Blackhat

At a nuclear plant in Chai Wan, Hong Kong, a hacker causes the coolant pumps to overheat and explode. Not long after in Chicago, the Mercantile Trade Exchange gets hacked, causing soy futures to rise. The Chinese government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) determine that the hack was caused by a remote access tool (RAT). An army officer in China's People's Liberation Army cyber warfare unit, Captain Chen Dawai, is asked to find the people responsible for the attacks, and enlists the aid of his sister, Chen Lien, a networking engineer. He meets with FBI Special Agent Carol Barrett in Los Angeles and reveals the code in the RAT was written by Nicholas Hathaway, his brilliant college roommate, and himself in their school days at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, years before Hathaway was sent to prison. Dawai asks that the FBI arrange for Hathaway to be released from prison, where he is serving a sentence for computer crimes. Hathaway is offered a temporary release in exchange for his services. He negotiates a deal with the U.S. government to have his prison sentence commuted as time served, if his assistance aids in the apprehension of the hacker. He must wear an ankle bracelet monitor, though, and be monitored by a deputy U.S. marshal named Jessup.