Everyone Is A Hacker In Training

An anonymous reader writes "Michal Zalewski was recently interviewed by O'Reilly's Onlamp. During the interview, he stated a belief that hacking is a state of mind. From the article: 'I don't think that (good) hackers have any special, hardwired mental abilities or specific personality traits, and I do believe you can easily learn to think like a hacker, even when you come from a different background.'" The interview goes on to discuss the overall need for better security in protocols and communications.

Comments

As a margin quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, the hacker's mind state is precluded to women due to proven biological limitations.

How do you kill a hacker?

[John Seminal]

Question: How do you kill a hacker?

Anwser: Pop his pimple.

I have known some "hackers". And the term seems to go over a wide range of ability. It is a self describing term some idiots appoint to themselves not realizing what it means. The ones who tend to have the skillset are also the same ones who don't want anything to do with the term hacker.

I knew a guy who was arrested and sentanced to jail for one month, and 3 years probation, because he hacked into the school's library stystem. Why did he do it? Because the library had a start screen where the user could only access the card catalog over the internet, nothing else. This guy wanted to "un-cripple" the computer so he could use it for any website. It is worth saying the reason the school restricted the computers is because when they were using less restrictive computers, some students placed programs on the computers that harvisted emails and passwords and all sorts of stuff. This guy who was caught paid the price for what others did before him.

How did they catch him? Was it a high tech game of cat and mouse? No. LOL. The school put up security camera's in the library, and they monitored what people were doing.

The school also suspended other students for putting Knoppix in the CD-Rom drive and using it to connect to the internet. The kids screamed bloody murder, saying if the school did not want them using Knoppix, the school should have removed the CD-Roms from the computers. LOL!

And what about all the script kiddies? The ones who have no brains but found a place to download some tool to hack with? What should be done with them? If a script kidde uses a tool a hacker programmed, and that script kidde causes damage, who is responsible? Should the hacker be arrested for releasing the tool?

In my opinion, a hacker is a derogatory term. They are people who have little respect for others rights. A hacker only cares about what he is interested in, and it does not matter who holds the rights to the computers, the property, or the intellectual rights. A hacker wants to, so a hacker does. In my opinion, a hacker is a term to descrive a type of criminal.

Re:Intensity over Extensity

[John Seminal]

I think good hackers tend to be obessive about what they hack - meaning that they eat, drink, and sleep the subject they are good at hacking at.

That is a disease. It is an obsession and is not healthy. Is it very different if someone spends 80 hours a week trying to hack a program, or if someone spends 80 hours a week looking at horse racing statistics trying to pick a winner? Both are addictions.

This is my issue with college - many of which try to teach a wide variety of subject to a student that really only wants a specific degree (say in Math or Science related) - studies have shown that people tend to remember less than 15-20% of what they learned in school/college several years after attending so why force something that will only be forgotten later for lack of interest?

Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it. If all you want to get out of college is a science degree, say in physics, then what will you do? Go to work for terrorists? What will be your point of reference to world events?

So you might only remember 10% of the shakespear you read in Humanities 101. But you will be a different person. You will get an understanding for some of the ideas that are timeless. You will know something more about power and curruption from Ceaser. You might only remember 10% of your psychology 100 survey class, but you will also be more tolerant of people with mental illness. You might not like that your college will force you to take a foriegn langugae, but after you are done, you will know about a different world perspective, and you might want to stick with it enough to be able to read newspapers from a foriegn land.

Re:Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?

[WiFiBro]

nooooo... don't mod up the n-th copy of that text on slashdot...