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Teen Hacks $84 Million Porn Filter in 30 Minutes

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the worth-every-penny dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Wood, a Year 10 Australian student has cracked the federal government's $84-million Internet porn filter in just 30 minutes. He can deactivate the filter in several clicks in such a way that the software's icon is not deleted which will make his parents believe the filter is still working. Tom says it is a matter of time before some computer-savvy kid puts the bypass on the Internet for others to use."

23 of 479 comments (clear)

  1. b-b-b-but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    They said it'd take at least 10 years because they used the same cryptography in Blu-Ray!!!

    1. Re:b-b-b-but by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's why they are so reluctant of allowing porn in Blu-ray. While all we get from breaking the lame DRM is hollywood crapiest, no one will be interested. Once there's porn to be seen, behind DRM...

  2. What an awesome photo on the news page by Lt.Hawkins · · Score: 5, Funny

    "We got Skynet by the balls now" sums it up quite nicely.

    --
    -- My Sig is a P228.
  3. Motivated Youth by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Funny

    Keeping a teen from porn is like trying to keep Vervet monkeys out of the fields.
    Unless you are willing to shoot them, it is a lost cause.

    1. Re:Motivated Youth by mulhollandj · · Score: 5, Funny

      I strongly disagree. There are very effective ways to keep teens away from porn. They involve teaching a kid to respect themselves and others. It involves talking to your kids about these things. It involves teaching your kids correct principles when they are young and being a good parent. Is it possible to have your child never see porn? Probably not as there are many conspiring men who have their hearts set on addicting as many as they can but you can teach your kid never to go looking for it and what to do if he accidentally finds it.

    2. Re:Motivated Youth by gerbalblaste · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I do believe your confusing porn with something emotional and meaningfull, like say a relationship. Its a quick physical release, nothing more.

    3. Re:Motivated Youth by sqrt(2) · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're starting all of your thoughts at the idea that teens shouldn't be seeing porn. And to the core of that idea is that teens seeing porn is bad for them. I don't believe there's harm with kids old enough to want to see porn, seeing porn. Don't take my words to mean we should be encouraging it, or that we should make it easy for them to do so, but 84 million to STOP it? That's a little off the deep end of the morality pool for me, that money could have been used in much better ways.

      Your teenage children are going to see porn. They're going to look for it. The "Not MY kids!" mentality isn't helping either. Yes, even your perfect Christian soldier children are going to actively seek out and consume pornography at least once in their lives. Whether, and to the extent that they're able to repress that is determined by how much of your morality actually stuck when you were brainwashing them to feel guilty about perfectly natural and healthy things.

      But hey, keep on rocking in the free world, I'm not a parent and it's not my job to tell anyone else how to be one. I think I do have a bit more common sense than a lot of the people who do end up raising kids though. Sometimes I think it's a shame I wont have any of my own.

      I'm sensing a karma burn here, but what good is having it if you don't use it :P

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      If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
    4. Re:Motivated Youth by feepness · · Score: 5, Funny

      Probably not as there are many conspiring men who have their hearts set on addicting as many as they can but you can teach your kid never to go looking for it and what to do if he accidentally finds it. And if you can't teach your child not to go looking for it, at least teach them to be smart enough to never have to pay for it. I mean, sheesh, this is 2007 people.
    5. Re:Motivated Youth by Rabbit+Time! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Honestly, I don't think there's anything wrong with teens looking at porn. But there are a couple important things to keep in mind, IMO:

      a) being exposed to too much porn without any actual, real sexual relationships to compare it to totally screws up your view of what actual sexual relationships are like. This is a good reason to try to limit young teens' porn consumption until they're a little older and have a little more experience. I know some people with seriously f-ed up ideas of how sex should be, or what they expect their partner to be cool with doing...simply because they watch too much porn and don't talk to enough actual women. Fantasy, people. It's fantasy.

      b) Weird, violent or just kind of sick porn is getting a lot easier to find and a lot more mainstream. While I, personally, think its totally fine for teens to look at pictures of naked people having sex in moderation, I think that its probably not that healthy for them to be looking at crazy-ass fetish stuff before they have the necessary experience to put it in context. This is not to say that I'm particularly opposed to porn that caters to various fetishes as long as they're made safely with consenting and not coerced performers...just that you need to take the basic class before you move to the advanced level, you know?

