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Hackers: Uncle Sam Wants You!
scraemondaemon writes: "A new TV public service announcement targets U.S. computer hacktivists with a blunt message: Uncle Sam wants you to help fight the war on terrorism. They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?"
-Foxxz
"Ask not, what your country can hack for you. Ask what you can hack for your country"
-The Slashdolt
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?"
Be an American and fight for our survival. You think they'd have messed with 767's if they had nukes? This isn't a game.
Do I get Stock Options?
- WeaselGod
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet turbines
simply come to the (insert local large public gathering place here) to pick up your prize!
a trick routinely employed by authorities to catch wanted criminals. they send out a mass mailing to wanted individuals stating they've won something fantastic, and all they have to do is show up to claim it. they show up, and their prize is an all expense stay in levenworth 8-)
of course, i'm sure our government wouldn't do something like this to hackers.
for the motivated, self starter, http://www.shamalbank.com/ is a bank with known bin laden accounts 8-)
not that i'm suggesting anything...
But they don't say how.
For all we know maybe they just want to test biological weapons on us.
Je t'aime Stéphanie
The largest part of the campaign actually seems to not be so much that they want your help, but that they want to politely ask you to not go an muck stuff up that you shouldn't...
Plus the Marines, Navy and Army have never to my knowledge demonized hackers, I believe that was all the DOJ's doing.
"Earlier this month, a German group known as the Chaos Computer Club publicly appealed to hackers worldwide not to engage in retaliatory hacking in the wake of the terrorist attacks."
Aren't the Afgan's essentially in the stone age? - at least that's what has been spun in the media to us all.
What potential targets would hackers have?
Frankly, I was hoping that there'd be an opportunity for those of us who are old and/or out of shape to do something more to help the war effort than just giving blood. I can't shoot for beans, but I can run cables and configure routers and code and so on and so on. I'd love to do something meaningful.
Go read the actual article. Fret not, they're still demonizing and criminalizing.
(They're asking 'hacktivists' to lay off)
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
Watch out, this could be one of those deals like when they published a list of criminals in the paper, saying that they'd won the lottery and to come pick up their money. When they showed up, with the cuffs.
Does this mean that hacking will not be considered terrorism?
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
six months ago i would never have imagined vint cerf appearing in an ad during a new buffy on upn telling me not to hack web sites in afghanistan.
funny how things change.
go get it
This is really the greatest recruitment campaign ever! If the Govt wants to let the hacker go, but doesn't want to risk them breaking into their former boss' company, label them a terrorist and have them serve 50 years. Before trial.
If the hacker is hired by someone else, then their current bosses are "harboring a terrorist" and have two choices - let them go, or go to jail themselves. Again, that's a no-brainer for most bosses.
Since hackers tend to be more into the craft than martyrdom, the consequences are painfully obvious. Every single highly-skilled computer geek under the sun will switch to working for the US Government, under duress and with their new boss under NO obligation to honor any kind of ethical standard. The risks of not doing so are just too high for most people.
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)
Informative? Yeah. Real informative. I'm glad everyone is thankful for what they have.
it's far from being the first time hackers have been called to serve in the way only they can. we can probably thank goodness for it too or guys like Turing would never had had the chance to invent these curious machines we're all so occupied with...
we speak the way we breathe --Fugazi
hehe. One of my favorite episodes.
Has there ever been hackers on the Simpsons?
After we haxor his boxen and root his servers and change all of their index.html files, then and ONLY then will Omar Bin Laden and his cohorts know they have been owned.
Their server farms and e-commerce terrorist sites that litter the internet cafes of Afghanistan will feel our rath. Our exploits will decimate their ftp sites and not a single router will go unpunished.
Maybe I'm crazy, but usually Uncle Sam is representative of the U.S. government, or possibly the country. But I don't think most people associate him with the 'cyberangels', which, incidentally, sounds like saturday afternoon programming on UPN.
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
A crime-fighting police now?
Well, I have said for a long time that the computer medium was just as "real" in a philosophical sense as any other territory. The people who wage battles on this territory need to decide why they use their skills to make political statements in "hacktivism."
Do they want to criticize the system which establishes the Internet on which they operate? To reform it?
Or do they want to transform it?
Hacktivism may involve what I call "Matrix" tactics soon - like the people in the Matrix, people who want freedom on the internet will have to evade universal identification and tracking systems that are put there by a central, all-encompassing authority in whose name the internet itself is maintained and operated.
That means, instead of throwing up a banner with some poorly written political prose, they will have to maintain entire alternate networks of communication to maintain their own freedom.
I fear that many people, seeing the true weaponry and force of the enforcement authorities arrayed against them (and ready to name them "terrorist") will drop into Uncle Sam's ranks.
I hope that more people will stick their foot in the door of technological freedom before it slams shut, and will keep it there for free communication.
Goat sex free since 2001
"They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?"
:)
Simple... hold out for more money
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Didn't Slashdot just post a few days ago that Ashcroft stated hackers where basically terrorists. Now American wants their services?
Also if hackers are in America, and they are basically terrorists, and America wants to basically nuke anyone who harbors terrorists, dosen't that mean we should nuke ourselves?
Heh
Japanese Americans were poorly treated during WWII. They could have complained, and whined, but they volunteered for the military. A famous Army unit was most made up of Japanese Americans. They fought well and heroically on the European front. Their sacrifice and committment helped change American opinion of Japanese Americans.
Hackers who help the US could help generate the same perception change.
I told my local CIA recruiter that a modified deflector dish or a recursive algorithm will be satisfactory for most any problem.
With this in our arsenal there is nothing to stop us in our war against terrorism!
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
The trouble is, the majority of "Hackers" are dopey script kiddies that know very little except how to launch a DDoS attack. This is only useful for minor harrasment against sits they don't like.
The skills required to track down criminals is simply not something they're capable of.
Wanted:
Hacktivists Dead or Alive
Qualifications:
Must be able to undermine authority, accept extreme levels of criticism from peers and outsiders, and must be patriotic.
Perks:
Get to work for the Gov't.
Could we cut a deal where if we do assist, we can get the gov't to change some of the DMCA, SSSCA, ECPA, ACPA and CIPA?
"stone age" - obviously not :-(
remember, we are talking about rich militant muslims, not the general populice of Afghanistan.
Shouldn't they just troll IRC with these PSA's? The people who know who Vint Cerf is aren't the ones they need to be concerned about.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
plain and simple .... where do i sign up?
who wants to make hacking an act of terrorism? god only knows what they'll do with this hackers after their purpose is served. my reply would be a hardy fsck you.
It looks like this can change. If we hackers take up the United States' call for help, it will help garner the positive attention we need to get our views heard. While fighting terrorism, we will also be fighting the image of the "evil" hacker that has been ingrained in the public psyche. I urge you to take this major step. Once hackers become heroes, we will finally be able to stand up against Corporate Interest. Remember, image is everything.
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
It's not so much that they're asking for help... more like "If you're going to spraypaint stuff, at least come to us, and we'll put you to work on a mural or something."
The write-up made it sound like Uncle Sam was putting together a crack commando unit of hackers.
Didn't they just bring up a bill that would consider hacking as terrorism? Do any of these people talk to each other?
Hackers are 'Terrorists' Under Ashcroft's New Act
-TheStruuus
Crack encryption, invade peoples' privacy, save the world!
Wow, this sounds like our foreign policy.
Step 1: Fight those bad people.
Step 2: Hey, they could be useful to us.
Step 3: Let's give them tools and have them fight our war for us. Call CNN and let them know about these freedom fighters
Step 4: Hmmmm, they aren't useful to us anymore. Better call CNN and tell them to start calling them bad people again. At least we know who they are now.
Wow. I'm in awe here people. They've got them there hackers pegged!
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
What do you think that the government will do when you are all used up? Will they put you up in a posh house with a butler and a maid?
No. They will lock you up and throw away the key, because you will kow too much by the time they are through with you.
If you get involved with a war, you will become a casualty of war.
The government hates hackers no matter what side that they are on because they pose a threat to authority.
Oh it's okay for the government to read your email. But it's not okay to read someone else's. It's okay for the government to browse your file and directories, but not for you to read anyone else's. Invasion of privacy is not wrong! Well only if you work for the government. (That's what they tell me)
Don't get me wrong I think this is a good way for individuals, who aren't as capable physical fighters on the battlefield to join the good fight, by providing military intelligence / espionage via whatever medium. But what happens after the government is done using these persons in this computer counter terroist taskforce. One of two things, either we have elite computer hackers still invading the privacy of Citizen Joe User checking for suspicious emails in the future, or these patriots are sent back to the grazing fields of cyberspace, and Hacker becomes a bad word again.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
I probably misspelled his name, but any way Turing created the abstact machine while Von Nuemann put it into practice.
While the superficial similarities between rewarding spook hackers and punishing civilian hackers seem sufficient to establish gross hypocrisy on the part of the Federal government, it's in fact little different from the time-honored tradition of our military and other militaries which, for aeons, have hired people to commit the same act of killing that would be punished as murder if it had been committed by a civilian acting without state authorization. Big deal.
What's more, the Sixth Amendment's "double jeopardy" clause is still in effect (one of the few clauses with some teeth left in it after decades of judicial erosion). If the Federal government establishes an arrangement whereby criminal acts are committed by individuals acting under government aegis and with the encouragement of state agents, then those acts cannot be subsequently punished (apart from certain situations such as genocide and other circumscribed offenses). One only need remind oneself of Whitey Bulger (on the FBI's most wanted list) who has gotten the FBI into a bit of a morass by acting as an informant for many years and during those years receiving tacit permission from the FBI to commit all manner of offenses including murder. The egg on the FBI's face hangs pendulously, because the FBI is now without legal recourse to punish those acts.
That glib tone is unbecoming, by the way.
Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this H4X0R dude what I recruited not half an hour ago from this very cybercafe....
One of my major beef's with the Linux community in general has been their fanatical anti .gov and .mil views. I've always thought of it as being
unpatriotic to bring down the net, via dos attacks, defacing a .gov website. Or
just generally being an asshole to anyone who is running a Redmond product on
their desktop. This
issue of wired does a pretty good job of summarizing all the "bad
stuff" that has plagued this community. Really take the time to read
the article and understand it before you start tossing flames.
With that said, I think this is a great oppertunity for the linux scene in general to get a chance to grow out of their stereotype, and actually become the hero's of the computing world, heck the world. It's all about putting your money where your mouth is. Imagine seeing a story like this in the news..
Dec, 31st 2001, San Francisco CA
Nuclear disaster was averted new years eve when a group of hackers listening in on alphanumeric pager transmission foiled a plot by the teleban to detonate a nuclear bomb in the middle of the cities finacial district. Working with the FBI and the CIA
I'm gonna stop because thats fantasy at this point, but IT COULD HAPPEN. If you are a patriotic american, and you care about linux, you need to step up to the plate and give the .gov a hand. Instead of making fun of
their shortcomings. Remember, this could change everything.
--Toq
I told my local CIA recruiter that a modified deflector dish or a recursive algorithm will be satisfactory for most any problem.
You forgot about adjusting the shield harmonics!
they keep changing the IP of my cable modem, so...
besides, it's those damn cookies that scare me!
