Slashdot Mirror
The War Against The Hackers
The war underway between the FBI and supporters of a well-known hacker group -- the latest round in the War Against The Hackers -- is as familiar as it is dubious.
For years now, federal law enforcement agencies from the Secret Service to the FBI have garnered enormous publicity tracking down people like Kevin Mitnick, who has languished in jail far longer than genuine criminals like white collar robber baron Michael Milken, (or than lots of robbers and drug dealers have). Or the hapless creator of the recent, short-lived but very famous Melissa Virus, whose arrested was trumpeted by the FBI and the Governor of New Jersey before a horde of reporters in New Jersey recently as if he were John Dillinger.
Nobody wants to or ought to romanticize criminals, but journalism and law enforcement have for years demonized hackers out of all proportion to the harm they do or the dangers they pose.
If they treat every computer "intrusion" like the Moon Landing, they also ignore the very real contributions hacking has made - namely the building of the Internet and World Wide Web, the building of much of the software and hardware fueling one of the biggest economic booms in American history, and for helping to create the freest, most interesting culture on the planet. The things hackers are often accused of doing frequently turn out to be trivial, misunderstood, or if you want a year or so, not crimes at all.
Wired News reported last week that the Sun Microsystems operating system that Mitnick was accused of hacking into - a major justification of the media and criminal case against him, and of the need for his imprisonment - is now being given away by Sun for free.
Since the Cold War has ended, most of the Mafia been busted up and its leaders imprisoned, bureaucracies like the FBI and Secret Service are nervously trawling for new evils to stalk, new budgets to acquire and justify. Law enforcement bureaucracies have to have bad guys, and they have to be well-publicized and dangerous. Otherwise, Congress doesn't give them any money. For them, the Internet in general, and hackers and techno-criminals in particular are a Godsend.
The FBI is trumpeting its new high-profile computing unit, having finally won a long bureaucratic wrangle for jurisdiction over the Net. In the l980's, the Secret Service made a bid for Net policing by conducting "Operation Sunrise" a series of infamous pre-dawn attacks on the bedrooms of a handful of suburban teenagers who were patching together the first BBS's and mostly making free long-distance telephone calls.
Although the arrests made some big noise in the media, they yielded little in the way of bad guys. The Net has changed a lot, but this by-now-predictable scenario hasn't.
In an era when crime is plummeting, it's perhaps no accident that law enforcement officials are sounding more alarms than ever against online pornographers, alleged child-stalkers, and computer outlaws, even as the number of actual victims is microscopic when compared to crimes like drugs and child abuse.
The country's in the mood to police the Net and hunt down hackers. The Internet is scaring the pants off of some of the country's most powerful institutions, from the moral and sex police clustered in Washington, to the music industry to Wall Street to banking to journalism. And nothing is more frightening to many of the people running these institutions than the mythologized image of the hacker.
The idea that there are hordes of techno-criminals out there waiting to disrupt business, government and society and trigger the next World War with their evil mastery of computing is pervasive. The fact that they are mostly young, invisible and politically powerless doesn't hurt either.
This campaign takes a number of different forms: there's the Mitnick stereotype: the dysfunctional all-powerful wizard breaking into our most important computing programs. There's the con-artist hacker waiting to read our credit card numbers. Then there's the kid turned killer by computing game. Journalism is as happy to pass along one as the other.
The fact that few hackers have ever done any serious damage to government or any other institutions, and have never to my knowledge caused any sort of physical harm to a real human being (hackers do far less damage to the country than, say, the Washington reporters who helped cripple the government for a year over Monica Lewinsky), is lost in the general hysteria over what geeks are capable of. The hacker scare is much like the child-snatching scare of the 80's or other media-driven hysterias. It essentially one more ephemeral media hysteria, supported by little in the way of concrete facts
Last week, MSNBC.com reported that the FBI's Houston office was investigating allegations of "computer intrusions" involving a hacker who goes by the handle "Mosthated."
Mosthated told MSNBC that he was the founding member of gH, and that at least eight other hackers around the country had been searched in the FBI inquiry. Last week, gH member Eric Burns (Zyklon) was arrested in connection with three separate attacks on U.S. government computers, including some systems at the U.S. Information Agency.
Mosthated told MSNBC he was raided by agents at about 6 a.m. CT Wednesday in what he described as a "huge hacker crackdown." Four other Houston-area hackers, three in California and one in Seattle also received FBI visits. None was arrested, but all had computer equipment confiscated.
After the FBI raids, the bureau's Web site was taken offline. "Somebody-some person or persons - attempted to gain unlawful access to it. They did not, but as a result we decided to shut it down," the FBI said at the end of last week. As of Friday, it was still down.
"The FBI WILL Not FUCK WITH MY FRIENDS FROM GLOBAL HELL," a hacker allegedly wrote in an e-mail to Antionline.
Antionline reported that more than 20 Web sites - none of which had any apparent connection to the FBI - were defaced by a member of Global Hell known as "Infamous." Mosthated told MSNBC he didn't support these retaliatory attacks, and asked that they stop.
Like the word geeks, the term hackers is often-misapplied. The public thinks a hacker is a computer pirate who breaks into computing systems, sometimes illegally, and often posing great risks to security, privacy or information.
Hacker authority Eric Raymond describes hacking as a a good, usually time-consuming piece of computing work that gets results. A hacker is a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most computer users, who prefer to learn the minimum amount necessary. Hackers wants to know everything about their technology.
A hacker is also somebody who programs enthustically or obsessively, rather than just theorizes about programming.
(When I first got my new Linux box up and running - it isn't any more - a number of hackers e-mailed me and congratulated me on finally beginning to "hack," that is to understand how a computer and a computer program worked. But they and I knew that I am not and will never be a hacker.)
Raymond also writes about something I've repeatedly experienced - the hacker ethic. In contrast with the greedy, mass-marketed, corporate-controlled mainstream media, hackers believe that information sharing is a powerful and positive good, and that it is also an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and computing resources wherever possible. Many hackers believe that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the hacker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.
I started writing about hackers nearly 10 years ago. Since them I've talked to hundreds. I've never met one who stole for profit or vandalized anything. People who do are thieves and thugs, and vandals, the same as they are off-line.
The single traits I associated with hackers are freedom, knowledge and generousity. Hackers are constantly fighting to keep the Net free, sometimes by going places they're not wanted. They knock borders and walls down. They instinctively struggle to keep the Net from being balkanized by the many interests and corporations who are eager to put up as many walls as possible so they can restrict access and make money.
Raymond has written that the most reliable manifestation of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical expertise, programs, software and computing resources. Because of these instincts - to be free, to share, and to spread comprehension of computing, hackers have a sense of community and a political ethic still unique to the Internet, and almost completely unknown off-line.
Sometimes kids will flame people claiming to be kick-ass hackers, but they give themselves away as bogus by their hostility. Hackers rarely waste time on hostility, unless provoked. They first and foremost want to share what they know, convert the unconverted, help the helpless and confused. They are unfailingly patient and generous, almost never getting more satisfaction than when they help the techno-impaired use a computer, understand a program, or get online.
When I was struggling to learn Linux, I was flooded with messages from hackers, offering everthing from 24-hour tech support to their home numbers to offers to offers to fly to my house and work with me. When I was writing for Hotwired and was mail-bombed by Wal-Mart supporters angry at a column I wrote criticizing the chain for selling sanitized music, hundreds of hackers rushed to help out, sending me virus protection programs, even lethal mail bomb response programs.
To me, there is a heroic streak to hacking. Off-line, people rarely mention the word freedom. In the context of school, media or government, it's usually a tired and reflexive cliché, constantly invoked but rarely celebrated or practiced. Hackers talk about it all the time.
Hackers are constantly patrolling the Net to keep it, and the vast information on it, free.
Hackers share. The first thing a hacker does when he or she discovers something new, useful or cool is share it with other people.
Hackers teach. Hackers have spend literally thousands of hours helping technologically-impaired people (like me) get online and function.
Hackers fix. Hackers are problem addicts. They love nothing more than to crack a problem, no matter how long or how many people have to get involved.
Hackers give. Hackers are constantly giving gifts. I've gotten telephone numbers for aircraft carrier flight decks, a White House summer vacation command post, my long-lost Uncle Harry's home telephone number, free long distance telephone test numbers, countless bits of music, hundreds of software programs and updates and 24/7 tech support.
Hackers are funny. They have a bizarre sense of humor based on their own language, metaphors and in-jokes. Outsiders can never quite get it. Hackers got and downloaded "Star War" last week even though it took all night and they planned to see it in a theater anyway. Hackers got their hands on the season finale of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer," scrapped in the U.S. but shown in Canada, even though many aren't "Buffy" fans. Hackers have downloaded CD's of the Matrix and every episode of "Futurama," mostly because it's there. Hackers have playlists with 1,000 songs. Hackers don't buy computer games, but they get online anyway, managing to get their hands on registration access codes.
I don't know the details of the FBI's latest war against the Hackers. Maybe these are evil criminals in need of capture by one of the word's best known law enforcement agencies.
I doubt it. If recent history is any judge, the group getting hauled into bureau offices and having their computers seized is more likely to have committed foolish mischief than crimes against the state. You're likely to hear a lot about the arrests and raids, and the subsequent intrusion, but little or nothing about the charges that won't be filed, or if they are, that end up dismissed or reduced. Raids on Hackers are usually to send message, rather than correct a real injustice.
The sad truth is that there are people out there online and off who will steal your money, invade your privacy, send vicious flames, or damage your property, digital and otherwise. Real hackers are not among them.
More than any other single group, with the possible exception of engineers and programmers, hackers have built the Web and the Net, given it what sense of community it has, helped countless people empower themselves through the use of technology, and kept it as free as possible from government intrusion and corporate control. They are not dangerous. They are not criminals. They should be celebrated, not feared and thrown in jail.
Very good post. I think it suck that those trying to have fun without doing damage are being throw to the dogs(media). It would be much better if everyone would sit back and try to understand why the hackers do what they do and why free stuff is better BECAUSE IT IS BETTER!!!
Great said... If only the media read slashdot...
Kevin Mitnik is doing more time because his lawyer agreed to a delay in the start of the trial, to get more time to prepare for the trial. The fact that it's taken so much longer has to do with the overloading of the court system (his case was moved to the back of the line) and isn't some dark sinister conspiracy.
The kind of people who rally behind Kevin are of course going to believe what they want regarding the case. And, of course, watch for people uploading bitmaps of black helicopters to their hard drive.
I'd suggest that the people who have paid for the infrastructure that makes up the 'Net' are governments and large institutions (read: all of us with our tax money), which debunks the myth that the net is a libertarian utopia.
The decentalisation is by plan, as specified by highly centralised military planning bodies, because the net was designed to survive and "preserve the American way of life" and all that, in the event of a large scale military attack.
my young, unguided, and fatally silly friend..
hackers (the real thing, not the Cult of ESR) are no more criminal than a schoolboy poking his head into an abandoned warehouse.
sure, some hackers commit data destruction - but they are usually forcefully ejected from the community. don't believe me? 'Terminal Man' was kicked out of LOD because he "destroyed data that was not related to covering his tracks. This has always been unacceptable to us, regardless of what the media and law enforcement tries to get you to think."
straight from the source.
Sure, there are people who deserve what he got and he probably deserves less.
Welcome to the American legal system, where marijuana users get lifetime sentences and rapists get a year or two in prison.
Kevin Mitnick is a menace... pick a better martyr than him.
Mark
It's really sad that a group of people who pride themselves on individuality and free thought as much as the slashdot community, can't get over this compulsive habit of flaming anything and everything Jon Katz says. Keep on writing, Mr Katz, there are those of us who's minds remain open to what you have to say.
Having said that, now in reference to this article... tell us something we don't know. =)
operation sundevil, i remember thee well.
anyhow.. i would totally go back to bbs'ing if it werent for all the info on the net. drivel like slashdot drives me pretty close...
Potentially, the two most influential HACKERS today were added to the FBI's Most Wanted List.
Anyone knowing the whereabouts of these two HACKERS should immediately inform their local law enforcement officials.
GET THE MESSAGE YET?
Now, on a related note, anyone who hacks is a hacker. You might not be a GREAT hacker, but you are a hacker.
Just like if you jog, you are a jogger. You might not win the NY Marathon, but you ARE a jogger.
How many times do we have to correct the idiots out there? Especially the ones who supposedly understand (Jon in particular)?
Hell, just go read the jargon file and you'll see the DIFFERENCE.
I have just this one comment: Why does the government try so hard to try to catch hackers who do simply nearly harmless things like steal credit card numbers and commit fraud with them, and then they spend no time at all catching other internet criminals? Heck, that would be too easy, let's just go back to playing video games and screw having lives.
I don't know why crackers get so much sympathy here.
If someone shuts down a site they should be prosecuted in the same way as if they vandalised the shop.
If someone uses 2600 to get free phone calls they should be prosecuted the same way as someone who steals.
Someone who cracks a site and gets credit card numbers should be prosecuted as if they stole them out of the person's wallet.
AFAIK most of the cracked sites so far haven't been that important. It sucks that most of you believe that crackers should be able to do whatever they like.
Crackers helped build the www? yeah bullsh*t.
Awww...geez...Yet another techno-libertarian
rant defending anti-social behavior. Should I
thank the thief who breaks into my house since he
demonstrated my need for a better lock? Common
courtesy dictates that you stay out of my house,
even though the front door is unlocked.
you are so incredibly wrong.
years.. *years* before this recent 'geek awakening', hackers were and are people who studied the deep magic of security.
bloodaxe, the prophet, phiber optik.. each of them have more of my respect than this entire lame community of geeks.
Among other things, Kevin Mitnik amassed a large number of stolen credit card numbers. He also lied to a considerable number of people in order to defraud them and get infomation out of them. Because "information wants to be free" of course, and he is THE LIBERATOR.
people know what esr has done for the 'net'. that still does not a hacker make.
most of you pimple-faced geeks were not even born yet when the hacking scene got started.
hacking is about social engineering. hacking is about computer security. hacking is not about middle-aged geeks who like to stroke their egos by calling themselves a 'hacker'.
No, crackers intrude... hackers don't... That's the point.
Kevin was arrested first for having stolen a security program. He went in jail for one year. He promised not to crack again. He was freed. And then he cracked computers again. Then he was arrested a second time. I have no pity for him ; this guy is a moron that can't understand a clear warning.
Perhaps we should s/hacker/attacker/ or more simply s/hacker/criminal/ instead. While there are no guarantees that this will work any better, at least it will stand out better and so be less readily confusable.
The crux of the problem is that crackers call themselves "hackers". They won't call themselves "attackers" or "criminals" :-). Maybe a double-edged meaning such as "cracking outlaw" would suit them better.
> We need another word
"technologist"?
Literally, one who studies technology. Certainly, this word has also been slightly tainted. It seems to bring up vague images of someone who's 3leet for managing to install MSVC++. Still, it makes things clearer. There are hackers who hack their cars (we usually call them auto mechanics). For the ones who hack other technology, in all its incarnations (computers, smart cards, new services, new toys), "technologist" seems to fit, without being a smear. Of course, we can redefine ourselves all day, but if we can't get the media to stop calling us names (think "negroes" versus "African-Americans" here), there's not much point.
If we were politically organized, things might be different, but, as someone noted, organizing "Our" People is like herding cats.
Crackers who deface web sites are simply vandals, regardless of their motivation.
If you don't like a politician, you speak up about it. You don't deface his election signs or destroy his web site.
I think crackers who perform these acts of vandalism are simply showing off. They're also probably very bored, and likely need to get a life.
Just as vandalism is a crime, so should cracking be.
> [esr] is...not a hacker...a suit
> Try the cDc, former LOD members, The Guild, or
> any of the hundreds of other respectable groups
> out there
A more spectacular display of ignorance and arrogance I have not seen for some time.
Let me be among the first to disillusion you: Someone who joins a Power Name Club with Secret Decoder Ring has pretty well declared his origin and motivation.
Or to put it another way,
B1FF r00Lz!!!!
"AOL be back," he said, and he was right
Remember B1fF? Silly me, of course not.
"A more spectacular display of ignorance and arrogance I have not seen for some time."
.. should have actually been in your subject line, describing your own post.
Well for starter, they should certainly detail further the story before his arrestation (which is actually the second one). Because Kevin Mitnick was sentenced one year before for similar facts, spent one year in jail and was freed. This put things in perspective. If you're involved in activities considered as criminal, you take the risk that the justice might not be fair. If you commit further offense, well you're an idiot, and you take an even greater risk.
A post advocating ignoring flames is flamebait?!
Which I heard is very common in the GNU virii community. LOL.
-Richard Thompson
Author of Unix and C
What would you know about most crackers?
Wouldn't be the first time ESR made a mistake would it?
What the majority of posters here seem to be pointing out is that Katz ISN'T doing anything but repeating what others are saying.
He isn't even clarifying the difference between "hacking" and "cracking".
THAT would be useful for someone being "linked everywhere" to do.
There are injustices committed everyday in the US.
This is a MINOR problem. No "hackers" are on death row because the court system finds it easier to convict a man of color than to investigate the crime.
Katz (and other journalists) need to focus on EDUCATING the populace. The HACKERS aren't the problem.
The COMPUTERS aren't the problem.
CRACKERS are the problem.
Focus on the actions of the CRACKERS and how they DIFFER from the HACKERS.
Then you will see justice.
Until then, you're just making the rounds of the talk shows.
We don't let the criminals define the terms used.
Hackers are people who solve complex problems for the challenge.
Crackers break into systems.
Crackers can be hackers and hackers can be crackers.
Just like the mob can have interests in businesses that employee non-gangsters.
Combining digital and illuminati. :)
Seriously, though. If the average person cannot distinguish between hacker/cracker (and people like Katz don't seem inclined to educate them) then we are doomed continual mistrust by the masses.
Clients are always astounded by how easy it is for me to crack their server security (there is NO security without PHYSICAL security). Because they don't understand this, they don't trust their security. I (and others like me) are potential threats.
This leads to massive distrust. How far are you going to trust the security systems you bought from a criminal who told you they would keep him out? Did he lie?
"It takes a thief to catch a thief."
No, it takes someone who understands theft and the thief mentality to catch a thief. If the public cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys (hackers == good, crackers == bad) then the public won't ever get over its distrust of computer systems.
And if they don't trust them, than any bad experiences with them are normal (virii, crashes, bo, password mailers, etc).
It ISN'T a method for discussing a subject. It IS a method for reinforcing your prejudices.
/. to bolster his own market value by reaching people who wouldn't otherwise have read his column.
/. to propogate the mis-use of the terms hacker/cracker.
People are calling Katz on his use of the word "hacker" when he means "cracker".
People are calling Katz on his subject matter when everyone here is already familiar with the subject (only with the correct terminology).
So Katz declares that he isn't writing just for the people who are familiar with the subject (and the terminology) but for those who will read the column when it gets passed to them or linked or referenced.
So, Katz is using
Which, in essence, means that Katz is using
THAT is what many people here have a problem with.
They crack.
Anyway I was just quoting ESR. Maybe ESR is just completly clueless with respect to crackers, but then, if a prominent and knowledgeable hacker would be so wrong, it would only make his point: that hacker and cracker communauties have a very small intersection.
Hmm... you're right he has to get a fair trial. There is clearly a problem. So if I understand well, if you got a speeding ticket and get arrested a second time for speeding, I should consider you a total moron and we should throw you in jail without a chance to plead your cause!!!!
The analogy doesn't work. Kevin Mitnik has been cracking systems for more than 15 years, being arrested every so often, so even being in jail for 4 years is in proportion of what he has done. Hopefully, when he'll get judged, the 4 years he spent will be deducted from his final sentence. The correct analogy is "So if I understand well, if you got a speeding ticket and get arrested a second time for speeding, I should consider you a total moron and you should have a fine of $20000 without a chance to plead your cause!!!!", keeping things in proportions.
What Kevin Mitnick did was stupid. He clearly should have stopped after the first time. But this case is not about Kevin Mitnick. It's about everybody's rights to a fair trial and if you can't understand that, maybe you should go work for the NSA.
All right, Kevin Mitnick should be given a fair trial. But then, what I say, is I have no pity for him; not because I think what he got was totally deserved, but because they are probably many cases of criminal whose rights aren't respected. Did you know that in most countries where death penalty exists/has existed, there have been almost systematically cases of innocents sentenced death (this includes the US of course).
Now, a criminal spending 4 years in jail without trial is one thing, sentencing an innocent to death is another.
There is 99.9999999999 % probability that at this moment in the US, there is someone whose rights are much more denied than Kevin Mitnick. But nobody cares ; instead "Kevin Mitnick" case alone is hyped by the cracker communauty.
It's such an incredibly self-referential and arrogant response to something that just doesn't seem all that important. For all their posturing of strength, "hackers/crackers" get all bent out of shape when someone calls them the wrong freakin' word, as if their efforts for Good Things and Truth were instantly diluted when an outsider refers to them incorrectly.
The crux of the problem is that 1) hackers were called "hackers" much before crackers and press started to misusing this word 2) crackers want generally to capitalize on hacker fame 3) calling crackers "hackers" could only help this capitalisation thus ruining potential and influenceable young hacker could-bes 4) there is no reason why the proper usage of term couldn't be "enforced" in the geek communauty (i.e. at least on slashdot).
If that's the case, we should all calm down and just pass around some beers, because the general public already has its perception.
I think that part of the flames on the issue crackers/hackers comes not only on the usage of these terms, which is only a symptom, but also on the underlying problem: that cracking is viewed cool/acceptable/elite by some people (with some bogus nuances such as "ethical cracking", the intruder doesn't make additional damages to the system, etc...).
You're confusing the magnitude of the trespass. No, I wouldn't call the feds in to nab some high-school student using a shortcut through my yard; however, were I (say) NORAD, I'd be a little peeved to find a high-school student 'taking a shortcut' through the center of my supposedly secure facility.
Also, as somebody else has already observed, the meat of your intent shouldn't determine guilt or innocence - at most, magnitude of sentence. (That is, killing somebody 'just to see if you could' shouldn't absolve you from responsibility.)
"Take a look in /etc on your linux box sometime, and search for esr."
/etc/termcap, which he "borrowed" from the bsd source.
that's a fairly ignorant statement in itself. eric made some minor adjustments for terminal settings to
to say that doing this makes one a hacker is bullish.
fetchmail is a similar case - simply extending an existing software package, popmail, to support more protocols. gee that's nice, but it does not sound like innovation to me.
If a hacker starts cracking, he does not suddenly stop being a hacker. Hacker does not mean "non-evil" computer programmer. A Hacker is an expert computer programmer. A Cracker may also an expert computer programmer.
I don't get it, Katz. What happened to all the useless, uninsightful bitching about George Lucas and Star Wars action figures and such? You've managed to ramble on about it in a couple articles already, what's one more?
In fact, Katz was sort of glorifying so much crackers, that this might well be justified. I now can imagine very easily a cracker trying to mail Katz bragging about his feats.
Are you even JonKatz?
I've never seen you post in a discussion board. While on the surface you seem to be him, with a poor overgeneralization of the topic, misunderstanding of context, and distortion of facts. However, the timing, right after Hemos'(?) post on 'hackers', leaves much to be questioned.
The question is whether or not people who have no
justifiable need for access into a system be granted other than "I'm curious?" So the question is:
Has Slashdot been cracked?
It doesn't contain any grammatical errors. There's no references to mythology.
"When I was writing for Hotwired and was mail-bombed by Wal-Mart supporters angry at a column I wrote criticizing the chain for selling sanitized music, hundreds of hackers rushed to help out, sending me virus protection programs, even lethal mail bomb response programs."
I can't imagine that there are THAT many Wal-Mart supporters out there, and I would have to say that defence of sanitized music is not high in the interests of people who mailbomb. These "hackers" that helped you out, offered you a retalitory piece of software, possibly illegal? Doesn't sound like Katz.
It's all about freedom? Your freedom stops where my intrinsic rights begin. You don't have the freedom to kill me, or to mug me, why should you have the freedom to access my machines or read MY information?
"Hackers give. Hackers are constantly giving gifts. I've gotten telephone numbers for aircraft carrier flight decks, a White House summer vacation command post, my long-lost Uncle Harry's home telephone number, free long distance telephone test numbers, countless bits of music, hundreds of software programs and updates and 24/7 tech support. "
THIS IS NOT KATZ. Who pays for the phone company to provide those free telephone numbers? Whose relatives lives depend on that phone line being free? Where is this mysterious "command post?" You trade mp3s, congratulations. As for tech support, I'm glad that 'you' are able to get support for those "applications." How about providing support for us who have to support the victims of your attacks?
"Star War"? Good to know that those people whose livelyhood depend on selling games are getting the full revenue stream from their efforts.
"They should be celebrated, not thrown in jail".
Slashdot Has Been cracked.
"Katz" doesn't mention mythology, legend, how well read, what he's written, or who he's written for. This is not Katz.
I guess we'll have to sit through another lecture by JonKatz when the real one shows up about identity theft.
Milken created the junk-bond market, which freed a
lot of capital and upset a lot of interests. That
was why he was targeted and jailed.
He was just as much a victim as Mitnick, though the cash he did manage to keep probably made his
life a lot more comfortable.
you're doing nobody a favor by insulting your readers. If you think /. msg boards are horseshit, pray enlighten us....why exactly do you hang around here?
;)
by stooping to the level of the anonymous coward who gets belligerent, infantile, and sarcastic (like me) you do provide idle amusement. but you forget one thing - the media doesn't notice it if AC gets puerile. but it's sad and pathetic for you to snipe the way you are. remember, you're not an AC.
You're right that sentences can be disproportionnal. But then the problem with Katz article is that he does not gives actual examples. I know that some crackers had their equipement confiscated ; but how many are currently sentenced and spent more than one year for minor cracking ? The "Kevin Mitnick" is a very bad example since it is a particular case of someone who repeatidly insisted on commited the same mistakes, and was potentially dangerous (in the sense of he would be satisfied only by being able to crack all the systems of all the planet, and acted in that direction). In Kevin Mitnick case the justice isn't blind and drunk, it is just misfunctionning (no trial).
A classic example from RL: in the mid-80's the Florida criminal justice system got inverted and it was better for a 7-11 robber to execute the clerk and any patrons than to simply rob it. [...]
Note that the inversion is only in a flaw of the implementation of the law. Note also that if for an "armed robbery" the standard became to also "murdering any witness", then it would definitly prevent a certain amount of armed-robber-wannabes from entering in this business. Now the equilibrium might be suboptimal (better have x10 more armed robbery, but without murders), but this should be closely examined in each case.
The harsh de facto sentences against crackers are forming a similar inversion. Most cracker activities are non-violent white collar crimes; some involve modest risk to human life (e.g., taking down a 911 system), but for the most part these are crimes without violence and to a large extent without financial loss. (There is plenty of asserted financial loss, but much if not most of that loss would never be accepted in any other criminal case.)
Note that the asserted financial loss play the of a balance that allow how to score how potentially dangerous cracker was. I don't claim that it is fair, but it allows a more fair discrimination between crackers ; if the cracker just cracks the system, without going further nor reading any information, the asserted financial loss will be lower than if he downloads all the information of the company, and then erases all the files of the company. This might prevent inversion. Of course if he is sentenced 10 years in the first case and 11 years in the second case, then that wouldn't work.
Do you have actual examples ?
How long until a cracker decides that if he has to serve time, he might as well make his crime fit the sentence?
I think that the crux of the problem is that many crackers start cracking because they find it cool. Not because they want to do something criminal in particular. So they most of them won't make their crime fitting the sentence. But I do think that most of them shouldn't be sentenced too heavily too.
But what you are raising is a quite valid pratical issue: if the sentences/penalties aren't used only for dissuasion, and in clear-cut cases, then of course it won't be really fair.
But the problem is that we are also at a point where the security of the systems is becoming rather weak (more systems than available time for good admins), and the networking systems (Internet) are becoming a key piece of the economy. What would you think if some people enjoyed shutting down electricity power of some towns (for hours, days or months) ?
The nominal penalty for cracking might be disproportionnal for the actual facts ; but it is in relation to the actual potential danger of crackers: the danger from a cracker might be range from 0 to infinite (contrary to someone robbing old women bags) ; the justice should have the means to properly sentence the bigger cracking cases (otherwise then the Mafia would just have to reconvert itself into computer crime) ; but should sentence lighter cases in proportion. Now the problem is the implementation: do you have any examples of the justice being blind when judging a given cracker (disproportionnal sentence), or examples of actual inversion cases ?
There is a book about Milken with more information, reviewed here. Check it out.
-- An Ayn-onymous Coward
"Wired News reported last week that the Sun Microsystems operating system that Mitnick was accused of hacking into - a major justification of the media and criminal case against him, and of the need for his imprisonment - is now being given away by Sun for free."
What does this mean? I assume its Jon being stupid...or its sarcasm perhaps. Maybe Jon does understand the difference between cracking and hacking and this is his subtle way of proving it? Unless Mitnick had the source code and was truely hacking the Sun OS...
what a dork...
Simply correct the person who is using the incorrect term.
Given how much Katz hangs out here (or does he just submit articles with reading the page), he SHOULD know the difference.
Unless he doesn't care and is just here to get PR by stroking your egos.
"Anyone with half a clue will laugh you to scorn."
oh the irony... it hurts.
You are so incredibly wrong.
Decades, decades before this recent 'cracker awakening,' hackers were and are people who studied the deep magic of computing, making the way clear for the computer revolution with all its attendant good and bad consequences... including, unfortunately, crackers and script kiddies who trespass, vandalize, and defraud. I have no respect for and am actively hostile to anyone fitting this latter description. They are beneath respect.
Social misfit.
Monitor-tanned phosphor worshipper.
Source Code poker-arounder.
Code Wizard.
Hair Shirt Wearer (reserved for the Microhates)
Obsessive Compulsive
Eunich Wizard.
Unix wizard.
Munich blizzard.
Twirling Staplegun from Hellski.
Six pound bag of cheeseburger widgets
Anti Free Beer Metaphoricians
"Free molecules! Not black holes!"
You just don't get it, do you?
ESR and other hackers build the things that crackers attempt (usually in vain) to tear down. Hacking is a constructive activity; cracking is a destructive and generally illegal one.
Hacking and "social engineering" are disjoint.
Hacking is about strengthening computer security, not overcoming it.
Hacking is all about "middle-aged geeks who like to stroke their egos by calling themselves a 'hacker'," especially in view of the fact that many of them have been doing this, and contributing incredibly useful tools to the community, longer than "pimple-faced geeks" and crackers alike have been alive.
Crackers: The act of breaking into a computer system; what a cracker does. also: a malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. hacker: also tends to connote member in the global community defined bythe net. hacker: a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities.. 2. one who programs enthusiastically even obsessively or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
I repeat..hackers don't behave maliciously, cept for good political reasons.
You missed ESR point! You should have say hackers don't intrude, even for good political reasons. Also you don't use the latest version of the Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/. It is much more clear:
cracking n.
[very common] The act of breaking into a computer system; what a cracker does. Contrary to widespread myth, this does not usually involve some mysterious leap of hackerly brilliance, but rather persistence and the dogged repetition of a handful of fairly well-known tricks that exploit common weaknesses in the security of target systems. Accordingly, most crackers are only mediocre hackers.
So you call the FBI every time a junior high kid takes a shortcut through your back 40?
Seriously, I think this is one of the points that Katz was trying to make (although I don't think he made it very well). While cracking may be wrong, it's generally a crime of about the same magnitude as trespassing. And instead of being treated like trespassing, it's being treated like an enormous threat to western civilization. You don't see the FBI mounting massive operations against teenagers who like to explore buildings by climbing in through unlocked windows, do you?
I think some parallels could be drawn between our current situation vis-a-vis [cr|h]ackers and witches and the supernatural in medieval Europe. The peasants (Joe Websurfer) live on the edge of the great dark forest (the 'net), and occasionally venture a little way into it, but they don't really know much about it or understand it at all, and so they imagine it as a place full of terrible dangers...goblins and trolls and all sorts of terrors live there, don't they? Who knows what they might do to you if they caught you?! And so when they see someone who goes into the dark heart of the forest for purposes unknown, and returns unharmed, rather than be reassured, they wonder all the more. Why aren't you afraid of the terrible dangers lurking in the forest ('net)? Because...YOU MUST BE IN LEAGUE WITH THEM! And so we're crucified because of other people's ignorance, regardless of our actual motives or actions.
No, the FBI's new "war" to replace the Soviets is the Drug War, silly Katz! There's a general (retired) running the DEA, a civilian agency. That might give you an idea of the mentality at work. Looked at the DEA's budget lately? So much for treatment options.
/., in his next editorial.
The FBI's been after 'hackers' since the mid eighties, with Operation Sundevil and all. The "War" against hackers is merely a reflection of the closed nature of our society. Information is money, and power.
Personally, I don't want any 'cracker' reading my credit card information, medical records, or purchase history. Even though it may be information, and 'information must be free', it's still MY information, and I don't want ANYONE reding it unless they have a legitimate reason to. Also, it's a short step from reading information to changing information. The next time Jon Katz gets out his credit card, would he want anyone seeing all the purchases he's made? How much money he has in his bank accounts? His IRA? His stock fund? His personal medical history? His education? How much Wired paid him? What he views on the web? What he runs on his computer?s (heh)? If he has no problem with this, then he can post his information on
To a lesser extent, corporate data has the right to be protected also, except in cases of fraud, negligence, or malpractice. Corporation A's private financial records may be useless to you or I, but to say Company B, who's considering an accuisition of Company A, it may be very valuable information. Or if Company A and Company B are competitors, Company A's marketing plans shouldn't be public domain.
As for hacker, a derivitive of the word hack, indicating a clever or onorthodox approach, I'm all for it.
As an aside- Has anyone ever seen Katz actually post in one of these forums? Defended one of his articles? Or are his articles read-only, sermons that are preached, rather than discussion pieces?
-No Name Specified
ever wanting any attention of a wider audience. Slashdot was and is a forum for relatively like minded people (us self-proclaimed nerds) to discuss topics that interest us. Having an audience watching us discuss various subjects fails to appeal to me at all, and I sit here baffled wondering why you said that as if it was some universal slashdot goal or something. Acceptance by more mainstream audiences was never anything I thought about. Wacky.
I dunno, I guess I can't see how unauthorized computer access benefits the masses. You say it helps tighten up security, but I can't imagine you'd enjoy your company's servers getting accessed by unknown strangers in an attempt to prove your boxes aren't locked down tight. It's electronic trespassing, and it just sounds illegal. Like any material thing in this world (car, gun, computer), if you want to keep it, don't do anything to warrant it being taken away. Stick to coding GNU projects or playing Quake, and not bitching about how you're not "understood".
People should finally understand that the word hacker has two distinct meanings. AFAIK, the so-called ``crackers'' call themselves hackers and they hack computers, systems, Web sites etc. At the same time, the computer geek community calls themselves hackers, they use the noun hack for a quick-and-dirty fix (or, rather: incremental implementation without formal design), and they generally just keep hacking intransitively. Nobody seems to be using the artificial word ``cracker'' except when the geek community is offended for being confused with the other hacker community. Lots of words have multiple meanings. That's perfectly normal. Marko
Well, maybe most of the crackers, but only a marginal proportion of the hackers.
I have learn 6502 assembly only because it was the way to go to make sound on a Apple-II. I have learn x86 assembly because I wanted to know how Turbo Pascal generated code, and latter because I wanted to make TSR programs (Terminate and Stay Resident). I have learn socket programming in school ; and I applied it to make a Virtual Reality server with VR386 clients (back in 1993/94, just after Doom was out). I never used assembly to have a peek at virus code (beside I use Linux so it would be very hard for me to find virus code).
In fact of all the people I know very few have ever cracked ; much more have PhDs. You are very wrong in thinking that the cracker communauty is huge and big. That's simply not true. The number of people having contributed code in a typical Linux distribution, is probably much bigger than the total amount of crackers in the US (I exclude the clueless wannabe who will go nowhere, except for some Visual Basic programming jobs).
Another complication: hacker ethics just don't jibe with what passes for ethics in today's society. How can you say "crackers are criminals, hackers aren't" when many of the hackers in question have filled their hard drives with software and music obtained illegally?
Yes but they are leaving others alone. This is a privacy problem. Cracking is a clear agression ; copyright infrigement isn't. Now if you would crack unused systems put in some place, say, only to see if the electricity plug works, and that no one will use, then it would no longer be an agression. The problem is that many crackers won't crack these systems exactly because this wouldn't be an aggression, and will not be fun for them.
Definition: "cracker" = person who (attempts to) intrudes systems belonging to other people.
Fact: "cracker" != "hacker", because nowadays, free Unices, Windows, WindowsNT, and applications provide enough/sufficiently complex programs and source code to play with. If most of the hackers only had ZX81s (Basic, 1 KB RAM), then at least, it would be understandable that they tried to get access to bigger computers. But nowadays its definitly no longer the case ; the "hacker" really interested in systems would read Linux kernel source, or use SoftICE to watch Windows kernel running ; and certainly not intrude in people systems.
Fact: "crackers" should be called "crackers", because "hackers", the ones who leave others' systems alone, existed and used this name many years before most current crackers were born ; see the Jargon file history: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/jar gon.html.
Of course it's no surprise that The Jargon File maintained by ESR make these points clear:
One who breaks security on a system. Coined ca. 1985 by hackers in defense against journalistic misuse of hacker (q.v., sense 8). An earlier attempt to establish `worm' in this sense around 1981-82 on Usenet was largely a failure.
Use of both these neologisms reflects a strong revulsion against the theft and vandalism perpetrated by cracking rings. While it is expected that any real hacker will have done some playful cracking and knows many of the basic techniques, anyone past larval stage is expected to have outgrown the desire to do so except for immediate, benign, practical reasons (for example, if it's necessary to get around some security in order to get some work done).
Thus, there is far less overlap between hackerdom and crackerdom than the mundane reader misled by sensationalistic journalism might expect. Crackers tend to gather in small, tight-knit, very secretive groups that have little overlap with the huge, open poly-culture this lexicon describes; though crackers often like to describe themselves as hackers, most true hackers consider them a separate and lower form of life.
Ethical considerations aside, hackers figure that anyone who can't imagine a more interesting way to play with their computers than breaking into someone else's has to be pretty losing. Some other reasons crackers are looked down on are discussed in the entries on cracking and phreaking. See also samurai, dark-side hacker, and hacker ethic. For a portrait of the typical teenage cracker, see warez d00dz.
[originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker. [...]
Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would loose his time craking systems, and then whining because justice is harsh. Maybe that's the case, but why the e2fscking hell have these morons to mess with systems that don't belong to them ? Why ?
Just recently a murderer got away with three years in jail. It was labeled as a "licence to kill." Kevin Mitnick had to spend four years in jail, without bail, until he could actually get to a trial.
Is it just me, or is there a problem here? Since when are malicious hackers worse than cold-blooded murderers?
All you have to do is ask yourself this question: which act causes more money to be lost by big corporations? Killing or cracking? Justice may be blind, but she knows the meaning of money.
"When I first got my new Linux box up and running - it isn't any more"
Why?
*ROFL* :) :) one might almost say that in order for programming to be geeking, the results have to not have any comments _and_ not compile :)
No, I don't think so... but then, you weren't to know that 'geeking' already has a meaning. Geeking is what a crack head does when they can't get their crack- sort of vibrating and sweating and going insane and paranoid and out of control
Therefore, Windows geeking is not surprising, but making a filter for the GIMP would hardly qualify- at least not if the filter is to be any good
And the fact that many "crackers" and "hackers" are in fact the same people.
Case in point: Steve Wozniak.
Few would disparage his hacking credentials, building the Apple I and Apple II nearly singlehandedly. He was also into the hacking/phreaking scene in the 70s (what slashdotters would call the "cracking/phreaking scene") and was actually taken in once for selling red boxes.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Many of those early hackers were also what you would consider "crackers." Back when very few people had computer expertise, the only people with enough knowledge to "crack" a system were inevitably also hackers.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yes, and Eric Raymond also thinks he owns the trademark on "Open Source."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Have you stopped to think why the term was polluted? It was polluted because the people who broke into computer systems in the 1970s were indeed "hackers," using any definition of the term. Therefore they were both hackers and system intruders. The media sort of focused on the system intruders part.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Posted by OGL:
"Crackers", Jon, "Crackers."
Not "Hackers."
-W.W.
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
/.'ers so immature that they are unable to cope with the possibility that someone else had an inciteful idea?
This is a really good point & the first time I've heard it anywhere. I find it amazing that so many people immediatly dismissed this article as irrelevant, or repetitive. Are
Posted by The Mongolian Barbecue:
It's so easy to send of a flame at katz- I've done the same thing myself from time to time, for some of his stuff that has seemed arrogant or ill-informed. But this is a serious issue that he is addressing here- do you argue about that? All I saw in your post was a criticism of katz, not a single mention of why hackers being demonized is not a very big problem for all of us.
So if katz obeys you and shuts up about this, are you going to do something about it? Or are you going to wait until someone makes a predawn visit to your house on trumped up charges? If you're not going to be helpful or address the issues, just shut up.
Sometime I wonder if /. is completely populated by fruits. This guy didn't read the article, that much is plain. He is spewing out garbage that he doesn't understand. Hackers and crackers are all bad. They ruin things and cause trouble for sys admins. All hackers should be sent to China!
TK427 - Do you copy?Posted by d106ene5:
Yes, abuses of the judicial and criminal system are every citizen's business - but there are more drastic abuses that should trouble any of us, like the manner in which death sentences are handed out, and the manner in which parole is granted to violent criminals.
Jon, please don't be so arrogant as to determine for all of us what is important and what isn't. You haven't demonstrated the wit to be my philosopher king just yet.
Posted by d106ene5:
Yes, abuses of the judicial and criminal system are every citizen's business - but there are more drastic abuses that should trouble any of us, like the manner in which death sentences are handed out, and the manner in which parole is granted to violent criminals.
Jon, please don't be so arrogant as to determine for all of us what is important and what isn't. You haven't demonstrated the wit to be my philosopher king just yet.
Posted by d106ene5:
Once again Katz replaces a stereotype with one of his own choosing.
Gee, if I had only known "hackers" (whoever they are) are such great people, I would have invited them to dinner.
By the way - Milken has donated huge sums to the fight against cancer (yes, this is prompted partly by his own battle with it), so please do not paint him with your broad brush. Most people who actually know something about finance will tell you that many of Milken's "junk" techniques revolutionized aspects of corporate finance - and are still in use today.
You don't understand. If you *like* breaking into systems and gaining expertise in that area, you're a CRACKER, whether you think of yourself as a hacker or not. It's the difference between a car thief and an auto mechanic.
You're claiming that so long as the thief only breaks in but doesn't steal the car, he's a mechanic.
Why don't you stop pretending to be an expert about computer culture and go pretend to be an expert about something else?
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
There are people out there who have massive political disagreements with you; do you think this should give them carte blanche to rewrite your web site in protest?
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
It's a shame, but we're NEVER going to be able to get non-techs (eg Katz) to understand the difference between hacker and cracker. Forget it, move along there folks. People have been brought up with the word "hacker" meaning "people who break into other people's computer systems" - they're not going to abandom the term just because
there is an older, nobler meaning. Gay used refer to light-hearted happiness, but if you insist on saying "I'm gay" to mean that you're happy you can't blame people for misunderstanding you.
We need another word, the closest we have is "developer" but that doesn't cover many of the conotations of hacking - does anyone have any ideas ?
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The only time I ever post seems to be to point to what other people have said about the subject...
This time its a Bruce Sterling book called 'The Hacker Crackdown.' As I remember (it's some time ago since I read it), it goes into some detail on the Mitnick case and lots of others. Definately worth reading -- I rate Sterling more as a journalist than a writer!
I think he published it on the web, too. Anyone have a URL?
Why does anyone care what other people call them?
If I spend all my spare time optimizing my home network am I any less skilled for being called a cracker?
If I spend my time installing Back Orifice on people machines do I sudenly understand more about my computer because someone calls me a hacker?
Do "real" hackers unlearn anthything from it?
I think the distinction between hacker and cracker is a little silly anyway. It's not like real people are all hacker or all cracker anyway.
Most of the people I know have a wide variety of interests. I practice Karate, I cook better than alot of profesional chefs, I play video games, I write code, I maintain my network, and sometimes I circumvent security.
So go ahead, label me. Call me hacker, cracker, looser, idiot, wannabe, whatever. But when I'm sitting at home eating sauteed chicken with white wine sauce over rice, and recompiling my kernel guess how much I'll care.
--
Yup... the gummint knew not the potential of the genie it let out of the bottle.
While it's true that TCP/IP and not Fidonet forms the foundation of the modern 'net (and thus state funding and not hacking was the initial seed), I suggest that this is an accident of history -- TCP/IP would have evolved without a shred of state funding soon enough.
Why is it, that when the state contributes a miniscule fraction toward something useful, it is deemed "non-existant, were it not for the benevolent government?"
In Liberty, Rene
More than any other single group, with the possible exception of engineers and programmers, hackers have built the Web and the Net.
I'd suggest that the engineers and programmers that "built" "the Net" are hackers: the evidence is the clear tendency toward decentralization as much as possible, for political as much as technical reasons.
In Liberty, Rene
I'm happy to see an article that finally details the true meaning of hacker. It bugs me so when parents and adults go on and on about "hacking" things.
> Hackers rarely waste time on hostility...
;)
Seems he should read more of the comments here
You can learn a lot from phrack magazine. In the 20 firts number there's a special collumn just on BBS/Phreakers being busted. They also usualy explain why and how they got busted by FBI and Secret service.
I love to log on to bbses. they migth become a alternative for power user the day the net will only have newbies and unresponsible persons
none Yet.
AFAIK, the real crime of Mike Milken was his success in selling junk bonds
Unfortunately, this success was due, in part, with misrepresentation of the risk involved in buying junk bonds. As a result, a lot of due dilligence was corrupted and the American taxpayer had to help clean up the mess. He got what he deserved.
columns are passed around to lots of people, including journalists
/., than write to your core audience. Other folks will either get it or not.
Which is really what you are counting on, isn't it? Other journalists reading your work I mean....
If you want to write for
the issue I have with the way kevin mitnick has been treated is that so far he's spent a lot of time in jail and hasn't had a trial or even a bail hearing, and has had lots and lots of motions for things denied, many times without explanation from the court. script-kiddie, cracker, or whathaveyou, no one deserves to be treated like that. 2600 has been doing a fairly good job of keeping kevinmitnick.com updated on a regular basis, and they've presented as many facts as they've been able to dig up. I'm sure they would be willing to accept opposing sides to the story.
It's true that there is certainly some overlap. But I could say that "All Americans are lazy" and there would be some overlap too. Some people might still get offended.
As far as hacker ethics go... I consider myself a hacker (albeit a minor hacker), and I don't have any illegal software or music on my computer. As for software, that is the beauty of Linux for me. There isn't even a temptation to grab other software... I've got all I need.
As far as ethics go, perhaps I just don't have the hackers ethic. If I don't agree with a license agreement, then I don't open/use the software. By opening or using it, I am in effect making a promise. If I am not willing to uphold that promise, then I shouldn't have made it. So I don't. Now I am getting back at the manufactorer by using capatalism to my advantage.
Oh dear! Sounds like someone isn't getting the credibility from his yuppie media peers that he thinks he deserves.
"Drat! If it wasn't for those meddlesome kids..."
Nothing personal, Mr. Katz, but your formula seems all too clear. You gush on about some cause or another and then mix in what you hope are a few 'geek-kulture' pats to the back, in the hopes of getting a call from Time or Rolling Stone admiring your latest tirade, backed-up by an intelligent / passionate discussion amongst 'todays tchnological youth' to show what a significant 'find' you've made.
Your posts are 'hot' in terms of topic, but low in terms of actual substance. It is your hope, i believe, that by initiating discussion of such popular 'hot' topics as Hacker/Cracker, Mitnick, whatever, the intellectual level of the ensuing discussion will be accredited to YOU, when in fact you had little or nothing of any worth to say.
In essence, you are trying to get the readers of Slashdot to write your articles for you, and you get *angry* and *indignant* when folks refuse to play along, and instead call a spade a spade, and have a field day flame-fest at your expense instead, embarrassing you before your valued publishing peers.
When people point out your foolishness, you grumble and shout like an old hippie that "It's not for me, it's for the PEOPLE! Your BAD VIBES against me are hurting THE PEOPLE!"
The flip side, of course, is that your presence here is an occasional humorous diversion, and for that I am grateful.
At your best your mildly insightful and entertaining. At your worst, you're a Middleman, which is just another form of Lawyer.
**>>BELCH
Has Anyone Checked This?
--I hate people when they're not polite -"Psycho Killer", Talking Heads
He stole $100,000 out of curiosity???
Yeah, right. Okay. So, If I shoot somebody out of curiosity (I just want to see what it looks like) then I suppose I shouldn't be arrested for murder, should I...
If he did it just out of curiosity then did he put the money back? Did he turn himself in?
This article is confused about the nature of hacking and hackers. I've known a lot of people who are considered hackers and none of them stole registration codes, or broke into government computers. This hacker/cracker confusion is prevalent in everything I've read coming from outside the hacker culture. Only those who are hackers understand, because hackers are individuals. How can anyone try to analyze a collection of individuals? It will always lead to confusion and stereotypes.
Loader of Code, Hacker not Cracker (there is a difference)DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER!!!
~ George Winston (1984)
Scott
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
I interpret Jon's usage as an attempt to
re-assert the word's proper use.
-- Larry Smith
Nice one! :)
--
>> have warred in a very public way against hackers...
... hackers tend to have a deep understanding of the systems they work on, crackers tend to just know surface details and incantations. Crackers (in general, obvious exceptions apply) feed off the teachings of hackers, they're rarely the source of new information themselves.
[snip]
>> hackers don't steal, vandalize or damage. They are most often freedom-loving and generous problem solvers and information sharers
Hackers may be, but they're not who're being chased.
The problem is crackers, and "real crackers" are not [gush, gush], they're anti-social malicious self-righteous spolit brats.
I know the article goes on to draw a difference, but it implies that all crackers are hackers "crossed over to the dark side" (my quote, not JK), I'd disagree
Once you've started down the path of computing, the choice is hacking vs. cracking, not one as a specialisation of the other.
Tim
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Jon, you're a great writer and I generally enjoy your articles, but I'm afraid you blew it this time. :-( First of all, you've confused the hackers and the criminals... people who break things are not good people, no matter how smart and skilled they are. Second - "robber barons"? Check your economics; people like Michael Milken make the economy go 'round. It seems a rather odd comparison and a gratuitous slap at entrepreneurs. :-/
Oh well, maybe you'll get it right next time...
This issue is too important for the silly horseshit that has made
As usual, I'm living in a parallel universe -- got tons of very intelligent, interesting, thoughful, e-mail about this column which, as usual, is being linked all over the place.
And as usual, the by now familiar amazement, apologies and jokes about the stupid and hostile postings (as opposed to those who just simply disagree). Normally I really don't care about the tostosterone posts. They're just a particular viral strain here.
But this issue is too important. People are in jail, and may be going to jail because it's so easy for law enforcment, journalists and others to demonize the notion of the evil hacker (not even using the term properly). Law enforcement agencies like the FBI are cranking up new units to politce the Web. And so there's a lot at stake in talking about this intelligently.
This has nothing to do with me or the way I write. I'm not the issue. The issue is whether or not police agencies are justified in expanding their policing efforts on the Web and tossing in jail people who are not dangerous or a menace to the stake. This is a big issue.
Don't trivialize with this infantile posts. Even as
So this is simply one more wish for the message boards to have a coherent conversation about an obviously important subject -- the kind of conversation I've already been having all morning with hackers, crackers and others who are involved. And the kind of conversation that should be public.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
No crackers steal...hackers don't..That's sort of the point OGL
jonkatz@slashdot.org
...in case you forget,
jonkatz@slashdot.org
From Eric Raymond
Crackers: The act of breaking into a computer system; what a cracker does. also: a malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around.
hacker: also tends to connote member in the global community defined bythe net.
hacker: a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities..
2. one who programs enthusiastically even obsessively or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming.
I repeat..hackers don't behave maliciously, cept for good political reasons.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
How many of you got into socket programming because you wanted to write an IP sniffer, maybe snarf a few passwords? How many of you who know assembly have never used it to peek at virus source code? How many of you learned assembly so you could write/modify a virus?
I'm not saying all hackers are crackers -- that's the conventional stupidity. But crackers often become hackers, and many hackers still crack sites or phreak long-distance. Most of the skills are the same; to talk like the groups are mutually exclusive is silly.
Another complication: hacker ethics just don't jibe with what passes for ethics in today's society. How can you say "crackers are criminals, hackers aren't" when many of the hackers in question have filled their hard drives with software and music obtained illegally?
Not that they necessarily should be illegal, mind you, but consider your audience. The only ethic that makes any difference (in the US, at least) is money -- if you don't have any, you're evil, and if you try to take money from those who have it, you're a criminal. (If you steal from the poor, of course, it's perfectly legal -- just look up the definition of "fringe banking".)
The issue here is an ethical dissonance, and, yes, insisting that some activities are those of "crackers" and not "hackers" has some merit -- it denotes acts using (mostly) hacker skills that the hacker community deems unethical. It's just that the distinction is lost to those on the Outside (who don't have a clue what ethics are anymore anyway). What makes a difference is how well we evangelize our ethics. Go out, all of you, and make hackers of men. :)
phil
So, if I get into Jon's house and just wander around looking into his stuff, there's no crime or problem as long as I let everyone know what I found? Hope you don't have anything just laying around that you wouldn't want the world to know. Jon, you need to think more before you post!
My computer is equivalent to my cyber house and the law should protect it as such. It should be protected under the fourth amendment as well. I don't want crackers or the government in their, it's mine damnit and I will invite in who I want.
Quite lyric comment about who are the hackers and what they're up to. However, even on the letter, the author does not seem to note that he's talking about the double soul of the hacker. The Good and the Evil souls.
:) ) and the world turned up side down. Yes there are still crackings. But it is several orders down than before. The old "bad crackers" turned "good hackers" and now digged on programs, developed new features and improved the system. Does that mean that the "baddees" turned turned to the "good guy"?
:) Anyway I didn't see that anyone cared about that...
Let's stop the lyrics. Hackers are not Good. Nor they are Evil. They are humans like anyone else. The difference between the hacker and the "common mortal/citizen" is that he has a bigger knowledge of a power that moves our civilization today. So their actions can be a lot more constructive/damaging than anyone else.
Hackers have made great achievements. Yes they made the Internet. They made a whole new OS out of nothing. They made most of what is now the modern computer industry today. And they made serious damage also. They invaded, lapidated, robbed, crashed networks, computers, whole systems around the Globe. They even manage to start to ruin businesses.
But there's an assymetry here. Can anyone remember of "evil" actions that can be compared to the make of Linux? With the exception of Linux itself many will scratch their heads...
Yes Linux is by itself an "evil" and we know very well about that. Most of us feel happy to see how some guys in Redmond start to worry about it. There is some sadistic thinking in this feeling.
However no one of us will ever judge Linux. No one will ever dream about it. Why? Because it goes above Good/Evil. It gives freedom. And in the middle of an anarchy it creates order. And the same can be said in relation to Internet.
In fact most of the actions I have done and seen shows that, here, we don't have a problem of Evil/Good. Most Hackers are stranger to these conceptions. At least on how the layman understands it. There is a hacker's Morale. But this set of unwritten laws is made of a rather pragmatic hunt for knowledge and human relations. Justice in hackers world exist but possesses a lot of specificities. I would say that instead of a Evil/Good "emotional" conception, hackers possess a sense of "Right/Wrong" in a very "rational" frame. Somehow this is a typical reflection of a world they dealing with. Computers are quite far from emotions. And it seems that they fanatics are less prone to "emotionalize" their life in this world.
Half year ago I saw a terrible epidemics on cracking. Hackers of different levels who roaming all over turning the work into a warfield. Some guys started to seriously consider a small "sunrise" to hold things. However a change of OSes (guess what!
Absolutely not. What changed was the level of freedom given to them. Before they had a crappy, cosmetic OS, that was supposed to work, with a lot of restrictions due to its cosmetic security. Now they face another OS, tremendously incomplete, quite buggy in a few places, with a small piece of "fundamental" security and with a chance to roam nearly everywhere. Freedom changed the relation people had and seems to have changed "Evil" by "Good". The common human morale remains the same in the souls of each one of them. What changed is that minds had a chance to expand they field of action into a more vast environment than before. Before it was a reaction of self-defense. Now the same is a reaction of self-education.
There are of course variations, exceptions in this structure. But they are also specific to each individual and situation. In general the picture was Dr Jekyll turned Mr. Hyde. Or is Mr. Hyde turned Dr. Jekyll?
The media's hassle is a cheap borrowing of that typical picture we all see in the comics: The Muscular Hero vs. The Evil Mind. A cheap stupid product that is easy to sell. Because anyone has read comics in his childhood. However they do not see where they are leading us with such freakness.
Do you think that hackers will not start shutting? Ok I am now an admin, some sort of "good guy". But on the first moment I fell that someone is endangering my freedom he can be sure that he will have to deal with me. And as me there are thousands that think the same. Any sort of "Sunrise" on the fast foot. Any type of restriction taken from the magician's hat. Any sort of "collateral damage". Any type of thing that hackers will see as a global danger to their lifestyle and thinking. Nukes will be child toys. III World War would never had so many people stepped in such a mess.
It's about time for society and hackers to think about those things that generate such situations like the present one. There is a massive pressure on turning people to Big Mac's. Some sort of consumer much like the typical TV user. However this is not the world of TV. This is something that deals with the most important part of the human being: his mind. An attempt to christianize the christians, here, can have deep consequences in the future.
The society must think that the hacker is already here. It might be quite a strange guy. Some sort of beer lover ET in blue jeans. But it is here. And made already its part in this world. It is no angel but also no devil. But it can be quite destructive if society tries itself to destroy him.
