Takedown (2000), also known as Track Down, is a film about computer hacker Kevin Mitnick, based on the book Takedown by John Markoff and Tsutomu Shimomura. The film was directed by Joe Chappelle and stars Skeet Ulrich and Russell Wong.

The real Shimomura has a cameo in the film, as his own heckler. This may be an double in-joke, one for author cameos and the other for independent researcher to duplicate, re-engineer, or do a skunk-works "clean-room" project, all of which usually is done undercover for various reasons, such as to avoid patent infringements.

Criticism and inaccuracies

In Kevin Mitnick's The Art of Intrusion, Mitnick states that both book and movie are "extremely inaccurate" and based on media hype.

The movie features Mitnick hacking using a later Toshiba, perhaps a Tectra 530. The real laptops used were a Toshiba Satellite T1960CS and a Toshiba T4400SX. Both ran Windows 3.1 and are white in colour. The movie clearly shows a single grey laptop.

Mitnick and Shimomura meet twice in the movie, one of which prompts Kevin to flee to Seattle. This meeting did not actually take place.

In the movie Mitnick hacks into Shimomura's computers and steals/deletes his files and software. In reality Mitnick never hacked any of the Shimomura's computers and he claims he never caused any damage to anyone by deleting files or data. He merely copied source code of some software, out of curiosity.

No ferries are necessary for a trip from Sea-Tac airport (or Boeing Field) to the University District, which is implied in the movie. Even if it were necessary, the type of ferry depicted in the movie is not found in the Puget Sound.

California author Jonathan Littman wrote a 1997 book about the case called The Fugitive Game: Online with Kevin Mitnick, in which he presented Mitnick's side of the story. Littman alleged that portions of the film were taken from his book without permission.

Additional information

Known also as "Hackers 2" amongst peer to peer users.

Released as 'Track Down' in the US.

External links

• Seattle Times article detailing Mitnick's stay in Seattle