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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.
The Wild west of IRC... BANG BANG! do what does that make IRCops?
One of the solutions for this problem is webchats. Webchat can be done using http and a web browser, all the functionality becomes controled by web frames inside the browser. No information can be retrieved besides the ones avaiable.
Of course that there are plenty of disadvantages, the speed is one of them, but I think that is acceptable so we can increase security.
Other option is modify IRC protocol to avoid these security flaws, this would avoid speed problems, and maybe is the more intelligent thing to do. But, will new IRC clients/servers implement the new protocol.
IMHO the new protocol, whatever it would be, http or new irc, should not be compatible with the old one, so we enforce the change, and avoid further problems.
What are the other options?
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I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
In other words, just trust the big companies and none of this would ever happen???
I don't think that was either the Schneier's point. I think Schneier was just pointing out the obvious.
If I am not mistaken, AOL has always monitored and censored their chatroom conversations. As a corporation, AOL has the ways and means to control the whole process. With IRC there is not any centralized control--someone can be running an IRC server in their dorm room, specifically FOR illegal activity, and there's nobody for the Fed's to subpoena, since they probably won't even know about it.
All Schneier was saying is that it's a no-brainer for the criminal types to use IRC instead of some sort of proprietary corporate communication method.
That was a good laugh.. and my friends.. that's why it was posted to /. :)
:) Surprised they didn't talk about that.
:) I met both my partners of my company (Web Hosting/Web Development) on IRC, and they have been good friends ever since. It is quite the successful business, and I have learned much since then... all because of IRC (well, I guess not that much.. I'm still using /. ;)
;better person.. to react in the right mannor (not just to get +o.. or plus +O for that matter ;0)
:) afaik :)
I've been IRC'ing since 1992. That's 10 years, and I'm still not a veteran.
Some of the World's (Internet's) greatest heros and founders hang out on EFNet/IRC or some like service...
Remember BBS?
It's so typical for people to lash out on things they do not understand. More or less, its all too typical that they never emphasize the best parts about it. I mean comon.. Let's think about it.
IRC is a place to share knowledge, not just CC #'s (who are they kidding.. I have never been asked to trade a CC # or anything of the like.) Many of the World's 'hackers' (or techies that work for YOUR company) can acredit their knowledge (or at least the start) to IRC. I know I can.
I knew nothing (well, not nothing, a tincy bitty bit) about the Internet, its structure, protocols, computers, other operating systems, etc. before I came to IRC.
It all started with the 'need' to have an eggdrop bot in my channel.. How the hell was I to do this?
*shrug* I didn't know what I was doing.. but I got my hands on a free WOPR.net shell, (if anyone knows who I'm talking about.. send a shout out.. I'm curious) and was forced to learn a bit of unix commands (heh) to opperate the bot...
By and by I had shell after shell.. learning more about *nix as the opportunity came along. I eventually had the oppertunity to have root on a friends system (from IRC) and learned more and more about the system and how it worked.
Fast forward a bunch of years
The news concentrates on the bad things always.. I've become a better person because of IRC, completely. Not only have I learned a tone of IT stuff.. I've also learned how to be a
Much of the Internet success stories are because of IRC, and I feel this article fails to discuss this... That is a bad thing, and this is why us 'hackers' seem to get a bad rep.
Oh yeah.. IRC didn't teach me how to spell, really
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Sase
"It's the opposite of that."
I may have skimmed a little too lightly, but I didn't see anyone mention that CNN actually runs one of the best IRC servers used for interactive televsion! When Mir was returning to Earth, there were well over 800 people in the room.
Then, with Talkback Live, they make excellent use of AIM and IRC. Very forward thinking.
Intelligent Life on Earth
AOL/TW/CNN obviously has risked much to become a major player in the content game. Their discomfort with a world in which anyone is a content producer leaks out here. You'd hope they would find ways to profit from this prospect of freedom, rather than trying to squelch it, but it's not surprising that some folks in that outfit don't get it.
As for me, I'm not anti-big-corporation where big corporations matter. I like airlines and bridge builders and silicon foundries, but I'm not about to set one up in my basement. I don't like Starbucks, because their main value-added is de-localizing what ought to be a lot of small businesses.
If information megacorps want to help me, they'll help me make the most of all the content out there, and they'll help me stay secure even though there's no sensible way to keep bad people out of chat rooms. I don't want to live in a world where people steal my credit card, but even more I don't want to live in a world where significant powers feel free to characterize online chat as subversive.
mt
Yes IRC is a great tool and sometimes it can be a lot like ebay. I've gotten some good hardware that I can't find anywhere else just by talking to people on IRC.
Of course these people will go to IRC chat rooms all the time, hell like every other type of computer geek on the internet they like to boost. It's natural for a geek to go somewhere and brag about their exploits.
The claim that identity theft is running wild and it's the fault of the hackers is an amazing assumption. While I do believe things like this happen to people around on many occasions. I do not believe it's as large scale as some people would have us believe. I have seen many more cases where identity theft is caused by people in the real world either losing their wallets. or other malicious deeds in which a criminal gets information from a victim.
You should automatically assume your credit card was stolen? Frankly if your not reviewing your credit card transactions you are a fool. But again. there are many more cases of this happening because of a store employee collecting the information some nameless computer hacker who is out to get you.
Why would things like pirated software, child pornography, and stolen information be available on IRC? It's a quicker communication medium. It's easier and faster for people to exchange the information then web pages or e-mail.
People use IRC networks like EFNET, DALNET, GAMESNET, etc. as opposed to AOL or Microsoft because the big business companies consider their users to be morons that don't need more advanced forms of software. When your network blocks out all types of profanity because it's "bad" many people are going to look to communicate where they can speak as they wish.
As for the law enforcement issue it is up to all the irc networks in question to regulate the going on in their own set of servers. I'll use Gamesnet as an example. They are constantly attempting to stop the "warez trade" from happening on their network and have assisted law enforcement when they find out their users are committing crimes.
The FBI gets lucky because like all criminals people who are involved in things like identify theft, child pornography sing like canaries. that's the only reason they get lucky. the boasting of hackers helps the FBI catch hackers
They should check SILC - next generation distributed conferencing with strong cryptography used for authentication and privacy.
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.
Au contraire.
We live in a world of absolute freedom. We just choose to use that freedom to form governments to prevent the unscrupulous from abusing others.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
The sadder thing is, this war is purportedly being fought for our freedoms, and the government seems to think the best way to secure our (hard-won) civil liberties is to start by taking them away.
Although they have been pretty clever about it: a war against an invisible, intangible, unmeasurable "enemy" (terrorism) is an invisible, intagible, unmeasurable war -- in other words, there is never a time when they have to/can declare victory and drop the pretext of fighting terrorism, and thus there is never a time when they have to give up the gradual rescinding of our liberties "in order to guarantee our security." How is this fighting for freedom?
Of course, while it's clever, it's hardly original. Pretty reminiscent of the never-ending wars fought in 1984; Big Brother's rhetoric's not even far off from Bush's, and the declared purposes of the wars are likewise pretty similar.
Oh well.
Fuck it
Welcome to the world of PROPAGANDA. Psychologists know that people will subconsciously accept brazen lies if they are sufficiently tired, confused, or distracted before taking in the false causal statement. This is called "suggestability". They will subconsciously seek a (false if necessary) internal logic or even a leap-of-faith to understand the author. If they are too tired to question this understanding, they will keep it and use it as if it were fact, gleefully making false judgements baed upon the supposed "fact."
AKA: sales pitch.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...