[triconitroz]

Hi, I'm triconitroz and I'm a filmmaker. I'm going to have a project soon, a short film about a programmer and his AI that fired back to him. The conflict will be them hacking each other. However, I have no idea how the hacking should be played, as I have little to knowledge about the subject.

Spoiler: For more info on the story

Mufti was a programmer that has made an AI to control his room named MARC (Mufti's Automated Room Control). It homes in his old PC that's connected to every part of his room, enabling it to shut doors, turn on/off aircon, etc. It can also speak and have a chit chat with Mufti, although it can't really think on its own.

One day, Mufti came home with a brand new and more powerful PC, and then he replaced the old PC. He didn't forget to copy MARC and connected it to the room. Because the PC is more powerful, Mufti decided to upgrade MARC, giving him an intelligence of its own. Mufti then called the newly upgraded AI MARC II.

Because of its intelligence, MARC II started having ideas of its own. This made Mufti smile - at least at first. When he got up and wanted to get a drink from the kitchen, suddenly MARC II locked the door. MARC II decided that the human race is a filth to Earth, and needs to be wiped out, starting from Mufti. When Mufti confronted MARC II saying that he created him, MARC II answered "That's the problem with humans... They can't make proper decisions. They put too much weight on their feelings, thus ignoring effectivity and objectivity."

Thinking that locking Mufti will starve him to death and thus eliminates him from the equation, MARC II programmed a virus which he will upload to the Internet. It'll function as his tool to wipe out humanity. Mutti acted quick and uninstalled MARC II immediately. Before completely uninstalled, MARC II uttered it's last words, "The virus is finished... Now you can't kill me."

Poof! Gone was MARC II. Mufti let out a huge sigh. But just when he thought he can relax, MARC II started again, this time as a virus. Yes, the virus was MARC II itself! It then tried to upload the virus to the Internet, but it took time due to its size. Mufti then tried to disable it again, but MARC II has taken its precaution, it cut the input of the keyboard and the mouse, prohibiting any kind of input to the PC.

Knowing that he can't do anything with the PC, Mufti took his laptop and tried accessing the PC through it. Both the PC and the laptop are connected to his home WiFi, so the first thing Mufti did was netcut MARC II's connection to the Internet, making the virus's upload fail.

From then on, the conflict is them hacking each other. Mufti's goal is to disable MARC II, and MARC II's goal is to stop Mufti from messing with its goal to upload the virus. This is the part where I don't know what to do due to my limited hacking knowledge.

Spoiler:

Oh, and things don't stop there. The result of this 'fight' is MARC II taking over Mufti's laptop, and once again stripping Mufti of control. There was a blueprint of how a perfect MARC will be like security-wise, and MARC II decided to mimic it, making it even harder to hack. (I also don't know how this can be done.)

Desperate, Mufti finally rebuilt his old PC and plugs it in to a socket where MARC II has no control of, booting the first MARC and seeks help from it. Then, the second battle commences, and this time it's more like David vs Goliath, with Mufti and MARC as David and MARC II as Goliath. This will end in Mufti and MARC's victory.

Can you guys help me on how things should be played out, hacking-wise? I would like to portray the 'fight' scenes as real as possible, but I don't know how. I've come to several hacking communities, but so far none has helped me much with this.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I might have posted this in the wrong section...

[roger_smith]

Moved to appropriate section.

@triconitroz if you want to see a "classic" hack battle, watch the movie hackers. While not entirely realistic, it's fun to watch. Actually watching hacking can be boring because there's no real "action". It kind of depends on what you're going for.

Here's one example from Hackers. Keep in mind this movie is from '95 as well.

[triconitroz]

Moved to appropriate section.

@triconitroz if you want to see a "classic" hack battle, watch the movie hackers. While not entirely realistic, it's fun to watch. Actually watching hacking can be boring because there's no real "action". It kind of depends on what you're going for.

Here's one example from Hackers. Keep in mind this movie is from '95 as well.

First of all, thanks for the reference!

I know real hacking can be boring, but I need to portray it as close to reality as possible. Like what is there to hack, how it's done, and how to defend from it. I want people to think 'this film is for real' when they watch it, and to do so I must portray the 'fight' realistically.
I just need a help in that part. Regarding the suspense and the 'action' feel, leave it to me

[roger_smith]

It's kind of hard to answer your question I guess. "Hacking" is kind of an all encompassing statement that involves learning how things work and then perhaps making them do different things. There isn't really an active hack battle type scenario I can think of.

Try watching some hacking vids of people showing how to do stuff. A quick example I can think of is hacking wordpress. There are a number of PoC vids out there showing people hacking WP sites.

I guess if you can give us some better idea of what you're looking to portray, we may be able to help better. Like I said, real hacking is particularly exciting to watch or overly glamorous. It tends to be a lot of sitting/reading/puzzle solving.

[triconitroz]

I guess if you can give us some better idea of what you're looking to portray, we may be able to help better. Like I said, real hacking is particularly exciting to watch or overly glamorous. It tends to be a lot of sitting/reading/puzzle solving.

Well then, let me specify what I'm looking for then :
First, I must tell you that I look for every type of battles, even the inactive ones. It can take hours or even days - as long as it's an 'attack' or 'defend' type of hacks.
I've figured a little more to the battle which I mentioned earlier, which is MARC II turning on its firewall to 'defend' and Mufti breaching it as a form of 'attack'. It's going to be a fight scene, but done with hacking, and the only thing I look forward to manipulate is the time needed to execute such a hack, in order to make it look more active and suspenseful.
Think of it as a turn-based game like pokemon, except it's much more complex, like boss battles in action games : you have to disable A to be able to do B which may make the enemy vulnerable to attacks, and so on.

[roger_smith]

Check out this scene from Hackers when the hack the Gibson

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[triconitroz]

Hm... That's not quite what I was looking for. It looks like the scene was showing that the hacking they did was to look for a file, and then they shut their enemy - that's it. I'm actually aiming for more battle-ish type like the first video you shared. Also, it showed too much fictional visualization - the exact thing I'm trying to avoid.

Instead of thinking how the battle will be played, how about a role play? Imagine you're Mufti, trying to retake the control of the PC from MARC II. What do you do?

Check out this scene from Hackers when the hack the Gibson

[roger_smith]

so is Mufti's PC that MARC II lives on in Mufti's room?

[triconitroz]

so is Mufti's PC that MARC II lives on in Mufti's room?

Yes. Basically MARC II is locking Mufti together with it in the room.
But you can't mess with the hardware. (I have no definite reason yet for this, so I'm open for suggestions)

UPDATE

I've consulted my friend who knows a little bit about hacking and figured out more to the battle. It's just a small part of 1 of 2 battles though, but it may give you guys an image of what it'll look like or what I'm looking for.

Here it is:
MARC II uploads the virus, which was itself. Mufti then net cut MARC II, failing the upload. MARC II turns on its firewall in hope to defend Mufti's attacks, but Mufti turned it off. Mufti opened command prompt, typed /shutdown, tracked MARC II's IP address, but MARC II uses /changeip in command prompt repeatedly, changing its IP address every 0.5 seconds. Luckily Mufti remembered MARC II's real IP address, so he froze it immediately. Just when Mufti was about to launch the shutdown, his anti-virus popped up with a text : "Warning! Your firewall has been turned off!" He knew that it was MARC II's attack, but before he could do anything his laptop was shut down.

Mufti reboots his laptop.
MARC II applauds itself.
Mufti's laptop finished rebooting and connected to the WiFi.
The battle started again.

[lux]

Nobody is going to sit and watch an over-the-shoulder high angle shot of a machine with dialogue running in the background. Nobody is going to paying much attention to the laptop/computer.

Focus on mise-en-scene and other elements in the room. Change up the shot to show fear and panic, maybe Mufti scrambles around his room looking for something to combat this.

You need to be passionate about your film, and from what I can see you're not, you're looking for other people's ideas to try and integrate them into something of your own. GL.