They
did in the CBS show Whiz Kids before
it even started. Developed before WarGames
was released, the young computer prodigies of the sixty minute drama only
used their skills to aid law enforcement. Nevertheless, the media was
predisposed to be critical following the feeding frenzy ignited by a group of
teen hackers who cracked the systems of Los Alamos and the Sloan Kettering
Cancer Center. Now all grown-up and reformed, the first generation hackers look
back at their brief notoriety in Michael T. Vollman’s short documentary, The 414s: the Original Teenage Hackers,
which screened at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival.
Milwaukee’s
real deal gangs took their names from the numbered streets that defined their territory,
so the 414s adopted the local area code in a similar spirit. Frankly, nobody
ever claimed they were malicious. They were just fooling around, trying blindly
to gain access to any system that acknowledged their random calls. When their
breach of the Los Alamos network was finally discovered, the FBI and the media
basically freaked.
While
some of the 414s who were old enough to be prosecuted had to shut up and do
their best to look innocent, Neal Patrick was still under-age and more than
willing to talk. In fact, he became a minor media sensation, before tiring of
controversy and computers.
Even
if you weren’t trying to cold call NORAD, there is a lot of nostalgia in The 414s. It will remind you there was a
time a strange cat named Phil Donahue had a talk show that some people took
half-seriously. The old hardware is also a blast from the past. Yet, it is also
an uncomfortably timely film, arriving at Sundance in the wake of the Sony
hack. You would think the Feds would have seriously stepped up there
cybersecurity game since 1983, when it was literally nonexistent, but you have
to wonder.
