Stuart Dryburgh, ASC, helps navigate a dark cyber underworld in Michael Mann’s new techno thriller, Blackhat

In the byzantine digital world of computer programming, there are “white hats” and “black hats”: the former, security experts trying to prevent the latter, malicious hackers, from breaking into businesses, banks and anything vulnerable to a cyber invasion. The subject came to filmmaker Michael Mann after the June 2010 Stuxnet computer worm destroyed one-fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. The viral attack spread on computers running Microsoft Windows, with a specific target of large-scale industrial systems using Siemens software. Subsequent statements by U.S. and Israeli arms officials blurred the line between white and black hats, indicating the Stuxnet virus was politically motivated. After intensive research, Mann decided to meld the notion of a global computer worm with his passionate desire to shoot a crime film in Asia.

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