Cyber Unrealism: The Net
The Net 1995
The 1995 film, The Net, starring Sandra Bullock was one of Hollywood's first attempts at an action-packed cyber thriller. It follows the main character Angela Bennett as she goes on a mission to bring down a corrupt Secretary of Defense and win back her identity. Bennett’s life is stripped away all for the success of a security program that most of the world uses which is actually responsible for several recent massive computer failures.
Wiping Viruses
In the opening scene, the film establishes Bennett’s career as a expert systems analyst by showing her wiping a virus from a computer game in seconds. Her ‘office’ set up includes two chunky monitors in her living room, one of which is playing Wolfstein while the other displays Pizza.net. After extracting a powerful virus from Wolfstein, Bennet put it on a floppy disk to be sent off to a coworker who collects viruses. The inaccuracies here are limited. While it makes sense to put the virus on a floppy disk and send it by mail, we have to remember that the internet does exist despite the movie only relying on floppy disks as their form of transfer. Beyond that, the pizza website Bennett orders from is a lot better than actual websites in 1995. Most websites in the film were ahead of their time. While it might be normal for us to book tickets or order food online now, in 1995 it was revolutionary. Pizza Hut and Dominos didn't even launch online ordering until years later. Later in the film Bennet books airline tickets. It is almost unheard of not to book online today but in 1995 no such service existed. The only way you could book online was by emailing a travel agent or confirming an already existing reservation, but there was definitely no online travel booking.
Chat Rooms
Throughout the film we see that Bennett is a shut in, spending all her time working from her home computer or online in chat rooms. The chat room she is a part of only includes three other people, all of whom are hermits and computer experts. It wasn’t very common to see avatars at the time, but they primarily exist in this shot to help audiences identify characters later. Bennett is also running text to speech on her computer which is only for the sake of audiences but wouldn’t have been a practice in the ‘90s despite chat rooms reaching the height of their popularity.
Identity Theft
The identity theft in The Net is a very intense and through wipe of her existence. It is an extreme depiction albeit not entirely inaccurate. Identity theft often occurs in chunks, when people steal social security numbers or use someone's name for a designated purpose like setting up accounts or obtaining medical services. Just recently one of the largest data breaches to date occurred, in which millions of social security numbers and emails were stolen and put up for sale on the dark web. In The Net, Bennets entire identity is stolen along with all her belongings and her house. In reality there are many types of identity theft, some commonly happen together and some mostly occur alone. Financial identity theft is the most common as it encompasses the stealing of credit card and bank account numbers. Another common theft is medical identity theft where someone uses your information to obtain medical services.
Clunky Technology
The technology shown throughout The Net might seem ancient to a modern observer but during the film’s release, the tech was as advanced as possible, too advanced even. There is no loading time for any of the programs Bennett runs. In reality a user might have waited a couple of minutes for a program to load in ‘90s. Hollywood had to make adjustments. No one wants to watch a screen load or see virtually nothing when a virus is eating away at a system. Nothing would have been instant so, the film took creative liberties, showing programs and viruses loaded in bits and pieces or fading into static dramatically. When a virus eats through a program it doesn’t look anything like the films version because it doesn’t look like much at all, at least until it is detectable.
False Fire Alarms
This is yet another film where the main character hacks into the fire alarm system of a building. If you recall, Dade from Sneakers, sets of his school's sprinkler systems. In The Net, Bennett needs access to an employee's computer, so she sets off the fire alarm systems for the whole building by hacking into their system. If a fire alarm system is network connected, then this is possible but most of the time it's hard to gain access to such systems. It definitely isn’t something any old employee would be able to do with their computer. She could have accomplished the same thing by just pulling the fire alarm, it would have been much more realistic.
IP Addresses
One inaccuracy even viewers of the 90s noticed was the IP address Bennett tracks down. It contains numbers higher than 255, so it is impossible. This is a necessary inaccuracy since putting a real address in the film could have caused problems for a very real user. For reference, an IP address is a string of numbers assigned to every device that is connected to the internet. It is what allows communication between devices, but it also identifies your location.
The Net deserves credit for being one of the first cyber thrillers, but it did unfairly paint computer enthusiasts as hermits. It was an innovative and exciting film for '90s technophiles, despite the occasional inaccuracies. It stands the test of time as a heart pounding digital suspense that captivates viewers today just as it did almost 25 years ago.
If you are interested in learning more about the breach we mentioned earlier, visit Troy Hunt's article detailing the situation. If you want to check if your credentials are compromised, visit https://haveibeenpwned.com/ .