I hope that screamondaemon is aware that the CEO of WorldCom isn't exactly representative of the US Government. The spot sounds to me like a bunch of network owners (those who have the most to lose from even friendly hacking) utilizing the national situation to further their own anti-hacking ends. "Please mister hacker, secure my system for free -- we all have to unite against terrorists after all."
On the other hand, I don't exaactly think that a bunch of vigilante crackers is going to do more good than harm, so I'm not really against the message of the ad.
Two hacker favorites -- USA Cable's Sci-Fi Channel, and UPN's hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- would be perfect places to air the spot, said Aftab, who is on the advisory committee of the Advertising Council, a nonprofit which helped put together the "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Drunk" public service campaign.
Buffy? You'd get better hacker demographics by advertising on AOL. Or Slashdot. Oh wait..
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Looking at the Cyberangels Web site, it looks as though they need people to train law enforcement and help WTC-bereaved families sort crap from gold on the Net when search for missing loved ones, etc. (They also help search out child pornographers, which I imagine is spectacularly un-fun...) Not really a call to arms. Anybody actually _seen_ the PSA?
#!
They want to hack into banks...let ole Kev near a computer.
This was a gag on the Simpsons. Nothing more, nothing less.
Yea, but carpet bomb seems to do the trick, just look at Viet Nam. Well maybe that didn't work out so well. Hey there is Japan. There is a fine example that losing to the US is always better then wining. Yea I know you can include Germany in the as well. But since the "Big One" carpet bombing has had less than satisfactory results. You know I have seems to miss my point, so I'll jsut stop now.
here here! and now you know why i dont use Linux...anymore :-P
...I thought under the ATA, hackers WERE terrorists! ;)
Turing's work saved countless thousands of lives, and was instrumental in developing the theories of modern mathematics and computer science.
But, that wasn't good enough for the British, who later killed him for being a homosexual..
This is why the possibility of a draft wouldn't worry me too much. If I was ever actually drafted to fight in a war, I know the DOD would rather have a talented computer programmer than another warm body in the front lines. Besides, it takes 3 years to train a soldier to do his (or her) job well. Why waste training on combat situations when I'm better used for hacking?
That said, I'm still not in favor of a draft. It's a huge drain on public support.
-Ted
They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?
If this is a reference to the proposed measures against "hacking offences", then you need to re-read the laws that are being proposed. They are neither as bad or as radical as the Slashdot article about it like to make it to be.
As far as what's a hacker to do, it's very simple: Do your part to protect the lives of innocent people and fight the war against those who don't respect the rights of humans to live.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Mua-ha-ha-ha! Mua-ha-ha-ha!! Mua-ha-ha-ha!!! Mua-ha-ha-ha!!!!
*cough* *cough*
'Same speed C but faster'
Wasn't it just in the last couple of days that they called hackers terrorists. Now they want hackers help? So they get your help until they are done with you, and then they arrest you for being a terrorist. If I am not mistake, you can ask Kevin Poulsen about that. I believe he was the hacker working for the FBI that did time for hacking.
I think the Comic Book Guy is the closest they have. Well, that and the time where Snake holds up the cybercafe, and steals Homer's bank account ("Oh yeah, download to Papa. Goodbye, alt-backslash-losers"). Nothing else really occurs to me.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Let me just start by letting everyone know I live (and am currently typing this) from Manhattan.
I used to dislike cops. THey harassed me, the were disrespectful to me, and messed with my friends.
I take it all back. All of it.
I have a new respect for all police in New York City since the attacks on the world trade center. They, along with the firemen all risked thier lives to help get people out of the buildings as quickly as they could. But, as you know, the building collapsed, trapping thousands (literally) of New York's finest men and women, who selflessly gave thier lives to help the rest of us.
Now, when I see a police man on the street, I smile at him. He is ensuring my safety, and the safety of others.
Now, its our turn. Sure, the government may have "demonized" us before. But times are fundamentally different now. This is not about image, or public policy, this is about honest to god people. People's lives, thousands, mabey millions of people, are at risk. I for one will do ANYTHING, yes ANTHING, the government needs done. (And yes, if they have enough tech people, I will gladly go to the front line in Afganistan, or Iraq, or wherever).
It is now our turn to step up, and help defend our country.
Make no mistake, our society, our values, the very things that allowed us to achieve such levels of science and technology, is under attack.
Lets show those bastards they messed with the wrong people
--Alex Fishman
Vint Cerf was interviewed on NPR's Public Interest yesterday. You can listen to it in RealAudio here. He makes a great case for how the Internet was put its first real test of the original intention of using packet switching, which was to ensure a reliable method of communication in the event of an enemy attack here on US soil - and passed the test pretty well, with the exception of some of the major media sites being slashdotted.
He is joined by George Sadowski, Executive Director of the Global Internet Policy Initiative, GIPI.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
This looks like a plea for the dispatchers to cease their operations.
The FBI and CIA have been known to do turnabouts on hackers. Just ask Max Vision. The gov't fought long and hard to demonize and criminalize even the whitest hats of hacking, and Ashcroft's pushing to get them labeled as terrorist acts on top of that.
The DoD's had it's fair share of smudged histories. Be Alert. Keep your pistol handy.
Yes, you can be useful in combatting terrorism. Just make sure you know where the line is getting drawn and be on the correct side of it.
And realize that some of combatting terrorism may go against projects you've been supporting, like anonymous remailers, strong crypto for everyone, anti-censorship protections, and the elusive set of projects working to enable dissidents in countries such as China to safely communicate with the outside world. These and other tools can also be used by the bad guys, and will no doubt become targets.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
this might finally give script kiddies something useful to do with their spare time :-)
hack...ehm i mean crack them all...
If the target machines are screwed then our special net ops can't get in and grab valuable info. Info is power. It's all about following the money.
And if they want consultants, I'd be happy to get a security clearance.
Two hacker favorites -- USA Cable's Sci-Fi Channel, and UPN's hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- would be perfect places to air the spot
... probably more computer literate people will be watching that show than all of SciFi and Slayer together ... at least for the first episode or two. Even then they will only be reaching a fraction of the hackers (in the traditional sense of the words) or network crackers (what they misguidedly call hackers), as geeks are at least as eclectic and diverse as any other group.
And in all seriousness, tonights premier of "Star Trek: Enterprise" would be the most suitable
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Unless I see a blanket pardon first, I do nothing. I don't want to do the right thing then get hunted down by my own government.
Replace all those X10 popups with "WTF D00D PLZ DONT H4X0R ROFFLL!!!!" ;-)
This sig is xenon coated, and will glow red when in the presence of aliens
As in 'crossing the'. It's a river in Italy. Look it up.
Ok, if they're serious about using hackers, here's some good things to do.
:)
1) Use those DDoS attacks on the Taliban and the terrorists. Block out their news, their proproganda. Stick it to their networks so they can't share information. At the same time reroute any pro-fundamentalist web pages to sites that promote more moderate approaches and demonstrate the stupidity behind radicalism. Show them the truth, at the same time you're snuffing out the lies.
2) Backdoor their servers and use the unauthorized access to swipe important details of operation. Set up sniffers on any communications you can for intelligence. I'm sure the CIA is already working on that one
3) Any crypto breakers should offer their services in some fashion, since they're going to be needed.
Things not to do:
1) Attack any and all Islam/Arab related sites. Keep in mind the enemy we're fighting, and don't drag innocents into it.
2) Deface sites not related to the struggle based on the idea of "making a message". That plays into their hands.
If the government is willing to sanction the good things, like everyone said this could improve the image of "freelance security experts". Heh.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Buffy the Vampire slayer? What do they want the high school 3l33t hack0r3?
:)
The perfect opportunity is tonight on UPN when the new Star Trek premiers.
Sheesh.
They're too late, tonight's Enterprise Premier is the perfect place for this 'public service' announcement.
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most
Can't you just see some gleeful little pinhead suit rubbing his hands gleefully at the prospect that the "hackers" they've been trying for so long to catch might be gullible enough to respond?
Next week's big story: government operatives nab hundreds of evil hackers while organizing "hack attack" on terrorists.
Pfft! I don't think so.
rm -rf /bin/Laden
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
There are more true hackers around then you know about. Regardless, us *hackers* whether we are white, black, or greyhat's are all around and you would never know...unless you asked us.
On another point, a hacker writes their own tools, script kiddies use the tools we have written.
Come to Defcon sometime, and you'll see how many "true" hackers are around. But that's only the ones that can make it. Otherwise you can always try the 2600 meetings.
Mashiki
--
Whitehat, why yes!
--
Om, nomnomnom...
I'd hack for the feds. It'd be nice, though if they'd cover my student loan debt in return. Seriously, teachers, health care professionals, and other groups can have their student loans wiped out by offering their services in underpriviledged areas, but computer science types can't really go code in the ghetto and expect the government to wipe out their loans. I'd be happy to offer any help I can, debts cancelled or not, but still, it'd be nice.
There was an article a few days ago posted here that the Justice Department wants Congress to pass John Ashcroft's proposed 'Anti-Terrorist Act' that would treat hacking as a form of terrorism.
Is it just me or does this sound like a stab in the back to provoke hackers into the open, then after they have done the work the US Govt would like them to do, jail them for breaking this so-called Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA)?
-- M
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
Haven't americans learnt it already? So they will patronize and pay hackers to fight bin ladden. So they will win. So they have a ton of uneasy hackers spinning on their chairs. So they will collect them and lock them up befor they will become computer binladdens. NOW. Most of Afganisatan does not even have radios, nevermind computers and networks. Hack Afganistan? Nope. Hack the hackers. Tie people who will rebel on the event when miliarty order will descend, and you got no resistance, at least from computer side. Remember embarrasments DOD and CIA had when their sites were defaced? Time to get back at those pranksters, with a national pride as a tool.
BEAWARE!
One of my major beef's with the Linux community in general has been their fanatical anti .gov and .mil views. I've always thought of it as being unpatriotic to bring down the net, via dos attacks, defacing a .gov website.
Yes, clearly only the Linux community would do such things. As I understand it, products from Redmond are the cause of the latest security problems (Code Red, Sircam, et al), no?
You, sir, are a luser.
Yeah, what's up with corporations thinking it's okay to act like some kind of authority figure? I'm getting kinda tired of it.
Anybody here work in advertising or media produciton? If you want to serve your country organize a "I Call Bullshit" ad campaign. So we all chip in cash and run ads to address all the misinformation put out by the spin doctors in the government. Fight fire with fire.
I've got 23 dollars to chip in.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
They're worried that well-meaning U.S. hackers may launch denial-of-service attacks or release worms or viruses aimed at disrupting terrorists
Question: How dumb do they think we are?
Answer: As dumb as they are.
Explanation: To combat terrorism the government is busy restricting every possible liberty they can get their hands on. In the end, it will only hurt good citizins and do nothing to the terrorists. Just as these feared attacks would.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
In WWII Alan Turing was recruited by the allies for his mathematical genius. He essentially saved the world from fascism, and afterwards he was demonized and led to suicide by a government that disagreed with his lifestyle.
The Fact that the government wats "hacktivists" to chill out only gives them more reason to do more damage. The way I figure it, if u wanted to do some mess like that to say, Taliban alligned web sites, they very well deserve it. The slipping of a nimba worm would shure as hell put some sugar in their gas tank. Under these circumstances however, I would go pester the Army, Navy, Marines, and FBI to give u a job doing what u do best. If ur gonna get lost in a sea of lies, u might as well have some fun doing it.
