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Author Says It's Time To Stop Glorifying Hackers
First time accepted submitter Geste writes "Diane McWhorter pleads in this NYT Op-Ed piece that it's time to stop glorifying hackers. Among other things she rails against providers' tendencies to 'blame the victim' with advice on improved password discipline. Interesting, but what lesson are we to learn from someone who emails lists of passwords to herself?"
glorifying actors, sports figures, politicians, generals, soldiers, writers, artists, architects, Canadians, cooks, race car drivers, the old, children, dogs, accountants, spies, computer programmers, cowboys, drug smugglers, and the disabled.
Note to the press: "Hackers" doesn't mean what you think is means.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Stop falling for the clickbait, Slashdot.
They don't do it for the press.
Without hackers you wouldn't have the level of awareness, support, transparency and resolve as you do now. 99% of all related computer/electronic security/functionality is directly contributed by hackers. Personal or hidden agenda's aside.
Hackers are testers and without testing a product fails, period.
And yea, that's spelled right. In all 57 states.
Next thing you know we'll stop teaching kids to look both ways before crossing the street because we're teaching people not to drive drunk. But this just isn't how the world works.
Why the hell is there a trend nowadays to call it "victim blaming" to give people advice on protecting themselves? Is it really such a bad idea for people to do things to protect their passwords?
I guess telling people to run antivirus is now "victim blaming", too.
FC Closer
So she emailed a list of passwords to herself, didn't bother encrypting it, and kept it in her on-line email account for 9 months, then she's actually surprised when she gets hacked?
I look forward to the day when America gets back to the point where people start taking responsibility for their own actions again, instead of always looking for someone else to blame (and sue) for their own stupidity.
He *emailed* himself his own password list then whines when his account gets hacked.
NO SURPRISE HERE.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
If someone gets to her gmail account - WHERE SHE KEPT A LIST OF PASSWORDS SHE MAILED TO HERSELF - then why isn't she thinking "gosh, maybe 'loverlady' isn't a good password after all"?
Why do I recognize that name? What other stupid shit has she said?
All others have to be quiet naive idiots ?
I corrected it myself.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will- ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert. This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals. Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike. - The Mentor
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
See Adrienne Brown, who really was victim blamed.
Or the poor woman in the Steubenville Rape case.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Author Diane McWhorter identity was stolen 6 times today
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Whether they play the victim card or not, we should still hold organizations accountable for not following security best practices such as those outlined by PCI/DSS. Target, for example, SHOULD have known better but decided to dismiss and overlook fundamental security concerns that COULD have been mitigated. The real question is WHO are they seeking glory from? I suspect the answer it is within their own peer groups. You can't ask a community of peers to stop glorifying the very thing they are built around. This is to say NOTHING of those who are in it not for glory but for illegal financial gain or to advocate some activist cause.
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Time to stop demonizing anyone who knows how to program a computer as a hacker.
Time to stop demonizing anyone who uses the bit torrent protocol as a pirate.
Time to stop demonizing a lot of people.
When you see the phrase of white hat, author has no idea of the concept of hacking. If you hire a lawyer or tax consultant to help with tor networks for your taxes, you hired a hacker. Article not worthy for a geek website, good for a gossip magazine.
but what lesson are we to learn from someone who emails lists of passwords to herself?
That real-world security is very disconnected from the clean and nice scenarios in your books and head, because real users think differently than geeks and do different things for different reasons. Some of them we gloat over and call them Lusers and other deragatory terms, but that's mostly to cover up our own insecurity because most of the Lusers out there have had ten times as many and twice as beautiful women and don't live in their mothers basements anymore.
Yes, I know that's also untrue. The point is that different people have different skills and while many of the non-techie people do stuff that we techies consider stupid, they could laugh just as much about us in other areas of expertise. Maybe not women, maybe for them it's sports or marketing or making friends.
So stop gloating and calling people stupid and look at what they can, in fact, teach you. In this case, there's quite a bit to be learned, not the least of which is that passwords are a moronic concept and need to die.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Hacker says it's time to stop listening to authors. Especially if they think hacker=computer criminal. It's got as much integrity as saying white people=bankers.
Things I learned in reading that blabbering op-ed.
