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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.
And fresh reports say that 'hackers' also use e-mail, telephones and postal services. Shut them all down!
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
Why is this news? Of course hackers hang out in IRC. You know what, so do crackers. And so do other people.
NEWSFLASH: The sky is blue.
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.
Criminals that want to organize any criminal actions are known to use the telephone system to communicate!
Astonishing.
Ah, what fun we had with bots . . . We had a bot to talk to our phone list database, a bot to page people, etc . . . Grand fun.
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
this just in -- dancefloors, bars, other public settings rumored to be HACKER FREE!
thelocust[dot]org
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.
i suspect the quotes from Schnier (sp?) were eitehr taken out of context or he didnt know what they were going toward.
i read the article yesterday (tried submiting it too, rejected) and the article was anti-IRC right from the start. Kinda like Phil Zimmerman's "guilt" over PGP dabacle with the Washington Post last September following the terror attacks.
basic thing to remember: the media is always biased, no matter how much they say they arent.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
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.
The Wild west of IRC... BANG BANG! do what does that make IRCops?
Even worse, he's doing his job for AOL. Do you really think that the main goal of CNN is to inform the people?
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
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?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
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.
the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC) didn't provide any statements to CNN regarding what goes on in Internet Relay Chat
Gee, I guess it would have been way too much trouble for CNN's hotshot reporters to log on and find out for themselves before running this half-baked article.
"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."
You should ALSO assume that your wife is cheating on you. And you're about to be fired. And someone is monitoring you. Constantly. We even know what brand of socks you're wearing.
But it's just another Internet tool like email, USENET or WWW. It can be used for good or ill just like anthing else. I don't think it's any more secure from monitoring than any other protocol. Anon [mixmaster] email actually seems the least traceable.
I think this is just a slander-by-association: someone doesn't find IRC participants "nice" [=like them] so choses to consider all IRC participants gulity by association. Might as well consider all email users evil, same logical fallacy.
Hackers also live in houses, which they use to store computers that are used to run various hacking projects. Obviously, something needs to be done about this housing problem. People should have to obtain a license or pass some kind of inspection, or else have their house taken away from them.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
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
------------
Sase
"It's the opposite of that."
Well, don't you know? If you're not using 100% big corporations services such as AOL, then you're anti-big corporations and are a commie and a terrorist. Please report yourself to the authorities to serve as cheap prison labor.
While we're at it, why don't they just go ahead and just take money right off from our paychecks...soon it will be illegal to give something for free! It's hard not to become cynical in the face of such corporatism - at least they had the honesty of reminding us that AOL/Time Warner is the owner of CNN.
Reminder: find a new sig
"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.
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
About 6 months ago, around 1500UKP was deducted from my credit card account fraudulently. The withdrawals took place in Turkey - somewhere I've never been or bought from. My cards were never lost, and I've only ever made a couple of transactions using them over the phone, but I'd used them to buy many items online. It seems reasonable to guess that my details were probably stolen on the net.
These things do happen!
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.
since the dawning of time evil men have thwarted to abuse the societies they dwell in. ever since the original urge to evolve from single celled space snots into the form of the human being, this evil force has compelled a portion of our fair species to evolve one step beyond the main stream. as early as the 1800s humans have developed simplistic vocal patterns used to convery root directives between what we refer to as "nodes". these nodes, when in a collaberative setting, can communicate rapidly, and the use of technology has only spread this disturbing pattern. eventually is is conceivable that these evil nodes will dominate the world with their bloodthirsty lust for communication.. modern day usage of "internet" relay chats indicates what we shall call "Big Trouble Ahead". If given time to spread, we may find that evil nodes of human clusters will continue their ravaging in search of the ultimate form of communication. we as reasonable members of the species must do everything we can to thwart this insidious infestation. Indeed, our very futures depends on it.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Some other media that the CNN article forgot to mention:
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
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.
This credit card theft, cracking, terrorism promoting menace of a protocol and its operational cells must be stamped out immediately! Somebody call John Ashcroft!
I'll take irony for 500, Alex.
It IS illegal to give away most things for free. (at least giving it away, without someone paying taxes on it).
Its just that most things the tax would be $0.00001 so nobody bothers.
The government ought to regulate and monitor this somehow!! *NOT!!!*
Article about IRC. Picture of Netscape on CNN.com
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
That criminals use the internet for 'identifty teheft' is not news Even the US government is on the case:
The original article seemed very alarmist. Is it really such a problem? My skimming of a US government report from some years ago revealled the following interesting information (emphasis added):
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
But IRC is largely unregulated -- a Wild West of chat...
YEEEHA!! I'm gonna rustle me up some trout to slap!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
...but you should assume that right now, in your wallet, there's a credit card number that has been stolen off the Net."
Opens up wallet.
OMG! He's right! Someone stole a CC number off the Internet and put it in my wallet! These hackers are good!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
is unworthy of repetiton. It is poor journalism of the most illiterate kind, engineered to whip up hysteria over something as old as the hills.
The author "With more than 23 years of journalism experience to draw from, Renay San Miguel is a technology anchor and correspondent for CNN Headline News based in CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta....From 1997-2000 he was with CNBC, where he served as a correspondent specializing in technology and the Internet. "
really needs to have 23 years of experience in how to research a story. And anyway, how on EARTH can someone from 1997, "..specializing in technology and the Internet.." not have ever used or seenIRC???
If he knows what IRC is, and STILL wrote that, then he really is just a sh1t stirrer, first class.
Nothing to see here: move along!
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
But with identity theft becoming a more popular form of fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), more attention is being paid to chat rooms that serve as flea markets for hackers.
This is the real thrust of the article, although it's brevity and excessive misuse of the word "hacker" makes it easy to miss. The article isn't slamming IRC as an evil haven of credit card thieves, it's pointing out that there's an entire chunk of the Internet called IRC that most people aren't aware of, and that it's possible, if not likely, that your credit cards and other personal information are being bought and sold on it right now.
Isn't it about time the media realized the difference ./hacking abilities.
between a hacker and a _cracker_? I've spent
enough time on IRC to know 99% of the people they
talk about in this article are just clueless
12 year olds who try to impress eachother
with their 'el33t'
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
Boy, oh, boy...you must be relatively new to the Internet.
Here's just one example of organized credit card fraud on the Internet. Some software piracy groups have *entire segments* dedicated to credit card fraud. They even have a name for these folks: "carders." They'll "card" a laptop, CD writer, etc. for you, and find a way to get it safely received. Many of these folks have huge lists of names, addresses, and credit card numbers that often come from compromised websites.
It's happened to me before. Luckily, I caught it, and I learned from my mistake. I've found a way to help defend against this kind of attack.
Everyone should think about using one-time-use credit card numbers when making purchases from anyone over the phone or Internet. Several credit card issuers offer this feature. Here's an example of one of them.
According to this guy, using AMD, Bonzai Buddy, Flash, and Quake makes you a hacker.
Depending on how you read it, it's either hilarious parody or a woefully misinformed parent. I was in the hilarious parody camp until I saw the rest of his articles.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
...or today two of more or less famous among computer-using population people for, both named Bruce, and with last names starting with "S" (Bruce Sterling, a writer, and Bruce Schneier, a cryptographist, of "Applied Cryptography" fame) made absolutely inane statements, performing the acts of nearly the worst ass-kissing that ever was mentioned on Slashdot?
Is someone going through the list (sorted first name first, like every ignorant person will do) and doing something to those people? Is there something in common? Or everyone and his dog suddenly became a patriot of the Corporate States of America, so those coincidences are merely a result of high density of this ?
To be honest, I would be equally disgusted in both cases, so I'll rather stick with the hypothesis of my insanity.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
They should check SILC - next generation distributed conferencing with strong cryptography used for authentication and privacy.