DTINFERNO@netzero.net
www.DTINFERNO.com
I regularly hang out in alt.2600, and I lurk in many other Newsgroups. Apart from the usual spam and trolls a new troll is breeding:
The Hate Troll.
A large number of posts are dominated by "Hack this Muslim site" or, "Hackers fight back against terror!" And of course these twits then list a site (which often has nothing to do with terrorisim, and often is hosted in the U.S... Not that the posters have discovered whois or nslookup yet...)
Fortunately the regulars (those who actually deserve the monoinker "hacker") ignore or flame the hell out of the poster. Not that that is an issue. The regulars can determine between free speech (freedom) and censorship (terrorism of words).
Unfortunately, the skript kiddies can't. Of course, this is the crowd that the advertisements are targeted towards. Not that it will help - the kiddies are incredibly thick skulled.
I just wish I could see the commercial (I don't watch T.V.) maybe it will show up on adcritic.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
So are we scum sucking terrorists or heros. I think they better make up their fucking minds before I touch one of their computers. I won't do it if they pass that law.
The article doesn't say what they want people to do, and I havent found where they want people to do anything on the website. Perhaps some contact information? I've got free time if it's volunteering somehow.
If I had another account I'd mod myself down.
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
It may not be much but the FBI is offering up to 138K for qualified IT pros. I sent in my resume. Even willing to leave my operations job with one of Pepsico's major Competitors (not coke). Gotta do my part.
P.S. NSA is also hiring, but the CIA doesn't want IT people. I didn't want to be a spook anyways.
However, after Operation Desert Storm and a wide variety of other opportunities for culling the male population of the Arab Middle East...
Seastead this.
not at all! do you??
The government has been known to do turnabouts. Just ask Osama Bin Laden.
I rejoice that there are owls.
OK, so a week ago we have the FBI complaining that /bin/laden has given up on his satellite phones and computers in favour of sending messengers on camels (or whatever, apologies for lame western stereotyping) since they can't be wiretapped. Now: Please r00t his servers for us.
.Net takes it up the arse... well, they're going to know whose door to break down, aren't they?
Piss poor. And anyway, a whole bunch of people are going to want a whole load of legal protection for what they know before they will do this. I mean, spend the next six months breaking terrorists servers apart and in a years time when
But if anyone goes for this: good luck. I do have some pretty serious problems with piling into Afghanistan and blowing shit up; but no moral qualms whatsoever when it comes to merely trashing terrorists ability to operate.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
MafiaBoy is planning a DOS attack on "Yahoo! Afghanistan". That'll teach 'em.
"Shake yur bon bon"
It turns out vinton cerf was the real mastermind behind the terrorist attacks, and when he realizes I know, he threatens to alter my mom's identity.
then all the hackers head down to grand central station with their macintosh laptops and beat him at his own game!
yay!!
might have to write a parser for pashtun and several arabic dialects besides.
The linked story makes it pretty clear (at least after the first sentence) that:
/., since Wired did provide the totally misleading info in the 1st sentence of the article...
1) the organization doing the ads is not part of the US government
2) They're asking hackers to NOT deface sites, etc.
I guess I shouldn't be too critical of
Subject: Hi! How are you?
I send you this file in order to have your advice
Yeah, I installed linux a couple of times, that makes me a hacker right?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Whoa! I was all set to hack Dorothy Denning's web site and make her photo look silly. But someone beat me to it!
Simple. Do it. Non-Christians have not made an issue of the decidedly pro-Christian coverage of memorial services. It is time for us to show that we can be as gracious. Now is the time for us to put aside our petty differences and come together against the worse of two evils. Yes, the federal government has been particularly myopic when it comes to technology and personal freedoms. All we can do is educate them and help them understand.
In the meantime, their ignorance is no reason to refuse to help where we can.
It they were hiring at the NSA or FBI it would be far more attractive. They could use some new blood from what they *say*. Joining a semi-approved vigilante organization is different. The alphabet agencies are somewhat well known for using and discarding people with plausible deniability, like Noreiga for example.
It's all whether they are really looking for people to protect the Internet, or to help them with the Big Brother program. Some of the provisions of the ATA are nonsensical -- they help the terrorists more than us. They are all very nifty domestic surveillance measures however. So I'm not following any leaders until this measure is finalized. If you want to protect the Internet what could be better, for now, than protecting your own systems?
The ATA makes it life in prison without chance for parole for defacing a web site. While I agree that action is illegal, I am not in favor of paying taxes to support the script-kiddies for life.
If you'd like to help them decide here's a petitition getting broad bipartisan support.
In Defense Of Freedom
Gov. want to make hacking a crime punishable by life in prison? Gov. also encourages that this crime be committed by random individuals towards semi-random targets without control of the gov.? Isn't that sorta like.. asking the people of the US to kill someone that's conceivably a terrorist instead of bringing him to justice in a court?
Hrm.. this post is confused, but that is because I'm confused. Better stop writing.
At least, I hope it was a joke. There is nothing to attack in Afghanistan.. The Taliban banned the internet a while back because it permitted access to "immoral content". Afghanistan doesn't have an information infrastructure, much less one that connects to the big wide world.
Check out the .af domain sometime. Totally barren. That's what makes this whole thing so ridiculous.
This
yes.
Like the poster said above about the Police in NYC. Times have changed.
In the past, it was us against them, because there wasn't an widely reguarded outside threat. Now there is.
So people can either keep bitching about the past and all the "injustices". Or they can realize that Now isn't like it was Before 9.11.01.
Times have changed. I've known for a while that the Taliban and Militantist Terrorist groups were bad, but I didn't know how bad. And the attacks on 9.11.01 wern't the final release, it's a step up.
So I'd say - let bygones be bygones and step upto the plate and help the Gov and Mil if they need help and you are willing. But don't bitch about what happened before, cause it was a different world.
The Anti-Terror thing in the House and Senate is already being ripped apart by the Committees, I doubt it'll get to a floor vote.
This is similar to the police stings you hear about from time to time (at least in the movies) where known felons are contacted in large groups and told they have won some attractive prize; all who show up are promptly arrested.
Not that anybody will be arrested as a result of dialing 1-800-usa-hack to sign up, but if you think a job offer is going to be the result as opposed to an immediate phone tap and lots of extra attention on your ip address, you are sadly deluded...
So would this be Life imitating art? Or maybe someone in the US Gov't read it and thought it sounded logical
m l
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2001/09/surrender.ht
This just in, '"I want you, evil hackers," Says Uncle Sam Website' hacked.
Well, looks like we need to come up with another color. To me, this doesn't appear to fall under either BlackHAT or WhiteHAT activity. Perhaps Red/White/BlueHAT?
I don't mean to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but what's the real point of this ad? It doesn't sound like anyone actually thinks it'll deter anyone. And on TV? Much more effective on-line. And there really aren't enough script kiddiez and whatnot to have a TV campaign make any sense.
The people who will actually be influenced by this are the ones who aren't very computer-literate. While the script kiddiez will scoff (or not even notice), there are far more computer illiterates (or semi-literates), and they'll be more easily swayed. Is this just another attempt at demonizing non-corporate computer types?
Actually, this is a worse joke than either of you realize... Bin Laden's organization is called Al-Qaeda, which translates to "The Base"...
it's unclesam w4nt$ joo
Hacker listening to this stupid show???
/., cheaper and more effective way of targetting them.
:)
Well, ok, 15yld kids would.
Are you all watching Buffy the Vampire???
I would guess next show Buffy will be slayering Taliban vampires.
CNN is much more interesting these days.
Actually, they should simply but a banner on
Yeah...banner marketing doesn't work...I forgot
My advice is that as many people in the hacker community that can, should help out the old .gov people in winning this 1st war of the 21st century and/or help out the less technically inclined NGO's doing disaster response in NY and DC. It is the patriotic thing to do. It is the right thing to do, and that should be enough reason.
.gov groups are the same ones that have misunderstood and/or demonized technology and the hacking community in the past. So what. It's still the right thing to do to pitch in and help, even if you don't like some of the people who will be on the team. If hackers are magnanimous here, then maybe some of those old political adversaries could be educated and shown that hackers are not criminals (those would be crackers). This could be an opportunity to win the "hearts and minds" of some local .gov people in addition to the ones we'll be fighting for in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and Iraq.
.gov how patriotic and productive the hacking community is. Ask Dr. Gerald Bull about the hazards of doing favors for the gov't in secret. Joe and Jane Sixpack need to be won over as well. Buy a book on public relations for small organizations; befriend a reporter; do a little of that social engineering to make sure that when the media is talking about what groups are doing what to help out, they mention your work as well. I am not suggesting that PR should take priority over actually helping out, but rather that with a little extra effort this is an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. An opportunity that may not come again soon.
Many of these
But don't just take this opportunity to show
And besides, even if no one but you ever knows what you did... donating time and effort to help the war efforts and/or disaster victims is still the right thing to do.
This [wired.com] issue of wired
Where did that sentance say I was linking to an article, go out and buy a copy. BTW only charma whore's post as anonymous cowards. I take full responsibility for my posts, even if I know they will get modded down to -1. You sir obviously do not stand behind your comment otherwise you wouldn't have posted anonymously, therefore it is you that is the luser.
--Toq
Why are some geeks such whiners. Here's an anology which might help. If you drive your car on the freeway at 120 mph they will demonize you and criminalize you. If you drive 200 mph on a race track and win races they will cheer you and pay you lots of money. Can you see the difference? Do you understand? Take the tin foil hat off for a while and join humanity.
The English tried this before... giving ships the right to be privateers, attack their opponents, and keep the loot. When the war ended, the government took back the permission, and pirates were born.
I'm not an USA citizen, but if I was, that's what I'd do: write an open letter to the Govt, saying I'd be happy to help if they (a) nullify the DMCA, (b) nullify the Sonny Bono Act, (c) abort the SSSCA and (d) FIRE ASHCROFT!
Publish on a Web site. Ask for signatures. Make clear that the signers DO mean to enlist if the above happens.
As I said, I'm not from the US, so it'd be weird if I made such page myself. Anyone who likes the suggestion, fell free to go ahead. The idea is hereby placed in the public domain.
... who has the most to lose in a hacking war, terrorists or the USA?
Exclusive: Crackers Prepare Retaliation for Tues. Terrorist Attacksl ?d ocid=3030000000002974
www.govtech.net/news/features/news_feature.phtm
(take out the extra space between d and o)
Crackers Prepare Retaliation for Tues. Terrorist Attacks
www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170117.html
These stories from last week are probably what brought about this PSA.
Ironic. Heard news about John Ashcroft lumping hackers in together with terrorists in the new anti-terrorism legislation: so the US is now starting its own Corps of Terrorists?
Seriously though, the slippery slope arguent with regard to civil liberties is vary difficult to make, since based on that argument, organizations such as the ACLU and other organizations have had to defend all sorts of morally reprehensible (yet still legal) activities/things/people, to such a degree as to alienate a large portion of the population. This effect of having to act based on the slippery slope argument, has resulted in members of the news media recently making statements such as those on the ABC sunday discussion program This Week, which were to the effect (and not an exact quote):These light treatments by the news media, of the civil liberties issues around the right to privacy, as manifested by the ability to use cryptographic mechanisms in communication, are inexcusable. Unfortunately, here I suppose I'm preaching to the choir.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
As others have pointed out, the U.S. government is not advocating cracker attacks; it's "Cyberangels."
