We asked the best legendary hackers what their reaction was after seeing Matrix
Here is a movie that left no one unmoved, especially in the infosec...
As the latest Matrix movie hits theaters and the Internet, we asked some legendary hackers what they felt when they saw the first episode.
There are a few people in the world of computer security who have made history and whose contribution is little known to the general public. They have made history, either because they have discovered important flaws, or because they have contributed to awareness, or because they are, often in the shadows, at the origin of essential companies in this field. They were also behind legendary hacker groups in the mid-90s, such as the Cult of the Dead Cow, L0pht, ADM, w00w00, etc. We had told part of their story in several articles. As the last Matrix opus arrives in theaters and in the videoclubs peer to peer networks, it seemed nice to ask them what was their memory of the first episode of the saga. When did they see it, what was their reaction? In Matrix Resurrections, the characters are propelled 20 years later (actually more). For the world of hackers, twenty-two years have passed since the release of Matrix in 1999, a real eternity in Internet time. In this time frame, members of these groups have created Napster, Veracode, Qualys, Whatsapp, you name it...
Personally, I saw Matrix on video-on-demand at the Alexis Park hotel during Defcon in 1999. I remember thinking that the Matrix movie was a kind of allegory. I saw a kind of similarity between the Matrix where what you see is different from what is really there and the emerging world of the internet. A world that would connect all computers and in which some journalists or blissful "experts" saw something like...