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BusinessWeek on Hacker Hunters
prostoalex writes "You keep hearing about FBI, Secret Service or other law enforcement authorities involved in pursuing international cybercrime gangs, but who are those people and how does the cyberlaw enforcement work? Business Week talks about hacker hunters and people they're after. A large portion of the article is dedicated to describing the global scope of such activities with Russia, Eastern Europe and China leading the ranks for criminal hideouts."
Could we please try to restore the word "hacker" a more positive meaning on mainstream media?
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Looks like the Ruskis have this available as a course (if you want to go to Siberia) Hacker Hunter U,
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Why do you feel such hard punishment shall be put on hackers. Hackers are normal people like me and you. They just try to improve their stuff. Sometimes breaking a couple rules here and there. I think what your talking about are texans.
17 billion dollars spent annually on Texan Medical. Approximately 5 billion spent on hackers. Its just a way to get rid of ignorance. Being a hacker (No, not a cracker) I went first because bullies at school were mean. To get away from all of this I took on computers. Realized computers are not bitches. For once something respected my love for it. An obsession was born. Maybe if you were nicer you would not have as many suicides, homicides, and rapes.
Retards: live with it.
A hacker is someone who loves hacking just for the thrill of it. AND Not for money. Haven't you heard about ParMaster, etc.?
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Anything but "crackers". "Crackers" just has no ring to it at all :-).
I almost added to the list:
Then I thought of a perfectly good reason to fight it. The script kiddeez and "Neo" wannabees hear the term "hacker" applied to black hat activity. They are led to think that messing with other people's systems is what is cool. One day they grow up and start doing something productive, while my time is wasted fighting their idiocy.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I always thought that somewhere in the FBI worked some geek that couldn't really accomplish anything, but for some reason, they couldn't just fire him. So when they realized that he's a computer geek, they gave him a computer and said, "Here, go after cyberhackers." What they didn't realize was that he'd actually take it seriously. So now there's a geek in some dark room at the FBI going after 1337 h4x0rz. And the FBI talks about it as if they have a department of 6,000 professional MSCE's tracking evil hackers out there.
Yes. Chosing SCO as a target seemed to me to have the following motivations for the crackers:
1: Advertising. They had a bot net that they wanted to demonstrate the power of. "Behold the might of our bots! It takes down SCO and Microsoft! Now pay protection money or your online casino is out of business."
2: Social engineering against administrators. Linux-users are more likely to be administrators and have other network-related jobs. The crackers might think that attacking SCO and Microsoft would gain them symphaty from some of the administrators.
3: The crackers don't like Microsoft. The security updates are a hindrance to them.
4: The crackers don't like Linux/BSD. Microsoft's saving graces, in the cracker's eyes, is that they at least used to make insecure software, and they made a monoculture fertile to malware. By casting the blame on "linux fans", they might hurt the image of the FOSS community.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
Unprosecutable because:
1) damages don't meet the threshold.
2) the system was unpatched and "invited" the hacker in - I hate this the most.
3) the system was not bannered "..by clicking ok, you agree to give up your expectation of privacy"... - also a stupid reason, but the case law is there.
4) the hostile systems are difficult to obtain evidence from (read: overseas, unfrienldy).
5) the hostile is obviously a script kiddie (stupid warez, IRC, etc.). Experience shows that the effort put forth to go after these idiots is not worth the 30 days probation a juvenile gets in MOST cases - damage dependant.
Can you post some links from a
I missed your point, on purpose. Can you see how the issue might seem to someone who does not have your unique vantage point? There's too much work, so you choose the high-profile cases. There's too much work, so you let the small fry continue to break the law. There's too much work, so you need more funding... All of this is more than likely true, however: My point is, to the eye of an average tax-paying citizen, me, it seems very much as if, because the average tax-paying citizen doesn't have large enough businesses or large enough losses, we don't rate any protection at all, and only those who pay larger amounts in taxes or sustain larger losses (regardless of relative ability to *bear* such losses) get their issues even heard, much less addressed. Beyond a massive education initiative so that the people affected are better-prepared to protect themselves (hence reducing the amount of work your beleaguered department has), how would you recommend solving this dilemma? And, really, do we want citizens knowing that we must protect ourselves because the people in the agencies we pay to protect us are so overworked? Methinks that way may lie vigilantism, which seems to get prosecuted much more vigorously for some reason.... Maybe we average folks don't get to see nearly enough of what's going on - maybe some network exec could follow a day/week/month in the life of a law enforcement official in yet another reality show, bring it home that it's not all doughnuts and jaywalkers, but meantime, there's still that pesky problem of appearances. I'm just letting you know how it looks from out here...
Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
The cops admit they can't rely on technology alone, they have to get back to basics: gumshoe work, people-on-the-ground, infiltration of the bad guys.
Good for them. Now will lawmakers begin to realize that Law Enforcement for the most part already has all the tools they need to fight crime? There is no need to keep ramping up the powers they are granting to the cops every damn year that directly or indirectly erode personal liberty in this country?
I'm not holding my breath.
That's just it... The thresholds are high - not because those are the glamerous cases (the vast majority are sensitive enough NOT to make it to the press), but because they have the greatest impact on our society, and hence, the taxpayers. For example:
a) A Government contractor housing sensitive information is compromised. The cost to the taxpayer is not obvious, but it *is* there. And it's a greater cost than you might imagine. Compromised technology and data exfiltration -- funded by taxpayers like you.
b) your company's website is brutalized, and perhaps the customer database is somehow compromized. The cost in rebuiding the servers is (if it's really big) around $10,000 in man hours. Explain to me how a price will be put on the customer database. This will have to be done by the already overworked prosecuter in court (assuming it ever gets there). Prosecution and sentencing are based on damage to society, in most cases.
Which one do you think the FBI is most interested in (for the sake of the taxpayer)? In the case of the first, *all* taxpayers bear a burden. In the case of the second... not so much.
Understand this. Cybercrime investigators are overworked well beyond what you can imagine. A threshold *has* to be established. If you fall below that threshold, I'm sorry. Secure your systems.
The days of sending out the fire department to get little kitty out of the tree are over. This has nothing to do with "ignoring the little guy". It's economy of resources.