In other news, bars and clubs are coming under fire for being havens for drunks, deviants and criminals. Churches are coming under fire because we need to protect our kids from secual deviants using the lord's work to help them out. Universities and libraries are known hide outs for communists, terrorists and dangerous foreign nationals called "graduate students." Shopping malls and "high schools" are breeding grounds for gangs of teenagers associated through shocking dress, style and manors of speech that are anathem to the status quo; these kids want to shake things up in deadly new ways. Department stores are selling guns, cigarettes, alcohol and dangerous narcotics such as aspirin and caffeine. Oh, and private homes -- which are difficult to monitor due to laws designed to protect criminals and prevent beneficial government employees from knowing what's really going on -- are the worst of all. People are torturing kids, raising deadly animals and polishing guns, ready to start a revolution against your great american goverment.
And I don't totally trust this "Applebees" restaurant chain, neither. John Birch says they're pinkos.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
(note: i am a former AOLer. at the time, they were the only ISP with a dial number that was local)
AOL does indeed monitor chatroom conversations, but not all at once, and you know when they're being watched, as a screenname "Guide####" appears in the list of people there. In addition, if someone's causing a ruckus, a Guide can be "paged" or someone can submit a TOS violation report, and they'll investigate.
Likewise, for IM conversation (ie, one-to-one conversations), someone can send a TOSV report, and AOL will investigate. But that's only for their ISP users (people that pay for the service), not AIM users.
My guess is that either all conversations are logged and purged after like a day or so, or a snapshot of the conversation is made when a report is filed.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
It's not that way to the real world. It's that way to an uneducated, luddite media (this writer's the technology anchor, for crying out loud, so there's no excuse whatsoever, including "dumbing it down"). When the real world is given 15 seconds of information, they figure out that the web is one part of the internet. They remember that. Really, they do. Go try it with your neighbors sometime -- they're smarter than you give them credit for. If their top technology guy doesn't know the difference between "web" and "Internet", this tells me what I need to know about CNN, and, scarily enough, about AOLTW.
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
Treat it as a precaution -- basically, you're being advised to check your statements carefully, looking for activity that isn't yours. It would not surprise me if a lot of people did NOT examine their credit card bills completely, considering that people have also been ripped off down by phone companies adding incorrect charges to their bills.
It's along the same lines of saying that assume that somebody might consider stealing your car every time you park it in a public lot -- meaning that you should lock the doors, secure any valuables out of sight, and so forth.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
That's an interesting claim you're making since the letters in "terror" don't appear in the article even once.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Cause she knows i am on IRC a lot, so now she will think i am a hacker!
which i am ofcourse i hack some c every day, but never the less this could set my reputation in a wrong perspective, lets DDoS CNN again =D
Quazion.
Friend of a friend is a cop on cyber-patrol (no, really) in MI. He spends a lot of his time on IRC setting up stings. Mainly they persue child porn offenders, but just FYI, the cops ARE active in IRC and other IM clients, and could persue this if they wanted to.
Any news source or any so-called "expert" that labels any and every very different subset of internet-bound network protocols as "The Web" oughta be shot before having their balls severed.
"The Web" refers to HTTP.
IRC is not the web.
The internet is not the web.
CNN already never bore much credibility in my book. Such shallow and poorly-researched article, clearly begging for "public's attention", filled with buzz-words, and offering such a one-sided vision of issues at hand, clearly proves what I have believed all along.
Here's a free clue to CNN editors: when hackers *need* a way, they find it. If it's not IRC, then they'll gather on bulletin board systems. That'll be their big come-back. Because that's where they used to gather before that. And if that still doesn't do it, they'll gather on public web forums. And if that doesn't work, they'll come up with a peer-to-peer chat protocols with emphasis on communities. Most Instant Messaging systems already offer you that. It'll just get expanded. And if that still doesn't work, trust me, the demand *will* be there, and new network protocols will be created. To accomodate grass-roots communities. It is amazing the things you can do with TCP/IP. If the more popular IRC networks get snooped or shut-down, then many more little irc servers will rise. Anyone with a DSL connection a shitty old PC can download many free, open-source flavors of the popular "IRC Daemon" software, "ircd", and set-up a very reliable and fairly scalable IRC server. Get two people together on different connections and you have a network. Each server can have thousands of simultaneously connected users.
The point i'm trying to bring home here, is that there will *never* be a shortage of venues for hackers to go about their illicit business. It clearly is sad, as such practices and articles like this one tend to focus the public's opinion on restricting our own liberties to *absolutely NO CONCLUSIVE END*.
