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Forbes Offers a Sympathetic Portrayal of Hackers
selain03 sends us to Forbes for a surprisingly tolerant article on the recent Defcon. The reporter spoke to several of the event organizers and faithfully conveyed their characterization of the community as motivated by curiosity about technology. The article quotes a Department of Defense cybercrime guy: "Run-of-the-mill individual hackers are just noise as we try to focus on the real problem. We have to investigate every threat, but we're often dealing with ankle biters." A refreshing perspective to read in the mainstream media.
Because that doesn't sound like a sitcom or anything...
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
As shown in the past, it's often the very very simple hacks like finding an unprotected machine and installing sub7 on it that brings down the giants. A high level of technical experience is NOT a prereq. for a serious hack
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Who better to design safes than professional thieves?
The game.
Some of the Defcon guys thought it would be hilarious to hack a major media outlet and place a sympathetic story about themselves on it. Mission accomplished!
A Forbes article that isn't hyper-sensationalist and pro-status-quo?
What, was Daniel Lyons too busy impersonating Steve Jobs to do the piece?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Maybe I'm just being foreign, but what' the heck is an Ofer?
Why didn't the more interesting story about the evil undercover reporter who got pwned made it to the mainstream media? There's no justice in this world for hackers... Won't somebody think of the hackers? ;_;
Give Kashyyyk back to the Wookies
Maybe they saw what happened to the other reporter. *shudders*
But, of all the places, why Forbes? Couldn't they have picked some respectable outlet?
Maybe Forbes was the only site they had any luck with, since, having alienated techies so thoroughly, they couldn't hire a competent webadmin.
"They're so cute when they launch missles."
Table-ized A.I.
All it has is 3 things: (1) Articles that state the obvious (2) Shit load of Rolex and Lexus ads (3) Those top 10 lists like 'top 10 affordable vacation getaways' where their definition of affordable vacation is something that costs between $30k and $100k.
Sometimes it is almost like they are taunting the reader, saying "look, drool and weep".
Even in this article, their 'discovery' is that serious hackers are curious about technology, script-kiddies are just a nuisance.
Color me surpised...
This falls flat. Just wanting to break in without permission is criminal intent.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Hacker originally meant anyone who dabbles with ANY code. Not necessarily bypassing security, and not necessarily on someone elses computer, and not necessarily without consent.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
I think the word you are looking for is malicious intent not criminal intent.
Nah, Forbes is just so single minded it's super easy to guess their passwords (it's money, by the by... always money).
So, kind of like a flat tax?
Both peep into locker rooms and watch 12 year-olds undressing, but there's a big difference! The pervert is doing it because he is a criminal and the concerned citizen is just doing it to see how it is done so that they can know how perverts do it.
Please folks... just proving you can break into someone elses computer or their car or spy on their daughters is wrong. If you really want to do something for experimental reasons then set up your own car, computer or whatever.
All cracking/hacking someone elses equipment is back hat.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Don't underestimate the power of a desperate hacker in shiny leathers.
Umm, no. Being a hacker has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to break into somebody's computer, be it for fun, profit, or whatever else.
Being a hacker has everything to do with having talent at and taking delight in learning how large, complicated but internally consistent systems work and then using that knowledge to solve problems, overcome limitations and make improvements. A hacker is somebody who instinctively wants to take things - most often computer systems/programs - apart, tinker with them, put them back together again and in doing so learn something, so that they can do really clever things with that knowledge later: and who gets off on doing all of this.
Hackers existed before most computers were connected to any other computers to break into.
I've often heard what you call a 'hacker' called a 'white hat hacker' and what you call a 'cracker' called a 'black hat hacker'.
When I was just starting learning security stuff circa '95-'97 the term 'cracker' referred (in most stuff I read and by people I talked to at the time) to people who modified binaries on their own system to do things they weren't supposed to (such as a no cd crack or adding new features to a binary - it didn't have to be illegal), while hacking usually referred to gaining unauthorized access to anything, be it local or over network.
It all depends on what crowd you gained your definitions of hacking and cracking from. I prefer these definitions because they seem to have more precision. You can hack for multiple reasons (good or bad, white or black hat), you can crack for multiple reasons (good or bad, white or black hat).
A company I worked for had a lot of cracked copies of their software circulating the Internet and I spent some of my time for them reverse engineering and preventing one of their more mysterious and unsolved cracks - I'd call that white hat cracking.
OMG! WTF! Ruuuuuuu-un!
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
so what if it's bad, or considered wrong. Wanting innocent hacking to not be seen as illegal is boring. Part of getting access to a system is the risk of getting caught! Risk is fun. If it wasn't we would only be content hacking sandboxes of our own creation. uhh, haven't heard this for a while... Hack the planet!
Balderdash!
Be sure to remember that when that hacker breaking in without criminal intent gets you injured or killed because of any number of the following. The computer they broke into and subsequently crashed or fiddled with operates complex medical equipment, from MR machines to CT scanners to any of the new latest and greatest wizbang remote surgery technologies. How are you going to feel when the specialist cutting on you from thousands of miles away can't complete the surgery because some "innocent" "non criminal" hacker satisfied his curiosity on a critical piece of equipment. We can also talk about industry jobs...where the innocent hacker causes problems with a mfg machine controlled by the computer they are in. I had the pleasure of watching a laser cutter start to cut through itself due to an accidental oversight in simple software settings, the guy running it caught it really quick, but it still left a nice small cut in the frame.
Hackers can play with their own shit all they want, they can set up VMs and any number of other setups to play and tinker and test. I'm sure you will have a wonderful time explaining to the cops that you didn't want to steal anything when you get caught bumping locks that don't belong to you "out of curiousity".
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
And what's really ironic is it's much easier to learn social engineering by reading from a script than it is to program. Programming requires long nights of trial and error, banging you head against the wall. Any telemarketer could perform basic social engineering.
According to the awards ceremony, nobody fessed up to owning any of them. DT hypothesized that it was because once somebody got into the box, they saw that it was a PIII and felt it wasn't worth their time. He didn't give any more details though.
Uh no.
Way back in the day, Hackers were and still are the folks creating the scripts.
"script kiddies" were little wanker wannabes that logged into an IRC chat or usenet session
and eavesdropped, glommed, or begged scripts out of real programmers. They then ran these
scripts thinking they were so 133t! This may have changed, but if you're actually writing or modifying
code call yourself anything other than a script kiddie.
Most of these so called script kiddies I've met couldn't code themselves out of a paper bag.
But they were so awesome when they stole someone else's script, broke into the local phone system, got caught and went to juvie.
It's not breaking into things, it's figuring how things work.
Mod me redundant, because this should be repeated 10 times down the list by the time I post.
Thanks. I've been curious about the results since I saw several requests for systems for the contest.
A hacker is a person with no criminal intent breaking into a computer and just wants to do it to satisfy his curiosity, this however is not generally acceptable in our society. A Cracker is someone who does have criminal intent when breaking into a computer and does it for ulterior motives other then the attaining of knowledge. I believe the former should be allowed while the latter should be strictly discouraged.
I think this is - looked at coldly and realistically - simply too fine a distinction for the public to make.
Part of the thrill of voyeurism may lie in almost being caught. For some, the closer the voyeur is to being discovered, the larger the thrill. Voyeurism
That strikes a little too close to home if "curiosity" is your motive - and technical proficiency your means.
Nor is the "hack-ee" required to take you at your word. It's a bit like planting a camera in the girl's dorm room and claiming later that you never meant to view - or distribute - the video.
The only proof that your "hack" succeeded.
I'd like to take a moment here to mourn American Heritage and its sister publication I & T, or as it was once known, The American Heritage [of] Invention and Technology. Literate, distinguished, gorgeously illustrated.