Gallery: You Can't Understand Security Without These Classic Works
MGM/Everett Collection01WARGAMES, Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, 1983, (c) MGM/courtesy Everett Collection
[*WarGames*](https://youtu.be/hbqMuvnx5MU) | A high-schooler hacks into a US military computer and brings the country to the brink of war—a reminder that attribution can be tricky.
02secrets-of-the-little-blue-box
[“Secrets of the Little Blue Box”](http://www.historyofphonephreaking.org/docs/rosenbaum1971.pdf) | Ron Rosenbaum’s 1971 *Esquire* story introduced phone phreaking to the world and inspired Jobs and Woz to start their first business.
Laura Poitras03citizen-four
[*Citizenfour*](https://youtu.be/rHaWhUjV96M) | Snowden defined how we now think about government surveillance; Laura Poitras’ documentary defined how we think about Snowden himself.
04the-cyphernomicon
[*The Cyphernomicon*](https://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html) | Timothy May published this mind-bogglingly prescient outline for a crypto-anarchic revolution on the Cypherpunks mailing list in 1994.
Touchstone Pictures05enemy-of-the-state
[*Enemy of the State*](https://youtu.be/MJQ30fPYec8) | More than a decade before Edward Snowden exposed the extent of the NSA’s domestic spying, this 1998 film warned of the dangers of giving the agency unfettered powers.
06Moral Politics
*[Moral Politics](http://amzn.com/0226467716): How Liberals and Conservatives Think* | George Lakoff’s assertion that metaphor and the framing of ideas determines personal politics remains hugely influential in modern polling.
TED07mikko
[Mikko Hypponen](https://youtu.be/9CqVYUOjHLw) | Few security professionals possess the public speaking skills necessary to convey supreme technical expertise. Hypponen is that rarity.
08Crypto
[*Crypto*](http://amzn.com/0140244328) | Steven Levy’s “people’s history of cryptography” starts at the advent of public key encryption and traces it through the geek victories in the first Crypto War.
Universal09sneakers
[*Sneakers*](https://youtu.be/rbJpx_6fYgE) | The perfect nerd-caper flick, this 1992 tale of penetration testers caught up in a conflict over secret codebreaking tools still feels relevant today.
10Cryptonomicon
[*Cryptonomicon*](http://amzn.com/0380788624) | Neal Stephenson’s 1999 masterwork is the ultimate cypherpunk epic, flitting between World War II and the late ’90s tech boom.
Ryan Young for WIRED11defcon-4x3
[Def Con](https://www.defcon.org/) | For understanding American hacker culture, four days in Vegas at one of the world’s biggest hacker conferences is like drinking from a fire hose.
12The Cuckoo's Egg
[*The Cuckoo’s Egg*](http://amzn.com/1416507787) | Clifford Stoll’s 1989 thriller recounts his hunt for a KGB cyberspy after a 75-cent accounting discrepancy revealed a breach into Lawrence Berkeley National Lab computers.
Paramount13three-days-of-the-condor
[*Three Days of the Condor*](https://youtu.be/vRn4A39QHKY) | Sydney Pollack’s 1975 political thriller stars Robert Redford as a nerdy CIA researcher who returns from lunch to find all his colleagues dead.
14The Puzzle Palace
[*The Puzzle Palace*](http://amzn.com/0140067485) | WIRED contributor James Bamford’s seminal 1982 book exposed how the NSA operated internally and how it spied on Americans after WWII.