That article clearly mingles without any distinction the "underground" aspect of IRC with "anti-corporation" stance and "identity-theft hackers".
Lemme make this clear:
it is NOT OKAY to steal identity and be a hacker. it's lame too.
it IS OKAY to be against corporation-hosted chat networks and for grass-roots communities such as IRC.
it IS OKAY to prefer "less-popular" communities to find like-minded geeks, such as ones we'll find on IRC.
If CNN had any clue, any journalistic integrity, they would at least try to bring some of those points home in their article. But they keep quoting that same guy, over and over, with scary buzz-phrases and words your average american will just eat-up.
Next thing you know, parents will only allow their children to "hang out" on AOL chat-rooms. "No more IRC for you son, it's evil, CNN sez so, mm-MMM".
Can we see a corporate agenda here?
fuckingshit.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
CNN are owned by AOL/Time Warner. AOL/Time Warner control two of the four major instant messaging systems (AOL, ICQ, the other two being MSN and IRC). CNN and other AOL/Time Warner owned news corps start bad-mouthing IRC, making it less socially acceptable. Many IRC servers are run from Universities, and with IRC becoming less socially acceptable justifying the related costs becomes more and more difficult. IRC dwindles in market share, with AOL taking up the slack. AOL's network now has a massive number of subscribers, and can even compete with Microsoft, who bundle their chat client with their operating systems.
Does this really sound so far-fetched?
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
I don't know of anyone who has had credit card numbers stolen or traded on the internet.
My wife bought CDs in November '99 from CD Universe. Her credit card number was apparently one of the ones displayed on that Russian hacker's website when he tried to get CD Universe to pay a ransom. CD Universe notified her bank. My wife's bank called her to tell her they were cancelling that card and sending her a new one.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Pope-abuse is a serious issue these days. As is nun-beating. And don't even get me started on the topic of penguin lust.
pooptruck
Haven't you seen Goodfellas recently?
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
/me slaps the FBI bot with a limp trout
Awhile back an entire database of card numbers was taken and STREAMED in an IRC channel. I believe it was EggHead's card database. Golly, this was reported all over and you didn't hear about it? The Reg carried it I'm sure as did others.
It was real, my card number was one of them and my card was cancelled\reissued by my bank. My big question though was WHY EggHead still had my card # on file. I went through my records and found that I'd not bought anything from them in over a year and yet my account was still being held by them - as was my E-mail judging from the SPAM barrage that followed this incident. Needless to say I've not bought ANYTHING from them since nor will I ever again. They lost my trust big time.
Rest assured credit card theft and identity theft happen all the time. I've now met two people who have had their identities stolen and it sux! Depending upon the circumstances getting a new SN can be a real PITA too. One of them hasn't been able to sufficiently "justify" a new SSN and has to explain the whole thing every time they need credit.
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Dosn't CNN run their own, pretty popular IRC setup?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
Au contraire.
Those in power, that is, the power to limit your freedom and mine, inherited that power in a fairly unbroken succession going back, at minimum, centuries. Everyone else is subject to their will.
Don't you recall the ever-bandied figures of 2% of the world's population owning >90% of the world's wealth? Class distinctions are ubiquitous. "For the people, by the people" is a joke.
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...
So what? How is meeting on IRC different from (physically) meeting in public places? (all kinds of) Hackers always had their virtual hangouts all over the net, and if one (kind) is shut down they'll find other places. The same places are used by other folks too, and while it may be interesting to observe that hackers dislike proprietary services like AOL (for reasons not only applying to hackers) that just means, that different places attract a different audience. Compare the demographics of a McDonalds with that of a tea-house for reference.
Now if the apparent fact, that some illegal activity is conducted via IRC should imply something about IRC (that it should be banned/forbidden, identify it's users, copy each message to the CIA) then the same is true for any public place, so let's start bugging pubs and demand a personal ID from everyone who goes there.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Bruce just answered the very legitimate question, "Why do hackers tend to congregate on IRC instead of, say, chat rooms on Yahoo and AOL?"
Well, how would you reply?