How come when the "major media" get stuff wrong, it's due to pro-corporate bias and part of an evil conspiracy, but when michael or someone else on Slashdot publishes falsehoods, it's an honest mistake?
Which is it?
Fuck that shit. I'm all about helping, especially now, but not when I'm being threatened with life imprisonment with no possibility of parole. If you don't know what I'm talking about, look up Ashcoft's new anti-terrorism bill, where in the the tradition of "encryption == munitions" they now give us "hacking == crime worth a mandatory life sentence".
Are they serious? or just very insulting???
The irony is strong in this one. Can anyone remind me when exactly we established Bin Laden used the internet?
EXT - NAMELESS AFGHAN PLAIN - MORNING.
An Apache helicopter settles onto the barren plain. Out from it emerge three plain males. They wear an assortment of camouflage combined with curious t-shirts, with sayings like "I don't work here" and "will frag for bandwidth".
Just as Geek1 begins to aim his machine gun at JonKatz, to put an end to his ravings once and for all, a crazed member of the Taliban comes flying over the desert horizon. He is screaming something.
The Geeks all stop and look at him. Terror strikes into their very hearts and souls. The words of their enemy shock them into utter panic. The three begin to flee in the opposite direction, now heading directly into a minefield. Geek1 stops running, a serene expression coming across his face. He grabs Geek2's shoulder by his t-shirt, quietly, allowing JonKatz to continue to flee further into the minefield. The two geeks turn to face their adversary, brandishing their weapons with a newfound confidence and sense of purpose. JonKatz vanishes over the horizon, screaming wildly.
CUT TO...
I mean, I'm not a criminal if I pick your Chub 5902b lock with my credit card and loot around your house setting traps and spray painting Drrrooo Wassss Heeeerreeee in a nice orange colour because you didnt realise that that model lock wasnt resistant against the trusty ABC Plastic Card, available from Script Kiddies Bank of Dom..... :)
You know the drill: They have a bunch of felons at large. Rather than try to serve warrants on them singly, they just send out a mailer. "Congratulations! You'vewon tickets to the Superbowl! Now all you have to do to claim your prize is show up at the stadium on such and such a date and get your picture taken!" And the dumb 'cons' fall for it every time... So go ahead, send them your resumes. Then they'll know where you live and can drag you in for questioning any time they want.
Besides, is this something you want to be supporting?
You're using her as bait, Master!
As a Brit that has been living in the States for the last couple of months I've had the opportunity to experience the behaviour of the US media and the government first hand, and to be honest it makes me sick. Let's get a few things straight:
.mil or a .gov.
- America is the largest producer and exporter of weapons on the planet.
- America has the largest arsenal of nuclear and toxic weapeons on the planet.
- America is the largest producer and exportor of torture equipment on the planet.
- America is the largest producer and exportor of anti-personnel landmines on the planet.
America supports more oppressive regimes around the world than anyone else, as and when it suits them. A while ago they were supplying the Iraqis with weapons. Then they went after them. During the Russo-Afghan war, they were funding, supplying and even training the very afghans that are now described as 'evil'. 20 years ago they were called freedom fighter. Now they are deemed 'evil'.
Two weeks ago hacking was illegal. Now it's OK, just as long as it's not a
Just because you are not shooting at someone doesn't mean your actions are peaceful. This is another attempt by the American government to whip up what is already a frenzy of 'They're evil! Get them!' sentiment.
If people had the foresight to try and work out *why* the events of the 11th happened, then maybe we could make some progress. As it is we'll be bombarded with the same old footage of disaster and death followed by Bush claiming that these people are 'evil'.
No doubt people will start port-scanning the few afghan/islamic websites that are around. Maybe while you are waiting you go to Amazon and buy The Plague by Camus. Oh, and switch of CNN.
Invoicing, Time Tracking, Reporting
I saw a letter about this in the most recent (summer 2001, p. 52) issue of 2600. It is as follows...
"Dear 2600: I was going to send you an e-mail two weeks ago stating that we should channel many of our frustrations with the U.S. justice system toward our adversaries, i.e., China. All of us in the U.S. hacker community are still U.S. citizens. Let us not completely denounce our country. We can utilize our special skills in a constructive manner that is conducive to U.S. information warfare policy. Later, we may use this as legal leverage for future legislation. -ICFN PMP
*response* As one of many such messages we got from the Navy, let us remind you that hackers are not soldiers and are far too individualistic and free-thinking to buy into jingoistic nonsense, regardless of the source. You should seriously consider the effects of reducing hackers to the equivalent of some kind of weapon. It will only increase paranoia and fear. And we find it extremely telling that the authorities, the media, and apparantly a whole lof of people in the military feel it's OK to vandalize sites if it's done for nationalistic purposes."
(As an aside, there's an interesting picture of an Ewok holding a rifle behind the article)
It would seem quite hypocritical for us (typical /. posters), who are so against Big Brother poking his nose into our business to turn right back around and do EXACTLY the same thing to other members of the US public. I seriously doubt "fighting terrorism" involves busting into a secret (insert arabic country here) computer and taking vital military plans. Rather, it will involve spying on your neighbors and seeking internal 'threats,' probably in ways which violate the 4th amendment to the constitution.
A different kind of animal
Ironic. Heard news about John Ashcroft lumping hackers in together with terrorists in the new anti-terrorism legislation: so the US is now starting its own Corps of Terrorists?
What do you mean starting? Theyve had a terrorist corps for years...it's called the CIA.
You're using her as bait, Master!
When .gov need hackers skill they pretend to love and care about them, after .gov get what they want, they gonna put all the hackers into jail.
is this what we want?
Gladto see I'm not the only one who is not afraid to ask "why"?
Everything cca93014 says is true. To some degree, America may have brought this mess on itself. :(
I swear by MacOS X. Although I use to swear *at* MacOS 9...
let help them and go to jail together4 2 .gov
read
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/09/24/20442
i think this is a trick from
I can understand Sci-Fi but BUFFY??!! No discerning slashdotter watches Buffy unless its to see a LOTR trailer. Try Battlebots, Toonami or better yet - pay-per view porn.
Remember for any .gov work, you are expendable and disposable.
When it comes to the crunch, its always the small man that gets crunched.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
There were good cops and bad cops, and there still are. That hasn't changed even though the dangers of their profession has become more apparent to us. And, speaking as someone with a law enforcement background, I still feel that we shouldn't be scared into handing over the keys to our freedom. Yeah, a bunch of them died, but I'd say 95% had no clue of the dangers (except for some firefighters who work the building collapse units) that awaited them in that death trap. Yeah they risk their lives every day but they get paid pretty well to do it (after top pay over 60+/ per annum with great benefits) and, in the case of firefighters, get all the tang they can drink (I'm on the firefighter list myself and should be going in in a few months - maybe sooner now). So for the same reason we shouldn't profile all arabs as terrorists, we shouldn't paint all cops with the martyr brush. Many are good men and women, but just as many as before still have lubed up broomsticks. The heroism of some of them still does not give them the right to harrass you and your friends.
FBI? Secret Service? I've heard both names... who has the jurisdiction for computer related crimes in the US, anyways? Or some other agency?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
that doesn't say squat. Assume a honeypot, or at the very least a lone web server on an entirely different network than the bank's internal net/trans.servers. I work for a co that does A F'ING LOT of VERY MANY banks' transactions, and hacking the 'pretty little face' to their brick & mortar buildings (ie their web site) won't do SHIT. Here's just ONE example: Chase Manhattan pays the co I work for mucho $ to do all of their damned work, especially with their credit and debit depts. We just bill em at the end of the month. Anymore, banks are just, well, brokers who take your money and give it people like, well, ME and the company I work for. I am AC, but don't underestimate what I've told you, there are more large datacenters getting a piece of this pie every day.
The FBI is looking or IT professionals:
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
If available, take a nice long walk away from the computer, and as they say, Smell the Roses.
Should we help the government? Sure last week they wanted to call us terrorists but if we help them maybe it will inform the public who we really are. Lets use this chance to get rid of the rep that the media has made for us.
Carpe meam simiam!
you know...and even some low budget detective movies..."you're going away for a long time, mr hacker, but work with us and we'll cut ya a deal, maybe even wipe your slate clean". I still prefer the more serious approach of Neuromancer to the patriotic call-to-arms tone this stuff carries.
Read between the lines ( steganography? ).
They want citizens to spy on their neighbors. Seems like the U.S. is using all the classic techniques of the old U.S.S.R.
We're more likely to survive Bin Laden than Bin Ashcroft.
Two hacker favorites -- USA Cable's Sci-Fi Channel, and UPN's hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- would be perfect places to air the spot...
They stereotype you and generalize you and then ask you for help.
In the grand tradition of governments and hackers as usual. They do everything they can to criminalize us and demonize us, and now they want our help. Will they reward us the same way the British government rewarded Alan Turing, by "treating" his homosexuality "disease?"
If you're a hacker, my suggestion to you is that you don't just help out of the goodness of your heart. Fair is fair: Demand just compensation, in the form of pro-hacker legislation and ditching the DMCA and the laws that are currently on the table. If they want hacker help, they're going to have to change the laws to be more hacker friendly.
It's that simple, folks. If they don't support you, you don't support them. If the USA really wants hackers to help them, the first thing the USA can do is to help the hackers.
The best show a real interest, get a few degrees, and spend the rest of their lives theorizing or writing standards.
Script kiddies go over the L0pht, get a "hacker tool" if there is such a thing, and deface websites. We're not talking about special relativity here. At best they learn to use a debugger and find overflows. I've met FEW "hackers" who actually possess any potential for becoming mroe than that.
"All your Al-Qaeda (the base) are belong to U.S."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I cannot resist dropping a few alternate nicknames.
Osama bin Laden = Old Salami BinBox
Taliban = TalentFan
Yes, it's probably off-topic. Mod it down if you want... I don't give a rip...
The CIA didn't train them to be "Islamic extremists", they trained them to be guerrilla warriors.
They were chosen because they opposed the "godless" Russians, which happened to be our enemies too.
> cloak-and-dagger games of subversion and manipulation stop,
LOL. They HAVE stopped, that's why we didn't have "intelligence" on this attack and why we can't infiltrate Bin Laden. Actually, this whole mess is a justification to get back into dirty Cold War era "cloack-and-dagger" tactics.
- sigs are for wimps.
If you wish to attract really good hackers you do not even think about discussing filtering software. Hackers hate corporate bs and I am sure a porn manhunt is not high on the list either. I went and took a look at the site because I quickly considered joining. As soon as I had gone through the fist page I left the site, total bs....
I am sure they will get their fill of wannabe VB Programmers quickly!
-Bob
My TiVo playback of the pirated DirectTV downlink (on my iPaq, running wireless in my bathroom) doesn't show any commercials.
:-) all around
And you just got laid (heh heh) off from a .com or whatever you call it (www.rulespace.com) and just graduated from college you sign up :).
