DEF CON 31 - What Can We Learn about Hacking in SciFi - Nicolas Minvielle, Xavier Facelina

The links between science fiction and reality have been demonstrated in numerous research studies. By speculating about the possible future uses of technologies under development, science fiction shows us plausible futures. In this sense, it allows us, as a society, to popularize and debate the consequences (expected or not) of our technological developments. In addition to this not negligible social role science fiction also has an impact on our current developments. We speak here of “loop-looping“, i.e. there is a feedback loop between what science fiction shows us and what we are then led to actually develop. From this point of view, our imaginations are performative, and this is perhaps the most critical issue: what I see can happen. In the case of hacking and cybersecurity, a particular phenomenon is added: the general public’s knowledge of these subjects is mainly through the fictions they watch, read, or listen to. We propose to analyze a corpus of 200 fictional attacks, and 800 real attacks and to compare them to define if the imaginary ones are predictive if they inform us or on the contrary mislead us as for the reality of the current attacks.