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" In the new thriller Untraceable, agents in the FBI&amp;#039;s cybercrimes division must find a killer who uses the Internet--and its users--to commit gruesome murders. The more people who visit the villain&amp;#039;s site, the faster his victim dies. But tracking down the bad guy isn&amp;#039;t as easy as your average geek might think: His exploitation of proxy servers and Wi-Fi networks--not to mention superior hacking skills and an innate sense of cunning--make him nearly impossible to find. We asked the filmmakers, cast and leading security experts and doctors just how believable this slippery Web criminal really is, and the results (at least compared to some other flicks out there) may surprise you. In an effort to portray both the police force and the technology accurately, the filmmakers consulted with E.J. Hilbert, a former special agent with the FBI&amp;#039;s cyber operations division. &amp;quot;When we were trying to design how the screens were going to look, I worked with [the filmmakers] and said &amp;#039;Don&amp;#039;t do it this way, it has to look like this,&amp;#039;?&amp;quot; Hilbert tells Popular Mechanics. Diane Lane, who plays special agent Jennifer Marsh, got the chance to interact with agents and use agency tech firsthand when she spent some time at the FBI&amp;#039;s Portland, Ore., cybercrime center. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always been a little bit suspect [of technology],&amp;quot; she tells PM. &amp;quot;I mean, the whole computer industry came into our lives in a flood, when I was in my 20s. And it&amp;#039;s too late for me to really get hooked. So I had to act tech-savvy. It&amp;#039;s like playing a singer--I lip synch great!&amp;quot; The film is as close to the real FBI experience as anything Hilbert has seen (take that, Silence of the Lambs!). &amp;quot;They get as close as possible while still being entertaining,&amp;quot; he says.     RELATED STORIES * FROM UGO.COM: First Review of Cyber Thriller Untraceable  * PLUS: Scientists Debunk I Am Legend&amp;#039;s Junk Science  * PLUS: Expert Second-Guesses Lost Season 3 Finale   The Internet Throughout the film, the killer isn&amp;#039;t just hiding himself using the Web, he&amp;#039;s also exploiting its properties to keep the FBI from taking down his site (aptly, if frighteningly, titled killwithme.com). With a constantly changing IP address, access to countless proxy servers, a botnet at his disposal and seemingly endless mirrors of the site, he seems digitally invisible. According to John Pironti, a leading security consultant at Getronics, Untraceable has gotten it right--mostly. &amp;quot;We see this kind of scenario every day,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s exactly what Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups do to keep their Web servers up.&amp;quot; And, says Al Kirkpatrick, chief security officer of First American Corporation, it&amp;#039;s not that hard to do. &amp;quot;A reasonably smart, but not even brilliant, teenager could do all of this,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;If you have the time and the inclination, you can go out to the Web and probably find detailed, point-by-point instructions and do it in a day or two.&amp;quot; Hacking into wireless networks--as the killer does to Marsh&amp;#039;s--is a common occurrence. It&amp;#039;s usually done by embeddinga backdoor Trojan that will be downloaded in what appears to be a benign file. &amp;quot;It could be a game you want to play, or a music file, or whatever,&amp;quot; Kirkpatrick says. &amp;quot;You download it, and it apparently does exactly what you expected it to do. But while it&amp;#039;s doing that, unbeknownst to you, it&amp;#039;s unloading bad stuff into your computer.&amp;quot; Ultimately, such a virus could allow someone to access important files or even control your computer remotely. Other details, such as blocking all foreign IP addresses, are possible, but much tougher to accomplish than creating a botnet, according to Pironti. Likewise, registering the domain in Russia--where the United States has no jurisdiction--is definitely &amp;quot;one of the problems we face,&amp;quot; Pironti says, but &amp;quot;if you&amp;#039;re a U.S. citizen, chances are you&amp;#039;re not going to go to a Russian server for that [domain name], so this is stretching it.&amp;quot; However, remotely controlling various aspects of technology, like the killer does in the film, is not only credible--it&amp;#039;s becoming more and more commonplace. &amp;quot;There are all kinds of wonderful things you can have your computer activate for you at home when you&amp;#039;re actually at work--change the temperature, activate lights,&amp;quot; Pironti says.     