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Vint Cerf on Net Security, Hacking, and Acting

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the internet-hams dept.

ancientribe writes "Father of the Internet Vint Cerf talks candidly in an article on Dark Reading about his being a Googler, and the biggest problems with Internet security and what he sees as the most promising solutions. He says that he's only done a little casual hacking, and that the term 'hacker' no longer comes with the honor it once did. Cerf also reveals in this personal look at the Internet icon that his real dream was to be an actor."

45 comments

  1. With the right definition... by Spazntwich · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'd say he's been a fairly significant actor on the international stage.

    Now he's just strutting and fretting his last few minutes on it though.

  2. Music by Metasquares · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From TFA:

    "I used to play the cello -- and regret that I gave it up so entirely in pursuit of science and math"
    I would say this is good advice for others doing intense study in science and math: don't give up everything else that you love or you will regret it for the rest of your life, even if you do become famous in your field.
    1. Re:Music by ch-chuck · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That is good advice indeed.

      --
      try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
    2. Re:Music by SnippyHolloW · · Score: 1

      Often hard when you have to focus both on your studies and passions (guitar, sports) ...

    3. Re:Music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Whats the difference between a chello player and a large pizza?

      A large pizza can feed a family of 4.

    4. Re:Music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, because Einstein ended up a balanced and happy man...

    5. Re:Music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      chello player[sic] You failed it.
  3. The Architect by MythMoth · · Score: 1

    I like his comment about The Architect from The Matrix Reloaded as a candidate for playing him in a movie. The analogy is neat and there really is a more than passing resemblance!

    Vint

    It's nice to see an eminent man with a proper sense of humour.

    --
    --- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
    1. Re:The Architect by MythMoth · · Score: 2, Informative

      And here's someone's blog entry making the point better than I did.

      --
      --- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
    2. Re:The Architect by thoughtlover · · Score: 1

      He does look like the Architect with the glasses on, but I thought he was referring to 'acting' as 'hacking'. I remember hearing that the most high-profile hacks were socially-engineered, thus allowing someone to gain access to unsecured, or lesser secured, computers within a company, rather than using a computer to hack inside.

      --
      No sig for you! Come back one year!
  4. DARPA Trilogy? by skoaldipper · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actor who would play Cerf in a movie: "Well, how about that guy in 'Matrix' who played 'the Architect?'"

    DARPA Revolutions

    The Architect - Hello, Al.
    Al - Who are you?
    Architect - I created the Internet.
    Al - Bullshit.
    The Architect - Humph. Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.
    Al - If I were you, I would hope that we don't meet again.
    The Architect - We won't.
    --
    I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
    1. Re:DARPA Trilogy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Advance copy of the first movies script.

    2. Re:DARPA Trilogy? by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 1

      How about Courtney Love to play Esther Dyson?

      --
      No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
    3. Re:DARPA Trilogy? by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 1

      They're hardly rivals.

      http://www.politechbot.com/p-01394.html

      "By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
      Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development."

      --

      --
      $tar -xvf .sig.tar
  5. Re:hackers given a bad name? by e-scetic · · Score: 1

    By the same token, who gives a shit what YOU think, and why are you whining and wasting my bandwidth?

    I happen to like and admire Cerf and enjoyed the minor update. I appreciate the poster having posted it and think it qualifies as "geek" news.

  6. He did do a brief acting stint by koreth · · Score: 4, Informative
    I remember seeing him in a bit part on "Earth: Final Conflict" as a presidential science advisor or somesuch.

    Ah, yes, he has an IMDB page detailing his appearances. So it looks like he got to live at least a tiny bit of that particular dream. Good for him!

    1. Re:He did do a brief acting stint by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      Maybe something was left out of that entry. To me, it reads like a production adviser, not an on-screen role.

  7. Does not mention M$ by name, what a let down. by twitter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The security quote:

    Cerf says the biggest threats are the proliferation of spam, botnets, malware, and denial-of-service attacks. "Much work is needed to increase the security of the Internet and its connected computers," he says, "and to make the environment more reliable for everyone."

    "And use of IPSec would foil some higher-level protocol attacks, and digital signing of IP address assignment records could reduce some routing/spoofing risks," he says. OSes need to be more airtight, too, and two-factor authentication should be more the norm than plain old passwords, he says.

