Among my many vices is television watching, and since NUMB3RS (I wonder if they realize there is a typo in the title?) came out, I have ReplayTV’ed it (man, I need a TIVO) often. I was (am, actually) watching the 12/16 episode where they are trying to lookup the records an environmentalist suspected of arson. Alas, they can’t, because
"it looks like Eckworth used a Diffie-Hellman encryption code…basically impossible to crack" on the password for his second screen name.
Hmm, even I may be able to help the FBI on this one: The "technical expert" who reported those details is colluding with the bad guys! Don’t listen to her and arrest her immediately! (Man, my Encyclopedia Brown days are rushing at me on this one).
I know there have been many references to crypto and other security tools in television and movies that are amusing. Please feel free to leave your favorite reference in the comments section (or a link if somebody is doing this already). (I think The Net with Sandra Bullock had an IP address in the 500 range…)
The problem is that too many people in Hollywood only have a very superficial understand of any technology and feel the need to throw in highly technical terms without having the fundamental understanding of what the terms really mean or where/how they are normally used.
Bruce Schneier normally has a few good links on issues like this on his blog, http://www.schneier.com