Neon Stowe
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 5 months, 2019–2026
2:00 · 447K views · Apr 17, 2014
The scene from the 2001 film Swordfish in which Hugh Jackman's character is forced to hack while under pressure. The clip is widely known for its absurd depiction of hacking.
Used as a joke or shorthand for ridiculous movie hacking and unrealistic depictions of software work.
5 comments from Hacker News
This is a reference to the ridiculous scene from the 2001 movie Swordfish where Hugh Jackman is writing a program to hack into a bank network. this video
This article missed a great opportunity to post that hacking scene from Swordfish as a counterexample of what hacking does NOT look like: this video
And here I was making fun of the Swordfish hack scene [1]. Turns out he was just assembling the crypto algorithm using vim. [1]: this video
Just like watching the movie Hackers and hearing how he hacked the gibson or the 7 screens setup in swordfish : this video
That "building the worm" scene has got to be my favorite depiction of software development of all time. this video