Earthlink is still alive. (shocking, but meh...)
Author likely uses same password for multiple publically known email accounts. (lacks even the least amount of personal information security training)
Seems to think Gawker is a respected, um, network. (HAHAHA!)
Thinks pepole hacking celebrity accounts or high-profile public figures is equivalent to what Snowden and similar whistleblowers do, at least as popularity is concerned. (Err...)
Mentions term 'white hat' like it's a mythical unicorn. (turtles all the way down....)
This is like a nail beutician, commenting on the security of a cars CAN bus. I want my 5 minutes back!
It seems to me like a venture into the fearsome territory of pointless and redundant. How is this a worthy discussion point and not promptly-filtered-by-hippocampus blabber from an entitled and technologically uneducated person? Do people now need detailed explanation from "the authorities on the subject" on absolutely *everything* ?
Reading this, to me, feels like reading anti-evolution blogs. Desperately trying to be an edgy and heard voice of a generation. So much so that "logic" is, for the purposes of being perceived as hip, opinionated and ahead of the times as possible, thrown out along with the baby, the bathwater & the bathtube.
If they are too stupid to act responsibly with a computer, then they shouldn't have access to a computer.
Using a computer isn't a right. It's an opportunity to learn, however, it's also an opportunity to ruin your life.
Facebooking isn't worth losing your identify, ruining your retirement and credit-score.
There should be an IQ test as well as a computer operator's license test, just like for driving.
I got into computers because I lied and told my friends I was a hacker.
This led me to learn how computers work, so I could keep just ahead of them.
It led me into taking my computers apart, debugging network issues, and eventually leading me to a career in IT where eventually my job became doing security audits and protecting environments from the thing I wanted to become.
We are what we pretend to be, and nobody knows what the opposite of a hacker is.
There seems to be no end to pinheads like this who run around and pontificate about crap they know nothing about. And, oh, hey, nice try impressing us with how sophisticated you are..."Oooh, look at me! I was at the museum of modern art! I'm ever so much better than you!" And, of course, she is part of the media class which spends a considerable amount of time glorifying violence to bring in entertainment dollars. The reality is that dumbshits like her owe most of their modern existence to "hackers" such as the Royal Society and others who refused to accept what they were told as conventional wisdom of the day and began "hacking" science and the natural world, producing great advances and inventions, and so on. I'll stop the rant now, and just say that useless flapjaws like her are the reason I ignore the major media...reading virtual fish wrappers like her column just wastes time I could spend doing more productive stuff which will actually help improve the lives of people instead of just making me look stupid in front of a national audience.
It is also time to stop glorifying Googlers and Facebookers.
They should be called voyeurs.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Over the past 10-15 years I've posted here it's become less about developers and more about the network hacker ethic. Information wants to be free right? Especially when it's a torrent of a movie you want to watch while simultaneously arguing that it's not worth your hard-earned money to pay for a ticket. People hee haw when some corporation gets hacked regardless of the sophistication of the attack and hoist the culprits up on their shoulders.
If you watch much Lockup or any other prison documentaries, this is a pretty similar philosophy to the inmates. "Hey, they left their door open or the car unlocked or unsecured, so they deserve what they got!"
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
A badly written rant containing ill-informed opinions, even when accounting for the author being no `geek', as she puts it.
The problem is not the `glorification' of hackers (seriously?). The problem is that laws remain outdated to cope with this digital age. The problem is that governments rely on badly protected and badly regulated technologies.
The problem is not having enough hackers.
Anyone with a lot of money and little computer security knowledge needs to hire someone to set up their computers and teach them safe practices. It would be worth several thousand dollars to a milliionaire to avoid the sort of problems Ms. McWhorter encountered. Perhaps she is not rich, but she has won a Pulitzer prize for writing. I think she could afford to try harder to be safe. Ideally an operating system should protect the user, but it is practically impossible to write complex software with no errors. People should be suspicious when their operating system comes with a time trial of anti-virus software. The fact that such software exists, makes it pretty obvious that the system is fragile. Ms. McWhorter writes well, but is clearly not a computer security expert. She needs help with her computer and on-line affairs.
