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CNN Says Chat Rooms Are a Haven for Hackers
MiTEG writes "CNN is carrying an article about IRC and how it aids "hackers" with their mischief. There are some alarming quotes from Bruce Schneier, CTO of Counterpane Technologies, such as "people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC"." Yeah, if they ever hung out in our chatroom, they'd
lock us all up for abusing Kurt the Pope.
In this age of watered-down single source media, this article is about par for the course. It's hard to believe that the bulk of American's accept CNN as a reliable media outlet.
At least the editor appears to have had half a brain and put a explination at the end. That article was slighly disturbing. It basically says, people with information to share, use a forum for shring information in order to share it.
I live in a giant bucket.
People who hang out in bars are more likely to be convicted of a DUI. Therefore we should close all bars.
People who own a gun are more likely to shoot someone. Therefore we should ban all stores that sell guns, such as K-Mart.
People who smoke are more likely to die of lung cancer. Therefore we should close down all 7-11s because that's where people sometimes buy cigarettes.
While it may be true that "Many people who are hax0rs use IRC", that in no way indicates that the converse is true. I realize I dont' have to tell you all that, but who else is there. I am sick of so-called "experts" spouting ridiculous notions.
Spend some time on irc.enterthegame.com. It's a server for people who play online games. Shocker, not too much hack talk going on here; just typical clan nonsense, all in good fun.
Chatrooms, in the news over the past years, have also been a haven for:
People sharing interest in pretty much everything you can find in alt.* and rec.*
Pedophiles
People meeting each other legitimately and socially
Terrorist plots
The future of Slashdot
It's just another red herring for the media, the biggest news for the New Yahk media is a big drought in Delaware, so guess what they dig up to shock Mr. and Mrs. Average American. Big wh00p.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Anonymously stealing, trading personal information
Ok, do this over IRC, and you're a criminal - do it with a website, spyware, or spam, and you're a business.
hmmmm..... maybe I need to check out #amazon and #brilliant.
"A lot more credit card numbers are stolen than ever used, but you should assume that right now, in your wallet, there's a credit card number that has been stolen off the Net."
To me this says, that I should assume, in my wallet is a stolen credit card. Well, there isn't, and I don't need to check. I have one credit card, and since I get a statement every month with my name on it, I obviously didn't steal it.
Now if he's just a confusing person and is actually saying that I should assume that one of my credit card numbers has been stolen. Well, as long as everyone out there practices some basic security, they shouldn't worry about that either. The first thing is to make sure you have fraud protection on your credit card (most have a $50 limit now). Second, look at your statement! If you just pay your bill without examining the charges, well, send me your credit card number!
"Hackers" getting personal information and selling it to other "hackers" is bad.
Corporations getting personal information and selling it to other corporations is good.
People with tightly held secrets are suspect.
Corporations with tightly held secrets are to be trusted.
A person trying to extort people is a thug and scam artist.
A corporation trying to extort people is just protecting the artists.
OK. I got it. Now can I incorporate myself? I think I'd be much better off as a corporation than as a citizen.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
"It's older, it's not tied to Microsoft or AOL or a big company, it's one of the Internet protocols ... so if you're running Windows or Linux or Macintosh or another flavor of Unix, you can use it," says Schneier. "So it's not that it's more suitable for hackers to use, it's just a more basic service and people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC."
There's the only useful statement in the whole fscking article. What a loaf of fertilizer. Must have been a boring newsday for the CNN "tech" crew...
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
There are some alarming quotes from Bruce Schneier, CTO of Counterpane Technologies, such as "people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC".
It actually seems to me that Schneier did a pretty good job of preventing some editor from slapping an alarmist breaker along the lines of "IRC is a tool designed for smelly hackers" into the piece; take a look at the full quote:
"It's older, it's not tied to Microsoft or AOL or a big company, it's one of the Internet protocols ... so if you're running Windows or Linux or Macintosh or another flavor of Unix, you can use it," says Schneier. "So it's not that it's more suitable for hackers to use, it's just a more basic service and people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC." [Emphasis added.]
He goes out of his way to point out that there's nothing that makes IRC particularly "suited" to nefarious purposes, but rather that its non-corporate nature is likely to appeal to anti-corporate people. (That, of course, is an assertion that can be argued forever, but it doesn't strike me as too alarming.)
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Any guesses as to how many posts on this thread will...
::insert whatever:: using ridiculous slippery-slope logic.
- Call CNN a bunch of morons.
- Suggest that we should therefore ban
- Say "Duh".
...without showing ANY evidence of reading the article, or making any factual statements whatsoever?
Really, now.
Now, for those with actual central nervous systems and who actually care about facts rather than knee-jerk responses:
IRC is a multiperson always-on real-time worldwide system, and is therefore more conducive to exchanges and marketing than phones, pagers and their ilk. There's no comparison, really, except for morons, because while a phone system at most might be a small-scale party line, messages on IRC can reach nigh-arbitrary amounts of people whom you DON'T need to have previous knowledge of. Even if you do NOT have any intended buyers in mind, calling random people and offering credit card numbers is stupid. Sending a CC list offer to an appropriate IRC channel is less stupid, in that you can reach more people at once, and they're voluntarily reading so they're more likely to be interested. Plus, there's no Caller ID, and if you're bright you may be using a compromised machine so that your own IP isn't shown. If the distribution of logs crosses national borders, it may be quite a hassle for anybody to ever find your identity -- assuming that you can maintain anonymity during an exchange, of course, by not screwing up by, say, using one of your own personal bank accounts.
And, most people who read CNN have little experience with IRC. Therefore, it's fair to give them a "heads up", especially, say, if they've got a teen who's spending a lot of time online and ordering more stuff than you think he could afford, or similar situations... this merely provides a bit of awareness to the technologically naive.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I dunno how many of you nerds know Bayes Theorem but it's one of the first rules and statisticians learn and, annoyingly, it is one of the more unintuitive arguments for the uninitiated
<Offtopic>I can't stand the current Cannibis debate in the UK where people state something like that 95% of heroin addicts used Cannibis first as a gateway drug. Therefore Cannabis should be illegal. While I agree Cannabis should be illegal, that argument is a statistically false one because you cannot say that 99% of cannabis users go on to take heroin. That would be significant</offtopic>
Here, just because I imagine 99% of script kiddies use IRC, does not mean we should be anti IRC. You cannot map it to the proper argument where I imagine only <1% of all IRC users have anything to do with hacking and scripting. If you, for example, kill IRC, you upset 99% of the populatoin and script kiddies go elsewhere
Exploitation of people's misunderstanding of Bayes makes the easiest and most effective weapon in the world of FUD
"It's older, it's not tied to Microsoft or AOL or a big company, it's one of the Internet protocols ... so if you're running Windows or Linux or Macintosh or another flavor of Unix, you can use it," says Schneier. "So it's not that it's more suitable for hackers to use, it's just a more basic service and people who are anti-big-corporation are going to be more likely to use something like IRC."
This spokesperson is basically saying that chat outside the venue of a benevolent, all-watching big corporation is evidence of intent to cause harm to the capitalist system, by extension. (and don't forget all of the child molesters hanging out on ... er... AOL!!)
While many are mocking the origin of the story, don't laugh.
Civil liberties can easily be eroded by the F.U.D. and implied subversion that a large media company such as CNN can implant in the minds of readers over a perior of time. "Chat room" == "bad unsupervised people up to no good" can become implanted in reader's minds subtly by repetition... with the terrorism paranoia running rampant in our society, spin like this ain't positive.
...except that the Govt. can already monitor e-mail (with Carnivore), phone conversations (with Echelon) and snail mail. So basically they need to whip up some way of controlling IRC as well, and CNN is only happy to oblige in preparing the national psyche for that (since AOL will make more money if people are forced to use corporate chat services). The sad thing is that, since 9/11, a lot of people seem willing to forego their hard-won civil liberties for security (or at least the illusion of).
This reminds me of two famous (and nearly identical) quotes:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.
-- President Thomas Jefferson.
1743-1826
Reminder: find a new sig
BTW, another quote:
There is no freedom without security.
-- Wilhelm von Humboldt
Total freedom means survival of the strongest and least scrupulous and those valuable to them, i.e. mainly the freedom to be robbed, raped, murdered and suppressed. The ideal is to find a balance between freedom and security.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Pardon me. But my colorblind friend says the sky is a medium gray.
He can't understand blue, or what possible uses that color has on a day to day basis.
Likewise, the people out there coming up with these "notices" are technology blind.
So if we couldn't trust a colorblind person to paint your house, how can we trust technology-blind legislators and other political reps to make the right decisions or statements on our behalf...?
Time to get out the voting stick.
There is no way to shut "IRC" down. IRC is not a single entity.
Anyone can download an ircd and start their own {server,network}. It's much like gnutella or other P2P variants.
RFC 1459 defines an open standard for the IRC protocol. Anyone can implement this, much like anyone can implement their own DHCP or S/KEY implementation.
There is no central IRC authority. Operators have the scope of the network on which they reside (if even that).
*sighs*
So basically they need to whip up some way of controlling IRC as well.
To read *any* message on a typical IRC network you need access to this many servers:
One.
The way IRC is constructed each message goes to every server, so it's a no-brainer.
Here's a solution for you, piss off. None of the people who USE IRC care about the security of the protocol. Snoop all you want, who cares if you know everything I ever said on IRC? The X bot probably has a log of 90% of everything that's been said on Undernet. We use IRC because it's fast and we can find lots of people quickly without any trouble. Anyone can start a new chan to talk to their friends in. It's simple, it works well, we like it. So stop trying to fuck with it. There's nothing wrong with IRC. It doesn't need to be changed. Piss off.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Someone might utilize a USEFUL tool in such a way that might entail malace. Among other things, IRC is useful for the following things:
Trading porn including child pornography (tm).
Trading illegal mp3's.
Trading illegal movies.
Trading illegal books.
Trading illegal software.
Trading illegal TV shows.
Stalking.
Preying grounds for Child Molesters (tm).
Learning BAD english "31337 anyone???"
Discussing illegal activity.
DOS zombie gathering points.
Trojan access gathering points.
Oh, and of course, its primary purpose, so that large groups of people can easily gather online in a user friendly way to discuss various topics of interest to them.
People, its a tool, nothing more. You can use it legally or illegally. I can cut butter or stab someone with a knife. I can buy food or drugs with money. I can use a telephone to call my friends to say hi, or I can prank call someone and threaten to have them killed. And yes, if I really wanted to, I could use IRC illegally. As could I with AIM, or yahoo's chat/forums, or anywhere else that I wanted to.
Yes CNN, Chat rooms are most likely havens for hackers (tm). Its not so much an issue of debate, but an issue of declaring the obvoius. I'll bet they use phones too. And Email. And websites. I mean, if there wasn't an internet, there would still be hackers even though all the reasons you think they're bad would be null and void. Hackers pre-date the internet, even those inflicted with malice. Although, script kiddies are a rather recent breed.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
This reminds me of two famous (and nearly identical) quotes:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. -- President Thomas Jefferson. 1743-1826
Well, it seems that Attorney General John Ashcroft doesn't agree with two of America's great founding fathers. He was quoted as saying, "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists."
I'm sorry John, but here, you are the terrorist. Don't persuade me or anyone else to give up my freedoms to make your job easier under the guise of making the world a safer place. To calmly allow you to take my rights is the first step onto a slippery slope that I don't even want to know the results of. I won't quit using IRC, I won't give up my private keys, and I will continue to protect my right to say and hear what I'm constitutionally allowed to. If you want to take my rights, try to change the first amendment. Until then, in the spirit of Monty Python's The Life of Brian(I know they're not American, but it's the best quote I could think of), "piss off!"
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
I've been on IRC for a while and from what I've seen the bulk of it is piracy and porn. I know there are some legitimate discussion groups but lets not kid ourselves here, IRC is not exactly innocent.
There is no freedom without security.
-- Wilhelm von Humboldt
To which I'll add: "There is on peace without justice."
--Peter Tosh, Reggae Singer
Total freedom means survival of the strongest and least scrupulous and those valuable to them,
Actually, that is a logical fallacy, since total freedom also means freedom to live - "total" freedom, as in "optimal" freedom would mean that everybody shared the same freedom without infringing upon other people's freedom. The balance is delicate, I'll give you that - but it isn't between freedom and security. Rather it is between everyone's freedom. Of course we also need to discuss what types of freedom: obviously, no sane society will condone freedom to perpetrate crimes against other people (because then it would negate those people's own freedom). We can stick to the basic freedom that every human should have, amongst which are the classics (freedom to live, freedom of speech, freedom of movement), and everybody will be just fine. However, with that freedom comes some risk that people will use it to do bad things. That is just something we have to accept: limiting everyone's freedom because of inherent risks is not an acceptable solution.
All right, that's enough typing of the word "freedom" for a single day!
Reminder: find a new sig
That's absolutely true. We've had some kind of "war" going on for a long time. I first remember it with the bombing of Libya in the 80's, but I'm sure it goes back farther. It's typically not an officially declared war, but rather some kind of foreign conflict with a purpose that is unclear. The "War on Terror" appears to be designed to last for a good long while yet. That ought to keep the minds of the masses from being occupied with Real Issues for the next decade.
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
. . . preceeded by about 20 years by:
"A man that would sacrifice his freedom for security deserves neither. The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time."
-Montesquieu, The Rights of British America
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.