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Hackers
Hackers starts out with a discussion on the hacker, what he (as is pointed out in the book, the hacker is almost always a 'he') does, and why he does what he does. Somewhat sadly, although fairly well-founded, is Taylor's choice of terminology. He chooses to consistently address the cracker as hacker. A hacker is not a cracker, but a cracker is always a hacker (put in more technical terms: the cracker is a subset of the hacker class -- think object orientation here), which is a point Taylor seems to willfully ignore. That he chooses to use the terminology in this manner is rather sad because it puts an ugly stain on the respectability of the hackers -- those of us who not meddling in computer break-ins or other dubious activities, but merely hack code to produce cool software. Throughout the rest of this review I will be using the term cracker to refer to Taylor's hackers, and hacker when referring to real hackers
However, since crackers are a subset of hackers, much of Taylor's discussion on the hack and hacking is applicable to the hacker community at large. This is one of the things that makes Hackers an interesting read. For a newcomer to the hacker community Taylor's discussion on the 'hack' is quite enlightening. Even for oldtimers his discussion may shed some new light on the hack. Contrary to existing material on the matter, like the Jargon File, Taylor is the first to spell out the criteria implicit in earlier treatises on the hack: 1) simplicity, 2) mastery, and 3) illicitness [as in 'against the rules', reviewers comment] (p.15). This latter criteria is in its use of the 'illicitness' term only applicable to the cracking activity. In a sense it is applicable to hacking as well. Then in the shape of 'against the rules'. We are not neccessarily talking against the rules of justice, but against what the system's rules say is possible. In that sense, calling the third criteria illicitness hints at somewhat dubious activities, but is in fact not. It is an important element in the regular hack (if such thing as a regular hack does exist), too.
Taylor manages to view the hacker community from a fresh angle. Being a sociology researcher his angle is quite different from that represented by for instance Eric S. Raymond or Gisle Hannemyr. One drawback is that Taylor draws on Steven Levy's overly romanticized hacker ethics as presented in Levy's book of 1984: Hackers. It is time someone tried looking somewhat deeper into the hacker psychology to realize that while Levy's five tenets may to a certain degree represent attitudes within the hacker community, it is not, contrary to what Levy proposes, an ethos by which hackers live and die (apart from this, though, Levy's book is highly enjoyable and recommended reading). I'm also having some problems accepting the psychosexual theories on hacking that Taylor proposes. They seem a bit far fetched to me. It's been a while since everybody agreed that Freud's psycho-therapy was kind of overly sex-fixated.
Taylor addresses a largely ignored issue in hacker literature, that of the gender question. Why are there next to no female hackers? He addresses the point through looking at societal factors, by explaining how the community is a masculine environemnt -- the new wild west, so to say -- and the fact that electronic communication creates misogynity through its anonymity. At the end of the chapter it is a bit hard to grasp what Taylor's point is, though (see Presentation for more).
Another issue thoroughly treated is the question of hacker motivation. What drives the hacker to hack? Taylor's background within sociology is again helpful, as he regards the issue from a fresh perspective. Hacker motivation has previously been treated by Eric Raymond in his essay Homesteading the Noosphere . Taylor's angle is to compare academic theories on hacker motivation with the the reasons the hackers' themselves give. From the discrepancy between these two angles he lists four reasons for hacking: obsession, curiosity, boredom, and the feeling of power. If not directly contradicting Raymond's view -- that hackers hack simply to gain peer esteem and status within the community -- Taylor gives Raymond's view a more multi-faceted hue. He goes beneath the drive for esteem, trying to address the reasons why anyone would need to gain esteem from their peers. As such, Taylor manages to add something new to a discussion that has been on the brink of going stale.
Issues on computer security and crackingTaylor's main focus on crackers is how society at large is to deal with them. Are crackers to be treated as criminal masterminds plotting to bring the world to its knees, or simply misguided kids trying to do something exciting with their computer knowledge? Several views are drawn up, with Taylor quoting representatives of each view without really making any kind of judgment himself as to the better way of handling crackers. It is an exercise in how difficult the question truly is.
A number of other quite intriguing cracker/computer security issues are spelled out by Taylor, as well. Issues include who is to blame when a computer system has been cracked? The system administrator for not maintaining sufficient security or the cracker for breaking into a system to which he doesn't have legal access? Should anti-cracking laws be targeted at stopping all kinds of illegal computer use, or are there degrees to the crime being committed? Is printing your personal CV on the company's printers even though it is explicitly forbidden to use company equipment for personal use to be treated as a computer crime equal to that of breaking into a banking system and tampering with the data?
