Hacking and the Academy Awards

5:55 PM -- Is hacking becoming, well, telegenic? First we saw CourtTV's "Tiger Team" reality TV program (see The Perfect Jewelry Heist and Pen Testing Goes Reality TV), and now the upcoming screening (yes, an actual screening) of a documentary called "The New Face of Cybercrime,” filmed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Frederic Golding.

Fortify Software, which hired Golding for the production, has released a trailer on YouTube of the approximately 30-minute film, which looks at cybercrime's impact on consumers and businesses.

Judging from the trailer, it's a slick production, with some impressive industry, government, and business personalities weighing in on the cybercrime evolution, including firewall pioneer Marcus Ranum; James Routh, CISO of The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.; Air Force Col. Jeff Salyards, director of the Defense Computer Forensics Laboratory; and Mike Ullman, chairman and CEO of JC Penney.

Cigital CTO Gary McGraw is also interviewed in the film, and the trailer includes RSnake (aka Robert Hansen, founder of SecTheory) showing how he can inject "anything" he wants onto the domains.aol.com page due to a cross-site scripting flaw on it.

"It's amazing the number of folks we were able to get to open up about this [cybercrime] topic," says Clark Newby, vice president of marketing for Fortify. "The story had not been all told together and put in front of folks... so that people can really get an understanding of what's going on inside the hacker ecology."

Newby says no bad guys appear in the film, but he hinted that some may have served as off-camera sources. "They're not in the film. I'll just say that," he says.

(Neither is our telegenic site editor, Tim Wilson, who filmed a segment with Golding that apparently ended up on the cutting-room floor. Star quality is tough to define.)

There are no plans for a Hollywood premiere of "The New Face of Cybercrime." Fortify will post portions of the film on its Website, as well as provide copies to its customers and business partners.

"Our goal is to educate folks about the threat and challenges," Newby says. The invitation-only screenings will be held in San Francisco, New York, and London.

— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading