At Idaho National Labs, security researchers managed to compromise a model power grid by using a computer-based attack or cyberattack.

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Q's Big Hacking Moment

Finally the MI6 folks have their hands on Silva's laptop full of secrets. It's time for a little high tech forensics, and Q is wearing a great cardigan with a special cyberzipper on it! The dialogue is full of words that the writers probably got from somebody who called themselves a "cyberhacker." There are algorithms and encryptions and asymmetrics! Plus — and this was my favorite part — at one point Q exclaims, "It's security through obscurity!" as if this is the most elite thing a hacker could ever do. Unfortunately for the writers, this is actually a phrase that security experts use as an insult, to describe security systems that rely on the fact that nobody cares enough about them to bother trying to hack them. Apple computers are famous for benefiting from security through obscurity. If you're a bad guy, you're going to design ways to exploit the far-more-common Windows systems so that you get more bang for your hack.

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Also, this is not how hacking tools really look on your monitor:

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Usually you're just dealing with a command line, even (or especially) when you're doing super fancy shit.

That said, there were few elements of the forensics scene that O'Donnell was willing to concede that the movie got (kind of) right:

Malware does mutate in memory to prevent reverse engineering, and will self-destruct if it detects that it is being reverse engineered. That's why you try to do the work inside a virtual machine that lets you rewind the machine state to before the self-destruct point. There have been attacks that directly target forensics software as well, so, if they wanted to, someone could screw with their machine with the intent of giving the investigator heartburn.

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Remember when Q yells something about "mutating" right before the UI goes all hinky? Well, that might not be entirely impossible.

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I asked people on Twitter what they thought the most preposterous hacking bits in the film were, and by far the most popular answer was the interface you see above. As software developer Yoz Grahame put it, "[A] pile of red wire hangers turns into a map of Tube tunnels which they then use." Added Lifehacker editor Whitson Gordon, "It looked like they were playing Asteroids." (I think he was referring to the black and white GUI, pictured earlier.)

But no problem was worse than a very, very basic one. Why did Q plug the bad guy's laptop into the highly sensitive MI6 network? Never do that!

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Also, What Is This, People?

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C'mon, this is Silva's super computer hacking lab? In a room full of dust, with no climate control, and servers that look like an LED project from MAKE magazine? OK fine — it does look pretty cool. But do not ever do this to your actual servers, unless they really are just blinky lights.

Security expert Bruce Schneier summed it up best. When I emailed him to ask what he thought about Skyfall, he said he hadn't yet seen it, but he was sure about one thing. "I'm sure it's implausible, whatever it is."

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CGI interfaces pictured here were created by Blind, Ltd.