Ray Seyfarth, ray.seyfarth@gmail.com, http://rayseyfarth.blogspot.com
Guys in the suits or the black hats, cuz last time i checked the guys in the suits have hacking the public purse for years.
If you want to see what real hackers are about, come on down to H.O.P.E. this year, http://www.hope.net./ We're just a short walk away from the New York Times at the Hotel Pennsylvania.
See you there!
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
...should not pontificate about "hackers". OK, I'll spot her the inept use of the term, but aside from that, when it comes to cyber security, Diane McWhorter is clearly an idiot. She uses a public mail server to send her passwords to herself, across the Internet, unecrypted, and it's somebody else's fault when such idiotic stunts result in compromised security?
Ms. McWhorter, It has nothing to do with "glorification". Criminals and miscreants will steal your shit if they can, often just because they can. The motivation doesn't matter. What matters is that they will. What matters even more is that one can, with a few simple steps, drive the likelihood of such a theft down to near zero. So when you fail to take those steps, you are being stupid. Its like never locking your house or your car and then crying foul when someone points out your negligence to you.
In the case of large organizations like Target, IT expenditures are controlled by management ladder climbers who don't have the knowledge to make the proper decisions on matters that require anticipating "unknowns". If a business case can't be made for spending money on security it gets cast aside because these people are only taught about bean counting in their MBA coursework.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
To read the dictionary and check the definition of hacker in the first place...
everyone to get off her lawn.
I'm surprised it took until two thirds of the way down this article for someone to say this. The author seems to be proposing that companies just don't implement security and "trust" hackers to not hack?
I also don't "get" why all these security breaches keep happening where the attacker can download the plaintext of basically all users' passwords...why the hell aren't these companies just storing the password hash? If a user forgets their password, email them a reset link to their listed account email. Wasn't this a solved problem 10 years ago?
(I admit I'm straying into the "this should be so simple and just work!" viewpoint that I complain about non-programmers having, unfortunately.)
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Dayumn .. Somehow they are going to have to change their web site to Makaday
I'm a hacker,
I'm a snacker,
I'm a mid-night wacker.
I get my lovin' on the net.
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
I was not aware of the second rule. Which is broken by all those password manager software, btw.
It's not a bad advice, to be honest, but it also depends on the fact that you are writing (storing) your passwords already.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Ok, we're going to snicker at someone e-mailing password lists, because we all probably understand that e-mail, by default, is sent in the clear, and is therefore not secure. It's hard for tech geeks to properly empathize with "normals" who just want to get some work done, or surf around on the net and not worry about getting their computer taken over by some malware.
Honestly, though, it's hard to blame normal users for this. Should a user have to be a computer expert in order to actually use a computer? Some might argue yes, but that doesn't seem too realistic. The fault lies with software developers who blindly rushed features out the door without giving proper thought to the security implications. Microsoft had a really bad habit of this until they made security a significant corporate priority - it's time for Apple to catch up now, as proven by the recent "goto fail" fiasco. The focus has since shifted to softer targets, first Javascript and browser exploits, and then third party plugins as those closed up, such as Adobe products or browser-based Java exploits, and the good time for hackers (no, I'm not going to call them "crackers") is still rolling on.
Honestly, I'm not sure what the answer is: Probably most casual users should actually move away from fully-powered computers and move toward safer, more locked-down systems like tablets and phones (like they have been). For people not doing serious work or creating actual content, these are more than capable, and are certain safer systems in general. Alternatively, getting set up as a limited account in an operating system with a smaller attack surface like Linux would be fine too. BTW, I don't buy the notion that Linux is inherently safer than Windows (granted, that definitely used to be true) - it's a combination of fewer threats (because it's a less rich target) and configuration options - Windows is also very safe as a limited user account). We've seen plenty of serious security holes in very popular FOSS software, even recently. But people buy computers because they actually want to do computer-like things with them, including running popular software. Limited accounts / locked-down systems are not always feasible.
