BHS - the Bank Hacking System

on 2007 Jun 19, Tue in Technology · en

We've all seen movies with fantastic graphical interfaces, full of eye-candy, that look so attractive that you're wondering "why the heck is my home desktop so ugly?" or "how can i make my home desktop look just as pretty?" or "how can they be productive with such a pretty but inefficient interface?" console-vs-GUI

The question you will ask yourself depends on many factors, among them:

how skilled you are with computers;
how skilled you are with designing interfaces;
which operating systems and programs you've used;
whether you are used to the console (command prompt, terminal) or not; etc.

The usual idea is that complex activities are never done in a pretty-looking program. For example, the majority of server applications are configured via plain-text configuration files, or commands in the console.Now, obviously, if you're in the know, you cannot do anything but laugh when you see a "hacker" hack the FBI by clicking several shiny icons and following easy on-screen instructions.That's how a friend of mine and I have developed the concept of the Bank Hacking System - also known as BHS.A BHS is an extremely attractive application that can do anything, all you need to do is to follow the instructions carefully. Here is a hypothetical scenario in bank hacking:

Choose bank (a list of banks is shown, moving the mouse over each bank will display its geographical location, amount of money it has at the moment, live footage from its security cameras, a map where all the security guards are shown in real time, etc);
Choose amount of money you wish to steal;
Configure additional settings, such as "make it secure" or "use someone's identity", "use offshore accounts";
Click Next to continue - a progress bar will be shown on the screen, and at each step you'll see the exact amount of cash already transferred to your account;
While the progress bar is shown, another one will be there too - it illustrates how much time you have until the security guys trace you. Naturally, you'll be able to protect yourself from that if you chose "prevent myself from being attacked" at step #3.

On a serious note, today I learned that one person behind the BHS is Mark Coleran, the visual designer who created the GUIs we saw in movies such as The Island, Tomb Raider, Blade 2, Alien vs Predator, etc. A quick review of his work can be seen in this clip (~60 MB), here are some examples:

You can see all these interfaces, and many others if you watch the clip mentioned above. As an alternative, a low-end version of it:

The original embedded media here was a Flash player, which no longer works anywhere. Original source: play.md embed.

Enjoy watching these fantastic GUIs, and happy BHSing ;-)