      This, actually...is why I kind of support making it harder for teens to look at porn, even though I don't really have an issue with it. Because that way, you know they'll figure out some way to get it anyway, but it will hopefully limit their consumption. Its like how when I got older I found out neither of my parents gave a crap about me smoking pot, and knew that I was, but fear of getting caught kept me from smoking too much of it or doing anything really dumb as a teenager. Maybe that's sort of hypocritical viewpoint, but I think its probably fairly practical, since trying to explain to a teenage boy why he should voluntarily control his porn consumption is just not going to work.

    6. Re:Motivated Youth by kennygraham · · Score: 5, Funny

      So we should avoid something simply because it's pleasureful? Oh, wait, just saw your sig. That explains it. Carry on.

    7. Re:Motivated Youth by sethawoolley · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I do believe your confusing porn with something emotional and meaningful, like say a relationship. Its a quick physical release, nothing more.

      It's the hedonistic pleasure part of porn that is the problem. Teach children to not engage in materialistic pleasures and they won't be so interested in porn.

      That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?

      As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.

      I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.

      I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.

      Just look at what you Christians cherish -- pity, guilt, sin -- not to mention guilt through inheritance, which no rational society anymore recognizes.

      May Christianity be the last, dying Hellenistic Mystery Religion.

    8. Re:Motivated Youth by NMerriam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      being exposed to too much porn without any actual, real sexual relationships to compare it to totally screws up your view of what actual sexual relationships are like. This is a good reason to try to limit young teens' porn consumption until they're a little older and have a little more experience. I know some people with seriously f-ed up ideas of how sex should be, or what they expect their partner to be cool with doing...simply because they watch too much porn and don't talk to enough actual women. Fantasy, people. It's fantasy.


      Except, I'd say in my experience and those I've know, that romantic movies do FAR more damage to young people's expectations of how real life relationships and sex work. The idea that sex is always some beautifully choreographed, slow-motion event ending in simultaneous orgasm makes LOTS of people think they're doing something "wrong" when they first have sex.

      And the vast majority of romance movies, if looked at objectively, basically encourage the notion of relentless pursuit through any means of trickery and illegal activity, no matter how many times the object of your affection says no. Because if you just stalk her enough, eventually she'll realize you're her perfect man! in terms of danger, I'd say that's a MUCH worse idea to put in kids' heads than the idea that maybe they'll meet a girl who likes to blow horses.

      Of course I'm not saying we should censor Meg Ryan films so that kids don't get an inappropriate view of romance, just that in real-life relationship terms it is pretty easy for most self-aware teens to understand what is unrealistic about porn.
      --
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    9. Re:Motivated Youth by sethawoolley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That somebody might be happy... would be so bad for you, wouldn't it?

      I'll respond to your post since there is more to say and I can reply to yours and the other one at the same time for one of my answers. First, nothing nor no one (such as myself) says a person can't be happy. I only was talking about not getting pleasure from porn. Are you implying that you have no other source of pleasure? I feel bad for you.

      In Christianity, pleasure is only good if it aligns with somebody else's pleasure for its their gain -- the religion's mythical (and surrogate) headmasters.

      Any incidental pleasure is always denied because it takes joy away from life, and if joy can only be found within the fold, all the better for the psychological meme of religion.

      As Nietzsche says, Christianity makes the whole of life repulsive.

      There are so many other people who have the exact opposite feeling towards religion and Christianity in particular that I'll leave it up to you to realize that Nietzsche doesn't know what he is talking about and more likely has a biased opinion of something he knows nothing about.

      Others have already pointed out that you must not know who Nietzsche was.

      I for one, don't think pleasure is at all a bad thing. That meaningful relationships are much more pleasurable than porn means we really don't have to worry about it systematically, unlike your apothecary soul.

      Hmm, seems you need to fix your reading comprehension problems. I never said that pleasure in and of itself is bad. I said pleasure from porn is bad.

      Because it's pleasure not found in alignment with your religion. The pleasures are so small and so restricted to brainwashing, that ultimately the pleasures are very few. About the only acceptable pleasure is making future brainwashed offspring, and even then, religion has historically debated the merit of such pleasure.

      I'll pause for a few seconds while you re-read my post now with that context in place......................back? Ok, good. Now, God gave us sex to not only enjoy but also procreate however those 2 goals are supposed to be done at the same time, not separate. We shouldn't take advantage of the procreation capability to just enjoy meaningless sex. That's where the issue of pleasure comes from. There are millions of things to take pleasure in but taking ONLY pleasure in something like sex is not it's intended purpose. Of course, we humans will mutate anything for our own pleasure (quite relevant in this case). How often we have watched horrific violence time and again because we find it entertaining? This particular topic of porn was in the context of children watching it on the Internet and not adults watching it to enhance their sex lives so with that said why would someone want to watch something alone and get pleasure out of it when they could enjoy it more if they could share it with someone? Again, humans are lazy so we take the easy way out. We'll pleasure ourselves because it is just too time consuming to find someone to enjoy it with. I can't imagine what will happen in 2029.

      When children get sexual urges, you would have them restrict them for years. That's repression.

      I do worry, no I pity those who live life in constant repression.

      I do too but I also am not that interested in the materliastic aspects of this world to which you think exposure helps someone become unrepressed. They really aren't that great in the whole scheme of things. Sure, if you are a mindless drone you will take part in those things solely for their immediate rewards but more intelligent people will look past the immediate pleasure and see the greater good.

      Again, materialism is by definition, anything not aligned with your religion, so you are implicitly being anti-worldly, and anti-pleasure of anything not "spiritual".

  4. And the only reason it took 30 minutes... by Southpaw018 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...was because all the other people were typing one-handed?

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  5. Tom Wood by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

    Tom Wood sounds more like a porn star's screen name.

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    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  6. More Money, More Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Could it be that throwing tax dollars at moral problems when not everyone agrees on whether or not said act is immoral is not the best idea?

  7. Fucking morons. by scenestar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    When are people going to accept that teenagers are sexual beings too.

    According to wikipedia he should be around the age of 15/16
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Australi a#Secondary

    When I was 15 I remember becoming sexually active with girls and having "needs"

    No filter can stop teens from getting off, no matter how many millions of dollars you throw at it.

    --
    perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
    1. Re:Fucking morons. by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's what sexual education is for. There is a direct relationship between the quality of sexual education in school and the number of teens who make it through puberty without causing pregnancy or getting pregnant.

      Preaching "True love waits" has a proven effect of NIL.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
  8. Here's a link to a real news article... by stoicfaux · · Score: 5, Informative

    The header links to a ad-laden, news light article. Here's a link to a better story with a tad more facts: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22304224-421, 00.html

  9. Cheapest Solution... by arthurpaliden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The simplest and cheapest way to stop / reduce a kids ability / opportunity to access porn, an other such nefarious sites, on the Internet is to put the computer in a well traveled place in the home, say beside the kitchen and not up in there room where they cannot be supervised directly.



    Its called 'parenting' and it really works.



    Rebuttals featuring 'special cases' will be ignored.

    --
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  10. Filter Schmilter. by Organic+Brain+Damage · · Score: 5, Funny

    The problem of teen access to internet porn is self-limiting. The boy will eventually go blind and then what's he gonna do? Digitized braille porn?

  11. Re:84 million dollars? by statusbar · · Score: 5, Insightful
    You fail 21st century business.

    I used to think this way when I heard about the Canadian Government budgeting $120 million dollars on a database and website for their Gun Registry, which ended up costing almost $2 billion. At the point where they spent half a billion dollars on the IT infrastructure alone it still did not work. Phones were not answered, web sites crashed, FAX lines busy.

    I then thought "Oh hey I could have built them a distributed database and front end that would work for only about $20 million!"

    But that is not what they wanted... They wanted to spend more and they didn't care if it worked. It's all about the kickbacks.

    --jeffk++

    --
    ipv6 is my vpn
  12. Surely you don't mean... by mutube · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but you can teach your kid never to go looking for it and what to do if he accidentally finds it.

    Masturbate?
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