab charged with the security of the US nuclear stockpile, and NASA. The film runs for 55 minutes and was inspired by the book Underground , by Melbourne-based writer and academic Suelette Dreyfus. [4]
A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who achieves goals by non-standard means. The term has become associated in popular culture with a security hacker – someone with knowledge of bugs or exploits to break into computer systems and access data which would otherwise be inaccessible to them. In a positive connotation, though, hacking can also be utilized by legitimate figures in legal situations. For example, law enforcement agencies sometimes use hacking techniques to collect evidence on criminals and other malicious actors. This could include using anonymity tools to mask their identities online and pose as criminals.
An electron is a subatomic particle.
The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is an annual film festival held over three weeks in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It was founded in 1952 and is one of the oldest film festivals in the world following the founding of the Venice Film Festival in 1932, Cannes Film Festival in 1939 and Berlin Film Festival in 1951.
Alec Nigel Broers, Baron Broers, is a British electrical engineer.
Chris Goggans is an American hacker, a founding member of the Legion of Doom group, and a former editor of Phrack magazine. He is known as an expert in security as well as for his statements on hacker ethics and responsibility.
A security hacker or security researcher is someone who explores methods for breaching defenses and exploiting weaknesses in a computer system or network. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, such as profit, protest, information gathering, challenge, recreation, or evaluation of a system weaknesses to assist in formulating defenses against potential hackers.
Nahshon Even-Chaim, aka Phoenix, is a convicted former computer hacker in Australia. He was one of the most highly skilled members of a computer hacking group called The Realm, based in Melbourne, Australia, from the late 1980s until his arrest by the Australian Federal Police in early 1990. His targets centred on defense and nuclear weapons research networks.
Kim Zetter is an American investigative journalist and author who has covered cybersecurity and national security since 1999. She has broken numerous stories over the years about NSA surveillance, WikiLeaks, and the hacker underground, including an award-winning series about the security problems with electronic voting machines. She has three times been voted one of the top ten security journalists in the U.S. by her journalism peers and security professionals. She is considered one of the world's experts on Stuxnet, a malicious computer worm used to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, and published a book on the topic called Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon.
Electron was the computer handle of Richard Jones, a member of an underground hacker community called The Realm. Jones, born in June 1969, was one of three members of the group arrested in simultaneous raids by the Australian Federal Police in Melbourne, Australia, on 2 April 1990. All three — Nahshon Even-Chaim, Electron and Nom — were convicted of a range of computer crimes involving the intrusion into US defense and government computer systems and the theft of an online computer security newsletter in the late 1980s and early 1990.
The Andromeda Strain is a 1971 American science fiction thriller film produced and directed by Robert Wise. Based on Michael Crichton's 1969 novel of the same name and adapted by Nelson Gidding, the film stars Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, and David Wayne as a team of scientists who investigate a deadly organism of extraterrestrial origin. With a few exceptions, the film follows the book closely. The special effects were designed by Douglas Trumbull. The film is notable for its use of split screen in certain scenes.
The 414s were a group of computer hackers from Milwaukee who broke into dozens of high-profile computer systems, including ones at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and Security Pacific National Bank, in 1982 and 1983. Of note, these "414s" are not affiliated with the "414" biker gang also based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Josh Abrahams is an Australian musician who emerged from the underground dance music scene in the early 1990s. He has performed and recorded under the stage name Puretone, and is also known as The Pagan and Bassliners.
The WANK Worm and the OILZ Worm were computer worms that attacked DEC VMS computers in 1989 over the DECnet. They were written in DIGITAL Command Language.
Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier is a 1997 book by Suelette Dreyfus, researched by Julian Assange. It describes the exploits of a group of Australian, American, and British black hat hackers during the late 1980s and early 1990s, among them Assange himself.
Suelette Dreyfus is an Australian technology researcher, journalist, and academic. She is a lecturer in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne, as well as the principal researcher on the impact of digital technologies on whistleblowing as a form of freedom of expression. Her research includes information systems, digital security, privacy, and the impact of technology on whistleblowing, health informatics and e-education.
Drew Berry is an American biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. He produces animations of proteins and protein complexes to illustrate cellular and molecular processes.
Underground: The Julian Assange Story is an Australian television film produced for Network Ten. It premiered at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and aired on Network Ten on 7 October 2012. The film draws its title from Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, a 1997 book by Suelette Dreyfus, researched by Julian Assange, but the film bears little relation to the book itself, which catalogues the exploits of a group of Australian, American, and British hackers during the 1980s and early 1990s, among them Assange himself. The film was not approved by Julian Assange, Wikileaks or any other member of the Assange family, and there was no collaboration with the Assanges or Wikileaks during the making of the film. However, Julian Assange subsequently had "a very favourable response to the movie".
Kevin Anderson is a cinematographer and filmmaker, working in the Australian film and television industry for over forty years. Anderson's films often include themes of memory, loss and unresolved grief and bereavement.