    But Cerf knows securing his baby won't be easy. "Security is a mesh of actions and features and mechanisms," he says. "No one thing makes you secure."

    It's too bad the reporter injected so much of their own opinion into the article. I'd much rather have heard Cert's own words than interpretations. The result is that it looks like the reporter did not ask the right questions at the time to get clear answers.

    Reading and rereading the above, it looks like he's thinking of ways to make the network work without having to trust the clients attached. That would be a neat trick.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

    1. Re:Does not mention M$ by name, what a let down. by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Funny

      it looks like he's thinking of ways to make the network work without having to trust the clients attached. That would be a neat trick.

      We could call it an internet.

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  8. Re:Father of the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Father of the Internet Vint Cerf WHAT not Al Gore!?
    No... they're both the father of the internet, they just can't get legally married yet.
  9. You can call me A.I. by sbowles · · Score: 1

    Did you mean A.I. or Al (as in Al Gore)?

    --
    You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
    1. Re:You can call me A.I. by skoaldipper · · Score: 1

      Al, as in Gore. But either A.I. or Al works though. What does A in A.I. stand for again? I keed! I keed! Uh oh. I sense a disturbance in the karma force.

      --
      I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
    2. Re:You can call me A.I. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      What does A in A.I. stand for again?

      Allen

  10. Re:Father of the internet by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Funny

    Father of the Internet Vint Cerf WHAT not Al Gore!?

          I demand DNS testing!!!

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  11. Those were the days... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Interesting
    He's probably one of the only people at Google who can remember the Arpanet or what the Internet was like before the Web.

    Hell, *I* remember ARPAnet and the Internet before the Web! BSD 4.2/3 on a VAX 785, Sun 3 and diskless clients, routing email using "host!host!user", ASCII terminals, Xerox LISP workstations and the days before EMACS... [ That last one can be used as either the beginning or end of a camp-fire horror story :-) ]

    I'm getting old.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Those were the days... by leshert · · Score: 1

      I was about to post the same thing. Hell, I'm almost exactly half his age, and I remember that. Either the author is too young or too careless to have a clue when these things happened, or else he thinks Google is populated mostly by 20-somethings with only an occasional Elder Statesman like Mr. Cerf (hint: it's not).

      Seeing such an obvious error in the first sentence rather soured me on the whole article.

    2. Re:Those were the days... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know enough to correct you - it's 4.2/3 BSD - and I'm familiar with all of what you mention...but my reaction is that I wish I had been born 10-20 years earlier, or been a bit more privileged as a kid...sadly, I had to get my start in the stupid microcomputer world of the 80s, and wasn't introduced to the much older (but in many ways much more intelligent) things until the early 90s.

      From what I understand, the pre-Web internet existed for quite some time after the original ARPAnet...when I got internet access, the web was a new (and fairly unimportant) development; I wanted the internet for e-mail, Usenet and FTP, and I got it via a Unix shell account (as in, dial up via modem to get a Unix login: prompt).

  12. Is it just me or by Malakusen · · Score: 1

    Does hacking have less of the mystique it used to? I remember back in the 90s, when everybody was still pretty much new to the whole computers and internet thing, society as a whole was just waking up to what could be done on the internet and how much of it. Seems like there's too many people on the internet now, it's gotten common and ordinary. Every jackass has a Myspace page these days, whereas back in the 90s people who could use the internet were smart enough not to put info about their personal life up there.

    And yes, I realize that true old school is using an Atari or a Commodore to connect to a BBS with a 14.4 dialup like I've got in the back room, but the 90s were when the internet was accessible for anybody interested, and yet still uncommon enough that everybody and his brother weren't online.

    --
    Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
    1. Re:Is it just me or by dedazo · · Score: 1

      I think it also has to do with the inevitable negative connotations of the term "hacking" that the mainstream media has perpetuated. "Hacker" has become a synonim for "criminal", unfortunately.

      --
      Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
    2. Re:Is it just me or by Bender0x7D1 · · Score: 1

      14.4?!? I wish! I was happy with 1200 on my Commodore and I didn't get up to 9600 until I bought my 386.

      --
      Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
    3. Re:Is it just me or by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's l33t hax0r, home skillet! I prefer cracker because media won't be so eager to use it as it carries a racist connotation--big no-no in the madia world; also redefining a term into what it's being redefined as is definitely hacker material.