America this, America that. Isn't this the same Uncle Sam that creates messes like the DMCA and SSSCA? Isn't this the same Uncle Sam that's trying to keep us all from using GPG and copy files? And now this Uncle Sam comes crawling back to us hackers and ask for us to help him?
Go ahead and mod me down, but it has to be said. Uncle Sam is not the entity to be helping. He's become old, senile, and tyrannical. If it we up to him, all hackers would be in jail! So instead he's giving us a choice: work for me or get labeled a terrorist. I think not. I don't know about other Slashdot readers, but I've about had it with these shenanigans.
I don't care if Uncle Sam wants to hunt me down, but I'm keeping my 31337 5k1Llz to myself. If I get drafted I'll move to Canada or get a sex change. (Why is it that only males are drafted?)
Anyway, I'm pissed. Uncle Sam can shove it where the sun don't shine.
Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
I've contacted several FBI employment offices via phone as well as the FBI employment websites, even checked the C3I and the DSS and the NSA websites.
There are no listings of a "Computer Hacker Extraordinaire" position.
Perhaps, the Cult of the Dead Cows are hiring...
We have met the enemy and he is us
I can see it now: Hordes of little kids crying about how they cant hit the enemy with a sniper rifle while jumping up and down. "What? He killed me in one hit? Thats such bullshit. I'm l33t!!"
> Now I know what to do with all those AOL CD's..
Next time you're in a plane, and some crazed fanatical "Holy Warrior" threatens you with a box cutter, take out the AOL CDs, distrubute them among the passengers and break them apart.
Voila, now everybody is armed with sharp CD fragments ready to impale the "Holy Warriors".
See, AOL CDs are very useful. Thank you AOL !
- sigs are for wimps.
All your Al-Qaeda (the base) are belong to U.S.
Definitely +1, Underrated!
Intelligent Life on Earth
Hmm...Last week they were calling hackers terrorists, this week they're telling them to identify themselves. Seems a bit suspicious to me...like you're going to be doing the aforementioned hacking from within a jail cell
What if someone were to setup a honeypot for finding Osama?
You could set-up several sites like binladenpornos.com and feature things like doctored pictures of him in compromising positions with livestock and such.
Anyway, by following the attempts to crack and rectify this site, you would flesh out the information on the technical side of his network. If you get sued, all the better to track funds and connections through the representing lawyers.
-- Len
I know that there have been a lot of movies that have portraid hackers to be the bad guys, but there have also been some shows that portray them as the good guys. Independance day where he hacked the enemy and blew up the mother ship. The movie hackers where they saved the oiltanker. I think one of the big reasons that hackers got such a bad rap was that movie with mathew brodrick in it that portraid hackers as bad guys and the goverment was trying to lock them up, rather than getting his help.
Now being a war vetran myself (Desert Storm), I can tell you that if the goverment wants to recruit hackers then I'd say that is probably the best way to serve your country. You would probably not have to fire a gun, you could do what you like, and if htey are understanding and don't get in your way (hahaha) then you can pretty much write your own ticket at that point. Anyway I'd do it, if I were a hacker.
Only 'flamers' flame!
phreak them right out .. make their long distance bills so large even bin Laden can't pay.
Everyone here keeps saying that last week THEY were trying to call hackers terrorists, and now THEY are trying to recruit them.
I think it is important to recognize the difference between Ashcroft and THEY.
A.D. 2111
ALL BASES OF AL-QAEDA WERE DESTROYED.
It seems to be peaceful.
BUT IT IS INCORRECT.
Katz is still alive.
Geek1 LOST FIGHT
AGAINST Katz AGAIN.
AND DOWN WITH HIM
COMPLETELY! GOOD LUCK.
Translation, "Script kiddies and trolls put down your keyboards." Not a bad thing to ask, and the appeal to patriotism is nice too. The message is consistent with others, such as making DOS attacks and cracks a terrorist offense with a real death penalty. "Doodz, you got the death penalty?", not to funny anymore and much less nice.
You don't really think the US government wants to hire out 10,000 script kiddies do you? What, with every CS teacher, National Lab researcher and defense contractor willing to jump right in the US has no shortage of computer operators. OK, they might use one or two. Warrez operators please report to the office of cracker mobilization right next door to the Imigration and Nationalization Free Refridgerator Service Office for Illegal Aliens.
Give it up, bitches! Turn off your crack bots and behave. Carry out useful and constructive protests instead. In the end, survival is cultural victory, so build up rather than tear down.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Um, no. What you're suggesting is really what the NSA is paid to do. Actually, this whole campaign really is what the NSA is paid to do. So, I'm asking, whenever you're "hacking" these various sites associated with terrorists, don't you think you're just fscking with the NSA's job by making them waste time trying to determine whether your transmissions are "friend" or "foe"?
Another thing, as many others have posted, this isn't a government job offering. If it was, and you're introduced to their equipment as part of your new occupation, then you'd know their true capabilities in the electronic communications department. And when you think you're going to be able to "leave your job", you'll find that you've become "too much of an asset" to be let go, easily.
Interestingly, South Africa is not part of the United States and its communications capabilities (or inabilities) have NOTHING to do with the original goal of the internet
Hmm .. I wasn't making any statement of the sort .. I just thought it was interesting, given the original goals of the internet ("routing around damage" etc), and the post made me think of it. Obviously those original goals now apply worldwide, not just in the US anymore.
No offense, but if you think that South Africa has any chance of being an enemy of the US, you can't know very much about it. We used to have nukes, yes, but the nuclear program was dismantled as I remember it a little over ten years ago. And in case you hadn't noticed, SA became has become a democracy during the last ten years, we have a very liberal constitution that was modelled partially after the US constitution, have a government that supports not only democracy but capitalism (which is actively in the process of privatisation of government assets), and South Africa has officially stated its support of the US in its "war on terrorism". If we're not committing specific *military* support, its because, well, we have a very weak military and given SAs own economic problems we can't exactly pull funds out of anything else. And not one South African I know of has any notion of being against the US in any sense. Whats with this isolationist nationalist stance of yours towards any country other than the US? You seem to be confusing South Africa with some of the hardline middle-east countries such as Afghanistan, although I can't imagine how you could possibly draw any connection, if you look on a map you'll notice its not even the same continent...
I don't have a problem with making our communications "dependent" (in that sense) on the well-being of the US. I'm not sure how you might have thought I was implying otherwise?? I'm all for bandwidth, the more the better.
Sheesh .. I'm afraid my imagination isn't vivid enough to think up all the strange ways people can possibly misunderstand the intent of a poster in an online forum.
the news will have "America Strikes Back"?
(for those that missed it, titles in the news were "terror in america, america under fire and such... think Star Wars, Return of the Jedi and the "empire strikes back"
Moose
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
hack it, you dolt.
You have no chance to surivve. Make your time.
The main Council of Muslim Clerics in Indonesia ruled that in the event of any American action whatsoever in Afghanistan jihad is declared. This is not a minor threat - Indonesia has the largest Muslim population, with extensive trade with the US. Since 'jihad' is a declaration of 'holy war,' and since 'holy war,' as the Muslims will tell us regarding crusades, is truly 'war,' are we to expected to be neutral about a people who have declared war on us, should this come about?
This also is just a joke. I would never suggest that anyone take down the Indonesian banking and communications systems, since that would interfere with America's supply of Nikes.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Remember the old song,
"There was an old lady who swallowed a fly..."
It goes on to list the other critters she supposedly swallowed.
"She swallowed a spider to catch the fly,
but I don't know why, she swallowed the fly."
Bird
Cat
Dog
Hog
It ends with the lines:
"She swallowed a horse.
She's dead, of course."
Bingo. Turing served a government that demonized him.
Hackers shouldn't provide the same blind devotion. If the US Government really wants help from hackers, the first thing the US Government can do is STOP DEMONIZING THE HACKERS! Drop the DMCA, drop the case against Dmitry, drop the new laws being introduce that criminalize the use of a computer for everything but shopping on eBay, and GIVE US SOME GUARANTEES THAT OUR FREEDOMS WILL BE PROTECTED!
If the US Government wants our aid, they need to make efforts to indicate their good faith towards us. And they have a LOT of catching up to do.
I'll be the biggest patriot you've ever seen when the Liberty this country is supposed to stand for is restored to me. It is Liberty that makes the country great, not the fact that it happens to be (out of some random chance) where I was born, live, and work.
Man - a lot of people here are lost in fantasy worlds...
just remember to stop hacking once their 'war on terrorism' is over.
Take the money and run! It's the patriotic, the American thing to do.
The ad was developed by cyberangels.com and may or may not ever make it to air. The US government has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with this. Don't be fooled either, no matter how good you think you are, if you were convicted of a computer related crime you will not receive a security clearance.
Besides, most "hackers" are silly script kiddies with no real skills. There is a great oppertunity for truely skilled hackers out there though. Check out the NSA if you want to work with some really cool stuff.
Biggest problem though with working for the Government is that the pay isn't really that great. This is where true hackers, who are also patriots can put their money where their mouth is. If you are a true hacker, then take a salary hit and get a job with the NSA/FBI/CIA.
Military jobs are not really that grand and don't won't accomadate rouge genius. They are all about reproducability. They would rather know that they can always get certain results by throwing this much money at grade b programmers than not being sure how well something would turn out by throwing same amount of money at grade a programmers even if it was guarenteed to be better.
Sorry for ranting a bit but that's reality. Oh, BTW, there are plenty of grade b programmers out there that are past draft age so don't expect for the military to care two shits if you can hax0r a windoze box...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
And this is his first volley.
How? Modern democracies can't appear to be too draconian in the treatment of segments of their own population. So the first step in the battle is to pave the way for the coming clampdown. Take control of the vocabulary surrounding the issue. Spin, spin, spin, until you have reframed the debate. Make a distinction between 'good' hackers and 'evil' black hat hackers. And make sure that the masses of your population have bought into this.
Now you can maintain your pretext of being a fair, just and rational government. You have clearly acknowledged that only some hackers are evil. Because even the masses understand that not all hackers can be bad. So now you have eliminated the "the government is being too extreme, too narrowminded" objection that its citizens are so sensitive to.
Then, let the games begin. Clamp down all you want. Resistance and claims of civil liberties infringments will be much easier to fluster your way through when you can point to the false duality you have spun: [GOV] "Hey, we're not the bad guys here. Were helping our citizens out. Were only getting rid of the evil hackers."
It's a great little sleight of hand. Because who would disagree that evil hackers must be fought? (You might disagree with what the punishment should be or what qualifies as evil, but once you decide what actions you believe are evil, or malicious or whatever, then, by definition, you are pointing at something that you don't think is good).
Want to see if you can find evidence that this might be the case? Just watch how the they discuss this issue over the coming weeks and months. What words do they use? What phrases and metaphors are used to describe hackers and the controversy? Is there repeated focus on the distinction between the good and the bad hackers? Is the spin consistent in creating fear and suspicion of hackers who don't wrear their goodness and patriotism on their sleeves? If so it's most reasonable to conclude that the war has begun and uncle Sam has announced his intention to get medieval on hackers.
