Jan 11, 2021 15:00:00

When you actually reproduce the ATM hacking scene of Terminator 2 with a program, it looks like this

In the movie '

Terminator 2 ', there is a scene where the main character John Connor hacks the stolen debit card PIN and withdraws cash from the ATM. Slack engineer Bertrand Fan has reproduced the scene that suggests Connor's genius talent that will compete with the enemy of humanity, AI Skynet , and released the source code.

Simulating the PIN cracking scene in Terminator 2 | bertrand fan
https://bert.org/2021/01/04/t2-pin-cracking/

You can see the scene where Connor hacks the PIN and withdraws cash in the following movie.


Wrap the aluminum foil around the debit card, extend the cable, and insert it into the ATM ...

Connect the cable to your computer and operate the keyboard rattlingly.

'PIN IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM'

When I ran the program, countless numbers began to appear constantly.

The number of digits displayed is gradually decreasing ...

Finally, identify the PIN '9003' of the card.

A series of scenes where Connor, who entered the specified PIN and withdrew cash, smiled.

Mr. Fan was impressed by this scene, and when he investigated what kind of computer was used in the work, he found that it was

Atari Portfolio. Launched in 1989, Atari Portfolio is the world's first palmtop computer with a 240x64 pixel LCD screen and running on three AA batteries.

It is difficult to reproduce the hack in the work of 'wrapping aluminum around a debit card and identifying the card PIN from it' as it is, but Mr. Fan who thought that it seems possible to simulate the display itself, only screen display I am trying to reproduce. As for the display of 'PIN IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM', it is OK if the banner is displayed as it is.

If you take a closer look at the numbers that appear after that, you will see that the first line is '12345678901234567890123457890123456780', which is a 38-digit number. In addition, according to Mr. Fan's observation, regarding the subsequent display of numbers, after displaying numbers with the same number of digits for about 5 lines, the number of digits will decrease by 1 or 2 digits.

So, here is the Python code that reproduces the hacking scene of Terminator 2 by Mr. Fan. As a process, the banner of 'PIN IDENTIFICATION PROGRAM' is displayed first, and '12345678901234567890123457890123456780' is displayed on the first line. After that, a random integer is displayed and the number of digits is reduced every 5 lines. The number of digits to be reduced alternates between 1 and 2 digits, and when the number of digits finally reaches 4, the display of integers is stopped and '9003' is displayed 10 times.

Mr. Fan converted the state of executing this code into an

SVG animation image with termtosvg , superimposed it with the SVG image of Atari Portfolio style design found on the net, and reproduced the hacking scene of Terminator 2. Click the image below to see the SVG animation.

Fan said it was nice to write the code in Python, but he was worried that Atari Portfolio couldn't run Python. After investigating by Mr. Fan, it turned out that it is possible to develop a program that also works with Atari Portfolio by rewriting the code on

Turbo Pascal of the development environment. Fan has installed Turbo Pascal on DOSBox-X , a DOS emulator, and is rewriting the program.

Below is a movie in which the program rewritten on Turbo Pascal is running on DOSBox-X.


Fan's program does not include any hacking process, but it seems that you can feel like a great hacker just by looking at the execution screen.