One thing I'd love to see is the death of standard login-password mechanisms. It's too much of a burden for both a normal user to both create and remember a secure password, and for the website to keep that valuable user information secret. We've demonstrated again and again and again that eventually a crack will be found and the info will leak. That's why I'm hoping that something like SQRL will eventually see widespread adoption. It's biggest strength is that it doesn't require trusting ANY second or third party with secrets of any sort in order to keep your identify secure (granted, associated data can still be compromised, but your identify can't be stolen at least). It's a very promising system, but we'll see if it catches on - it's sort of a long shot. But for the time being, something like LastPass is the next best thing. Someone needs to tell the author of this article about it so she can stop e-mailing herself password lists.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
The person bypassing the lock on his own car and then reporting the issue to the car manufacturer is a "hacker".
That is NOT how the term hacker is used by most of the population and I suspect you know that. "Hackers" are not considered good guys. Someone breaks into a computer (or car in your analogy) that is not their own? Hacker. A hacker *might* do what you describe but most are (or at least appear to be) engaged in considerably less honorable activities.
I giggle every time nerd gets in a huff and tries to self righteously insist the word hacker is for the good guys and cracker (which is also a racial pejorative for white people) is the term for bad guys. When I was in college I had a black roommate that used the term cracker in that context to me (I'm white) in front of another black roommate. You should have seen the look on the other guy's face.
...renowned author and general nitwit Diane McWorthless rants against the NYPD for "victim blaming" after they point out that she probably shouldn't have left the keys in the ignition when she parked her car on the street, and that locking her door might have prevented thieves from making off with all her belongings.
Hackers=bad but we'll make movies about swashbuckling pirates until the wheels fall off.
bah.
You don't get to supplant the definition of a word because you want to embrace it's favorable connotations while rejecting the negatives: I'm assuming you're referring to hacker vs. cracker.
Note to those who do want to replace hacker with cracker. You might pick a replacement word that isn't a racial pejorative next time.
Note to the press: "Hackers" doesn't mean what you think is means.
Note to the geek: The meaning of a word takes on a life of its own when it comes into general public use. The outsized ego. mischief and malice of the black hat hacker is something anyone can see and understand and it overshadows everything else.
I suggest you actually get some education and learn what "hacker" means before you write a rant... oops sorry, I mean "article".
Hackers deserve to be glorified, Look at all the awesome things being done by hackers. Just go to any Makerfaire and talk to all those hackers and how they are doing amazing things.
Then you have the art hackers of Burning man, and the other technology art installations out there.
Let me guess, the writer was uneducated and using a very outdated term? Because the only people calling cyber criminals "hackers" are the under educated media and luddites that have not been paying attention to what has been happening in the world.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
NOT ON THE COMPUTER!
For work passwords, WRITE them down (pen) on a piece of paper and keep that piece of paper in your wallet.
For home passwords, WRITE them down and then that piece of paper like any other important piece of paper for your home.
If you do it on the computer you do not know that the system has not saved it to a temp file or something that a cracker will find.
People who will physically break into your house and steal your computer are a different threat than people who will break into your computer via the Internet. Protections against one will not help against the other.
Since the "majority" has not a faint idea what hacking is, or was, i refuse letting them assign new meaning to words they dojn't understand.
Brave words.
But the tide will wash over you anyway.
"Interesting, but what lesson are we to learn from someone who emails lists of passwords to herself?"
Well, if this is true, then there's not much that can be learned from her. The hackers she mentions in the article don't seem to be breaking into accounts than by any other means than guessing user passwords and voicemail PINs. That said, this isn't really an article about the glorification of technical guru gone bad, wreaking havoc on defenseless people. It's, apparently, about someone with maybe above-average tehcnical knowledge taking advantage of people who don't take enough precautions. So, it's hard to be terribly worried since most people who don't take enough precautions aren't likely to learn their lesson from an op-ed.
Also, maybe the writer is suffering from the same myopia we all suffer from time-to-time. We glorify people all the time and for even lesser things, this particular issue isn't unique. In fact, I might make the case that people actively seek out things to glorify and that this just shows up on peoples' radar. And it is very likely never to go away. So, in other words, the op-ed is a waste of energy and time.
Hackers means exactly what the press thinks it does.
Protip, kiddies - English is a living language, and the definition of words is not set in stone. Popular opinion determines the meaning of a word; butthurt does not.
You don't watch TV do you?
Politicians, reality show 'stars', entertainment reporters, etc...