    4. Re:Is it just me or by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1200!?! my first modem was 300 baud on my commodore 64! I'm only 29 years old! (I was a broke kid).

    5. Re:Is it just me or by chris.evans · · Score: 1

      True old school is a Commodore vic-20 with a 1200bps modem :)

  13. educate yourself by dedazo · · Score: 1, Insightful
    I'm sure it's a huge disappointment to you that "M$" was not mentioned by name - that's probably because Cerf knows the problem can hardly be blamed on Microsoft, and there are a lot of *nix boxes out there that are also part of "big iron" botnets. You might want to look through this. Or Google a bit, if you're interested. You'll find lots of studies by people generally smarter than yourself that do not exonerate "M$" but don't stick them exclusively with the blame either, because it would be disingenuous to do so. I find that even people on Slashdot tend to be a bit more intelligent than to just blame everything on "M$" and be on their merry way.

    People like yourself that live in Linux la-la land where everything is Microsoft's fault are going to be the most problematic when/if desktop Linux actually gains any traction among home users. The same group of people who can't be bothered to buy a $25 NAT router and keep their machines patched. What, do you figure botnets just take machines over by osmosis?

    Of course it would be ridiculous to claim that Windows is not part of the problem here, but the problem is not as simplistic as you like to portray it.

    --
    Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
  14. Vint Cerf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Vint Cerf might be the father of the Internet...

    ..but we're the mothers that have to make it work!

  15. Speak for yourself, troll. by twitter · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    "M$" was not mentioned by name - that's probably because Cerf knows the problem can hardly be blamed on Microsoft

    I'll let Cerf tell me that, not some troll like you. The little slide show you pointed to mentioned XP but no other OS. What exactly were you trying to tell me? Have you found a successful gnu/linux hosted botnet outside of a lab? Take your chicken little nonsense back to Redmond and help those idiots hold up the sky, because it has fallen on them.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

    1. Re:Speak for yourself, troll. by The+Bungi · · Score: 0, Troll
      Have you found a successful gnu/linux hosted botnet outside of a lab? Take your chicken little nonsense back to Redmond

      Oh flocktard-in-chief, I'm eagerly awaiting your response to dedazo. I mean, it does not get any better than your prick arrogant "well show me" and then BOOM BABY!! Go on, I'm looking forward to it, as always.

  16. Yoda sez: Anger leads to bullshit by dedazo · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Don't get your panties in a bunch. Why do you act like every single response to your posts is a personal insult? What, you think these 10,000 boxes were running "Windoze"? That's kind of a catch 22 for people like you, isn't it? The best IRC software runs on BSD and Linux, or at least I've never seen an IRC server that works well on Windows. Ergo, what were those machines running? BeOS? AmigaOS? Heh.

    Don't let your insane hatred of Microsoft blind you to reality. Botnets are not an OS problem, they're a process, people and security problem. You can't change that (or anything else) by claiming everything you think is wrong is Microsoft's fault, or whining that anyone who points out otherwise is employed by them. Your little "if you don't hate everything I do and think the same way I do then you must work for M$" mantra gets more annoying every day.

    --
    Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
  17. It soured me too by Wee · · Score: 2, Informative
    I was soured on the rest of it as well, so much so that I wrote them an email.

    The author was (I think) trying to set up Google as young company, with Vint as a senior benefactor, juxtaposing his age with the myth of everyone here being 24 years old. Or something. But I can name 5 people here off the top of my head (myself included) whose experience predates the web, or who worked with/on/over ARPAnet in some way. If I stand up and look around, I'll spot no less than 8 people with grey hair. Not everyone is fresh out of college.

    I was just very puzzled as to why they chose that sentence to start off the article. But the rest of the piece turned out to be mostly fluff, so I saw it for what it was in the end.

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

  18. Re:hackers given a bad name? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ah just shut up Tom, stop subjecting us to your whiny babble yet again. Don't you have anything better to do with your time?

  19. Maybe if he could have done both by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH2-Yhl84UM

  20. What, nothing? by dedazo · · Score: 1

    So twit, are you going to honor me with your incisive rebuttal? I found your supposedly non-existent "gnu/linux" botnet well enough - how about some actual discussion instead of your infantile "oh you must work for M$ and I hate you" bullshit?

    --
    Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo