MovieChat Forums > Now You See Me 2 (2016) Discussion > Something very ridiculous about this mov...

Something very ridiculous about this movie, and nobody's talking about i


The chip that can apparently break all encryption in the world.

Seriously, anybody who has a decent knowledge of how computers work, knows that current encryption algorithms can't be broken by classical computers even after a billion years.

Maybe they can argue this thingamajig is a quantum computer, which greatly reduces the algorithmic complexity to be able to break encryption. But if that's the case, then they won't be the only ones with such technology. Currently quantum computers are being developed in many companies and universities, so when a device like this actually works, it won't go unnoticed.

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The chip is just a modern Holy Grail. Been used a couple of times before (I remember it being called a Skeleton Key in something). Yes it's unrealistic, but it's a movie and the people behind it doesn't have to be very knowledgeable in every area they touch in the movie for it to be enjoyable. It's not like many of the special things in movies are realistic, they rarely are, but many stories doesn't work if you do it realistically.

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I just checked and this wasn't a documentary.

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Thank you for checking, I feel better now.

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You're assuming that a brute force attack is the only successful attack against encryption.

There are conceivably other ways. You just need to be able to factor an insanely huge number in a reasonable amount of time.

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And you would do that how exactly? Especially since this device can break ?all encrypton in the world?. It's one thing to find a vulnerability in AES, but to find it in every encryption algorithm in existence? How would you even try to write a program that automatically searches for vulnerabilities?

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Sorry, I missed the point of your post. You're talking about prime numbers. OK. So how would you increase the time needed to factor a huge number withouth breaking physics in the process?

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It's actually possible, and it happens in real life. NSA tricked the whole world to use their rigged numbers. They don't need to factorize it, they knew it.

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That was before people knew NSA was intentionally screwing with everyone. They made everyone use 56-bit encryption knowing it was easily breakable using brute force. But we now know better and use 256-bit encryption, which cannot be broken by brute force in a million years. Now, you may argue that there may be a flaw in the algorithm, or that the prime numbers are already known, or something, but unless you have documented proof that this is the case, there's no reason for us to think so, especially now that we're not waiting for NSA to approve our algorithms.

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Just read this in another board by Lizardo74

There was no real chip. The entire Macau arc was orchestrated by Thaddeus and the Eye

Everyone else were pawns playing their little game.

It was a team building excercise and initiation into the Eye. And at the end you can see the guy from the facility.

Hope this helps!

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But what about Daniel Radcliffe? He thought the device was real, and was supposedly a technology expert.

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Really? This movie was horrible on so many levels and this is what you want to talk about?

Why does it even surprise you?

It's just another nail in the coffin of a film that should have been an easy hit.

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I work in IT, so naturally these are the things I notice the most.

It's less of a surprise and more of disappointment.

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Ech, most our encryption algorythms can actually be broken after a billion years. for example a regular salted 16 bit encryption would take "only" around 50 million years to break for a purpose built ASICs.

Furthermore, it is theorized that if quantum computer does get made, our current encryption would become obsolete due to its entirely different way of working around problems. Maybe this chip was the first quantum computer. And its not really as insane as it sounds, Googles experiment with quantum computer now has a small quantum processor that gets things right around 84% of the time, so we are far ahead of where we were even 5 years ago.



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The spirit of abysmal despair

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I agree with most of what you say. But

Maybe this chip was the first quantum computer.


Not at the size of a playing card, no.

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Why not?

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The spirit of abysmal despair

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Why yes?

The first computers were the size of large rooms. And while we're obviously way past that, quantum computers are another monster that rely on new technology that wasn't used before.

Just look at how big a D-Wave system is, fully assembled: http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-series/introduction-d-wave-quantum-hardware#h2-7

Now tell me that can fit in a playing card. In 10 years, maybe, but this is not a futuristic film at all.

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First computers were the size of large rooms because we did not have technology to produce small transistors. we have technology to do so now so no new computer developed now requires to be the size of the room. Quantum computers would have being small as a requirement given that it has to deal with very small and precise particle physics.

Note that the D-Wave you linked to here clearly explains that the giant cube is the shielding and cooling unit and the actual computer inside it is rather small. you know, kinda like the giant cube in the movie they stole the chip from. Heck i wouldnt be surprised if they designed the look of that thing after D-Wave by how similar they look. The actual quantum computer part of D-Wave is small enough that you could carry it around by hand.

Ah so people that can literally dissapear into water and fake a plane flight through power of tech is not futuristic enough.

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The spirit of abysmal despair

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Note that the D-Wave you linked to here clearly explains that the giant cube is the shielding and cooling unit and the actual computer inside it is rather small. you know, kinda like the giant cube in the movie they stole the chip from.


Yes, but we see later in the movie that Daniel Radcliffe tests it on his computer by just plugging it. Now, at this point, the whole flight is being faked, but the point of it is that it's realistic enough that he falls for it. So, either he's an idiot that doesn't understand how the chip works, which would contradict the movie, or the chip isn't supposed to work in a shielded cool environment, which would contradict physics.

Ah so people that can literally dissapear into water and fake a plane flight through power of tech is not futuristic enough


The faked flight doesn't imply it's a futuristic movie. It implies it's poorly done. There's another thread here that explains that flight simulators do exist and work as you would imagine, but require enormous equipment on the outside that can't be easily hidden even with futuristic technology.

About the guy disappearing in the water, it's meant to be an illusion, even though I suspect it was actually CGI (but I don't know). It was never meant to be literal teleportation.

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Well you can check a chips book sequence and serial identification without requiring it to do anything more complex than basic boot when powered, IE it is possible to check if your CPU or GPU is functional without requiring it to work under load during boot, which is nowadays done silently by the BIOS but back when PCs were new you could observe this sequence of events. Furthermore, the plane being fake, they could have easily made it so the device he plugged the chip into showed what he wanted to see instead of what would really happen and the chip may have never been activated at all.

Im well aware that flight simulators exist, however given the events taking in the movie the ONLY way it could be explained in-movie lore is technology that we do not currently posses (though i agree that outside the movie lore it simply indicates poorly done movie).



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The spirit of abysmal despair

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Is that your first computer related movie?
Or were you just too young before to notice something?

Because you can see bs in most movies that have anything to do with hacking (ridiculous how it is displayed) and any equal deeper computer work. It's like: show some windows, let them pop up in masses with random text in it - who cares, not the watcher obviously - and done you're in - lol.

Even shows like CSI have computer bs all around in almost every episode. Don't get me started about superzoom and image enhancement that make a crisp clear 200x zoom picture out of an old vcr recording .

A device that can hack other computers is also nothing new. Been used here and there. Who cares. It's not a documentary.
And if you want some realism I'm all for it but don't single out this movie and downvote it for cr'p when this computer tech bs is all around in the movie world.


---
Lincoln Lee: I lost a partner.
Peter Bishop: I lost a universe!

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Thanks for the insightful answer. I appreciate it.

It's not a documentary.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3110958/board/thread/260173066?p=3&d=261248112#261248112

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The advanced computer technology was from alien technology.

Actually all of our technology in real life was derived from the UFO crash in Roswell in 1947, and from a crash before that near Maryland in 1941. Even the Germans before WW2 obtained technology from a crashed UFO in the late 1930's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_BbtXj2P4g

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At first I thought you were replying to one of my comments on the movie Arrival.

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You obviously are not up with movie lore. In "Sneakers" the Robert Redford character - Martin Bishop - stole a double secret, special black box from the Ben Kingsley character's - Cosmo - hitech company that had developed a breakthrough on encryption. It really worked. I saw it decode "anything" right there on the movie screen - the national power grid, the nation's air traffic control, etc. (cough, cough) I'm just having some fun.

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