Bruce never implied for a moment that IRC should be shut down because that's where all the hackers are, he simply pointed out that it was a system more suitable to the technocultural aspects of the seedier parts of hackerdom -- which, of course, it is. So too is Linux, so too are home-built computers, so too is a distaste for your average sitcom. One can observe that without arguing that Linux, non-Dells, and Dharma and Greg-free homes be raided.
--Dan
Personally, I don't see what the big deal is with credit card numbers. The reason I say this is because it seems that most people don't think a whole lot about their credit cards.
Yes its a generalization, but I know this from experience--at least from where I live.
I work at Subway. We take credit card orders all the time. It would be trivial for me to copy down the credit card numbers we have in a little paper sack we keep the reciepts in. Am I legally responsible if I distribute these reciepts? Not that I know of.
Of course, I wouldn't do anything like that for the ethics of that. But there are a lot of people who perhaps wouldn't think that way.
Customers, I've found, don't give a rats ass about the security of their credit card. Think about it. Do you sign it? Where I work, we don't check the signatures anyway. I've began checking though but too often the signatures are too faded or unreadable anyway. Many of the more security conscious customers write "See I.D." in place of the signature. I asked someone for their ID the other day and they were surprised. It seems that our store isn't alone.
The big problem is that no one is trained properly for swiping cred cards. Basically employees train employees and so people only know what they need to know to get the job done.
It isn't all our fault either. Too many customers hand me their credit card before I've even rung up their meal. If they don't check the price on their reciept before they sign it, which I am sure most don't, I could easily run the credit card for an extra fifteen bucks, and then take fifteen bucks out of the register. Chances are, no one would know any better.
Credit card numbers are not secure and any fear on getting them over IRC is just empty hype. Of course we all know that. Credit cards could be relatively secure, but there are too many weak links in the chain. In the end, its up to you to protect yourself. Personally I would avoid using a credit card for small purchases. Only purchase at places where they *always* check your ID and always get a reciept.. The government isn't going to protect you and certainly these online tabloids aren't. Its up to you.
Funny, up until the recent AOLization of CNN, CNN ran an IRC server for discussing their news stories. They even provided a newsticker through the IRC channel. They just shutdown the server in the last month or two.
Now that they are out of the IRC business, they are claiming it is used by hackers? Seems more like AOL has decided all those bad people on IRC should be chatting through AIM instead like good little sheep.
During 9/11 chat.cnn.com irc server was the best place to get real time news.
In that order.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
There is an exemption for up to $10,000 of gifts per year per person. (The total value of gifts, or value of services rendered needs to be less than $10,000. If it is more, then the recipient pays income tax)
Also, trades are covered under barter rules. (in an exchange of goods, somehow both parties profit, and both get to pay income taxes. There are special IRS forms if you do alot of work via barter.)
Also, everything you sell on ebay counts as income too.
You can't deny that the open, underground nature of IRC makes it ideal for both hacking and illegal activity. (Notice how I specifically did not equate those activities :-)
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling - er - hacking - is going on in here!
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Run your own IRC server, or convince a friend to do so, and allow only SSL connections. Unreal, a popular ircd, supports SSL connections (port 994 by default).
Unless you then do everything as a DCC chat. This will only encrypt the client-server connection. It won't necessarily protect the server-server connections or help if the server itself is hacked.
My cards were never lost, and I've only ever made a couple of transactions using them over the phone, but I'd used them to buy many items online. It seems reasonable to guess that my details were probably stolen on the net.
Actually the most likely possibility is internal fraud from your credit card issuer. Or someone getting hold of the recipt from any transaction.
Entire generations joined the net *after* ICQ, AIM, and Yahoo. People deliberately are avoiding the "newer" tech.
--Dan
This came to me over the opirc (where I do some of my tellecommuting work) network just a bit ago:
/. article....unfortunately, probably no one :)l d=-1&commentsort=0&tid=95&mode=flat&pid=3324348
!lilo:*! Reply to a comment on a
will see it since I can't sign onto my account from work
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30906&thresho
It's the real deal: Mod It Up!
Howard Dean for president
Er, that should be "already willing to give up liberty".
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh