why did Silva steal the hard drive in Skyfall?

why did Silva steal the hard drive in Skyfall? - Grey Metal Plier on Round Disc

At the start of Skyfall Bond is chasing down the hard drive which contains all the names of agents under cover.

Then later on in the film you find out that Silva is actually a genius hacker and he gains access to MI6s network and uses his hacking skills cause explosions and open doors etc.

So why did he not just use his hacking skills to hack his way into that list rather than going through the trouble he did?



Best Answer

I had a friend who used to work in government research. Apparently some items of data are so sensitive that you have to disconnect from the network (and definitely the internet) before accessing them.

Logically this list would be about as sensitive as it gets so it is unlikely to ever be put on a PC in way it can be network accessed and would only be transported via USB stick or something, probably under armed guard with various built in safety measures.




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What did M do to Silva?

He is a powerful cyber-terrorist who was once an MI6 agent but was betrayed by M when she turned him over to the Chinese government in 1997 during a mission in Hong Kong. Fifteen years later, he commits a series of terrorist attacks as part of a larger plan to publicly discredit and kill her.

Was Raoul Silva a 00?

Remember Raoul Silva, the main antagonist in the film Skyfall? He is presumed to have formerly been a 00 agent, preceding James Bond as M's 'favourite' agent.

Did James Bond fail in Skyfall?

Also, Silva successfully detonated bombs in MI6 headquarters and in the London Underground. With all this in mind, did James Bond fail his mission in "Skyfall"? Bond managed to save his own life and to kill Silva, but virtually all of Silva's plan seemed to succeed. Shiz Z.



Skyfall - Silva's Reunion with M (1080p)




More answers regarding why did Silva steal the hard drive in Skyfall?

Answer 2

The list was on a hard drive on a laptop. If the laptop was online and if Silva knew where he had to look for, yes, he could have hacked on to the laptop. But considering the sensitive information of the list, it's plausible that this was kept offline, which means he would have no way of being able to hack into the laptop. Even if the laptop was online, Silva would have to know

  1. the specific information of the laptop
  2. when the laptop would be online
  3. having to break through any firewalls that might have been there.

As for how he could hack into MI6, he was an operative for them for many years. It's also possible that when he wasn't going on missions for MI6, he got the information necessary to know how to get into their system. I mean, James Bond was able to log on to M's computer in Casino Royale, so there must be some kind of weakness MI6 has yet to fix. And the MI6 servers were always online, and always in the same location, so that made getting past the firewalls the only major obstacle for him.

Answer 3

He needed James Bond to come after him so he could be "captured“. This allows him to be close enough to kill M during her hearing. This is why he had someone steal the hard drive which led Bond to the poor, helpless woman. It was all a trap for Bond and ultimately M, from the beginning. It had nothing to do with the ease or difficulty of getting a list of names and locations of deep cover agents.

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