br23 blog - minsk, belarus

23 (imdb entry) is a great movie. It’s a German production, and I decided to watch it on a Saturday evening almost by accident, just because I always look out for my favorite number. And I think I just discovered another dimension to my own internet identity, with some strikiing similarities…

“The movie is based on the true story of a group of young computer hackers from Hannover, Germany. In the late 1980s the orphaned Karl Koch invests his heritage in a flat and a home computer. At first he dials up to bulletin boards to discuss conspiracy theories inspired by his favorite novel, R.A. Wilson’s “Illuminatus“, but soon he and his friend David start breaking into government and military computers. Pepe, one of Karl’s rather criminal acquaintances senses that there is money in computer cracking — he travels to east Berlin and tries to contact Soviet KGB…”

Of all the German movies I’ve watched (probably about a dozen), I’d rank it third, just after “Das Experiment” and “Run, Lola, Run”. Midway through the movie I suddenly realized that this is indeed a true story and that I’d read about it long time ago (in a Soviet computer magazine that published selected chapters from the American book The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage). Ok, I will say no more to avoid any more spoilers. If you are interested in the history of the early era of computer hackers, you gotta watch this film. Nichts ist so wie es scheint.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2006 at 11:04 am and is filed under Deutschland, Movies, Hi-tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.