Do they ever use mouse?
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In general, people who use computers professionally tend to be using keyboard commands more often than casual users. That being said, hacking in the movies is completely unrelated to how it works in real life, because it’s very difficult to make it look exciting to run a program and wait an hour or so for results. Having the characters type frantically makes for something that looks interesting on screen, so even if that’s completely not what hacking would look like, it gets put in movies anyway.
Not anywhere like in the movies, but yes, lots of typing in command line windows.
Some tools have graphical interfaces and there is tons of research involved so lots of web browsing, so yes they still use their mouse.
Hacking in the movies bears basically no resemblance to what hackers actually do. Speed is rarely of the essence, and all the flashing popups are just for show.
But there is a good reason why you would see them mainly at the keyboard. Most fundamental computer systems, the kind that hackers would want to gain unauthorized access to, are text-based. You interact with them by typing commands rather than clicking buttons. Software exists to give these types of systems a GUI (graphical user interface), but it would be silly to go around trying to install and connect that kind of thing in a system you just snuck into.
Are you trying to catch hackers?
Short answer is no, very minimal typing at the time of the attack and probably no mouse since it will be on a text driven command line line you do see in the movies.
Really most of the work will be done ahead of time, in the form of scripts/programs that someone already wrote. It could be that same hacker or another and they just downloaded it.
ELI5 part: Imagine your teacher says you have an online test with open ended questions. For the test itself you only get 30 minutes but they give you a bunch of questions the *could* be on the test ahead of time. A good student would prepare answers for those questions and then just paste them into the test.
That’s what hackers are doing
Some yes, but then they’re mostly writing scripts that they run when actively “hacking”.
Others aren’t even at a computer when they hack, like social engineering.
That part is basically the only true thing about Hollywood hacking.
In real life, Mr Robot is much closer to the truth.
You spend months investigating systems to see if you can find a vulnerability in a given router, operating system (windows), software (like the server running on windows) or some appliance (like your automatic vacuum).
Once you find a vulnerability, you most likely sell the instructions to someone interested.
The guy who buys it has a specific target in mind, like Big Bank™, because they know that Big Bank uses that specific kind of appliance/software/os/hardware. They then run the software (just like you would – pretty much double click the program), wait a few minutes, get a result, and pray to God that they won’t be discovered.
If you don’t sell the secret you found, you might instead make some widespread attack, like writing an “invisible” program and upload it to the internet. You then wait for the results, hoping you’re right about being hidden, and that it actually works on everyones computer. In this case you might receive results once in a while, for several months or years.
Hackers do type.
For one, programmers in general use less of the graphic interface and more of the command line, which means they use mouse less and keyboard more when navigating their computer (for example, when copying files, opening folders etc.).
They also type a lot of code. However, they don’t do it like they do in movies. They don’t do it in real time as the attack is taking place. Instead, they write their code and then send their code somewhere to do its thing. They don’t write a bunch of code on the spot during the attack.
most of the commenters below say no, and they’re mostly
correct. The only caveat is when there’s a human on the
hacked side actively closing ports, making firewall changes,
changing DNS records and the like. Which does happen in
other scenarios besides DDOS.
But yea, it’s mostly trying to make a dull activity look
TV worthy of action (the Peripheral comes to mind)
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