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

Hehe, that's funny ;)

[Sase]

That was a good laugh.. and my friends.. that's why it was posted to /. :)

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? :) Surprised they didn't talk about that.

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 :) 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 /. ;)

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 ;better person.. to react in the right mannor (not just to get +o.. or plus +O for that matter ;0)

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 :) afaik :)

CNN *runs* an IRC server!

[LinuxHam]

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.

Re:Not really so alarming...

[uncadonna]

Not as alarming as the /. blurb made out, but still revealing of the corporate mindset. Apparently AOL/TW/CNN still finds something dubious or alarming about the concept that people would have something to say to each other and use their technology to do it. In the mass media world, everyone who wasn't a member of a tiny content-production elite was expected to be a consumer and only a consumer. To the extent that everyone is now a publisher, this is threatened.

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.