Shadowing Practice: Hacker Breaks Down Hacking Scenes From Movies & TV | WIRED - Learn English Speaking with Video
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1
It keeps rewriting itself to counter my commands.
2
This has something to do with computers.
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Hack them all.
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Hi, I'm Sammy Kamkar.
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Sammy is the co-founder of OpenPath Security and a computer hacker.
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I'm back to talk about more hacking scenes in TV shows and movies.
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Breaking into a government system, The X-Files.
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This has something to do with computers, with the internet.
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Actually, the ARPANET.
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You can access it through the internet, though.
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I want to believe, but this clip isn't too realistic.
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ARPANET is essentially what the internet came from.
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DARPA, the US government agency, created ARPANET and that bubbled into the internet and became publicly available.
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When the X-Files came out, ARPANET was no longer in existence.
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Isn't this something you could, I mean, how do you say it, hack into?
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I'm sorry, I think this is the end of the line.
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How you say, that's what she says.
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She says, how you say hack.
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How do you say it, hack into?
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But how you say is what you say in other languages when you don't, right?
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What did you do?
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Oh, it's a government system.
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I know a couple of logging out tricks with VMS version 5.
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If you're using a password that you know, then I don't really consider that hacking.
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What is that?
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It's an encrypted file.
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Why would your three-year-old have an encrypted file than a secret defense department database?
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Can you decode it?
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There's another issue here in that they find a file that's encrypted.
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That by itself is not too unrealistic.
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They're showing the file in ASCII format.
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Can you print it out for me?
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But when you print it out, that's going to be useless information.
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And that's because many of the characters that would be in an encrypted file are not visible in an ASCII format.
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So you end up with things like periods, which may or may not be a period, or it could be a totally different character or byte.
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So your ex-boyfriend is into computers.
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I would totally say that.
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Wait, your boyfriend's into computers?
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I should meet him.
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Locking down a system.
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Jurassic Park.
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In this clip, it looks like Newman, you know who I mean,
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is kind of running around, activating or deactivating certain types of locks.
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But at some point, someone else tries to run a command like access grid, and that causes an access denied.
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But then he gets a series of messages.
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So this doesn't look too realistic, just in the fact that he's getting access denied messages without a password.
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And he's also then getting a message in a loop
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which is just less likely to happen in a realistic scenario This reminds me of some of the clips
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that we saw in the first technique critique
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when we were seeing really just a lot of pop-ups
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that would occur Stop the pop-ups And a lot of videos typically
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that will hackers will put onto devices That's not something we
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generally see in the real world It's a unique system It's
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all the files of the whole park The girl gets to the computer and says it's a Unix system.
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It doesn't look like a Unix system, which is typically a terminal or a console window, but it actually is Unix.
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It tells her everything.
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I've got to find the right file.
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The 3D interface that she's using is a legitimate software that a company called SGI made many years ago.
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It's not something anyone actually uses.
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It was really just a proof of concept of using a 3D file system.
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The reason no one would ever use it is
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because it takes forever to navigate a 3D system when you're just trying to find a file.
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I hate this hack and crap.
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Decrypting the file, the code.
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There might be an error in the video compression.
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Can you fix that?
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Maybe, but I would need to get online.
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Here we see Jesse taking a corrupted video file, and for a moment we see him start running a program called FFmpeg,
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and he essentially tries to remove corruption from this video file, and that's totally reasonable.
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FFmpeg is meant for all sorts of modifications or alterations to video images and audio.
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So for example, if you have something that's corrupt, you could take all the frames that are not corrupt, extract them, and then reconstruct all of those frames into a single video.
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There was a part that was inaccurate in where we saw the red, green, and blue channels all visually come up.
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While that would be possible to do, FFmpeg, the tool itself is a terminal-based tool so it's all text-based despite operating on video image and audio.
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Can you fix that?
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Maybe, but I would need to get online.
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He has to go online but if he already has
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that FFmpeg tool downloaded to his machine there's actually no reason for him to go online
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so who knows what he was actually doing.
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Sometimes you do hear of hackers getting sentenced not to use computers or be on the internet.
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Unfortunately that occurred to me earlier in my life for several years.
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I don't know if we want to go into it.
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Now I'm allowed to be on the internet.
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Hardware hacking, firewall.
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I need my daughter's MP3 player to use as a hard drive.
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Here we see Jack Stanfield using his daughter's iPod to store data while under duress in a kidnapping situation.
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This is the scanner head from the thanks machine.
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And you'll capture the images of the account numbers off the server screen and transfer them to this.
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That's totally realistic.
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If you think about an MP3, it's just a digital format of audio and audio is really just an analog signal.
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So you can convert that into a digital format and just like you can convert any other data into some digital format.
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But there's still just images.
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What are you gonna do with them?
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Use an OCR program to convert it to data that the computer can use.
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He also mentions using OCR, which is object character recognition.
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So if I were to take a screenshot of a bank account, it's an image, there's not actually text in it even though I can read the text.
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OCR software would then convert that and extract all of the text from it without me having to type it in manually.
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10,000 songs, 10,000 account codes, it doesn't know the difference.
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The only thing he doesn't go over here is how he converts the images from the scanner into the MP3s.
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You do need some conversion to occur, so that needs to be a computer or a microcontroller or something.
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It should work.
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Hacking a smart fridge, Silicon Valley.
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Hello, my co-friend.
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Hello?
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Huh, suck it, Jian Yang.
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Hmm, ah, huh.
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You're attacking and destroying my refrigerator?
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And you misspelled my name.
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Essentially, smart fridges themselves are really just computers.
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They're running some operating system, maybe a stripped down version of Linux.
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I was able to brute force the backdoor password to that Chrome piece of shit in under 12 hours.
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What Guilfoyle is saying is that he was able to brute force the password.
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All that means is he went through millions and millions of passwords trying to authenticate through some mechanism that the refrigeration exposed.
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Maybe it's connected to the wifi network and it has a port open that you can then connect to.
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That is a possible scenario.
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A backdoor is a way to log in or authenticate into a system without going through the traditional mechanism.
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So maybe a website has a username and password field.
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A backdoor would be a special URL that you wouldn't need to enter any username or password.
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I added a little visual flare.
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Huh, suck it.
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Hacking an ATM pin.
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Terminator 2, Judgment Day.
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Please insert your stolen card now.
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They insert a device that looks like a credit card tied to a computer with a ribbon cable.
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And it looks to do some type of brute force of the pin code.
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Go baby, go baby, go baby.
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Right.
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Yes!
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Easy money.
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Some of this could be possible.
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The problem is the pin code has nothing to do with the data on the credit card, nor is it ever inserted within the credit card slot.
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Those are two independent systems.
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What they're doing here with the pin just isn't talking to the right system, so they'd have to be plugged into something else in order to even attempt an attack like this.
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Who to learn this stuff from anyway?
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From my mom.
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Destroying a hard drive, the core.
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This is the FBI, we have a warrant.
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Shit!
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In this scene, the main character is trying to wipe, delete, purge, any data he can from a number of different data storage types.
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He takes some pretty big magnets and he goes over what I assume are hard drives, which would work for traditional spinning platter hard drives
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that would erase a lot of the data as the data is kept in magnetic fields.
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If I had to destroy something like a traditional spinning hard drive, then I probably would do something similar by using magnets,
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but ideally I would also want to open it after the fact and then crush it into bits.
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The more small pieces you have, the less data someone will be able to extract and be able to put them together.
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He also throws some CDs or DVDs into a microwave.
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The data there is actually stored within the polycarbonate.
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So if he had a sufficient time to melt it, he could make it disappear.
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But it just depends on that amount of time.
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He also deleted some data just using software.
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Now, a quick software delete in the period of time he had, which was only a few seconds, while that appears to delete the files, it actually doesn't delete the data.
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All it does is tell your hard drive or your computer that the data in this sector is now free.
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In order to actually delete data from a drive, you actually need to overwrite that data.
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And typically, you'll want to overwrite it several times.
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Then, for a safe measure, hit it with a hammer a bunch of times.
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I know these look like computers.
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Totally not.
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Faraday Cage, enemy of the state.
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This is where I work.
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Completely secure.
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Copper wire mesh keeps the radio signals out.
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He says this copper wire cage or a Faraday cage keeps radio signals out.
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Normally, that is true.
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When you have a conductive mesh or a metallic mesh, the only thing that can penetrate that mesh are wavelengths that are essentially smaller than the mesh itself,
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so the holes themselves.
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But in this case, there's a lot of radio frequency that can fit in that wavelength.
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So really, even something like 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi would be able to penetrate that mesh.
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If the mesh were smaller, then it would be able to block a lot more radio frequency.
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Hate to see the chicken that lives in this coop.
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Acoustic analysis.
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Eagle eye.
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Sir, all the threats you've been tracking, chatter all of it.
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In this scene, a couple of things are happening.
