World's Worst Hacker?

An anonymous reader submitted a video clip that allegedly demonstrates a hacker working in a honeypot. If you fear for the future security of the internet, this video will set your mind at ease.

Comments

Re:What he's doing?

[bsDaemon]

I saw this last week. There were all kinds of hilarious inabilities to properly change directories or find scripts, which is why he kept downloading the same crap over and over again. Just for fun, my boss here (at a well-known company that makes security products involving pigs) fetched some of the files that the kid was trying to use. Half of the scripts were just fucking awful, such as hard-coding repetitive actions rather than using loops. The so-called "hacker" also left clues to his identity all over the crappy "sploits", too.

I honestly have a hard time believing the douchebag in the video was able to get a shell, even on a honeypot, and then fail to be able to change directories. However, the kits he was fetching were also so terrible I don't think that even if this hadn't been a honeypot he'd ever have gotten any local privilege escalations anyway.

oh, it's a troll

[FuckingNickName]

First I just thought "well, not everyone is a super smart irrelevant cubicle IT support geek" and shrugged at the point that was trying to be made - which, I guess, is something along the lines of "it's really this easy to break in to some systems, and it's great to laugh at people who.. err.. manage it, because not everyone knows what to do next."

Then I saw them downloading W2Ksp3, and realised that the whole thing is just a bit of sensationalism to get pageviews. The hacker is as genuine as the honeypot.

Re:oh, it's a troll

[FuckingNickName]

Well, I now have a second point: improve your cognitive skills. A honeypot is not genuine in the sense that it is not providing a genuine public service, merely sitting there trying to lure ne'er-do-wells. And the person typing is not genuine in the sense that he is probably the video author, trying to get hits for his site by playing the almost risk-free "make geeks feel superior" gambit.

True Story from Michigan

[PhilipTheHermit]

So, back when I was an undergrad and used to play around on MUDs, my roommate and I wound up talking to a young woman who claimed to be a hacker. She wanted to get together, and asked if she could bring a friend. Figuring we were about to get incredibly laid, we invited her up to the university. Young and dumb, what can I say.

We met her and her friend at a rest stop. We waited for a long time, and were about to leave when an incredibly ramshackle old sedan rolled up, with its muffler clanking and rattling, its headlights flickering, and great clouds of blue smoke trailing out behind. A beautiful girl leapt out of the car, followed by her friend: a very tall, very skinny punker dude.

Our spirits were crushed, but being polite computer science students, we couldn't figure out how to get rid of them. They didn't have enough gasoline to get home, but they DID have booze. So we went back to the university.

Immediately they wanted to "hack a computer", and marched to the computer lab, which was still open. This was where we talked on the MUD. There was no talking them out of it. Trailing behind them, wondering what on earth they thought they were going to be able to do from a computer lab, we somberly shuffled along.

On seeing a computer, the girl leapt into action! jumping into the seat, she said "I'm gonna hack this bitch!" and her boyfriend perched on the back of her seat to egg her on. I said something like "hey, look, don't do anything that'll get anyone in trouble, ok?" and she said something like "don't worry, I'm leet, nobody's ever going to know I was here!" This did not soothe my fears. I was about to say something else when she got a DOS prompt, and started typing in random passwords.

> God
> File not found. (I don't remember the exact words)
> Sex
> File not found.

(This went on for a long time.)

My roommate and I chatted quietly a few feet away, greatly relieved. We admitted our suspicion that this person did not, in fact, know anything about computers, or possibly anything else. To our enormous relief, the person appeared to be harmless. Also, it was becoming clear that neither one of us were going to get any. We wondered what we should do. We didn't want to be rude.

Suddenly, I had a thought. "Let's get her into the MUD!" My roommate thought that was an excellent idea, so we said "Hey, somebody wrote this path on a piece of paper over there... Maybe it'll get you in!" She tried it, and was allowed to log into the MUD. She yelled out in triumph! She was invincible!

She played happily on the MUD for about a half hour, with her boyfriend proudly telling us how "leet" she's always been, and then we went back to our room. We let them crash on the suite couch, and they were gone in the morning.

I wonder how many "hackers" are like this? Just trying stuff they saw on TV, with no understanding of what's actually going on?

Anyway, she was gorgeous, so I think we can be forgiven for indulging her a bit. She was about 5'5, with pale skin, medium brown long straight hair down to her hips, and a mix of hippie and punk clothes. Such an appealing woman... Not really connected to reality, exactly, but definitely not boring.