Not so sure? Just look at how declaring a group to be terrorist has become grounds to annihilate it. Once a group is declared terrorist, the government has the overwhelming support of its citizens in combatting it. That is a phenomenal display of unity. It provides to the government an almost absolute power to deal with those groups it declares to be terrorists. With it comes the danger of corrupted abuse of that power. Who gets to decide which organizations are added to the terrorist list? How many groups on this list are completely unrelated, in deed and in action, to the other groups on the list. Yet we are encouraged to think of them as a single group. Whose to say that evil hackers won't be declared terrorists as well?
The reason for me posting anonymously is because I have been indicted on federal charges of computer hacking into government computers (and no, I was not in the news for it), and await trial.
I find myself in somewhat of an ironic situation should I be found guilty of this crime, while at the same time being asked to help the same government body that is prosecuting me.
No point am i trying to make; I just find it a weird situation.
Now imagine the words, "Previous killing and/or mass destruction experience preferred."
---
You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
chemical weapons, torture equipment
What kind of chemical weapons and who exactly are we selling them to? Even more so on the "torture equipment"?
Either come up with some hard data to back up your statements, or you're just trolling. Put up or shut up.
Just because some brain dead policy comes from our government, doesn't mean that many people (inside or outside) the goverment support it.
If the US has such strong ties to peace treaties, how come they are now reneging on unarguably the most important; the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missle Treaty?
"They" is mostly President Bush. Missle defense was probably going to die in the Democrat controlled Senate, but it looks like opposition is giving way in the name of "national security". Why a group of terrorists would spend millions and millions of dollars developing a nuclear bomb and an intercontinental ballisic missle is beyond me when a $3 box cutter will get you a 747 to fly into a skyscraper........
http://dylan.wibble.net/unclesam.jpg
I recieved this E-Mail with an atteched
"Sperling, Sheldon" wrote:
Shelly
Sheldon J. (Shelly) Sperling
United States Attorney
Eastern District of Oklahoma
1200 West Okmulgee
Muskogee, OK 74401
918/684-5151 (phone)
918/684-5150 (fax)
sheldon.sperling@usdoj.gov
Name:westpr.rtf
westpr.rtf
Type: Rich Text Format (application/rtf)
Encoding: base64
And my reply?
Dear Sir,
I recently recieved an E-Mail that either originated at your address, or originated elsewhere with your address 'spoofed.' Attached was a 'Rich Text Format' document. I cannot view that document without using the Microsoft Operating system, which as a US Citizen I excercise my right to *NOT* do. If you really wish to correspond with me, and this is not a 'spoofed' E-Mail, please follow standard E-Mail conventions. No HTML. No attachments in proprietary closed source formats. Just plain text like every responsible netizen since the Internet's inception. At that time I would be glad to review what you have to say and consider replying with something meaningful by way of a response. However, given that the title of the document is westpr.rtf, I can only conclude that either:
a) The file is innappropriately named
b) The file was not sent by the US DOJ
or
c) The US DOJ has taken to SPAMMing me.
I certainly hope it isn't option c.
Sincerely yours,
reluctant US citizen [name ommitted here, but included in actual E-Mail]
In reality I could use StarOffice, but why should I have to?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Getting it on with Janet Reno? I couldn't close my eyes tight enough for that...
"Move F-16 for Infinite Justice"
I can see why they changed the codename now...
RFC 1149 is how afgan gets all thier communications delivered.
I see the point, but is making a deal with (for real) Satan gonna help you in the long run? seriously...
I'll give you a +1 for wanting to do a good thing, but -1 for thinking that such a deal with the "good ole" USGov would be a good thing...
That's the most sensible thing anyones said here so far. Damn right it isn't a game. It's war, and we've all got to do what we can to defend life and liberty.
The first World Information War is being fought as you read this. Or do you HONESTLY think that Nimda, and now WTC.EXE, are someone-elses-problem because they don't affect your precious Linux machines.
To all the Quislings out there: Notice the sudden drop in stock prices because of the double whammy of WTC followed by Nimda? Think there isn't a co-incidence? You can't very well play in your Open Source Geek Utopia if the financial and telecoms infrastructure that supports it has been reduced to tatters.
Grow up.
RFC 1149 I hope they have birds in afganistan.
How is this "Offtopic"? Clearly the subject is about hackers using their skills against the Raghead Menace.
I'm going to 0wN j00r A55 in Metamod, fuckflap!
All cops are not heroes. The heroes died rushing into the building. The ones you see on TV, directing traffic, standing around, etc. are NOT heros.
Subject line says it all.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Just one more example of how the society can't live without the Geeks.
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
.... foiled a plot by the ->teleban- to detonate....
It's TALIBAN. Study your facts first. Tele- in tele-something is a greek word and means "from a distance". That is tele-vision e.t.c. It beats me what a tele-ban means to you......
Oh and by the way, and then the camera pans back and you get lost in the sunset?.
You watch to many (american) movies i think.
There is no war without caualties. There is no war without pain. These people there are real living people, with blood in their veins, just like you. What you (the great patriot) is proposing is to make a war with the downtroddens there.
Study the facts first. The talibans there are 40.000 and have killed nearly half a million of their OWN people. And yet you want to go to war with all of them.
You are a classic example of ignorance.
the watcher.
As a Brit that has been living in the States for the last couple of months I've had the opportunity to experience the behaviour of the US media and the government first hand, and to be honest it makes me sick.
Odd, how nearly everything you say about the US applies to Britain as well, but that doesn't seem to bother you. Britain Special Forces did a huge amount of the training of the Afghan rebels agaisnt the USSR. Britain has a large cache of nuclear weapons and Britain has fought against Iraq toe-to-toe with the U.S.
I also note how you hate it when the US opposes dictators and hate it when the US attacks dictators. I guess it is the US you hate, but when your own country does it, it is all OK. European countries support and fund dictators whenever it suits their commercial purposes. France recently overthrew a democratically elected regime in Africa in order to get a contract for the French company Elf. When Europe does this it is "realistic". When the US does it, it is evil US imperialism.
You say the US should examine the causes of this attack. OK: the attact was by Fascist right-wing religious extremists who want to impose dictatorial "Islamic Emirates" in (at least) every country of the "Islamic World" from North Africa through Central Asia. They attack us because only we can stop them -- the Europeans (Brits aside) will sell out the entire world for a few oil contracts.
Ashcroft is a jerk. Why do you think that
my mother in law and many like here voted
for a dead man instead of voting for him?
Despite this fact, I am solidly behind him
and Georges Bush for the time being as we
should all unite to fight a common enemy.
Hopefully the congress will not let Ashchroft
tamper with our civil rights to get what he
wants. It is important to get the criminals
but also important not to can innocent people.
Remember the Arab doctor from Texas?
As for things we don't agree with in politic
we can always resume our quarrels after we
beat the shit out of those motherfuckers
who killed so many of our people.
For the time being it is more important to
be united and do all we can to help our
government win the war. Even if it means
fraternizing with fundies and right wingers
and other weird people.
No matter what our political views are, as
Americans we all feel the pain of the families
who lost their love ones in those mass murders.
how the FUCK is that off-topic?
As for things we don't agree with in politic we can always resume our quarrels after we beat the shit out of those motherfuckers who killed so many of our people.
I note that if crackers use their skills for information warfare they'll still be breaking the laws mentioned in the quid-pro-quo request.
Orders from officers or officials in the executive branch is no excuse for committing felonies.
So some of the requested actions may be necessary if the government wants to legally use the crackers in their efforts.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
that's not a troll, that's a good point. see ya in meta-mod!
>Republicans want *less* government and more freedoms.
Republicans wants *less* government that limits the abuses from some companies and protects
the environment
but want *more* government to make sure that people don't commit any sin while having sex.
script-kiddie-hax0rs = BAD!
patriotic script-kiddie-hax0rs = GOOD!
:)
--- d'oh
and im sure your ip has been noted and forwarded to the FBI as a taliban sympathizer by cmdrtaco.
/. account next time you got something stupid to say.
You are a classic example of karma whore. Try using your real
Fuckhead. Grow up.
--toq
The government has been known to do turnabouts. Just ask the Albanian terrorist organization, the KLA.
They went from being the 'largest and best (US) armed terrorist organization' according to the CIA in 1998 to the reason why the US bombed civilians for 3 consecutive months in 1999.
Now that is a quick turnabout!!
(Of course, since the KLA still controls 60-90% of the heroin going into Europe, they are now paying protection to Uncle Sam.)
Terrorism isnt a bad thing. Its only bad when its used against you.
zeke
NateKid said: If you let one bombing change your opinions about ANYTHING (other than stiffer package checks at the airport), Osama Bin Laden has completely won. The poiont of terrorism is to instill terror in civilians and in your case it looks like they've succeeded.
Some have said that allowing the attacks to change the way we think is wrong, and I think that argument is flawed.
People are more grateful for the good things they have and grateful for those who have survived. They are more aware of the world they live in, aware that vigilance is necessary and that freedom is not always easy.
Not learning anything from events is a backward step in evolution.
Humans attempt to learn, to improve ourselves, it's what we do.
And that includes improvements in airport security *and* gratitude replacing taken-for-granted attitudes towards the police.
fosh said: Sure, the government may have "demonized" us before.
Putting aside the past mistakes of the police when they ask for your help (showing that you in fact can help and are capable) is putting aside pettiness for something more important, something constructive.
Pettiness begets fighting and achieves very little.
Maybe not all cops are heroes, but very little in this world is absolute. Be grateful for the good things you have and do what you can to change the bad things, without becoming bad yourself.
If you want to improve the police force, do something positive like joining it and doing it right.
This problem is not specific to the United States. When Britian was the most powerful and advanced nation in the world it did exactly the same. Many of the problems in the Middle East can be traced back to British (and French) semi-colonial rule. I'd say in a parrallel universe where Afganistan is the Super Power, they would behave the same way too.
The incredible hypocracy, foolish, myopic, greedy policies of the USA is perhaps a level of intensity above Britain - but perhaps this is only because technology has intensified and hastened most things.
It is the problem of Empires. It is the problem of our increasingly centralised 'States' system.
We need to hand power back to the people. I'm not talking about lowering taxes or other BS, I'm talking about industrial democracy, community rule etc. As the people of NYC showed, most common folk are decent and willing to help others. It is States and Corporations which allow indecent folk to exploit and kill others for their own greed and ambitions (Bush, Blair and Bin Laden are all in the same camp here)
* * Always question "the National Interest" - 9 times out of 10 it is a cover for evil
This seems intuitively obvious. However, I'm not sure it's true.
Just how many script kiddies are there out there? I suspect the ratio of them to serious security professionals is probably pretty severe.
While I wouldn't want to hand off responsibilities for securing systems to script kiddies, I can think that they could well be useful on the other side of infowar: taking down the enemies' systems. After all, script kiddies tend to be quite adept at acquiring tools... the possibility of using a large number of them as a kind of electronic human wave does have a kind of appeal.
then again, what would boot camp be like? I can just see it now... :)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
"Sorry, this is a job for grownups, not children. Stay out of trouble and we'll keep you safe."
Sorry, indeed. We're really sorry that we MIGHT want to help. We're really, really, sorry that the effort that's been done to stop SPAM and crack the RC-5 challenge can't be turned to "real", wartime use.
Yes, this is an attempt to keep terrorists from breaking into sensitive military secrets. Yes, this is probably work that might get people into trouble, if not with us, than with someone else.
