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Inventor of Proxy Firewall Blames Hackers
An anonymous reader writes "SecurityFocus published an interview with Marcus Ranum, the inventor of the proxy firewall. It's an interesting reading, and the end is even better:
Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the
hackers. Let's not forget that they're the ones doing this to us. They're the
ones who are annoying an entire planet. They're the ones who are costing us
billions of dollars a year to secure our systems against them. They're the
ones who place their desire for fun ahead of everyone on earth's desire for
peace and the right to privacy."
Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the
hackers. Let's not forget that they're the ones doing this to
us. They're the ones who are annoying an entire planet. They're the
ones who are costing us billions of dollars a year to secure our
systems against them. They're the ones who place their desire for fun
ahead of everyone on earth's desire for peace and the right to
privacy."
Ok, but swap a hacker's desire for fun with a software companies
desire to make money without properly taking responsiblity for
securing their product and one could also write:
Truly, the only people who deserve a complete helping of blame are the
software companies. Let's not forget that they're the ones
doing this to us. They're the ones who are annoying an entire
planet. They're the ones who are costing us billions of dollars a year
to secure our systems against them. They're the ones who place their
desire for profit ahead of everyone on earth's desire for peace
and the right to privacy."
It is like a credit card company saying that if someone breaks into
their systems and steals my credit card number, that is my
responsibility - or maybe it is the hackers fault. Well sure, it is
my fault for using a stupid bank, and the hackers fault for committing
the crime - BUT SURELY the bank has to take some fault for making this
whole possible - right?
But if they weren't keeping you and I employed we could both be employed doing more productive things.
It's like saying the vandal who goes around smashing windows is a good guy because he keeps the window repairman employed.
Old and crusty falacy...
Rome builds shitty wall, Emperor blames failure on existence of barbarian hordes.
It'd sound fucking ludicrous to read that in a history book, it's no less ludicrous to read that in a modern context.
Dude, grow a pair.
Perhaps five or ten years ago it would have been plausible to say that computer criminals were largely breaking into others' machines for fun -- but even then, as Clifford Stoll discovered, there were exceptions. Then it turned into more of an organized enterprise. People controlling most of the infected machines on the Internet are NOT doing it out of curiosity or fun: They are doing it for power, and exploiting that for criminal enterprise.
In the past years, we have seen profit-seeking criminals discover how useful insecure systems are to them. The major disruptions now are not caused by simple thrill-seekers.
If I'm reading that right, you have it backwards - like a lot of people, I think. If, let's say, someone left their front door open and you saw some nice lookin shiny thing while walking down the street, and you went in and took it, then got caught...what would the police say? "Oh, it's not your fault. After all, they left their door open."
No, while they were idiots for leaving the door open, you were the only one who broke the law.
The same thing applies here. Because someone or something leaves doors open doesn't mean you can or should enter them. No one has to live with spam merchants - that's why we're taking measures to combat spam on many levels (from the national do not call registry to spam filters on the email system at the office). No one has to live with hackers, either. That's life, but not how you put it; this time, I applied your logic to both sides.
Can you live with that?
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Actually I'd say the Hackers probably did us a favor in the long run. How bad would it be if everything were nice and rosy and then organized crime started playing hard ball?
At least we've had time to learn and understand and actually build tools to help in the defense of our systems. Now if companies ignored the petty hacker attacks that's their own fault, but at least it started with relatively innocuous stuff rather than more heavy duty attacks...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
He agrees with you. That quote was the last paragraph of the last answer in the interview. Here's the full question/answer:
His point: there is pleny of blame to go around, if you want to spread the blame. The hackers who break in are the reason the rest of the blame matters, but the rest is still there.
Just in case someone thought you disagreed with him. And because now everyone has read the full context of the quote we are discussing, which will be a rarity on /.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Obviously this guy has never heard of espionage. *Most* (not all) hackers/crackers get in, poke around, and leave. I've known a few that actually fix shit on the way out, and leave friendly notes (though I think more highly of the do no harm crowd).
The *REAL* danger are corporate spies who not only want your secrets, but also plant spyware, or destroy infrastructure to hamper a competitor. There is also the growing instances of state-sponsored computer cracking whereby poorer nations (particularly the axis-of-evil states) seek to leverage the power of attacking information infrastructures instead of the physical infrastructure. Remember, the US didn't take down the Soviet Union by dropping bombs and shooting bullets. We bankrupted their ass in a nice game of 'keeping up with the neighbors'.
The grandparent and parent both touch on something important. The vandal/repairman example comes straight from Hazlitt and is indeed an old fallacy. People see the new improved and rock-resistent glass and they say 'now that's progress'. What they don't see is the resources the shopkeeper had wanted to purchase with the money that had to go to the new window. The shopkeeper could have spent that money to become more efficient or expand. Or as in Hazlitt's example, bought a new suit. Then the tailor would have had more resources to put into play.
The window repairman, much like the parent poster, probably thinks rock-resistant windows and proxy firewalls are an excellent investment. When we look at the long list of technologies that changed the 20th century, many/most were developed at least in part to help wage and defend warfare. One might deduce that warfare is a creator of value. Yet war is always a destroyer of value. It is the allocation of resources that could be more suitably employed.