“Yes, that’s what is described here in the report,” the caller replied. “No, we haven’t had any problems really,” the clerk replied, “just a couple slowdowns. “We heard you’ve been having problems with your customer account tools?” The caller said.
The caller told the salesperson he was from the T-Mobile headquarters in Washington. It happened at a T-Mobile store near Los Angeles. Hollywood’s hacker war began on Februwith a simple phone call. In fact, you don’t even need to be a hacker to do it. But it doesn’t take an evil genius or nation state to break through the firewall. Perhaps it was easier to believe the silver screen version of the threat, which often seemed to be personified by some scruffy genius in black surrounded by walls of HD monitors (see White House Down), blowing through high-end security systems like Swiss cheese.
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It’s a larger narrative laced in irony: how the movie studios created the myth of the hacker in the popular imagination, only to become victim of the real thing. As Stone tells me, “it’s a dicey, unknowable game.”īut this isn’t just a story about how easily Hollywood can get pwned. It’s a battle that’s leaving everyone on edge. And as Snowden’s most recent leak of documents on the U.S.’s clandestine drone program proves, the nation is fighting to future-proof itself before it’s too late. Just a few weeks ago, CIA director John Brennan’s email account was hacked - with its content dumped online by Wikileaks - after he was compromised by what appears to be a high school student. This is the big-screen version of how vulnerable it feels to live online in 2015, from Beverly Hills to Capitol Hill. While the total potential cost of such hacks are hard to gauge, some estimate the bill could fall somewhere between $150 and $300 million based on similar incidents at other companies. Last month, court documents revealed that Sony will be coughing up as much as $8 million to settle a class action suit with employees whose personal information was compromised in the breach, and that’s likely just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a game coming at an increasingly costly price. Stone says such precautions, while new, are “the wave of the future.” In the wake of the giant hack against Sony Pictures last November, now marking its one year anniversary, Hollywood is playing an increasingly wacky game of Whack-A-Mole, trying to club down one hacker only to find another one rearing its head. “The concern is a lack of control,” Echemendia tells me. It’s a challenge that’s only compounding as Hollywood - like the rest of the world - moves more and more of its content and communications online. He’s Ralph Echemendia, Hollywood’s go-to digital bodyguard, a reformed hacker from the dark side who now helps filmmakers, celebrities, and moguls keep their valuable data secure. This explains the stealthy guy with the Fu Manchu beard milling around the set. “If you can hack his story,” Stone says with caution, “it would be a big prize.” In a way, Stone is making a meta-movie that no one has seen before, building a firewall around a film whose subject is an icon of bad infosec. And it’s one that’s even more pronounced with a movie that promises to reveal more about Snowden than the world yet knows. “It’s a major concern for every filmmaker,” he tells me, during a break from shooting. He wants to make sure that no hacker comes after his film and leaks its secrets before the movie’s release. government’s classified surveillance program.īut Stone isn’t just concerned about capturing the saga behind Snowden’s incredible leaks. The film, which will be released in spring 2016, traces the whistleblower’s rise from lowly army enlistee to the National Security Agency contractor who exposed the U.S. Stone’s here filming his controversial biopic of Snowden.
It’s a cold day in Munich, and Oliver Stone, Hollywood’s most notorious director, is staring down the world’s most notorious hacker, Edward Snowden - or, at least, the actor who’s portraying him, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
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