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.

Comments

CNN is quality media

[timothy_m_smith]

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.

Selective Reading

[ackthpt]

If you want to see something, you will. It's called 'predisposition'.

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.

Nice headline.

[reaper20]

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.

Is Bruce Schneier on crack?

[Nos.]

He says this:

"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!

Not really so alarming...

[jonesvery]

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.)

Bayes Theorem

[Glorat]

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

Re:Also used by 'hackers'

[Archie Steel]

...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

Re:Also used by 'hackers'

[-brazil-]

The difference is that since IRC channels are basically public, monitoring them is both easier and no violation of civil rights.

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.

Re:This is news?

[llamalicious]

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.

Re:Also used by 'hackers'

[arnie_apesacrappin]

Snip (Archie Steel):

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!"

Re:Also used by 'hackers'

[Archie Steel]

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!