Three Blind Phreaks

Post writes "'When they dial, they use the middle finger.' - Wired's story about three sightless brothers who 'have devoted their lives to proving they can out-think, out-program, and out-hack anyone with vision.'"

Comments

Nothing Special

[pocketfullofshells]

from the article, "They called secretaries and said, 'I need to get in to do a repair. You need to give me the number and password.' Sometimes they succeeded, or else they'd get only the number and try to break the password by using proprietary programs."

sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.

But they make news because they are blind.

DAMNIT why could'nt I have been born blind so I could make the news!

Re:Nothing Special

[aTMsA]

sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.

But they make news because they are blind.

Well if you read the article carefully, you'll see this:

At one point during my visit with the Badirs, I pull out my cell phone and make a call. Before it even connects, Shadde, who is sitting across the room, recites all 12 digits perfectly.

Ramy smiles at the parlor trick. "It used to be disgusting to be blind," he says. "Today, you scare people. You possess skills that those with sight cannot possibly understand."

This is something normal people usually can't do, but i've known blind people that can do that kind of "tricks"(they can also tell you if you're standing or sitting while talking on the phone, for example). Certainly being blind gives them some good social-engineering-enabling abilities, and they can also play the poor-blind-victim that'll probably soften the most paranoid secretary;

Of course, if instead of touch-tone passwords these secretaries had been typing their passwords in a unix terminal, they would be screwed, and no amount of over-the-shoulder peeking would have helped them! ;)

Re:Nothing Special

[decipher_saint]

sounds like normal boring phreakers to me.
But they make news because they are blind.

That's for damn sure, I'm a visually impaired programmer what doesen't commit crimes, where's my news story?

Articles like these really piss me off. It makes it sound amazing that not only can blind people use computers but they can use them well enough to commit crime!

Yeesh next thing'll be "Blindsploitation" movies...
"Take that sighty!"

Are they heroes?

[ObviousGuy]

It used to be cool to show off with these 'hacks' like phreaking and other service-theft tricks, but these days it seems that they would do better service to the name 'hacker' if they worked on things that made our world easier to live in, for both sightless and sighted folks.

I'm not about to tell them what they should or shouldn't be doing, but sometimes you really have to wonder how the hacker community can take having borderline criminals like these three brothers calling themselves part of hackerdom.

They are crackers, despite what they call themselves.

Yeah, they're blind, so what

[W32.Klez.A]

They're still thieves. The article doesn't really display any sense of apology from the brothers, and it sounds like they're just giving bullshit lines to make it sound like they're doing the old 'I switched to the good side' thing. I have ten bucks that says they'll be back to the same old thefts within a month.

All of them?

[dan14807]

"I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI..."

So that's it, huh? Makes me wonder about the validity of their claim to be "hackers".

Re:All of them?

[UserGoogol]

Yeah, because a GUI is so useful when you're blind.

Re:Three Blind Mice

[Directrix1]

This article just shows that even a blind person can be as big a dipsh!t, as anyone with sight. If they were ripping innocent people off without technology, there would be outrage. But the fact they are using "social engineering" and hacking techniques make them idols? Those who think this is cool, are more blind than the brothers.

Re:Why are genetically defective people breeding?

[univgeek]

And while eye-sight was required for survival centuries ago, intelligence is required to survive now. Evolution doesn't need these brothers to be weeded out. Survival of the fittest means that if these brothers survive because of intelligence, then their lives are not worthless for the next generation of humans.

So go back to your cave, troll...

My my...

[CODiNE]

As a deaf guy I just have to say... living your life based on revenge and sticking it to others is a sad way of living. All you do is repeat the unfair sort of situations that made you so PO'ed and produce an army of other angry PO'ed people... ooohhh... negative feedback loop! Cutting people off on the freeway and tailgating doesn't solve your problems. It's funny how people in left hand turn lanes get upset at people running red lights keeping them from making their turn... so they in "revenge" run their red light and cause different people to miss THEIR turn, who then in return... blaaahhh... just live by "The Golden Rule" and everybody is a little bit happier.

Re:Why are genetically defective people breeding?

[evilviper]

the parents should have stopped breeding. Now there are three more genetically defective people who can keep those defective genes into the gene pool.

Wow... I thought we'd heard the end of this with the death of Hitler's Nazis, and Margaret Sanger.

I would say the best thing about our society, is that physical abilities do not mean life or death. I would assume that you are a skinny geeky guy (possibly not, but likely since you are posting here) and in the world of hunting and gathering, you would be dead, because you are not the strongest, and fastest.

If you think that all geeks should die off, then you are a moron who can just discard the contributions that less-physically-fit people have made.

The best example that comes to mind is Stephen Hawking... He should be dead by most measures, but he is alive, and contributing to the betterment of all society.

What do you know? Are you certain that blind people have nothing to contribute to society? People though the same thing about Blacks, Hispanics, etc., yet they've been proven wrong time and time again.

Before "civilization", nature would weed out genetic defects like that using starvation, wolves, lions, bears, etc. Now you have people perpetuating defective genetic lines just because they can.

First off, you are assuming that there was a time before civilization. Animals like wolves have a natural pack instinct, and humans show the same traits. It would seem that humans would have always sought-out civilization...

Well, I suppose crap like this is why I marked you as a FOE in the first place...

blind script kiddies

[krappie]

Sorry, but I wasnt really impressed by these people. I've always heard that blind people make the best phone phreakers. Thats probably true. When you deal with an entire system based on sound frequencies I can see blind people having an advantage.

But whats the point of the article? They're just 3 blind script kiddies that think they can hack the planet. I see people with vision every day committing credit card fraud. Why are these guys bragging about it on Wired? THEY EVEN GOT CAUGHT. GENIUSES!!

And what is this?!

But Ramy was too ambitious to stop there. "I taught myself to program in all the languages: C, C++, Basic, Java, HTML, PHP, CGI.

CGI isnt a language! And thats a direct quote from him. What kind of idiot says "I can program in CGI."

Sorry, but these are just three script kiddies causing the usual problems that script kiddies cause. Am I supposed to be impressed?

So theft isn't theft?

[Infonaut]

Nothing like selective morality.

So if you use phone sex hotlines you deserve to have your money stolen? If you use a dating service do you deserve the same thing? If you subscribe to a right-wing or left-wing newspaper do you deserve to be ripped off by someone?

As for ripping off a government-sponsored radio station, who do you think is paying for it? Where does the government's money come from? It's not takin money from mom and pop directly, but it's not as though their not hurting the general public. People like to rail against government inefficiency and complain of mismanaged tax dollars. It's odd to me that someone would not be outraged by criminals directly stealing those tax dollars.

These guys aren't exactly Robin Hoods.

Re:Three Blind Mice

[namespan]

Dude, Osama bin Laden is so damn cool. Did you see how on Sept. 11 he orchestrated a complex attack on the US, involving a collection of covert actions intricately interwoven to form a subtle web

This is actually quite true. The terrorist actions were bold and devastatingly effective, the result of some clever thinking combined with a willingness to die.

Cool in the same way a nuclear bomb is cool. Horrifying, something you want to totally reject, even as it is impressive.