Slashdot Mirror
Stupid Hacker Tricks - The Folly of Youth
N_burnsy points out an article in Computerworld which "profiles several youthful hackers, some still serving prison time, some free, who have been caught indulging in some fairly serious cybercrime, and looks at their crimes and the lessons they have (or have not yet) learned.
Starting with Farid 'Diab10' Essebar, currently a guest of the Moroccan prison system, who wrote and distributed the Mytob, Rbot, and Zotob botnet Trojans. There's Ivan Maksakov, Alexander Petrov, and Denis Stepanov, all guests of the Russian penal system, sentenced to eight years at hard labor for creating a botnet to engage in DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks to blackmail online gambling sites based in the UK, threatening to take the sites down during major sporting events. Then there's Shawn Nematbakhsh who was a little too eager to prove a point about the electronic balloting system that the University of California employed to hold student council elections, by writing a script that cast 800 votes for a fictitious candidate named American Ninja." Not everyone on the list is exactly youthful, and the range of offenses shows how lumpy this area is both to the law and in public perception.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;193960399;fp;16;fpid;1;pf;1
steampunk web design
University student imprisoned for interfering in University council elections as a way to expose how bad the voting system is?
There is no justice in the world. That kid should have been given a fucking medal.
OK, if you're happy and carefree it no longer means you're gay unless you're homosexual, and hackers are now criminals who break into computers. Even the tech press is calling cyberglars* "hackers". Even slashdot, who should have striven to maintain the word that used to be a badge of honor back when nerds were being rediculed, uses "hacker" like the ignorant lusers do.
:(
So what's the new word for someone who writes quick and dirty code that actualy runs, or changes a transistor radio into a guitar fuzzbox?
BTW, if you wrote TFA shame on you! the proper word is "script kiddie", cyberglar, cyber burglar, "computer criminal". Not "hacker" for God's sake. Just because Joe Sixpack thinks a "hacker" is a criminal and RAM is a brand of truck doesn't mean we should share in their ignorance.
"I used to be a gay hacker, now I'm only a happy nerd"
-mcgrew
*Yes, I just coined that word. So sue me.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
that tom hanks/ leonardo decaprio movie about frank abagnale serves up the most useful point about guys like these:
1. convict them and put them in prison
2. take them out and convert their sentence into useful work for the federal government. if they f**k up, back in the hole they go
when some guy finds a chink in a voting system and exploits it, yes, he's done wrong, but he's also done society a service, no matter what his intentions were. this doesn't necessarily need to be rewarded, but it does need to be recognized as useful work in pursuit of a useful goal for society. these individuals, however morally and ethically flawed, still have use to society
what they need is supervision, like frank abegnale, and skills that previously went to petty vandalism and self-indulgence at the expense of society can instead be converted into useful work for society. these individual must be supervised, since their ability to form ethical and moral decisions has obviously been shown to be severely compromised, but you will note that frank abegnale today is currently very wealthy and quite the free man, and all of his current wealth accumulated through honest work. rehab is not only possible, but it is also profitable, for the individual who needs an ethical and moral correction, and society at large
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Shame on you Shawn Nematbakhsh, all respectable Slashdot-reading hackers know the fictitious candidate is always CowboyNeal.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
You know the fourth or fifth minute of any CSI episode, just before the Who song and the opening titles, wherein the cops are looking over the corpse of the week and one of them smirks and says something completely snarky and graveyard-humor-y about the whole situation to their appreciative chortling colleagues?
This whole article is like that.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
If even harmless hacks are illegal and may land you in jail, only serious criminals will take the risk (for serious potential money gains).
I think that is why there are less reports about benevolent hackers pointing out security flaws these days, but lots of reports about botnets for spamming and DDOS activities.
C - the footgun of programming languages
P.S. (on
I wonder what would that Rinzai guy show to a sexual predator.
"Cracker" is the distinction made only within the tech community. To the general populous, "hacker" is firmly entrenched and carries the same meaning.
If you really want to change that perception, plan to run full page ads in every major newspaper (because the people who misuse the term are less likely, imo, to get their news online) and launch a multi-million dollar TV campaign in every major market for a few years. Even then, you'll still be vexed by people who will use the old term, but having run the campaign, you'll be able to elevate your level of righteous indignation.
Then you might be able to start a new affinity group: Mankind for the Ethical Treatment of Hackers (METH).
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
If you are over 45 and you never attempted to gain unauthorized access before you were 20, you either
* were not skilled enough to avoid being caught and you knew it
* had VERY good morals
* didn't have an opportunity
Before the mid-80s "casual" hacking was just as likely to get you a job as it was punishment. By the late '80s and '90s there were much better ways to prove you were good and too many people were misusing other's computer for purposes other than "because they could" or "because it was cool" or to save a few bucks on long distance phone calls.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
About a year ago I was playing a silly Flash game at a site belonging to Telstra, and after a few rounds got bored and fired up Wireshark to see how it logged the scores.
I found the URL it used to post the scores back to the content server and, in a flash of idiotic curiosity, changed my score to some huge number, requested the URL and checked the scoreboard.
It was quite thrilling to see my name at the top, with a score a hundred thousand points higher than the next person - then I realised I'd probably committed fraud, especially since there were prizes for the winners. I hurriedly emailed Telstra, apologised very humbly, and asked them to forgive me. When I checked the scoreboard a few days later, my score was gone, and I never heard from them.
Pretty amazing, considering they had my mobile phone number, email address, IP address AND a written confession.. there must be some nice people working at Telstra (or they couldn't be bothered following it up). Either way, I'm very, very grateful that they let it slide.
If I come and expose the gaping security holes in your house, you'll be ok with that? If you come home and find me milling around in your living room or rifling through your things, you won't get mad right? After all, I was just exposing the security holes, I didn't do any harm!
If you aren't ok with me going through your things without permission, I'd have to ask why you are ok with with breaking in to someone else's stuff. You can't have it both ways, if your stuff isn't fair game, why is their stuff fair game?
And please don't pretend like you have any serious home security. I'm quite sure you have a standard pin-tumbler lock like everyone else in the world. Not only is it trivial to pick, but I don't even need to do that. Since the blanks aren't controlled I just get a blank and make a bump key.