Entertainment

Cipher Is An Evil Car Hacker In 'The Fate Of The Furious'

by Allie Gemmill

From the very first moments of the trailer for The Fate Of The Furious, it was clear that there was going to be some mind-boggling stunts. Remember the submarine that emerges from the arctic tundra? One of the craziest and most crucial details in the new film is (spoiler alert) that villain, possible new love interest for Dom, and genius hacker Cipher (played by Charlize Theron) can hack cars for her own nefarious means. But can you really hack cars like Cipher does in The Fate Of The Furious?

In the new movie, one of the tricky little plots Cipher whips up is to hack all the cars in New York City so that they can turn into "zombie cars," as she calls them, and their can auto-drive capability can help her take out the Russian ambassador. This leads to cars driving without drivers and falling from the sky out of parking garages and down onto drivers on the streets. This occurs during a sequence you can see in the film's trailer, where Cypher makes a ton of cars rain on the Fast and Furious team.

In a time where humans are looking to technologically advance nearly every part of our lives, it's not difficult to look at cars as one instrument for innovation. The technology that makes things like putting your car on autopilot or pairing your phone with your car via bluetooth have essentially made your car into one giant computer. This means that reports are regularly coming out about how experts are testing the hackability of cars in the real world in order to help car companies spot design flaws that could allow for real world disasters. So yes, your car can totally get hacked and yes, it's legit scary.

The one major caveat — and perhaps the one thing that creates a big plot hole in The Fate Of The Furious — is that you can only hack newer cars. The kind of computer technology that we now find in cars is a recent development, so the idea that Cipher could potentially control literally every car in New York City is a bit on the unbelievable side. Then again, this is The Fate Of The Furious we're talking about; of course it's going to get a little crazy.