Hollywood hackers: what media gets wrong

9th September 2025

From the guy-in-the-chair cliché to villains using viruses that may as well be magic, film and television gets a lot wrong about hacking – but not everything.

Not too long ago I found myself watching Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4) late one night, as I had stumbled across it while flicking through channels. While not the masterpiece of the original, I did find myself becoming drawn in, largely due to the fact that the story focuses on a “hack” that plunges everything into chaos.

With knowledge about cyber security that I didn’t have the last time I watched it, I was able to spot what seemed accurate, what characters were doing correctly, and what was incredibly over the top (if quite entertaining). So, I thought it might be fun to explore some of the stereotypes, give some examples of where we’ve seen them and tell you if they’re just a bit of fun, or a genuine part of cyber security:

Traditional hacker types

Most film and tv hackers fall into four categories: the Lone Genius (Mr Robot, The Matrix), the Cyberpunk Rebel (Ghost in the Shell, Hackers), the Evil Mastermind (Skyfall, Live Free or Die Hard) or the Comic Relief Hacker (The Italian Job, Ocean’s 8).

The cyberpunk example is clearly over the top, with the aesthetic being popular with many hackers, good and bad, but nothing more. While there are no supervillains as such, there are certainly cyber criminals who want to cause chaos and damage, often for profit.

Sometimes they work in groups, some state sponsored even, but many are sole individuals acting alone committing smaller scale crimes. Additionally, having worked with cyber security professionals, I wouldn’t say they’re comic relief as such – they take their jobs very seriously – but they do have a great sense of humour!

What Hollywood gets wrong

Speed and simplicity: in fiction, breaches can happen in a matter of seconds. Though this can occasionally be true, some of the most effective breaches have taken months, or sometimes even years to accomplish (though it wouldn’t be quite so cinematic)!

Interface fantasy: this refers to when a hack happens in a film and suddenly there are laughing skulls onscreen (I’m mostly thinking about Skyfall here). In reality, most cyber attacks go unnoticed until they’ve already happened, or appear as basic text or code, not elaborate images: most bad actors don’t care about how it looks, they just want your money.

Overpowered access: often, characters are able to access systems without needing any credentials – usually, this is not the case. Breaches involve complicated social engineering to get access to passwords: not as glamourous, but just as dangerous.

Lack of teamwork: while smaller attacks are frequently committed by lone actors, larger breaches take whole teams working together to accomplish. Additionally, when defending against attacks, it takes a whole team, working in tandem to monitor, detect and destroy threats.

Evidently, there are a lot of differences between cyber criminal fact and fiction, and it is worth remembering that cyber threats should be taken seriously. However, sometimes film and tv gets things right, as we’ll explore in our next blog post.

Please contact Interfuture Security if anything you saw on screen has you worried about your own security!

YouTube: https://youtu.be/9B7dYo31OdU