The Hacker Profiling Project

NewsForge writes "NewsForge is running a story about a project aiming to profile hackers like the police do with common criminals. Not based out of the U.S. per se, this project falls under the auspices of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI). The project was co-founded by Stefania Ducci, in 2004, along with Raoul Chiesa." From the article: "NewsForge: What would the project concretely produce as final output? Stefania Ducci: The final goal is a real and complete methodology for hacker profiling, released under GNU/FDL. This means that, at the end of our research project, if a company will send us its (as detailed as possible) logs related to an intrusion, we — exactly like in the TV show C.S.I. when evidence is found on the crime scene — will be able to provide a profile of the attacker. By 'profile' we mean, for example, his technical skills, his probable geographic location, an analysis of his modus operandi, and of a lot of other, small and big, traces left on the crime scene. This will also permit us to observe and, wherever possible, preview new attack trends, show rapid and drastic behavior changes, and, finally, provide a real picture of the world of hacking and its international scene."

Comments

Re:What have they done to our language

[mordors9]

Even accepting that you are correct that they are talking about crackers, I have the feeling that most of the script kiddies will not make the list. I assume they are talking about the real deal type guys that make their own cracks and then the other guys try to imitate them. Many of whom may even fall under our common definition of hacker. Those people that will discover a neat hack and then inform the other party of the problem. If not, if it is the script kiddies, it will be a very long and meaningless list.

Re:Like CSI?

[Otto]

Sure thing, except that the real explanation is that the car is made of metal and it acts as a Faraday cage, that's why you don't fry in a car if hit by lightning.

Actually, that's not correct either.

The real explanation is that a car is a big wide chunk of metal and that metal provides a better path to ground than the path which happens to go through your soft fleshy tissues.

For it to be a Faraday cage, it would have to be sealed or having only small holes (with their size depending on the frequency of the EM radiation you're wanting to block). Considering that you've got big chunks of glass instead of metal in it, a Faraday cage it definitely is not. Proof: You can pick up radio signals inside the car. A Faraday cage would not be able to get those, even with an external antenna and wires leading into the cage.

Sorry for being pedantic, but this is /. after all...