Taylor also questions the computer security companies' motivations (and rightly so, one might add). Are they simply running a protection racket like that of the mafia, using cracking and virus alerts to scare their customers into investing in expensive counter-measure software? Or are they avenging angels siding with the innocent, the not particularly compu-fluent masses? Using the dichotomy of the computer security industry vs. the crackers, Taylor raises the issue of whether good computer security can only be achieved through knowing the enemy, the crackers. Can crackers and computer security consultants work together in a symbiosis, or are they eternal enemies never to be reconciliated?
Another issue dealt with is how crackers are to be handled. Should their acts be punished in the harshest way, or should they be helped into redirecting their activities into more useful terms? The question is whether the cracker is to be treated as a nuisance or as an asset. Taylor treats this issue quite thoroughly referring from the parliamentary discussion in Britain. He also discusses in what ways legislation can prevent cracking. He shows how little the law enforcement agencies know about cracking and how they employed overkill (refer to the Norwegian police's recent raid on the hacker who broke the DVD encryption).
PresentationHowever intriguing the book might be it is presented in a very unorderly and weird way. The pages are filled with rather long quotations from various e-mails, books, interviews, etc. I gather the intention is to present the reader with the direct opinions of the book's "main characters," giving us in a way a first person view of the matter. The idea is nice, but the effect is that it ruins the fluidity of the text, making the book somewhat hard to follow. Also: it is at times quite difficult to grasp what message Taylor is trying to convey when he is expressing himself through the extracts of other people's opinions. Quotes are OK, but when, without exaggeration, 50% of the average page is taken up by quotations it is a little bit too much of the good stuff.
Having said that, the book is very structured, each chapter building nicely on previous chapters. The conclusion at the end of almost all chapters helps clarify Taylor's opinions a bit, which is nice. Still, it does not weigh up for the confusion created by the excessive use of quotations.
ConclusionTaylor succeeds with explaining the relationship between crackers and the computer security industry, presenting the matter in a more multifaceted way than that of the mass media. The book is a definite must for those wanting an introduction to the social sides of computer security. However, I find it rather amazing that a book written in 1999 seems to totally ignore the writings of Eric Raymond, as these are probably the best works on how hackers view their own culture. Despite this, I believe Hackers might prove an interesting read even for the hardcore hacker, if only as an alternative look at our own culture.
Purchase this book at fatbrain.
As long as the mass media and Hollywood continue to perpetuate the term "hacker" in a negative sense, then the confusion will continue.   However, there is an unfortunate possibility that the press avoids the use of the term "cracker" for other reasons, ie., that term has been used in the south for years to represent poor whites and might be considered perjorative.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
When I studied Computers in school (and thats how long ago it was, it was "Computers"), we did a hell of lot of work on the social effects.
One point that was mentioned was that IT is unfortunately a male-dominated reserve - and it's sad. We cannot allow this artificial dichotomy to continue.
However the Free Software movement has proven that IT can, and does, throw up changes that work.
Its a sad fact that plenty of the women I know who work in IT have to fight serious pettiness and ignorance just to be treated equally.
...Upgrade now to Schrodingers Dog...
Freely available at the following URL : The Hacker Crackdown : Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier .
Thank you //Johan
Installed the Bubblemon yet?
>Why are there next to no female hackers?
Really. I'd like to see the studies, statistics, and data indicating this conclusion. I'm a man, but I know many women in the hacking (no, not cracking, but I'll leave *that* rant to someone more eloquent) community. Granted, there are far fewer women involved in this field than men, but to say that there are "next to no female hackers" is going much too far.
This book sounds like an interesting read, if only to find out what goes on in the minds of non-techies with respect to techies, but I really hope it's not too expensive. Books are steep enough nowadays. Which reminds me... when I'm not a student anymore, I'm going to invest in a college textbook publishing company. Bloody textbook prices are driving me crazy. They must be making some major cash at those publishing companies...
I don't mean to be flamebait or off-topic, but he has a very good point! I was about to post the same thing, but I didn't want to be redundant. Anyway, this is quite important. Yes, our language is always evolving, yes, phrases soemtimes take on new meanings, but this one has a clear, literal meaning. Besides, it's abusing the French language. :)
Um. On the subject of [h|cr]ackers. I have given up trying to explain this to my friends. I only now resort to the "it's cracker not hacker, darnit, and hacker originally meant someone who tinkered with their computer" speech when, upon learning that I am in the midst of a game of NetHack, say, "Hack!? Are you one of those people who's hacing into Yahoo and eBay?!"
*sigh*
-Ravagin
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is NPR! And that means....it's time for a drum solo!"