But if there isn't something you can tell us that we CAN do, someone's going to try to do it anyway.And yes, maybe they'll get hurt. But maybe they'll save others from getting hurt. We aren't all under 35. We aren't the right shape, the right size, or even the right ideology for you. But we can't just sit there while others bumble. That's just not our way. Harness us. Use us. But don't ever insult us in this manner. That's all.
teleny, friend of cats.
Ion Storm bashing... Save it for 2018...(Score:5)
/. young bucks are having the 20 year reunion in 2018. Picture it with me, won't you?
by smirkleton on Friday July 20, @08:42AM (#72450)
(User #69652 Info | http://www.smirkleton.com
Amazing to see the continued vitriol.
If only Ion Storm had released a 3d shooter called "Storming Ion Storm", in which you play an opinionated geek running around a virtual community armed with an obnoxiously deadly penchant for regurgitating old jokes about Daikatana, they might have had a grassroots hit on their hands.
Clearly, there are already legions of players here.
FWIW, I'd prefer not to play that game. It was fun two years ago maybe. And maybe it'll come back on a wave of retro-nostalgia when today's
It'll be at a 10x10 booth at PC Expo, the Linux "Woulda Coulda Shoulda" gathering. Two dozen middle-aged dorks sitting around bashing Microsoft and AOL/Time Warner (their booths occupying 95% of the entire tradefloor). Then the subject of crappy games will come up, because X-Box Ultra is the only gaming system around. Then invariably, with the sense of nostalgia for the halcyon days causing all sorts of synaptic activity, someone will say, "You know who used to really SUCK?" - "Jon Katz?" - "No, even more than Katz..." - "Who?" - "Ion Storm!"
A burst of chuckles. Then someone shouts "First Post!", causing everyone else to await his comment.
"Hah- turns out KillCreek made John Romero HER bitch!"
Laughter. One person comments, "Funny +1". Another repeats it. Another. Then someone else says, "Overrated -1". More laughter. Some high fives.
Life will go on, even for those who, while living, do not have a life.
Fuck them.
"Many in government and industry are now concerned that well-meaning U.S. hackers may launch denial-of-service attacks or release worms or viruses aimed at disrupting terrorists, and in the process hurt the overall Internet."
or...
"Many in privacy and civil rights groups are now concerned that well-meaning U.S. congressmen may launch bills or release laws or regulations aimed at disrupting terrorists, and in the process hurt the overall Internet."
"fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy"
"An inefficient government that stays out of your bedroom is much preferable to an efficient government that doesn't." ~ someone who I can't recall
Best.. post... ever.
It now appears we've been seriously overestimating the capabilities of the NSA/FBI/CIA/Echelon. What about refocusing those idle cycles currently being used by SETI/distributed.net, etc. for something actually useful like decrypting unclassified portions of encrypted terrorist communications, or searching for steganographically hidden messages in publicly available sources, or 'triangulating' information from multiple sources, similar to what's being done in historical research to figure out what really happened during a particular event, or forensically determinining the source of a rumour, for instance.
That's odd, I was fairly sure that bin Laden's beliefs prevented him from keeping his money in banks, because they pay interest and interest is evil. I guess if he can pervert Islam into blowing up buildings with planes, he can have his money in a bank... but that does seem very uncharacteristic of him.
I don't recall any real "sex laws" in quite some time. And like Democrats don't want to limit certain liberties.
You're another brainwashed freak with monochrome vision.
They demonize you and criminalize you and then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?
You're either paranoid or a megalamaniac or both, and I doubt you're a hacker.
Hint : if you find it challenging to "hack" with a script someone else wrote, no
one is after you. They're laughing at you. Hard.
Aren't the Afgan's essentially in the stone age? - at least that's what has been spun in the media to us all.
What potential targets would hackers have?
We are not talking about the Afghans directly. This directed towards possible support groups. Such is sniffing major bank transaction to watch for suspicous activity. putting key loggins ect on executive PC who may have direct or indirect ties.
Putting shredder or DOS type software in other sympethetic coutries networks. There are a huge scope of posiblilties. Even some US banks are a little shady on some these global deals. Loyalty always stops at cash. Think about it.
PS. Sorry for the previous Anon Post. I forgot to login.
We Will Rebuild
Two Towers-Two Worlds.One seeks triumphs and freedom for man.The other deems man unworthy and wrecks them.
Second, any hacker would make a better bullet-catcher, and yield better results too, rather than gulping Cola in a dark room in front of a monitor at the Pentagon. Besides, just *what* in Afghanistan are you going to hack?
I don't know who pulled that uncle sam refference out of thin air, but I've been all over the cyberangels website, they *aren't* the government, just a standard non-profit organization. No where do they claim any connection to the government, which is what the figure head of "uncle sam" traditionally represents.
/. links to a blurb in Wired which links to another blurb? Man oh man, the war has truly begun... the propoganda machine is firing on all pistons now, and Slashdot (and the internet as a whole) is another government tool?! Mind you, I personally believe cracking is flat out wrong (especially now!), but I hope vigilant sysadmins and joe-hackers aren't equated to terrorists in the eyes of the US gov forchrissakes! That's called paranoia!
Wouldn't a simple: /bin/laden
rm -rf
fix the terrorist problem?
> They demonize you and criminalize you and
> then ask for your help. What's a hacker to do?"
and that surprises you? standard bait & switch, isn't it? put pressure on someone, then give him a way out to reconcile himself. CIA torture manual, page 2.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I piss on Mecca. I spit on the Koran. I shit on Mohammed.
They had a few persistent spammers too, that they didn't want to terminate. Spammers were good for their business. Then, a stupid admin there managed to tell a nanaeity "Fuck off, you shouldn't tell me what spam is!", but fortunately, they realize soon thereafter that being RBLed was even worse for business. :-)
Well, I wouldn't want to do business with these guys, that's for sure...
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
I did not know NY was under martial law and that freedom of movement was restricted....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Saying TV==hacker_favourite is idiotic.
I threw away my TV in 1996, three months after 'checking out that net'. Books and the net are the channels I use for getting information. For entertainment: books, the net, coding, computer games and of course, real life(TM). TV is for people with 5-min attention span, hackers (I hope) have longer spans.
I hate to see how people build their 'living room' around the TV. Then they are in front of it like statues around an altar. Yuck.
It was full of civilians whose only crime was to be showing Milosevic propaganda (like if they could have refused).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Anyone noticed any similarities to the word "terrorist"'s use today when compared with the word "communist" about 20 years ago?
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
A long-lasting shot of CowboyNeal riding a nuke heading to Kabul....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
If you're not eligible to work for Uncle Sam, try here.
civilian deaths are unaviodable in war. If a religous extremist group in your country (Afghanistan) supports and protects terrorists who declare war on the USA (I won't even go into proving WTC was Bin Laden - it doesn't matter, he declared war years ago) then the citizens of that country are going to incur the punishment brought on them by their own governments actions. I agree that other western (and eastern) nations have taken part in the training of these individuals, and it now they are feeling the repucussions. But too bad! They were trained to fight in THEIR countries - and when they do this to USA, its an unforgivable act of war. And in war - innocent people die. Sometimes thousands, sometimes millions. Considering the number of Russian nukes that went missing (were sold) in the later period of last century - it is entirely concievable that these individuals have nuclear weapons, and the deployment of them is fairly simple - fly a chartered 747 towards Dulles International and the people on the ground can't tell it's got no passengers - just a nuke on board. The way these people work, they'd put a nuke on a plane WITH passengers and praise their unknowing sacrifice afterwards. Not only that, but agents of Osama's have now been tracked to 64 countries rather than the inital confirmed 55. And many many of these are in USA. Biological warfare on American soil is a very real possibility. By the time you figured out why you were getting so many sick people into the hospital, it would have spread to every other corner of America, and to other nations through people as hosts (thanks to our global transport system).
Before you start a war, you know many innocents are going to die - on both sides. The cost on the American side could very well be high - but the cost of those deaths when the war is finally won, protects the legacy of the nation and the wars and deaths that have already brought it so far. Its a history that Americans have fought to protect for centuries, and the cost now, although it may be high, is the price that must be paid for that continued freedom - otherwise the deaths of Americans in every war from the war of independence, through the civil wars, the world wars, and every other skirmish to this day - was for nothing. We owe it to those people to do our duty.
No, I'm not American. I've only been there once - but I'm a citizen of one of your eternal allies, and I'm dying for some payback on those individuals responsible, and every person who supports their cause. They are brainwashed into believing theirs is the good cause - hence all the phones and international communication in Afghanistan being disconnected. Foreign documentation has been frowned upon for years and the citizens themselves can not be blamed for this. But even with the mistakes our allied nations have made, their course has been proven to be that of evil. Their celebration, not of a military victory, but of the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians who never wanted a part in a war - sealed their own fate.
Kill them all.
civilian deaths are unaviodable in war. If a religous extremist group in your country (Afghanistan) supports and protects terrorists who declare war on the USA (I won't even go into proving WTC was Bin Laden - it doesn't matter, he declared war years ago) then the citizens of that country are going to incur the punishment brought on them by their own governments actions. I agree that other western (and eastern) nations have taken part in the training of these individuals, and it now they are feeling the repucussions. But too bad! They were trained to fight in THEIR countries - and when they do this to USA, its an unforgivable act of war. And in war - innocent people die. Sometimes thousands, sometimes millions. Considering the number of Russian nukes that went missing (were sold) in the later period of last century - it is entirely concievable that these individuals have nuclear weapons, and the deployment of them is fairly simple - fly a chartered 747 towards Dulles International and the people on the ground can't tell it's got no passengers - just a nuke on board. The way these people work, they'd put a nuke on a plane WITH passengers and praise their unknowing sacrifice afterwards. Not only that, but agents of Osama's have now been tracked to 64 countries rather than the inital confirmed 55. And many many of these are in USA. Biological warfare on American soil is a very real possibility. By the time you figured out why you were getting so many sick people into the hospital, it would have spread to every other corner of America, and to other nations through people as hosts (thanks to our global transport system).
Before you start a war, you know many innocents are going to die - on both sides. The cost on the American side could very well be high - but the cost of those deaths when the war is finally won, protects the legacy of the nation and the wars and deaths that have already brought it so far. Its a history that Americans have fought to protect for centuries, and the cost now, although it may be high, is the price that must be paid for that continued freedom - otherwise the deaths of Americans in every war from the war of independence, through the civil wars, the world wars, and every other skirmish to this day - was for nothing. We owe it to those people to do our duty.
No, I'm not American. I've only been there once - but I'm a citizen of one of your eternal allies, and I'm dying for some payback on those individuals responsible, and every person who supports their cause. They are brainwashed into believing theirs is the good cause - hence all the phones and international communication in Afghanistan being disconnected. Foreign documentation has been frowned upon for years and the citizens themselves can not be blamed for this. But even with the mistakes our allied nations have made, their course has been proven to be that of evil. Their celebration, not of a military victory, but of the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians who never wanted a part in a war - sealed their own fate.
Kill them all.
The real hackers out there are hacking out of a sense of duty anyway. Realize two forms of hackers, those who do it to promote security and improved functionality and then those morons out there who find a recipe to hack and do so with malicious intend. The self proclaimed geeks that can't think for them selves can go to hell and for those who hack with intelligent purpose--do something brilliant for your nation!
Any word on how that elite [pronounced e-light] team of computer hackers getting along?
The latest from CINCPER is they touched down outside of Kabul an hour ago.
Outstanding!
W. slips hand in waistband Al Bundy-style and takes a sip of his beer.
CUT TO. . .
Get it in writing, with your name specifically on it, and signed the President, that's what.
Otherwise, you're gonna have to fight it as "entrapment", and good luck when the jury is made up of 12 people who were too dumb to get out of jury duty, and who's definition of "hacker" comes from typing the word in on AOL.
They can have my keyboard when they pry it from my COLD DEAD FINGERS. First they try to take it away, now they want to borrow it?? I trow not.
They need hackers because they don't have enough players for the Counter-Terrorist team.
Is people with internet savvy to assist in mining information from the internet on terrorist. They should really air that spot on TLC,DSC and the history channel, during robot wars on comedy central.. I think that would reach the intended target audience.
They should organize a defcon like meeting, to organize and inform the computer hacker community.
(and of course to secretly take our pictures)
They should have one in boston and in SF.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
http://www.azzam.com/ http://www.qoqaz.co.za/ http://www.hizbollah.org/english/frames/index_eg.h tm
http://209.204.204.153/index_e.htm
I am not a hacker, but if you are fuck this sits out of hell!!
I will know that USA won this war when no terrorist cell will be able to watch this sites!
hehe I searched for this in the thread without finding it, weird.. well here goes then..
"You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals."
my questions are few and my answers are even lesser - yet I live and smile.
---
HACKERS MANIFESTO
The Conscience of a Hacker
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers.
"Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal",
"Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...Damn kids. They're all alike.
But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's
technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did
you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what
may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter
than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.
I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers
explain forthe fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I
understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it
in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.
I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second,
this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake,
it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing
through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an
electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day
incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...
You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you
did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been
dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that
had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are
like drops of water in the desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch,
the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already
existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't
run by profiteering gluttons, and you callus criminals. We
explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge...
and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without
nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie
to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're
the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they
look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that
you will never forgive me for.
I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this
individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
I should suspect that the .gov and Disney will rally folks to the cause by co-working on a film whereby a young boy realizes that the only way his wayward traveling hacker of a dad will come back to the family is when "the US wins the war." Following a good old fashioned American prayer session a CEO makes him the CTO and voila a rag-tag group of washed up hackers and coders (Tony Danza as "hckN4beats") come together to crash the massive infrastructure that is Afghanistan thereby reuniting said boy with poppa - Cyberangels in the Outfield.
Coincidentally is this what Horge Mush was talking about when on his inauguration he started tossing out quotes about angels in a whirlwind?"
The term Cyberangels is the name of one of the groups in Alien Crossfire. I doubt this is a coincidence, but as to whether it means anything....
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'll bet Mitnick is Pissed!
One of the _interesting_ things I've learned about Americans over the last two weeks is how ignorant we as a people are of the rest of the world. It extends well beyond the backwoods coal mining families or the prairie dog ranchers. This lack of world knowledge reaches the media, the government, (and major organized religous moguls ... which, come to think of it, are basically media-wannabes trying to establish government rule), just to name a few.
There can be no doubt that countries such as South Africa have much more to lose than their internet connectivity in this ordeal. Simply by standing up and stating that they back the Anti-Terrorist Coalition led by the US, they add their names to the list of potential terrorist targets.
I would ask forgiveness for the wayward American, but while ignorance can be accepted, refusing to learn cannot.
Ok, this is kinda more towards the Please Don't Start World War III edge of the topic spectrum, don't kill (recruit) me for it...
Is it just me, or every time we back one side of a foriegn conflict, we suddenly realize a double-decade later that we made the wrong move. I think, if we want to stop having wars, WE SHOULD STOP ENCOURAGING OTHERS TO HAVE WARS!!!! My god...for a peace-loving country, we sure do love to get involved in war, we sure do love to flip a coin and back whichever 'donkey' it lands on, and we sure do love to miraculously ignore any wrongdoings that country does/did until after they've won (and of course, they will, thanks to the irresistable force that is (begin echo)American Egoism -ism -ism -ism -ism...(end echo)) So what *should* we do? Well, we should handle our own damn business! We need to swallow our inflated ego, and realize that the more we get involved in everyone else's business, the more everyone else resents it. The only problem is, I think it's already too late, considering that given our american paranoia, we're going to see terrorists (just like communists) bloody everywhere, and we'll end up declaring war on everyone that doesn't eunanimously support us. Hasn't anyone else realized that this war is the perfect excuse for america to do whatever it damn well pleases to whomever it could possibly find a reason to move against. I say the best thing anyone can do to make an intelligent decision of position in this conflict is to research it, bin laden, the US history with afghanistan/terrorist groups, etc... (And I mean from unbiased sources, like...umm...ENCYCLOPEDIAS, and not relying on the networks' sensationalism of what little truth they allow to trickle down to inform them)
-1, Disagree is not a valid option. Troll, Flamebait and Offtopic are not a substitute.
is how ignorant we as a people are of the rest of the world
It hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of the world, either :) Very often there are revealing comments on /. like "Ghana is practically next door to South Africa", or responses to an article about a plan to build fiber optic connections around africa (funded by african companies no less) along the lines of "throwing pearls to pigs" and "what are these people going to do with the internet, they still talk in click languages". Another example was when a south african utility company (Eskom, one of the biggest utility companies in the world) was mentioned as being one of the main researchers of nuclear bubble reactors, there were comments like "third world countries should not be allowed to have nuclear power stations, they can't handle it" (neglecting that South Africa has built and maintained a nuclear power station without incident since the 1970s). Comments like that indicate a desire to form strong opinions about something that a person clearly knows very little about. (Lets not even go to comments about turning 3rd world countries into parking lots :)
I get the impression its a sort of deliberate arrogant ignorance, a sort of "other places in the world don't actually matter so why bother to learn" attitude. And its usually essentially impossible to even mention anything like this on /. without getting modded down instantly. Still, Americans have worked hard to attain the successes that do set them apart from so many other countries economically, and in a way it might be seen that they have a right to be a bit arrogant. But it does seem to come down to simply refusing to learn about other cultures, a willful ignorance that embodies the attitude of "who cares, other non-US people don't mean anything to the world".
Of course, thats only the general impression that the US gives of themselves outside of the US, I would hope that the majority of americans are not as arrogant as the more vocal ones.
At any rate, regarding terrorism, some parts of South Africa (particularly the Cape) have also had a problem for many years now with terrorist bombings, not as bad as places like Israel, but typically we have maybe two or three incidents a year. These are perpetrated by certain minority fringe groups. So we have everything to gain from an anti-terrorism campaign. Additionally, several South Africans also died in the WTC (one of which it seems may have been a distant relation of mine). South Africa did stand up and state that we back the anti-terrorist coalition (as have many other African countries), but I can't remember seeing any mention of any of them on CNN.
Anyway, thanks for the more positive comments :) I must admit I have never visited the states (although I plan to), so my opinions may be wrong, as I base them partially on the image that the US projects of themselves.
Freelance a bit. I translated "I send you this file in order to have your advice" to Farsi and emailed it to binladin@aol.com. I hear it pissed him and his followers off off and he changed his email address to an MSN account, I think it's binladin69king@msn.com now.
AC's cheerfully ignored
It's not uncommon knowledge that the US has a large chemical weapons stockpile. But all the article that you're linking to talks about is the problem of safely destroying this stockpile, not about exporting it.
About the torture equipment: the sarcastic saying of "well if its printed on the Internet then it must be true!" also applies to print.
Next, Netcraft say it's an NT 4 box.
AFAIK, this is a shared host - if you knock over the box then you'll take down a whole bunch of sites run by people who're totally innocent (not to mention all the innocent people who bank with this company who'll be affected by such an irresponsible attack).
Having checked IPs, my site doesn't seem to be hosted on the same box, but I know I'd be pretty pissed if my visitors couldn't get to my site because someone had decided, with pretty tenuous reasons, to hAx0R the host machine. If you (understandably) feel a need to take action, please try to do it in a more productive manner.
Would you believe that was the original movie title for "Bring It On!"? Cheer Fever? C'Mon Hollywood, you can crank out something better than that.
Anyway, what I've been saying in relation to the war for the past few days is, "Gimme 20 bucks, a shotgun, and keep the ammo comin'!" I've had enough of these sleeper agents screwing us over in America. I'd love to be part of the special forces team that goes in there and wipes out the little buggers. I'm not sure if any of you have seen the recent issue of the Houston Chronicle, but there's a comic strip in it showing the country, Afghanistan, as a smoking crater in the ground with scattered debris and scorch marks trailing out into the surrounding countries. The quote in the cartoon is, "...and this is Afghanistan before we start bombing."
Clap if you love fruit cake!
raptorGT
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
Hartmann: Private Joker!
Joker: Sir, yes, sir!
Hartmann [reading from PDA] "Twenty-six hundred. Basic Military Cyber Warfare." You gotta be shitting me! You want to be some fuckin' hacker? You wanna be Captain Crunch?
Joker: Sir, I was in the Legion of Doom in high school, Sir!
Hartmann: Jeeezus H. Christ. You're not a hacker. You're a killer!
Joker: Sir, a killer, Sir!
Yeah, that's the problem with Leiberman. But the point was that Rebublicans don't stick with the small govt. concept through thick and thin, so to speak.
My joke got modded as Insightful and my insight got modded as Funny.
I am Parry Aftan the executive director of Cyberangels.org. Vint Cerf agreed to do this PSA with me. It's not a PSA for the US government. It's just a PSA to try to explain how "hackers" is an honorable title, but means people who protect the Network and live by the hackers ethics, and are expert in network and software engineering. Vint (one fo the inventors of the Internet) prides himself at being a "hacker." He asks that all real hackers put their talents to positive uses, like finding and defending against malicious codes, or working with groups such as ours. We're a charity designed to help online victims of cybercrimes. We're not uncle Sam, we're the Internet community defending the Net, and trying to get the word out that patriotic cracking only hurts the Net and hurts our military's ability to find information about terrorism activity. those of us who love the Net know the real meaning of hacking, and wish that everyone did. Many of you have come to us, asking how to help. we welcome all the help we can get, and hope that you will spread the word to others. Let's defend the Net and keep it open, and protect America and oppose terrorism of all forms. we have 10,000 volunteers (all unpaid including me) from 76 countries around the world. All virtual...and all love the Internet and know how much we can do to make the lives of others better. We are working with many of the families of the victims of the WTC and Pentagon attacks, rescue workers and rescue dogs, relief efforts, and others who want to contribute to the healing and to help. Few are as caring as the hacker community. And we have so much to give. What we lack in money, we make up for in skills.... The Interenet Society needs our input too. I am a member of the ISSG, the Interent Society's Societal Steering Group, which leads the Internet Societal Task Force. This arm of the Internet Society deals with all policy and societal issues, such as digital divide, equitable access, privacy and security... we need your experience and voices there too. You can learn how to get involved at isoc.org... If there is anything I haven't answered, feel free to e-mail me at parry@aftab.com. thanks! Parry Aftab Exec Director Cyberangels