Slide Show: 10 Movie Scenes Of Authentication Worth Rewatching
From the prophetic to the downright silly, these scenes are sure to entertain any security pro
March 7, 2012
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Since nearly the time of the talkies, there has been no bigger champion of authentication than Hollywood writers and directors. Whether its speakeasy bouncers looking for the right password at the door or some crazy villain or hero ripping out appendages or eyes to fool a biometric scanner, authentication systems prove to be useful tools for writers moving the plot along and injecting a little verisimilitude into the story. However they're used and however wildly inaccurate they may be, these fictional authentication scenes are great fun to watch for security pros who use authentication in real life. And sometimes the scenes in older movies that seemed silly in a bygone era have proven more than a little prescient, sometimes prophesying innovations and other times perhaps even inspiring tech innovators who brought fiction into the realm of reality.
In this spy romp, CIA agent Miles Kendig, played by Walter Matthau starts his campaign to get out of the spy game and upset the bureaucratic apple cart with a tell-all book by committing a classic insider attack. He uses his current ID badge in video system that matches his face with his picture in front of a door guard to enter a CIA records repository and steal a file on himself.
Courtesy: Edie & Ely Landau Inc./The Criterion Collection
One of the first portrayals of biometrics in the movies, 2001: A Space Odyssey features a scene in the second TMS-1 section that has a character required to speak to a computer in order to be authenticated by voice print before being allowed onto a Pan Am space plane.
Courtesy: MGM
Some security experts would argue that passwords these days are about as effective as the password in the speakeasy scene of the Marx Brothers film, Horse Feathers. The scene has Chico asking Groucho for the right password, only to give Groucho the password when he says "Hey whatsamatta you, don't you understand English? You can't come in here until you say 'swordfish.'" The password, incidentally, made for the title of the schlocky hacker movie starring John Travolta years later.
Courtesy: Paramount Pictures
The old trope of slicing off a finger or an eyeball or a finger to trick a biometric scanner has been around for a while now, but none will match the campy hilarity of Wesley Snipes's Simon Phoenix character putting an eyeball on a pen to bust out of the slammer.
Courtesy: Warner Brothers
Before iris scanning became a clichéd Hollywood writer device, James Tiberious Kirk made it cool in the 1982 Star Trek classic, Wrath of Kahn. The quick scene is fun if only to watch for the decidedly unsexy typefaces and screens that are reminiscent more of classroom projector illustrations than high-tech computer interfaces.
Courtesy: Paramount Pictures
One of the first examples of biometric fingerprint scanners on the silver screen, the James Bond movie Diamonds are Forever features a Bond girl--Tiffany Case--who uses a biometric scanning gadget to ensure her apartment guests are who they say they are. Unfortunately for her, Bond wears a fake fingerprint to fool her device.
Courtesy: Eon Productions/20th Century Fox
We still may be waiting for our hovercraft skateboards, but the fingerprint payment systems featured in Back to the Future II when Biff pays for a cab may not be as far off in the future as we once thought. With NFC devices and other mobile payment technology knocking on the door, that scene isn't nearly as ludicrous as it was back in the day.
Courtesy: Universal Pictures
The whole movie Gattaca is about using DNA to identify and class people using different methods, but one of the coolest fictional gadgets is a finger scanner that pricks the user's finger, lets a drop of blood drop down into the machine and processes the identity to confirm or deny access into a building.
Courtesy: Columbia Pictures
The 2002 thriller Minority Report has police officers depending on eyeball recognition to identify people all around the city, a practice that begets blackmarket eyeball replacement surgery. It's a procedure that Tom Cruise's main character John Anderton has done to elude the authorities.
Courtesy: 20th Century Fox
How does Monty Python possibly employ authentication in its silly tale of the Knights of the Round Table? Well, by using five-, no, three-factor authentication at the Bridge of Death. Answer the bridge keeper's three questions at the Bridge of Death or risk being thrown into the abyss. Unless, of course, you ask the keeper a question he can't answer so he gets thrown off himself.
Courtesy: Michael White Productions/Sony Pictures
How does Monty Python possibly employ authentication in its silly tale of the Knights of the Round Table? Well, by using five-, no, three-factor authentication at the Bridge of Death. Answer the bridge keeper's three questions at the Bridge of Death or risk being thrown into the abyss. Unless, of course, you ask the keeper a question he can't answer so he gets thrown off himself.
Courtesy: Michael White Productions/Sony Pictures
Since nearly the time of the talkies, there has been no bigger champion of authentication than Hollywood writers and directors. Whether its speakeasy bouncers looking for the right password at the door or some crazy villain or hero ripping out appendages or eyes to fool a biometric scanner, authentication systems prove to be useful tools for writers moving the plot along and injecting a little verisimilitude into the story. However they're used and however wildly inaccurate they may be, these fictional authentication scenes are great fun to watch for security pros who use authentication in real life. And sometimes the scenes in older movies that seemed silly in a bygone era have proven more than a little prescient, sometimes prophesying innovations and other times perhaps even inspiring tech innovators who brought fiction into the realm of reality.
In this spy romp, CIA agent Miles Kendig, played by Walter Matthau starts his campaign to get out of the spy game and upset the bureaucratic apple cart with a tell-all book by committing a classic insider attack. He uses his current ID badge in video system that matches his face with his picture in front of a door guard to enter a CIA records repository and steal a file on himself.
Courtesy: Edie & Ely Landau Inc./The Criterion Collection
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