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Are you sure you didn't mean to write "In light of the ..."? C'mon guys, a spellchecker doesn't replace actual proofreading.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
Male hackers/crackers (aren't crackers something I break into my soup?) are often engaged in these activities to garner some respect and esteem from the community at large, stroke their egos, so to speak. Female participants in the community are more likely to be doing it for their own self gratification, not a pat on the back.
There is also my still-standing opinion that many women in this industry don't have the self-presence to compete effectively in the industry, simply because they take things entirely too personally. Everything sounds like an insult or sexist comment to them. It's a sad symptom of women all over the world, and applies to a lesser degree to any minority.
That said, I'm female, and because I am here for my own personal enjoyment and growth, it doesn't matter what male hackers/crackers (soup? can't stop thinking about soup...) say or do.
stop taking life so seriously. It's not out to get you.
My opinion, abuse it as you wish.
Sakhmet.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
Ban the Nukes! Save the Whales! Screw it. Nuke the Whales!
There's been alot written about why crackers do what they do - in articles, books, and on websites.   And there are even interviews and quotes from White Hats who tell you exactly why they do what they do - that is, to point out the casualness and outright laziness of many sysadmins and sysops regarding security and proper configuration of their systems.   Microsoft has recently pointed out the ebay fiasco in their rather cagy dot-truth" page.   In reality, the problem was one of misconfiguration and not some defect in the OS or hardware.   This extends to many of the major sites and particularly to their router configurations (or misconfigurations).   It's also been said that much of the DDoSing going on can be reduced dramatically if one pays close attention to how their equipment is configured.
The topic of security is a fascinating one and with the proliferation of 24/7 broadband access, ie., ADSL, cable, ISDN, it is prudent that whether you plan to put a windoze box, *nix box, Mac box, or Be box on the net, you RESEARCH security before you put that box out there.
The latest DDoS attacks were blamed on zombie Linux boxen out on the net.   Alot of the reports focussed particularly on those PCs sitting on college campuses with big pipes.   I think that in the education arena, particulary in the CS departments at the colleges, driving home the issue of computer security is a MUST
.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Couldn't he have picked ANOTHER name for this book? We already
have a book called "Hackers" (what keeps this particular book from
stepping on it's toes is the fact that it's full title is
"Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution".)
But still, that's pretty lame to me. Have some friggin consideration for one of
the best books on subject available to both people outside the culture,
and inside. (Yes, I'm aware of it's inaccuracies, but H:HOTCR is still a damned good read.)
Apologies for the flamage, but this pisses me off.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
Folklore consists of certain universal ideas that have been mapped onto local cultures. For example, many cultures have a Trickster figure, so the Trickster may be deemed a universal; but he appears in different guises, each appropriate to a particular culture's environment. The Indians of the American Southwest called him Coyote, those of the Pacific Coast called him Raven. Europeans called him Reynard the Fox. African-Americans called him Br'er Rabbit. In twentieth-century literature he appears first as Bugs Bunny and then as the Hacker".
I think Stephenson has a point here. In nineteenth-century American literature, I suppose Huckleberry Finn could be called a Trickster too.
Moderators, take note:
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Look at the basic anthropology of women. Women are much more hardwired than men to be social animals
Bull. Neither men not women are "hardwired" for anything, other than a few relexive responses which, revealingly, are the same across the gender line. Response to loud noises, the eye-blink reflex, etc. There is little else in human beings that is hardwired AT ALL. Sure there are differences between male and female humans, but most of them are hardware. Men grow beards, women grow breasts. The social stuff, however, is far too complex to be left to the slow, unreliable hardware. Social things change too fast. The fast responses that software allows are the only solution. So humans learn, grow, and adapt. Faster than their hardwiring would allow.
Hardwiring is for insects.
Sitting around the basement fsck'ing around on PCs isn't a particularly social activity.
No? It is when I do it!
Sure, some (stereotypically) women's hobbies are social. But so are some of men's. In fact, the opposite argument used to be made regarding (stereotypically) women's sports. That they tend to be individual competitions (tennis, gymnastics) rather than team sports.
But I digress. The hacker does not hack for individual glory or profit, or because of the social contacts that it affords. He (or she) hacks "because it's there."
Maybe the women hackers are just better at not getting caught (when they're breaking rules) or avoiding attention (when they're just bending them).
If this was POT:
this wouldn't be bold
this wouldn't be italic
this wouldn't be a link
this wouldn't be teletype
this would lack emphasis
this would be weak
break
break
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
OK, I'll take on serious flamage for this.
No flamage necessary.
But - why not concede defeat on this terminology battle? I think that hacker is firmly imprinted on the collective retinas of our culture as a bad thing. All the whining in the world from a bunch of fucking phreaks on slashdot won't get people to say "cracker" instead of "hacker".