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There is a voice over IP phone that they ultimately disconnect to prevent someone from snooping or enabling the microphone.
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It shows that the camera is essentially able to read lips.
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Really creative and absolutely doable with software today.
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What they didn't expect, and which is really creative,
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is they're actually using acoustic analysis to look at vibrations off the coffee cup that was there.
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So when you're speaking or when someone's speaking, they are moving air molecules and that's going at a certain frequency based off the frequency of their sound.
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When that hits something like the drink, you're actually able to convert that physical change of
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that liquid back into audio because essentially it's moving at the frequency of sound.
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And if you can visually see that, you can then convert that visual frequency back into the frequency of sound and hear it.
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So it's actually very creative, but it is doable.
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Denial of service attack.
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Ralph breaks the internet.
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Stealing for insecurities.
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Don't leave me!
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Insecurity detected.
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In this clip we see some sort of malicious system that is finding this insecurity in Ralph.
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And they're essentially duplicating Ralph and duplicating this insecurity, which then takes over all sorts of websites,
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stops, it starts interfering with people's web browsers.
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The internet is under assault as a massive denial of service attack crashes servers across the web.
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Denial of service typically isn't going to do something manipulative like alter your web browser or alter a video feed.
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Instead, its goal is one simple thing and that's to bring a system down.
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While this is pretty unrealistic, I think we can give Ralph a pass here, just for his insecurity.
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Hijacking a TV channel, V for Vendetta.
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Dad, what's wrong with the telly?
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Good evening, London.
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In this scene, we see someone essentially taking over a TV station.
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In this case, I don't consider this hacking because they essentially already have the capability, they're in the station, and they have the ability to already override the video that's been playing right now.
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What makes it a little less unlikely is that they're also taking over billboards, and often those are coming off a separate feed off some pre-recorded video.
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Granted, those could be based off of live video as well.
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In Tim Burton's Batman, we do see something similar where a live newscast is taken over by the Joker.
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Now, that is actually a lot more realistic and is an actual hack because often live broadcasts are being aired over radio.
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So if someone can intercept, and by intercept, I just mean send a stronger signal, then they can actually override that signal if they can hit the receiver and take over that.
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So that is something that can happen and has happened in the past.
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He don't look happy.
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He's been using Brand X.
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Stock market hack.
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Who am I?
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In this clip, they're on the roof of what appears to be a stock exchange, and they're somehow connecting to the network.
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This by itself is going to be a little challenging
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because there are many different networks and just being on the roof is typically not enough to jump on the network.
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We do see them run something called bash, buffer overflow.sh, and some number.
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And buffer overflow is a common technique to exploit various types of software by overflowing their memory
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so much that you get to a point in memory that you can tell the processor where to run code.
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And you can then point that back to the original memory you overflowed and that's now your code.
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So it's a way to take over a computer just by inputting some data.
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What they're demonstrating is that they're able to connect to and then run their own code and run their own instructions.
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We're also seeing essentially video of a graph and that chart is probably going to be extracted from some other location,
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maybe from a website or from some other feed.
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So it might be possible, but it's going to be challenging to do this.
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autonomous vehicle exploitation fate of the furious there's over a thousand of them hack them all
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in this clip we see a bunch of cars getting hacked
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and taken over some of this could be possible
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and there's a pretty incredible demonstration of this type of attack where they were able to take a jeep
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that was driving on the road with someone from wired inside and they and they were able to take that car over.
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They first started just controlling the windshield wipers, adjusting the radio, and then actually started messing with the controls of the vehicle, like the throttle.
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And that's because some vehicles do have these components computerized.
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However, what they're showing here, where they're just arbitrarily choosing cars to take over is really unlikely
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because it's a lot of effort and it's typically a targeted attack.
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You have to really know the vehicle that you are trying to get to first.
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Ouch.
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You see a bunch of cars that are actually parked and they start driving.
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Well, that's not going to happen if you have something like an e-brake.
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As far as I know, today there aren't many vehicles with a computerized e-brake,
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so we're just seeing way too many vehicles doing way too many things they simply don't have the capability to do.
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I'd buckle up if I were you.
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Credential hack.
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Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol call.
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In this scene we see Ethan Hunt going into government building.
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He reveals his credentials and the person working behind the desk starts scanning the credentials.
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He looks at kind of what percentage of this hacking is being done.
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This seems pretty unlikely for a couple of reasons.
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For one, when you're talking about a credential or authorization system, it's likely not gonna be on some wireless network.
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Even if you do have a wireless network in a government building, it's again, likely not tied to a security checkpoint.
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Another problem here is that we see a percentage of completion.
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You almost never have percentages when you're talking about hacking.
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It's either you have found a mechanism to get in or you haven't.
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So the loading bar in hacking scenes is usually not very accurate.
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Love your disguise, by the way.
250
Mag Spoof, Mr. Robot.
251
Thanks, doll.
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In this scene, we see Darlene take a little magnetic reed head and take a hotel card and scan it, and then store it into a device called Mag Spoof.
253
Then she goes up to the hotel room and she essentially hits play, which either replays that or it brute forces the code,
254
and that unlocks the door and that is something that can absolutely occur.
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MagSpoof is a device I personally created, and it's designed to essentially allow to perform penetration testing around different types of mag stripes, primarily around credit cards.
256
The device itself is an electromagnet, and what all that means is it's able to create a magnetic field both north and south.
257
The writers of Mr. Robot were really creative here and asked
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if this were possible on hotel magstrites and it's entirely possible
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and they actually came up with the idea of taking
260
that same device
261
and using it here in a hotel to brute force through
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various numeric codes for a room just by having somebody else's room card and that's a totally feasible scenario.
263
Hacking at an Apple store.
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Captain America, the winter soldier.
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No. I was trying to find something.
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Can I help you guys with anything?
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Oh no, my fiance was just helping me with some honeymoon destinations.
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It seems that really what they're trying to do is just hide who they are and what they're doing.
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So they're going to an Apple store
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so they can take the IP address of the Apple store rather than doing it say from their home
271
or office or Captain in America network.
272
How much time do we have?
273
About nine minutes from now.
274
Generally, you wouldn't want to do it in an Apple store.
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For one, they're gonna have a lot of cameras.
276
So all they have to do is correlate the time, the computer, and then look at the video feed and they might be able to capture who was there.
277
Well, maybe we can find out where it came from.
278
There was an art prank done many years ago at an Apple store in New York.
279
The creator, Kyle, ended up getting the Secret Service sent to his house.
280
So you probably don't want to try this.
281
Congratulations, where you guys thinking about going?
282
New Jersey.
283
If you did want to actually perform attacks and hide your IP address, it would make more sense to have some sort of device, say a Raspberry Pi computer connected to a solar panel,
284
throw it on top of a store, and then connect to that.
285
So that is now connecting to the free wifi of somewhere nearby.
286
And now you're sort of proxied.
287
There's no video of you.
288
You're not at the store, but you're taking advantage of their IP address and now it's gonna be much harder to link back to you.
289
Person who developed this is slightly smarter than me.
290
Slightly.
291
Phishing attack, Ocean's 8.
292
Rihanna or Nineball is trying to fish somebody.
293
She's constructing an email or message.
294
It has some link that the person clicks and then
295
that person had their camera engaged and the video feed went back to Nineball.
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That is pretty unlikely.
297
In order to actually enable somebody's web camera, you need to get code to execute on their computer.
298
That's usually very difficult.
299
When you employ those attacks and they get executed, they're gonna be discovered pretty quickly if you start using it, and it's gonna be patched pretty quickly.
300
So it's not to say it's not possible, it's just that once you start using these types of attacks, you're essentially burning them.
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Otherwise, a phishing attack by itself, getting someone to click something or visit a malicious link, that is pretty easy to do and that happens honestly every day.
302
You poor thing.
303
Discovering a worm, hackers.
304
It isn't a virus, it's a worm.
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Here we see Zero Cool doing some sort of investigation.
306
We do see a lot of algebraic formulas, unfortunately, which have really nothing to do with what he's doing.
307
Granted, if you're programming, You will be writing a lot of algorithms, but you're never doing it in, let's say, the algebraic format that they're showing.
308
It isn't a virus, it's a worm.
309
The worm eats a few cents from each transaction.
310
And when the worm's ready, it zips out with the money and erases its track.
311
He says this is a worm and not a virus.
312
And that seems true.
313
Essentially, we think of a virus as some piece of software
314
or malware that requires some action by a user in order for it to execute,
315
where a worm is more likely something that requires little to no action in order to proliferate.
316
By this point, it's already running at twice the speed as when it started.
317
When I was younger, I did accidentally release a worm on a site popular many years ago called MySpace.
318
All it did was someone would visit my profile.
319
Without knowing it, they would add me as a friend, and the code would copy to their profile.
320
That means when someone visits their profile, the code would copy to their profile.
321
Within about 24 hours, over a million people were infected.
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It said, Sammy's my hero on all these profiles, and MySpace had to shut down in order to remove this worm.
323
Unfortunately for me, I couldn't touch a computer for several years, I wasn't allowed on the internet until I went back to a judge, now we're here.
324
Crash 1,507 systems in one day.
325
Aptitude test, Snowden.
326
We're gonna start with an aptitude test.
327
The average test time is five hours.
328
If you take more than eight, you will fail.
329
I don't know whether aptitude tests like this happen in government.
330
I can only assume they do.
331
I know with a lot of companies, you will go through some types of tests.
332
You will be on the spot.
333
You will be given a computer or you'll be given a whiteboard and they'll say, okay, do X, you know, write some software to perform this.
334
So there are realistic tests like this.
335
It's actually interesting because they're running legitimate commands.
336
We see Nmap run a few times.
337
You see TAR, an archiving utility, used to compress some data and then extract that data.
338
A lot of this was extremely realistic.
339
I'm really just nitpicking, but a couple of those commands had a verbose flag enabled, which should have output a lot more data, but they didn't output any data.
340
But otherwise, it seemed like a reasonable clip.
341
Eyes on screens.
342
You don't have enough hard space if you want other clips.
343
Does anyone have an iPod?
344
Conclusion.
345
Hacking itself is not always the most glamorous to look at.
346
However, we are seeing more and more hardware type hacking where people are taking physical devices
347
and moving hacking into the real world.
348
And that by itself, I think, looks more interesting.
349
And that's a wrap.
350
All right guys, from the top.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Hacker Breaks Down Hacking Scenes From Movies & TV”. This video has 350 sentences and 4136 words to shadow. The speech runs for 23:19. The speaker talks at a natural 177 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| worm noun | /wɝm/ | A generally tubular invertebrate of the annelid phylum; an earthworm. |
| mesh noun | /mɛʃ/ | A structure made of connected strands of metal, fiber, or other flexible/ductile material, with evenly spaced openings between them. |
| realistic adjective | /ˌɹɪəˈlɪs.tɪk/ | Expressed or represented as being accurate, practicable, or not idealistic. |
| password noun | /ˈpæs.wɜɹd/ | A word relayed to a person to gain admittance to a place or to gain access to information. |
| convert verb | /kənˈvɝt/ | To transform or change (something) into another form, substance, state, or product. |
| brute noun | /bɹuːt/ | A person with the characteristics of an unthinking animal; a coarse or brutal person, particularly one who is dim-witted. |
| credential noun | /kɹɪˈdɛnʃəl/ | documentary or electronic evidence that a person has certain status or privileges |
| encrypt verb | /ɪnˈkɹɪpt/ | To conceal information by means of a code or cipher. |
| insecurity noun | A lack of security; uncertainty. | |
| extract noun | /ˈɛkstɹækt/ | Something that is extracted or drawn out. |
| aptitude noun | /ˈæptɪˌtud/ | A natural ability to acquire knowledge or skill. |
| hacker noun | /hækəɹ/ | Someone who hacks. |
| execute verb | /ˈɛksɪˌkjuːt/ | To kill, especially as punishment for a capital crime. |
| denial noun | /dɪˈnaɪ.əl/ | An assertion of untruth. |
| cage noun | /keɪd͡ʒ/ | An enclosure made of spaced bars, normally to hold animals while providing some ventilation. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| take over verb | To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| go back to verb | To stem from; to originate in. | |
| go over verb | To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze. | |
| come off verb | To become detached. | |
| come out verb | /ˌkʌm ˈaʊt/ | To be discovered; to be revealed. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. | |
| come up with verb | To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- How do you say it, hack into?
- Can you print it out for me?
- Wait, your boyfriend's into computers?
- What are you gonna do with them?
- You're attacking and destroying my refrigerator?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been tracking · that's been playing · He's been using |
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | if you're programming, You will be |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is meant · be plugged · is kept |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | system, which is · OCR, which is · had, which was |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 86 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: authenticate /ɔˈθɛn.tɪ.keɪt/, algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: mesh /mɛʃ/, credential /kɹɪˈdɛnʃəl/, phishing /ˈfɪʃɪŋ/, malicious /məˈlɪʃəs/, modification /ˌmɑdɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: algebraic /ˌæl.d͡ʒɪˈbɹeɪ.ɪk/, authenticate /ɔˈθɛn.tɪ.keɪt/, visually /ˈvɪzju.əli/, capability /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/, modification /ˌmɑdɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like worm, mesh, realistic.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.