If he was doing it out of curiosity, he would have stole 1 dollar, not 100,000.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
But lets be careful not to think of people such as Mitnick as not 'being' criminals even though punishment may be disproportional relative to other crimes. We should take a look at it, but that doesn't mean that we should apologize for punishing them. After all, Mitnick for example, did many petty things and deserved punishment, though I believe it was not a reasonable amount.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
If they're invited their not a hacker, they're a consultant.
Not everyone who objects to having their system broken into is an ignorant peasant, scared of their own shadow in the forest.
For example: I think that sex is a good and right thing. Suppose I see a woman that I would like to have sex with, but who doesn't want to have sex with me. From my point of view, wearing a condom would prevent any untoward repurcussions, since no one would get sick or pregnant. These are the only valid concerns I can see anyone raising. So if I wear a condom, she will be no worse off than she is now, and I will be so much happier. Surely if she were as informed as I am, she would agree. Why should I let her ignorance and narrow-mindedness prevent me from having this fun. THIS STILL WOULD BE RAPE IF SHE DOESN'T CONSENT. It's not my evaluation of what she should or should not think about appropriate use of her body that counts. It's hers.
My system is not your toy. Just because you return my car with the tank full in the morning doesn't mean you can steal it and joyride tonight.
If a stranger climbed over my fence and set up a tent to camp out in my back yard, I'm not going to assume that they're just going to stay there for a day or two and leave with no harm done. I'm going to call the cops and have them removed. The purity of their motives does not abbrogate my right to privacy.
I don't even want to think about the criminal casing my house who discovers the laxity with which I enforce my property rights in the above scenario.
Tresspassers should be prosecuted. Cyber or otherwise.
Jeez, if I read one more post about 'how could Katz come down on the poor, downtrodden, unjustly treated (!!!) Mikey Milken' one more time I think I'll be nauseous.
As this article reminds us, Mikey got in trouble for the highly illegal practice of INSIDER TRADING, NOT because the 'big bad govt wanted to put down our oh so holy saint of blessed junk bonds'. As it also shows, he can't be bothered to obey the law even in recent times.
I guess in tomorrow's episode we'll be treated to the story of 'The Saintly, Mistreated Charlie Keating' and other fractured fairy tales...
In answer to your question: Yes ,IMHO, it is important. One of the things that the OSS movement is going to have to overcome is the image that some people have (and I mean decision-making people) of anything created by ``hackers''. If the news media insists on confusing ``hacker'' and ``cracker'' when reporting on criminal activity performed by ``crackers'', we'll never get past the issue of trust that these people need to have. It's great that you don't have a problem with the misuse of the term. If the general public has the idea that hackers engage in breaking into systems and other illegal activity, I would not want to run around calling myself a hacker except to a carefully selected few who understand the difference. If you are at all about your professional reputation you might wish to avoid calling yourself a hacker.
Even if they publicly renounced their past activities (``youthful indiscretions''?), I would not trust anyone like Kevin Mitnick or Phyber Optick (sp?) to do anything more sophisticated than insert a floppy on one of my systems... and maybe not even that.
Letting the press continue to misuse this term makes our advocacy efforts that much more difficult. If they can't or won't change their use of the term then, perhaps, it's time to create a new term (much like OSS was created in response to some of the negative connotations attached to ``Free Software'').
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I should like to consider myself, some day, a hacker. Via the ESR definition. But... I was once into cracking. I still think it's mildly fun, but only if all you do is (maybe) leave a note that says 'Hi, your system has a hole in it because of [...]'. .EXE files, and to do that I took a look at some virii to see how they did it. I learned (sort of) assembly to do this, and I think it's nifty for other things too. What does this make me?
Recently, I needed to write something that would append to
Conor
Programmer, Consultant, Geek, CTYer.
Katz... you're cool.
/me dons asbestos suit.
Conor
Programmer, Consultant, Geek, CTYer.
The fact is that as a by-product of his intrussion, Kevin Mitnick copied some files ( don't know whether data, binaries or source code, but I think THERE was some source code involved ).
In fact, those files are part of the evidence being used to incriminate him.
I think it's about time that the computing community woke up to the fact that the word hacker can and does have multiple meanings. There are plenty of words like this in the English language; bitch has two distinct meanings, one derrogatory and one not; why cannot hacker too? In fact, even in use within the community we deal with different meanings for variants: the hackers I admire are the ones that don't produce hacks, but produce good code instead.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
That the media mislabels groups of people is not surprising because it happens all the time. But the FBI does not arrest you if MSNBC calls you a hacker or a cracker, they arrest you if they have evidence that you maliciously attacked one of their servers -- which some members of gH apparently did do. So what's the problem?
"... I declare our city to be a free and independent state to be named Tri-Insula!" --Fernando Wood, Mayor of NYC 1861
It seems to me one must start with attempts at synonyms to "hack", and work from there. The ones I can think of offhand are kind of lame, to wit: :: hacker-> feater(?!?) :: hacker -> stunter(?!?)
hack -> feat
hack -> stunt
But I'm certain the august readers of this forum can do better...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
You're the one making the mistakes here. You seem to think that "crackers" are just the same as evil hackers (like "white" and "black" witches, eh?). That braindead thinking is part of the problem here. Hackers and crackers don't have much in common, except for both working with computers these days.
TA
I usually use the term "Coder" to avoid confusion.
When was the last time you heard of a 'real criminal' (murderer, robber, etc) fighting off law enforcement with gunplay?
When was the last time you heard of a computer criminal doing so?
If you're a law enforcement agency, which one are you going to choose to go after?
Really, who cares if its lost? I will go on using the word "Hacker" anyway. Why? Because I like it. And I won't say "no, you mean cracker" any time I hear it wrong, because I get kind of annoyed by people that do. But if someone asks me why I use it the way I do, I'll tell them.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Language constantly changes, and the efforts of France to control it is a good demonstration of how hard it is. Forget it; the word "hacker" will mean "one who breaks into computer systems" until the press gets a clue about computing (about 20 years from now they might understand the 1990's... sadly, it will be 2020 by then).
It might have helped (eons ago) if the word chosen to mean what we mean by "hacker" hadn't sounded so violent (like the word "hack", as in "to chop violently at something"). It's too late now.
Let them call Mitnick a hacker. You can't stop them anyhow. What about the word void for people like us, you ask? If we stopped fighting so hard, one will develop. English abhors a vacuumn. "Techie"? "Techy?" "Ultra-geek?" Who knows, but you won't be able to control that either. And it will be co-opted and corrupted too.
Have patience, and let time take its course. The press certainly can't be educated any other way.
Your effort is better spent elsewhere.
test
sorry, forgot to preview... forgot my pw
(Crackers) don't buy computer games, but they get online anyway, managing to get their hands on registration access codes.
No crackers steal...hackers don't..That's sort of the point OGL
Care to blurr the line a bit more?
Seriously tho... romanticizing crackers will get you nowhere. There is a world where little kids log on to BBS's and download Doom 2 a month before its release allongside 'boxes.txt' and 'qcrack.zip'. This is the world of the cracker.
There is another world where bright young semiprofessionals figure out that encryption algorythm, or how to build their own tellephone, or how to get ahold of some id beta tester's computer. This is the world of the hacker.
One creates the exploits, but is too noble to use them. The others use the exploits, but are too ignorant to make their own.
You would expect that one would move from one world to the other. I would hope this happens when they turn 18 (when juvinile records wonderfully dissipate), but there are some crackers that refuse to grow up.
They do have common traits. Crackers wants to be hackers so why not emulate your heroes? Cusade for justice and a free copy of Quake 3! Smash online censorship and mailbomb that governor who proposed the dumb anti-porn (i mean anti-free speech) law!
When do the hackers grow up? When they figure out it's cooler to code up a constructive piece of software than to distribute 'papasmurf.c' to a zillion script kiddies. Then they are programmers.
We need less blurring of the lines here. We don't need to call programmers hackers and hackers crackers and romanticize all three. We need to learn that positive contribution to the community means a kernel bugfix, not redistributing a film, song, or game that cost some honest professional spent part of his life creating.
The point isn't that Jon Katz, author, is getting linked all over the Web. The point is that the articles he wrote are getting linked all over the Web.
What is a person? Is he molecules or the sum total thereof? Or is he the total of that and his actions attitudes and effects that he has on the universe?
[engage flamage]
You are what you post. and likewise when your post is linked it is a link to YOU...
Don't even pretend that when one of your comments is moderated up you don't get a little ego trip... OF COURSE you do... i'm sure everyone does...
if YOU didn't care about moderator points then you would post as AC! and likewise if JON didn't care about "being linked all over the place" then he would have posted this to USENET!
oh, it's all about getting your due... Jon Katz has made that perfectly clear. In fact he wrote a WIRED article but posted it on slashdot. WHY? Maybe Wired wouldn't post it!!!
Now Jon, does that hurt? If it does you're nothing but EGO. If not then I have seriously misjudged you.
As the numerous posts quoting the jargon file has probably allready exhibbited, you should start putting more thought and research into what your write instead of just churning out a flashy newsbite because people are going to link it!
[disengage flamage]
Let's see... formula for attention...
take one bit sensitive audience
one bit insulting/disparaging sentiment
mix well....
INSTANT ATTENTION!
Bryan Warner did it and became Marilyn Manson... now Jon Katz did it and is becoming the suit formerly known as Jon...
It's funny how the nerd community puts so much effort into this argument. They continually insist that the word means something else.
Nevermind the fact that they are a total minority among a majority that has been using the word with a negative connotation for years.
Gee... why hasn't the mass-media gotten this straight? Because the word "cracker" sounds so stupid! Crackers are something you put cheez-wiz on. There is nothing sinister or scary about them. The word "hacker" on the other hand sounds baad.(with 2 a's. example: Val Kilmer is a BAAD ASS!)