Very true.
And personally, as a programmer I've always thought of a "hack" as not partucularly good anyway.
And per your above comment, you actually include the term that was always used for those who wrote code - "programmer", which is what folks could go back to using.
I am not a programmer or hacker or coder.   I prefer the networking and adminstering side of things.   But I will say this - folks who go into any techy field are often labeled by the non-techs as "geeks" or "nerds" in the negative sense, invoking images of someone with taped up glasses and pocket protectors and high-water pants and such.   BUT...   look at the rapid change of the term "geek" and "nerd"?   As I noted previously, those terms were considered and portrayed (again in the media - particularly TV, movies) as negative, social outcasts, blah.   NOW, the terms "geek" and "nerd" are considered cool - and you can thank media outlets like Wired for that.   So if the term "hacker" (which I think was an attempt to get away from the stereotype that had formed around the term "programmer" as non-social outcast) was a term that programmers used for themselves to get rid of the negative image, and then the media twisted it around (almost like a one for one trade by giving up on nerd/geek and now focussing negativism on hacker), so too can hacker be reversed back to its original meaning.   But again, it'll take some time.
-- Win2k: "It's not so much that it's only 65,000 bugs, it's just that they stopped at 65,535 to prevent an overflow."
Schools and parents encourage boys towards technical stuff, and girls towards nurturing stuff.
If men and women were allowed to go after their own, personal interests, rather than have them dictated from On High, I suspect you'd find that the number of men and women in cracking was about equal.
Doubt it. This is the whole "nature vs nurture" thing. If you look at animals, the females tend to be more nurturing, the males tend to go out and hunt (generalizing broadly, of course). Humans are the same way. Quite a while ago, I read a newspaper column about this, and the writer made the comment that she had given her son toys that weren't the typical masculine toys (no trucks, soldiers, etc) for his whole life. She watched him playing one day, and he was using a doll, pushing it across the carpet saying "vroom vroom!" pretending it was a truck.
I suspect that hacking and cracking are things that appeal to males' need to hunt, and that that is at least as much of a factor as the way people are guided in school and by parents.
I have a college text (Intro to technology) that defines hackers as an bad word. Saying they do malicious things etc. Bleh
:p'
I think its a very VERY prevalent miconception to all new computer users.
I run a mud and I get asked 'what are you doing?'
My reply is usually 'hacking leave me alone
Then they respond with 'whoa you run the mud but you are hacking your own mud...' *sighs*
Its like a lost cause outside of the community. For every person I sit down and explain it to 20 others wont ever hear the speech and will propogate to 20 of there friends what a hacker 'really' is *laugh*
:-(
Seems to me that many birds would disagree, too. Male and Female penguins take it in turn to look after the egg and/or chick, whilst the other hunts.
Sometimes, it gets really complex. Some species change gender, during their lifecycle. Since they don't get a brain transplant, their attitudes and experiences must be the same.
Even if you look at humans, is it =REALLY= that true that the males are the "hunters"? Think about history, for a moment. Elizabeth I, Bodecca and Cleopatra would have disagreed. In more modern times, Baroness Thatcher (former PM of England and one of the most ruthless leaders England has had in over 1,000 years), Monica Lewinsky and Nancy Reagan certainly wielded very un-nurturing, commanding power over others.
I'd say that the "males need to hunt" is wildly over-exaggerated. I suspect you'll find as many men in monastaries as women in nunnaries. Not exactly a place for stalking prey, either way.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Make that, "Since this is POT, [it has all those styles that you demonstrated]"
A lot of people don't seem to get this, but think about how this works: the Slashdot server code doesn't somehow "make" the text display in those styles; it just sends text to your browser, which is the one that displays it. The entire page is one big HTML document and the text of your comment is pasted into the body of that document. If it contains tags, the browser responds to them and displays the text as appropriate.
The "Plain Old Text" mode means that Slashdot does not do any preprocessing (e.g., escaping "<" characters by replacing them with "<" sequences) to the text that you enter before pasting it into the HTML document, so any tags that you type appear directly in the page that the browser receives. The one exception is that it inserts <BR> tags between paragraphs, so you don't have to. Otherwise, what you type is exactly the text that appears in the corresponding part of the HTML page, tags and all, which means that the browser will use those tags as formatting information in displaying the page.
If you use the "Extrans" mode, those special characters are replaced by escape sequences, so any tags you type appear as source rather than being interpreted as formatting information.
Note: all of the above is based on my observing how Slashdot behaves and thinking about the logic of it. It's not like i've read the SLASH source or anything.
#include <std_disclaimer.h>
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}