Difference between revisions of "Day of the Technopath, The (Dispatches)"

Latest revision as of 17:25, 4 November 2022

The Day of the Technopath

The Day of the Technopath Title Card
Format	Video (TV)
Genre	Documentary
Origin	UK
Language	English
Release Date	11 October 1989
Running Time	41 min
Production
Created by	NA
Directed by	NA
Produced by	NA
Written by	NA
Screenplay by	NA
Distributed by	Channel 4
Narrated by	NA
Starring	Jan Hruska, Stephen Gold, Robert Shifreen
Music by	NA
Cinematography by	NA
Edited by	NA
Production Company	Channel 4
Location(s)	Various
Original Channel	Channel 4
Additional Information
Based on	NA
Topics	Technology, Computers, Hacking
Follows	NA
Precedes	NA
Associated Video	NA
Website	channel4.com/programmes/dispatches

The Day of the Technopath is a Dispatches episode exploring computer security threats of the era. This documentary is particularly interesting because very common problems today are discussed at their infancy: organized crime first experimenting with cybercrime, threats to critical infrastructure, computer espionage by foreign nation states as well as cyber warfare. The Day of the Technopath features a wide array of sources ranging from journalists and politicians to computer hackers and security experts.

Synopsis

The documentary begins with a cautionary tail told by a British politician, Emma Nicholson, about potential threats viruses and computer miscreants pose to the country's economy and national security. According to Mel Croucher, a journalist and a video games writer, the new computer underground has transformed from young amateurs looking for a bit of mischief to the one filled by adult professionals out to make a profit.

Several examples of malicious code are discussed by Dr. Jan Hruska, founder of Sophos, and Mark Drew, Information Security Manager at IBM UK. The first example was one of the first examples of a computer worm that propagated by sending copies of itself to all people in compromised users' contact book. The virus enticed users to execute it by promising to display a "Christmas card", hence the name - Christmas Tree virus. Christmas Tree virus resulted in high network traffic and outages.

The second program discussed in the documentary was called Datacrime. The virus was designed to silently infect programs (.com files). The virus would activate after October 13th of any year once any of the infected executables were ran resulting in local disks being formatted. There are several other examples discussed of viruses infecting critical computers such as British Rail and Polltech.

Next, the documentary explores computer hacking as an innocent mischief. One example was the hack of British Telecom's Prestel viewdata service by Robert Schifreen and Stephen Gold. The compromise allowed the two to log in to arbitrary mailboxes on the system including the one belonging to Prince Philip. Interestingly, because Britain did not have sufficient legislature in place to prosecute, the case was dismissed. The Computer Misuse Act 1990 was introduced partly in response to this case. The Day of the Technopath illustrates the wide variety of computer hacker personas by interviewing Barbara Hammet le Brun, a French baroness, painter, musician and recreational hacker.

The film concludes with a section on computer fraud, copyright infringement, industrial espionage and the lack of police training or legislature to combat these crimes. One example of organized crime getting involved in computer crimes was the embezzlement case against Prudential-Bache Securities where approximately 8 million pounds were stolen by a disgruntled employee and siphoned though 4 different countries in order to conceal its final destination. A major gap in law enforcement education is identified where only a small percentage of British police force went through a brief 4 week training course on computer crime.

I find The Day of the Technopath a really interesting historical documentary, because it was filmed at the crossroads of the hacking culture just before the legal system, organized crime and military really caught up with the activity. At the time the episode was filmed, 1989, hackers in UK were still able to get away with harmless exploring (Case of Stephen Gold), the private security industry was just beginning to emerge (Dr. Hruska just founded Sophos antivirus company a few years earlier) and organized crime involvement in computer hacking was still limited to its most primitive forms (Prudential-Bache Securities case). At the same time there are hints in the documentary of things to come, something that we see occurring every day in modern times, such as computer espionage and sabotage perpetrated by foreign governments, computer hacking used for mass illegal profits and the introduction of draconian laws based on fears spread by politicians (hacked bomber plane dropping a nuke on Russia). The documentary was filmed during the last of the innocent days of computer hacking in Britain. A year later Computer Misuse Act 1990 was introduced that permanently made hacking illegal.

Downloads

References

• thesprawl.org

External Links

• Dispatches on IMDB