Basically TV's basic function is to glorify clowns.
I don't think I have seen one comment that "Guccifier" did was wrong. But, there are plenty of posts calling McWhorter an idiot, a pinhead, a shithead, etc. and telling her to shut up and that it is her own fault she was hacked.
Most comments on here are verbally abusing the victim while completely ignoring the person who compromised her account and posted her personal details on line. And, I am willing to bet that if that happened to any of those posting said comments, the victim would want to kill the perpetrator.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
And yet if you go walking into the wolf-filled woods without any protection, you have nobody to blame but yourself if you become puppy-chow. Just because the wolves are two-legged doesn't change the basic reality.
Yes, it might be nice if we could eliminate all dangers from the world, but until that day we all have a responsibility to act with a measure of self-preservation against the threats we face on a daily basis. Whose "fault" something is a wonderful topic for philosophical discussion, but it does exactly nothing to change the fact that you've been killed/raped/had your identity stolen/etc. And if you were harmed as a direct result of doing something stupidly dangerous, well then the ultimate responsibility is yours - you are only the unfortunate recipient of the expected outcome.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
To be fair, passwords are dramatically better security than not even using passwords. But for the reason you gave (as well as numerous others) passwords are a terrible idea.
1) You can't (safely) use the same password in more than one context.
2) If a password is leaked, all protection the password provides is lost.
3) It's easy to forget a password.
4) You can't "lend" somebody your password. ... etc...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Every year around here the police do a media blitz trying to get people to lock their cars, make sure their garage doors are closed, etc. Is that blaming the victim? That doesn't mean the burglar isn't to blame, but it does make life harder for the police when criminals find it so easy to pick a target. It's well known that theft is mostly a matter of opportunity. The white-hat hackers are just the ones who've been screaming for years, "for god's sake people, don't store your front door keys under the mat!"
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Disclaimer: I didn't RTFA, and while I agree with the headline and summary, it's not for the same reasons and I actually have a lot of respect for real hacking.
I agree that it's time to stop glorifying hackers. Not real hackers that find SSL vulnerabilities, or who hack the mainframe, or who embed assembly in their compiled programs. No, those people deserve all the glory they get (which is very, very little). No, I'm talking about the "hackers" that are always stealing peoples' passwords.
A figurative 99% of security breaches happen because a password got stolen. That is not hacking. That is stealing a password. It requires no more technical competence than the average user possesses. If you write your password down and throw it away, the garbage man can find it and log into your email. Does that make him a hacker? No, it makes him an unethical, opportunistic garbage man.
Password security is not equal to computer security. Real hackers compromise computer security, possibly resulting in a stolen password, or possibly resulting in access that renders the stolen password irrelevant. And if someone steals a banker's password and uses it to do things the banker is allowed to do, then there wasn't anything wrong with the computer security.
That's not to say the user is automatically at fault for the password security. I mean, sure, the user could have handled the password better, but if that user understood that in the first place then there never would have been a problem. Password security is a policy detail. That's probably why it's usually the weakest link. Only the geeks understand enough to design an effective policy, but the geeks don't usually design good policies for non-geeks.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
she wants to run around naked & jail anyone who notices?
Issue #1: "Hackers" (the cyber-criminal variety) are glorified...
in Hollywood, the same as car thieves, bank robbers, etc. But I think the primary reason people engage in cyber crime has more to do with either the self-gratification of defacing someone else's work or the money there is to be extorted/stolen.
Issue #2: Victims of cyber crime are blamed
Could be a matter of perception. Just because a provider has given tips on responsible account management doesn't mean they're blaming you. The fact that you put your password on a post-it note or sent it over email doesn't absolve the criminal of responsibility, but providers can't make login systems perfectly secure - they have to trust you to keep your credentials (however many factors there may be) secret. When unauthorized access with valid credentials happens, the provider doesn't have any idea whether it was because the password was guessed on another website or because it was disclosed. It is still a good idea to send a cyber crime victim tips on responsible behavior to reduce the likelihood of future attacks, while also working to better secure the system if appropriate.
Every time I hit myself in the face with this Hammer, it hurts.
Clearly, we need safer hammers, or an outright ban on hammers all together.
