Cybersecurity Awareness for the Masses, Part II

This post continues our end of Cybersecurity Awareness Month series highlighting our New America Cybersecurity Fellows’ favorite cybersecurity-relevant popular culture references. Yesterday, we focused on references that have inspired our Fellows and/or they believe will inspire others. Tomorrow, we will look at some cautionary tales. Today, we look at references that our Fellows have identified as great examples of representation of cybersecurity in popular culture. Do you agree? Let us know your favorite cybersecurity related pop references at @NewAmCyber. And if you like this, don’t forget to check out our regular Humans of Cybersecurity blog!

Tarah Wheeler - Information Security Researcher

Ocean’s 8

The hacker Nine Ball, Rihanna’s character in Ocean’s 8, is my favorite. Her character is possibly the most authentic hacker I’ve seen on screen in what she not only represents, but actually does. Her plays and attacks are real. Social engineering, OSINT (open source intelligence), phishing and vishing, and IoT vulns in cams and monitoring systems are exactly how actual red teamers break into systems and locations. Not only am I ecstatic to see a woman of color is playing a hacker, and that’s a conversation always worth having, but frankly, as an offensive security researcher, I think I and every other woman I know is just thrilled to see hacking done well in film. Rihanna did us all proud and that movie is absolutely an example of a hacker with a heart of gold doing tech right.

Laura Bate - Policy Analyst at New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative

Ghostwriter

In the 1990s kids' TV series Ghostwriter, the plucky team of mystery-solvers and their remarkably well-read ghost consultant embark on a case to try to uncover "Max Mouse", a hacker wreaking havoc across the school. The case allowed viewers to consider ways that network vulnerabilities could impact their everyday lives by changing grades, triggering fire alarms, and other examples that are relatable for a young audience. While that lesson is excellent in its own right, what makes the story a particular favorite for me is the character of Erica Dansby (Julia Stiles). Dansby is a take-no-guff hacker who insists on writing a newspaper story about Max Mouse, demanding, "Do you know anything about hackers? Can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace? Ever read Neuromancer? ... I'll handle the hacker stories." This image of the fiercely smart female hacker set the stage for future characters like NCIS's Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) and Criminal Mind's Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness), and, more generally, helps women and girls see themselves in such roles. Plus, "can you jam with the console cowboys in cyberspace?" may be one of the better lines ever uttered on national TV.

Ian Wallace - Director at New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative

High School Musical

Few movies before or since have had a plotline that depends quite so directly on a cyber attack against physical infrastructure: a targeted but reversible interruption of power to the school’s gym in order to foil a dastardly plot to prevent the school’s basketball star from fulfilling his destiny by auditioning for the eponymous school musical. But what makes this particularly movie special to me, as the father of two girls who love the franchise, is that the hackers responsible are Taylor McKessie (Monique Coleman), the African American captain of the scholastic decathlon team, aided by her friend Gabriella Montoya Montez (Vanessa Hudgens), a musically gifted Latina brainiac.

Tellingly, neither girls seems to have gone on to formally specialised in cybersecurity/computer science. Three films later, Taylor goes off the Yale to study political science while Gabriella goes to Stanford with a view to studying law. Nevertheless, the world could still do with a few more policy-wonks and lawyers with the skills to perpetrate (and as adults, therefore, presumably work to prevent) such attacks. At a time when the cybersecurity workforce remains disproportionately white and male, we need more role models like that.

Jacqueline Muna Musiitwa - Executive Director at Financial Sector Deepening Uganda

Black Panther

Released in 2018, Black Panther captivated audiences as it became the third highest grossing movie ever in North America. Based on the Marvel Comics character, Black Panther depicted a fictitious African county Wakanda that was environmentally preserved with advanced infrastructure (including technology). While the film was popular for many reasons, I was drawn to the strong female cast, particularly Shuri (Letitia Wright), the genius behind the country’s sophisticated technological prowess that protected the country from enemies. Their technology and mineral wealth was highly sought after. The movie ends with Shuri accepting to lead a technology research center to increase outreach in a low-income neighborhood in Oakland, California.

Shuri’s success with audiences has led Marvel to create a more detailed series of her adventures. Shuri’s character has the potential to change how females, youth, people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and people of color see themselves as potential contributors to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields. Considering the low diversity in the sector (including cybersecurity), Black Panther and Shuri could combine comics and the classroom in order to shape tech’s future workforce. And, of course, Black Panther’s message on the need to give back inspires initiatives that decrease digital access.

Fahmida Y Rashid - Senior Managing Editor at Decipher

Project Mc2
Representation matters. In Netflix miniseries Project Mc2, four teenage girls are secret agents who use science to carry out missions. Bryden Bandweth (Genneya Walton) is the hacker. She modifies a smartphone into a spy/selfie pen and proves her tech chops by hacking a lab's wireless network to display a photograph on every screen in the lab. The show isn't about just cool hacks, though. One of the plots they foil is a company trying to launch a satellite that would allow it to access each and every person's personal data, such as email, texting, and other information that can then be sold for billions of dollars. In another situation the person the team is protecting gets kidnapped when Bryden tweets from the secure location. Operational Security (OPSEC) and data mining in a way kids can understand! It is so hard to talk about the perils of being online all the time, and Project Mc2 does a great job of showing off the cool parts of hacking while passing along valuable lessons on how to live with tech.

Anthony Hendricks - Litigator at Crowe & Dunlevy

Jay-Z ‘s 4:44 Album

In Jay-Z’s most recent album 4:44, Hova raps about infidelity (sorry Beyoncé), forgiveness (thanks Beyoncé) and personal growth. On the album’s closing track “Legacy,” Jay-Z explains the legacy that he hopes to leave to his family after his death. In the first verse of the song, Jay takes a short departure from writing his oral will to discuss the dearth of opportunities for minorities in the tech field. Jay-Z compares the difficulties people of color face when attempting to enter the tech space to pre-Jackie Robinson Major League baseball when blacks were barred from playing.

With two bars, Jay-Z proves that he is not only the best rapper alive but also pinpoints one of the challenges facing cybersecurity—building a diverse and knowledgeable workforce. Having diversity in cybersecurity means that there are a variety of voices, experiences, and skills working together to solve some of the worlds biggest problems. This Cybersecurity Awareness Month it is important not only to discuss ways to protect ourselves but also to understand that creating a truly diverse cybersecurity workforce expands our ability to do so.