Slashdot Mirror
From The Floor At Defcon 8
It appears that ZDtv is doing some fairly major co verage of Defcon. They've got the works - some text reporting, as well as streaming video from the floor and speakers, from what I can see. It's not being there, but heck, you're at least one less degree separated.
I think it's just you :-). Seriously, the old guard always hates the transformations wrought by the arrivistes. I myself have been known to utter a curse or two about what Usenet has become compared to its heydays (IMHO) of 1980-1994. Probably someone loving it today will be bitching about what a sewer it is in 2005. It's just the way the world works. (COMDEX - what a zoo. I stood in line for over an hour to get into the last one. I may boycott the next one with you.)
Spot the Fed will have to be replaced by spot the hacker come next year. I was talking with Priest and he estimated well over 6000 attendees this year- almost twice Defcon 7, which was too big as it was. It was overly crowded, and while many of the presentations were top-notch (the mojonation and freenet), there were just TOO MANY PEOPLE.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Your toddler raises an interesting point. He cannot see the objective differnce between chips and flakes. To him they are the same shape and therefore the same thing.
In this case the media and the general public are no better informed as your toddler. To them there is no objective difference between hackers and crackers. And there never will be. The differece is only useful to "technical types".
"Cracker" may retain use in the technical community, but it has no meaning in the outside world. To the media, they (hackers/crackers, we, you, whatever) are hackers. Period.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
Great, and I had to miss it. Vegas is always damn fun. Add to that a thousand morally-flexible, half-intoxicated geeks looking for fun and a good hack at all hours of the day and night, and it's too good to miss!
"One hotel ice bucket, three two liter bottles of Dew, a pound of mashed potatoes from room service, gaffers tape, and thirteen paperclips. Sounds like we have all the parts for world domination, boys! Let's get to work!"
.sig: Now legally binding!
It's natural, therefore it's good?
My 18 month-old knows the word "chip", but doesn't realize that flaked cereals aren't chips. So shen he wants some raisin bran, he asks for "chips". What if we all started saying "chip" when we meant either chips OR flaked cereals? We would lose a useful shade of meaning. Point: Words are not just labels, they are differentiators.
There is an objective difference between hackers and crackers. Calling both by the same name destroys the ability to talk about them easily. This ability is not much prized (or even noticed) by the general public (including the mainstream media), but it IS useful to technical types. That's why I, as a technical type, resist this change.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Probably any guy running an nmap gets written up as a "transnational attack".
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
It's natural, therefore it's good?
:), but realize that trying to explain to non-techs the difference between hacking and cracking is pretty pointless.
The post you are responding to was not a defense of the usage of "hacker" vs "cracker"; it was an exposition of the way langauge works. It is pretty common for technical terms to enter common usage. Often, the common definition is incorrect from a technical perspective. It works the other way to, with terms going from common to technical usage. "Hacker" is a perfect example of this phenomenon. Every old definition I can find suggests doing something poorly. A bad writer is a hack. A bad cough is a hack. Hacking at meat or wood or golf balls indicates the hacker's inability to do any better.
My own pet peeve is "imaginary," as in "imaginary number." There is nothing imaginary about them. They are just as real, and just as abstract, as the so-called real numbers. Yet the term, despite its incorrect connotations, persists.
Anyway, like it or not, "hacker" in its mainstream usage, means someone who cracks computer systems. Don't try to enforce technical definitions on people who have no need for them, and don't try to reengineer the language. Feel free to ignore me (I know you do anyway
> Why do links on slashdot often have a space in the linked word?
It's a bu g.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
No, the were doctors who killed. They were still doctors (aside - I am not anti-Kevorkian.)
The trouble with the hacker/cracker distinction as made by hackers is that it is too self-serving, and relies on a simplistic good-vs-bad dichotamy.
For most people, including many technical people, a hacker is anyone with a high level of technical understanding, whether or not they are a programmer. People who break into computer systems, *if they understand what they are doing* (and more do than the vanities of some would like to admit) are hackers-who-crack. What makes the press identify them as hackers is that they know more about systems and security than the media or the public at large.
Arguably, there are also many programmers who aren't hackers - programmers who rely on pre-canned libraries and hand-holding IDE's to develop what they want, without the intellectual curiousity to look under the hood or cultivate an understanding of the principles beneath the program.
I will endorse a distinction between possibly-miscreant-but-knowledgeable/curious hacker-who-cracks and miscreant-and-nasty non-hacker script-kiddy who uses canned exploits to annoy people and impress the ignorant, but I can't endorse a naive effort to simply say 'hacker good, cracker bad.'
I've put up some of my DEFCON pics. I promised someone I'd post this pictur e of a random drunk guy. Whoever you are, I've kept my promise. Have fun. :)
The more you know, the less you understand.
Curse the need to make money for binding me to an office this week. DEFCONs tend to be pretty cool. It's unbelieveable how much they have grown and the audience that they have gained. It's now, as one would say "taken seriously."
Eh...
Thad
The Bolachek Journals
I wrote up a report of my experiences at Defcon from Friday to Sunday.
It's available here.
"Overseas, our job is to violate people's rights, break things and kill.
Domestically, it's different...
DoD official at Defcon 8
I submitted this link to slashdot earlier today, but since they've posted this story they're not likely to post mine. So here it is. The article covers the Black Hat Briefing sub-conference and talks a bit about just how crazy the corporations are about finding decent security people. Definitely a decent article.
noah
It's just like the way Slashdot has evolved: the more it grows and the more audience it gains, the LESS it is taken seriously, particularly by the nerd and geek community for which it is intended.
M$: "We're #2!"
Heh, I was reading wired and there is a really good article over there as well.
. html
:)
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,37896,00
It goes into a little more detail and has a bit of a different perspective thant he ZDNet stuff
OT: ZDNet and linuxcare share the same building
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
For those of you that weren't there, I put some pictures up of our trip up. There's not a lot, I haven't updated it since sat night (I should be putting up some more pics after lunch). Also I should probably consider replacing the page with html that's written while sober. Hmmmm.....
Comdex is there to make a good impression on the public NOT the techs. Nearly all of the booths were to look good, and hype products, not to teach or inform. Crud.. Intel was throwing around their marketing BS about how their new processor (Pentium Pro at the time) improved internet aceess. The 3D graphics they were doing we did on a 486 (actually ours looked better).
Motorola had some content about the design of their processor. I did manage to get a evaluation kit of a dongle for copy protection, but all the good info came from the small booths tucked away in the show.
I have to say it was fun to hang out with my coworkers, but the show was a waste of my time. And that was 5 years ago. I hate to wonder what its like today.
A cracker can be a script kiddie who knows nothing, or he can be a creative person who uses his skills, knowledge and intuition to gain illicit security access, Rather than a crufty old UNIX hacker, who uses his skills knowledge and intuition to keep a mail server running.
The only thing the press gets correct is the byline, and even then...
Didn't this thing just end yesterday?
From the text of this post it looks like all this stuff is live.
<Drunken Undershirt Speech>Maybe if Slashdot wasn't owned by the damn multinational media and was still a small site like it used to be back when it sucked, then now it wouldn't suck as much as my pet pig on this here tree bark.</DUS>
Nice.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
That's not the way the english language (any language actually) works. If the media (and the general public) called mechanics "blacksmiths" and no one but the mechanics themselves mechanics, sooner or later the word for people who worked on cars would become "blacksmiths".
It's the same with hackers. The media calls them hackers, the general public calls them hackers; no one but the hackers themselves uses the term crackers. If this continues long enough (and I argue that it has) the word for people that do that sort of thing will become "hacker" whether or not they call themselves hackers. That's the way language evolves. Get over it.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
Is it just me or do Conferences go down hill really really fast as soon as the media starts hyping them and you get a severe influx of people that do not belong there. Look at Comdex for example, 3 years ago, it was a great place to go and actually learn about whats coming out. Last year and the year before, 99% of the people there were only there for free shirts and hats and other merchandise. I doubt I will ever go to Comdex again. I went to Defcon 6 and 7 and they were good, I just hope the media doesnt go nuts and ruin this conference like they have will all the other good ones.
Gotta admit...I like the Fear and Hacking acticle...
This is the way to go to defcon.
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
Defcon 8 was certainly a good conference this year. It was estimated at about 5500 people. Most of which stayed at the lovely Alexis Park Hotel.
I'll try to be somewhat breif on my experiance there.
Pros:
Informative Lectures, speakers who knew what they were talking about
Plenty of neat stuff to buy.
Plenty of people that are well known in the "hacking" scene.
Fed spotting!
Free beer provided by the people at dis.org
From Thursday evening to Sunday morning (when I left) there were constantly people around all 3 pools drinking, talking. People at the LAN (wireless too this year!) to mingle with. It never got boring.
Cons:
Speaker room isn't big enough! You had to get a seat and keep it for hours at a time if you even wanted to be able to sit down.
Immature people doing random acts of lameness. For example: Cement down the toilet, Super smoke bombs in the pool, DoS over the LAN, and other lame things.
Luckily our favorite Hawaiian shirted enforcer Priest was there to take care of some of the kids.
Overall, I had a wonderful time. The Defcon site is usually very quick with bringing tons of information from the con within a couple weeks of it ending, so be sure to check back there.
On a side note, anyone willing to contribute to the "Air condition all of Las Vegas" fund? That place is so damn hot. 114 degrees (F) one day.
Good conf DT and the Goon crew, keep em coming!
http://www.defcon.org/
None of this filtered ZD Net Crap....
This
> Imagine if the media kept referring to auto mechanics as blacksmiths.
Well, in that case people would start calling auto mechanics "blacksmiths". It might take a generation or two for auto mechanics and blacksmiths to learn to like it, and a century or two for prescriptive grammarians to learn to like it, but all in all the world would keep turning and autos would keep getting fixed.
Language is malleable like that. "Marshall" used to mean "horse groom". "Geek" used to mean a person who swallowed goldfish and other live animals whole. "Gerbiling" used to mean hunting for gerbils. Think how much the meaning of "the geek and the marshall are off gerbiling right now" has changed!
I think it's time we came to terms with it: outside the jargon of a narrow technical elite, "hacker" means a person that breaks in to computers, and "cracker" means a Good Ole Boy from the Old South.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Actually, it's not like referring to auto mechanics as blacksmiths. It's like referring to professional crackerjacks as locksmiths.
Eventually every time the common populace hears the word "locksmith", they associate it with somebody who has performed illegal entry. This is what has happened to the words hacker and cracker.
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!