Think of the children!
So you would stand idly by and allow misinformation by a group who clearly and chronically has absolutely no grasp of the field they are discussing ruin your language?
It's not my language. I didn't invent it. I don't own it. I also am not so arrogant as to think other people are stupid and do not grasp the meaning of the word. And even if I have an opinion about it my opinion doesn't mean much. The word hacker, for better or worse, now means someone who breaks into computer systems. Intent doesn't play into it although usually the term isn't used with positive connotations. You may not like this but that is the way it is. Get used to it. That battle was lost a LONG time ago.
Thank you for being ignorant of the fact that there is no viable alternative.
Lets please stop asking for the demise of a system with no replacement.
how the fuck do you remember all of the other important stuff in your life? Phone numbers, addresses, people's names? Do you just write all that stuff down too? Cause your password is way more important than the phone number of your ex, and I bet you remember that shit.
That is called Culling the herd... you think it's not being taught on purpose? it's to flush out the really weak members of society and prevent them from breeding, if they wander into traffic before puberty, they'll never breed, thus increasing the average IQ of the country.
when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Passwords are keys, do you put your house and work keys in a mostly public pigeonhole on a regular basis? Then rail against people who are dishonest enough to collect keys from other peoples pidgeonhole? Yeah the key thief that was caught might be a bit of a dick however their a lot of other people who've already taken copies and sorted through your house while you weren't there.
What the user doesn't say is that
1. She knew emaiing passwords was a bad idea.
2. She know that password complexity was a good thing but ignored it as its too hard
Robin Hood. Dick Turpin. Butch Cassidy. Bonnie and Clyde. Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán.
People who break the law have always been the subject of fascination, and for a certain subset of the fascinated, glorification. We still enjoy caper movies about criminals pulling off complicated heists, movies which gloss over the innocent victims of crime or even depict the criminal as an instrument of poetic justice. For the vast majority of people fascination with criminals is harmless. Living in a civilized society requires restraint that makes fantasies of anarchic behavior attractive. In moderation, some measure of admiration of rule breakers probably helps keep the people who run things in check (e.g. the Edward Snowden case).
The problem is that some people have difficulty separating fantasy from reality, keeping to moderation, or understanding how complex or ambiguous people can be. Julian Assange is neither an angel nor a devil, but a flawed, complicated person who did something that needed doing. George Washington wasn't the childhood paragon of the cherry tree legend, but an ambitious, rash, somewhat dishonest social climber who achieved greatness under the pressure of circumstance.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
... we don't glorify hackers, we glorify good people doing good things that benefit the common good. It just so happens that some of those people accomplish that goal by hacking.
He's not in the chemical engineering business; he's in the empire business.
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
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New York Times readership is approaching a flatline of above absolute zero and that's accounting
for quantum fluctuations in the frozen-solid at the end-of-its-time universe of print media.
There used to be a time where op-ed from NYT could sway opinion in a big way, but there was
also a time when we could all smoke in bars: Once Upon a Time. It's now been quiet some time
to snuff out and quit that cigarette and stop those tree-wasting rotary-offset presses that churn
out a paper nobody pays any attention to.
Quit WASTING MONEY to have your opinion pieces 'discussed' at sites such as Slashdot, NYT.
Hackers are well-versed in technology and computer software. To the point of having the ability to fix flaws that other people just shrug and assume it's part of the program or hardware. But hackers are sporadic, unregulated, and are seen as those damn rock n' roll geeks. But we must not shun them as hackers are the only ones who know what they're doing.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
solution: fist to face. jaw meets baseball bat, etc. etc. find out who your hacker is and take care of it.
I disagree with very little of what you just said - most especially, yes, the tendency in some cultures for "victim blaming" to absolve the criminal is completely abhorrent. Likewise the fact that women must be disproportionally aware of potential threats is deeply saddening. And yet so long as the risk exists they must perpetually choose between taking precautions and living a life without fear, but probably eventually becoming a victim. What is it - 1 in 4 women in the US will be raped at some point in their lives? And I believe that doesn't include estimates of those that are shamed to silence, a truly ugly statistic if ever I heard one. And something that a society is very remiss in not addressing (but realistically, how? We know punishment, even the death penalty, has minimal effect on dissuading future crimes).
And yet I feel obligated to stand by my assertion that a measure of responsibility sometimes (often?) does reside with the victim. If a mountain climber misjudges that a rock can support their weight, nobody questions that the fall their own fault - tragic perhaps, but they gambled on a risk-benefit proposition and lost. Hopefully they had the foresight to securely install a safety line. It's not pretty, but the price of any gamble is the potential of losing, and the wise person factors that into their considerations, especially if the price of losing is high. If a firefighter misjudges the speed at which a fire is spreading and gets cut off, they likewise bear a measure of responsibility in their (hopefully near-) death. Or if a lion-tamer becomes too comfortable with their lions. Just because the threat possesses an intellect and will of it's own doesn't absolve the threatened individual of their own culpability in creating the situation in which it could affect them. All risk-assessment, all gambles, come with the potential of losing, and if a loss is unacceptable then you must take precautions.
For the low-income woman who has no choice but to return home to a bad part of town, she can still avoid most the dark alleys, and carry mace and/or a weapon. Kitchen knives are cheap, and with a little luck and attitude enough to convince an attacker to seek easier prey. Not everyone has the option of avoiding the wolf-filled woods, but to enter them defenseless is to invite tragedy. And yes, I'm aware that that paints a pretty bleak picture for the meek low income woman forced to survive in an untenable situation - but that is the reality of the situation, no amount of pretty words will make her any safer.
I do absolutely, categorically deny that we should allow victim blaming to in any way displace striving for a safer world. And shaming.. well that's totally untenable. Do you shame a person when they don't do their homework? When they fall off a bike? Well, probably some people do, but except in the most egregious cases of irresponsible behavior it rarely helps anything, and can often do further damage, despite them bearing near-total responsibility for the failure. But neither do we pretend that their actions had no role in the outcome. If we are wise however we wait until the tears have mostly been shed before we draw their attention to their own role in the outcome. Because as you allude - accepting that responsibility while still in the grip of the inevitable, irrational, emotional reaction can feed some unjustified but very dark and self-destructive spirals.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We glorify much worse in society.
Our top artist, Jay-Z is a man who made a career spanning over a decade rapping about being a criminal(gangsta rapper), and glorying a life soaked in drugs, loose women, and crime.
On the other hand, we have movies like zero dark thirty which glorify torture.
We glorify politicians who lie, cheat, and steal, and we encourage eachother to lie cheat and steal for them.
When a kid is bullied in school they are generally blamed for being weak, socially unfit, or making themselves a target.
Most celebrities, the people who we all mimick, do drugs, drive under the influence, sleep around, and act without a care for the rest of us. If we admit we don't like them, something is wrong with us. We re-adjust our social values around them.
We glorify the press and the news, and when they get caught lying to us, often to assassinate someones character for either social or political reasons, strut around as if their position makes them nobility, and violate each and every rule they tell us they abide by with enough regularity its safe to say they don't exist, we extoll them as the saviors of democracy.
But yes, its hackers. Hackers are making society a terrible place. If computer break ins where any other field besides computers, it would be socially accetable. If you get take advantage of financially, or make a silly mistake, well its proof the capitalists are smarter than you. If the bank takes advantage of your lack of time to fight them, its because they deserve to prey on the weak. If you break into the bank computers because the same smarty pants bankers are to daft to learn your field, your a terrorist.
Somehow hackers are glorified? Another shitty op-ed from the NY Times, a fine publication with a long history of clueless op-ed writers, and hideously snobbish double standards.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again, the NYT is a fine publication, but the opinion editorials are run by a bunch of smarmy yuppie shitheads without any real vantage point in society.
Maliciously cracking into systems so you can violated the privacy of rich, powerful and/or famous people is, well, still wrong, but not really much more wrong than papparazzi-ism in general. People who resent those higher on the social ladder are gonna have sympathy with--even if not outright endorsing--anyone who makes trouble for those on the top. Those on the top are going to be absolutely enraged by them. Thus you have internet commenters who glorify hackers, and government leaders and the wealthy who absolutely crucify them in response. I don't know what will happen to Guccifer in Romania, but if he were arrested in America he'd probably be looking at decades of time--for a 42-year, probably a life-sentence. What he did was wrong, but he doesn't deserve to lose his freedom for the rest of his life.
That is all. I have hundreds of passwords including many for systems I manage. Every single one is different; however I only have to memorise one password - the one to unlock my pwd manager.
So to sum it up: Angry luddite, heaps scorn on those who take advantage of their sloth and ignorance. Never willing to delve into 'silly technical minutiae' in the slightest, (they roll their eyes and treat as barbaric and oafish anyone who does), they maintain a self-righteous, prideful ignorance of all things 'technical'. Ewww even the thought makes one want a hot shower followed by scented candles and a pulp novel. But they loose their indignation when played upon for a fool, when they do foolish things. They demand (stomp foot repeatedly) D.E.M.A.N.D. that those 'tech. people' treat them gladly. When the 5 year old gets what they have a hard time with, they are mystified. They, having no knowledge of the study, reading work involved in gaining knowledge enough to be proficient in the art of the technology, seek to replace 'our tech. people' with 5 year olds, 'since its all the same to me'. So I thank God for the hackers. Fiddling with your email is better than draining your bank account or stealing the deed to your house, and its a good wake up call to quit being an idiot and take some personal responsability. No one expects you to get a degree, but learning a bit about how to drive a car sure beats crashing and killing everyone around you (here's a hint: computers are more complicated than cars, they've dumbed them down for you).
I'm not convinced "hacker" ever meant anything other than what it does now. I think this shit about it having in the past meant "someone who's really good with computers" seems more like a fantasy made up by some nerds at some point in the past which just makes present-day nerds so giddy with excitement over being able to call themselves "hackers" without calling themselves criminals that they happily accept it as truth despite having no evidence whatsoever, and then they re-post this "fact" every time they hear the word "hacker" used for what it actually means.
In other words, this supposed original definition is nothing but an incredibly popular meme. So popular in fact that I wouldn't be surprised if someone can find an online dictionary that describes this alternate definition. My bet is that there's no such evidence of the word meaning anything other than "computer criminal" that's dated before 1990. I have no idea when this meme was created, but it's pervasive enough that seeing a 2013 edition dictionary claim that "hacker" originally meant "someone who is very skilled with computers" would impress me no more than seeing it on Wikipedia would.
I just want to vomit every time I see some douche write something like "Note to the press: "Hackers" doesn't mean what you think is means." Well, guess what... Not everything you've read on the internet is true. The word "hacker" never meant what you wish it originally meant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
glorifying actors, sports figures, politicians, generals, soldiers, writers, artists, architects, Canadians, cooks, race car drivers, the old, children, dogs, accountants, spies, computer programmers, cowboys, drug smugglers, and the disabled.
I, I, I resemble that Remark!
I couldn't give a rat's ass what some unqualified journalist has to say about the issue. Just because some famous old print media has an opinion doesn't mean we should listen.
Idiot writers.
Might be a good first step to become qualified to write about technology.
That kind of competence is what is supposed to distinguish an op-ed writer from an amateur blogger.
To stop confusing the terms "hacker" and "cracker". There's nothing wrong with viewing the world as malleable and acting on that, towards the premise of betterment. Engaging in a course of destruction, theft and maliciousness, however, should be vilified.
The programs I've had to maintain in Perl have been enormous hacks, the worst by far of all the languages I've had to work with.
It was a pretty cool idea 27 years ago, as a partial replacement for sed and awk, but hasn't aged gracefully (look at the awful cludge they did to put together an object model).
But for some reason, the hackers like Perl, and thus the "glory" that goes with the hackers keeps the language alive.
There are all kinds of flawed claims, myths, and half-truths floating around regarding the language.
Few people at these critically, because of the glory.
If you have to write more than 5-10 pages of code, Perl is the wrong language.
Because people who write Op-Eds are so vital to society?
The NYT Op-Ed column writers.
They're too stupid to live.
Hacking for a cause is a crime also....unless you have permission. Dunking a basketball is not.
Hackers invent creative solutions with code, Crackers are the bad guys. And yes, "Bad guys" is entirely subjective.