RELATED STORIES \u2022 FROM UGO.COM: First Review of Cyber Thriller Untraceable  \u2022 PLUS: Scientists Debunk I Am Legend&amp;#039;s Junk Science  \u2022 PLUS: Expert Second-Guesses Lost Season 3 Finale   Cellphone and Car Tech In a pivotal scene, the killer manages to isolate Agent Marsh on a bridge by disabling both her car and her cellphone. Trapped inside her vehicle, which has no wipers, lights, power locks or tracking system, Marsh listens as the killer speaks to her through her OnStar system. That&amp;#039;s all well and good, Pironti says, but OnStar doesn&amp;#039;t have control of a vehicle&amp;#039;s wipers or lights. &amp;quot;The ability to use that communications channel is possible, theoretically,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;If you can get the unique ID of the car, and you had a transmitter and you knew the unique identifier and the signal frequency, theoretically you could make a phone call through the system. But it&amp;#039;s not very easy, and there are features built into OnStar to keep that from becoming a reality.&amp;quot; Physical access to the vehicle (which the killer probably had) could also explain what happened with the lights and wipers, though not how it happened at such a strategic place and time. Marsh&amp;#039;s Web-ready phone, however, could have been a target. &amp;quot;There is the potential, even though it&amp;#039;s not likely, that he could break into the phone and disable its ability,&amp;quot; Pironti says. &amp;quot;But it&amp;#039;s a sophisticated concept, so you&amp;#039;d be better off having physical access to the phone rather than doing it remotely.&amp;quot; (Thankfully, Lane herself wouldn&amp;#039;t have this problem. &amp;quot;I keep everything super-low tech,&amp;quot; she tells PM. &amp;quot;I think I have the first BlackBerry ever made. That thing--I could throw it at the wall and it wouldn&amp;#039;t break.&amp;quot;)     RELATED STORIES \u2022 FROM UGO.COM: First Review of Cyber Thriller Untraceable  \u2022 PLUS: Scientists Debunk I Am Legend&amp;#039;s Junk Science  \u2022 PLUS: Expert Second-Guesses Lost Season 3 Finale   The Killings The more people who visit the live, streaming killwithme.com, the faster a victim meets his maker--and the killer employs various gruesome methods to do the deed. From overdoses of anticoagulant to prolonged exposure to heat lamps to a bath in sulfuric acid, he ups the ante--and the notoriety of his site--with every murder he commits. His first kill (kitten death notwithstanding) makes use of an anticoagulant drug called heparin. As more people visit the site, the dosage, administered through an IV drip, increases. The victim begins to bleed from his nose and bruise profusely; within 12 hours, he&amp;#039;s dead. Heparin is the most widely used IV anticoagulant, says Dr. Andrew Einstein, an assistant professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. &amp;quot;An individual receiving a dose of heparin that is too high will be prone to a variety of bleeding complications, which can include nosebleeds and bruising,&amp;quot; Einstein says. &amp;quot;More serious complications can include bleeding from the GI tract and bleeding around the brain, both of which can be fatal. For IV anticoagulants at a high enough dose, it would be reasonable for fatal bleeding to occur within 12 hours.&amp;quot; The killer turns to chemistry for one murder, immersing his victim in a dunk tank of water, releasing more and more sulfuric acid as the site gets more hits. The victim&amp;#039;s skin begins to flake away; blood bubbles in the water, and after a short time, he dies. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d get a lot of blood because you&amp;#039;d be exposing the dermis,&amp;quot; says extreme surgeon and PM Editorial Board of Advisers member Dr. Ken Kamler, &amp;quot;but it would be like a chemical burn. People can live for a long time with a severe burn, and unless you hit a vital organ, you don&amp;#039;t die.&amp;quot; What&amp;#039;s more, Kamler says, the victim would probably tan (sulfuric acid, he says, is used in leather tanning) after a few hours of exposure. Even if he died, the sulfuric acid would stop eating away at the skin after awhile, so the skeletal remains viewers see when the feds discover the victim&amp;#039;s body aren&amp;#039;t realistic. They would actually find someone tanned like leather. Another victim is murdered with 182 heat lamps. His skin turns red and blisters and he gives way to death within 6 hours--but not without somehow managing to mouth his apparent location first. &amp;quot;The skin would definitely get red as a beet because it&amp;#039;s trying to dissipate heat,&amp;quot; Kamler says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think you&amp;#039;d see blisters in six hours, but I don&amp;#039;t know how hot those heat lamps were.&amp;quot; And, Kamler adds, once his body temperature rose more than 10 degrees, the victim might become conscious, but not intelligible--so there&amp;#039;s no way he could have gotten that address out. &amp;quot;When your brain starts heating up, you lose that fine control that allows you to focus and be coherent,&amp;quot; Kamler says. &amp;quot;I would say anything else is Hollywood.&amp;quot;   RELATED STORIES \u2022 FROM UGO.COM: First Review of Cyber Thriller Untraceable  \u2022 PLUS: Scientists Debunk I Am Legend&amp;#039;s Junk Science  \u2022 PLUS: Expert Second-Guesses Lost Season 3 Finale   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a5116/4246219/>