The only reason slashdotters are in such a frenzie about this is because they don't want to be called geeks, nerds, or dorks. They want to be BAAD ASS hackers!
Sorry guys but it's time to quit denying the truth. I'll be the first to admit it: "OK... My name is Peter and I'm a big nerd."
Most sigs are dumb. This is one of them.
Yes, yes, you do define hackers, with various examples of ethics, and so on... but this comes after calling various crackers... _cr_ackers... hackers as well. Which is the common misconception in the mainstream media of which you spoke...
Secondly, I'd just like to point out the direct hipocricy of the federal government putting so much effort towards capturing people who's crime is the theft of information while simultaniously monitoring any and all data they can...
Witness both the recent Australian announcement of the satalite systems that filter and save any messages that pass through, and the abuse of key escrow (like we didn't see that one coming from day one) by the US in the European arena.
More over, the US government has more motive and oppurtunity to put there stolen data to use than do most individuals.
-- did you get my letter? / did you get it today? yeah, i got a letter / i threw it away - Sleater-Kinney
I think all of that could have been said in
two or three sentences. No need to preach to
the choir, Jon.
I used to be interested in Katz's articles.
I really did. I swear...
--- witty signature
i'm blanking on his name, but there was a cracker arrested last year for electronically stealing something like $100,000. He didn't do it out of greed: he did it out of curiosity. He was exploring the bank's system and found an insecure point in the money transfer system. He just wanted to see if he could do it, not be greedy. In the end it did the bank some good by pointing out a serious problem.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
>Hackers don't buy computer games, but they get
>online anyway, managing to get their hands on
>registration access codes.
How is it somehow heroic to steal CDs, movies, and computer games?
I find the idea of the "virtue" of stealing games to be the most ridiculous, since the game programmers are... well, hackers trying to make a living at it. There's nothing virtuous about it; it's an evil side to the culture.
Come on, Jon, you can do better than that.
I've also met Milken. He *is* a nice guy, but I don't know about remorse. I assume it would be a touchy subject with him.
misrepresentation of the risk involved in buying junk bonds
Well, caveat emptor, as the Romans used to say. He didn't sell junk bonds to widows and orphans, but rather to financial institutions that were perfectly capable of evaluating the risk themselves. I tend to have very little sympathy for, say, a hedge fund which bought risky assets (because they offered high return, why else!) and when the risk turned against them started crying misrepresentation. BTW, the Milken junk bond career started with an academic book which proved that historically a well-diversified (key word!) portfolio of junk bonds provided better risk/return ratio than a portfolio of blue-chip bonds.
a lot of due dilligence was corrupted
Er.. I don't really understand what you mean and I doubt it had anything to do with Milken.
and the American taxpayer had to help clean up the mess
There was no need. A lot of financial institutions (like pensions funds) became too greedy and gobbled up junk bonds. When the junk bond market collapsed they ran to the government for help. I don't see any *need* for helping them out of the mess they got themselves into. The situation is similar to the smoking debates: are the tobacco companies guilty that the people smoke, or they just provide a choice and some, or maybe a lot, people *choose* to smoke. I personally tend to take the latter position.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
This is slightly off-topic of the government fixation with hackers/crackers, but I feel somewhat uncomfortable about the demonization of Michael Milken, the truly evil convicted robber baron, etc. etc. AFAIK, the real crime of Mike Milken was his success in selling junk bonds (which is basically all he did). His ability to sell junk bonds gave aggressive upstarts an opportunity to take over large established companies and resulted in a takeover mania at that time (nothing illegal here, just market forces at work). The powers-that-be became very uncomfortable with this situation (think job security for CEOs) and successfully found a way to get rid of Mike Milken. He *was* demonized by the press, but I really question his image as the evil robber baron. He gave tools to people to take over and, frequently, destroy companies but that is not good or evil in itself. One can make a very good argument that most of these companies were too fat and lazy and needed to be destroyed.
Yes, the government went out of its way to make Kevin Mitnick's life miserable and demonize him, but in an ironic twist lost on Jon Katz, this is the fate of Mike Milken as well.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
The security of systems is about much, much more than the theft of information. The losses by companies whose machines have been broken are often more in terms of man-hours to recover the system. Why??? Because once a script kiddie has played with your toy, you have to clean it off before you use it. This means: drive reformats, OS reinstalls, bring patches up to date, get your apps reinstalled, etc. All from a "trusted" source. Why? Trojan horses, back doors, etc.
Plus, it's not uncommon for the little bastards to DoS attack other sites. This leaves the administrator saying "I'm sorry" and dealing with complaints from other sysadmins.
All of this takes lots of time that the sysadmin should be using to do real work and TIME==MONEY!
It doesn't matter what you call someone who breaks into your house, rifles through your drawers, and then throws tacks in your neighbor's driveway. I call him a criminal, and he's usually a dumb one at that!
Sheesh... I ussually like Katz! But it hurts my head to read that!
Katz, you often write great stuff, but this "hacker" article seems only to stimulate simpathy and popularity among slashdotters. I think you missed your target big time.
"most of you pimple-faced geeks were not even born yet when the hacking scene got started."
i don't think you were using computer or even born too when the hacker scene began at the MIT (among other places) in the 60's.
"hacking is about social engineering."
No, cracking is about social engineering. Kevin Mitnick was a good social engineer and a cracker.
"hacking is about computer security"
Right... but not about breaking computer securities, about strenghtening them. A hacker can try to crack a computer if a client ask him (that's what is called a samourai) or his own computer or some of his friend computer to try a security error he found in some code but he don't do it every day nor all the day long.
"hacking is not about middle-aged geeks who like to stroke their egos by calling themselves a 'hacker'."
Right...those are generally scripts kiddies or lamers calling them hacker instead of cracker. Hacking is about any-aged geek that like to stroke his passion for computing/his ego by doing software available for other people to review. A Hacker is not somebody that call himself hacker, a hacker is somebody that love computer and do software for them and his called hacker by other hackers.
I personnaly love the hacker community and mentality but having contributing nothing to the hacker community at the time I can't be called a Hacker, just a wannabie or a newbie.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
"I think people will accept good quality, whoever gives it to them"
Ok, I'm a manager and I hear on the radio that a group of hackers (in the wrong sense of the term) attacked the FBI site. Two days later I hear again about Linux, this "hacker OS". How can I trust a software to operate my company if it is written by a bunch of people attacking the FBI/Pentagon/... website???
The problem is that people can't tell the difference between hacker and cracker, so how can they trust hackers (the reals) if they think of them like if they were crackers? It is easier to have the media attention by cracking than by hacking because it is more "hot", so crackers calling themselves hacker had the attention during too many years and the medias and the opinion know their definition very well now. On the other side the hacker community is gaining more and more media audience with Linux and all the hype around. This is an unique occasion to teach the media about the first and only real meaning of the word hacker. this will be hard because it's hard to change people habit's but it's doable. If we don't fight for our name then we will lost but if we fight without ever withdrawing our effort then we will win.
May the force be with all hackers.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Hackers are the parasites of the cyberworld. As Tom Ray pointed out so vividly with his artificial life experiment Tierra, parasites (beings that steal resources to live or reproduce) co-evolve along with the other citizens of the ecology. They are a feature, not a bug. Interestingly, he found that environments where parasites were permitted were both more diverse and more robust, compared to environments where parasites were artificially supressed. Apparently, by bleeding off resources without contributing, they increase selection pressures on the "animals" who are "playing by the rules". So it is in cyberspace. Of course, just as animals, in turn, evolve defenses against parasites, so cybernauts should protect themselves. It really is a jungle out there. While the FBI is swatting mosquitos, who knows how tapeworms there are?
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Then there's the k3w1 31337 |-|4x0r-d00d13z whose only purpose in life would seem to augment their virtual genitalia through pingflooding and crashing poor lusers' computers using BO and the like. That kind of fscking moronae just love to call themselves "hackers", for it sounds so much 13373r than plain old cracker. It's a dick size thing, much like calling oneself "homicidal maniac" or "jackhammer". Something to do with the bit about "hacker" meaning "one who makes furniture with an axe" - axes are cool, remember? Cream crackers, on the other hand, are not.
And the media follows, like the big herd of blind, deaf, dumb but still bleating sheep they are. (hacker sounds so much better than cracker, and gets you more readers -> more money).
Now, now everyone there's enough idiocy in this world for everyone :)
Woohooo! acutaly I'm glad to see you flaming back jon!
I personaly love you work....
---------------
Chad Okere
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Despite the media hoopla, Michael Milken was and is a financial genius whose methods of financing business were revolutionary at the time. Michael's biggest problem was that he stepped on too many toes and ruffled too many feathers on his way to the top, added to the fact that then prosecutor Guiliani (now mayor of New York City) was looking for "sure fire publicity", much like the guy that has it in for Kevin Mitnick. I'd suggest checking out a book called _Payback_ by Daniel Fischel for a more objective view on the entire Michael Milken story. It's out of print, but worth the find. You can find a brief description at:7 4/qid=928252550/sr=1-2/002-5450756-3750419
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/08873075
Thanks and have a great day
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
I agree that these crimes are blown out of proportion, nothing like stealing atomic secrets or genocide. But they are crimes none the less. I don't see any need to romanticize it.
I think the real hypocrisy here is that the government is working hard both to crack down on the crackers and to keep our computers less secure by restricting cryptography.
The *default* moderation may be zero, but if someone is returning to slashdot, reading the comments, and participating in the discussion, they can CHOOSE not to read 0/1/whatever posts.
Moderators of slashdot are admirable, they will moderate down a blatent "$NAME sucks" or "you're a complete and total moron $NAME, shut up" message, no matter what the contents of $NAME. I've seen plenty of "katz sucks", "MS sucks", "mitnick sucks", and so on messages marked down, and it has nothing to do with the article content.
If they are willing to read Katz' work, and willing to look into the community he is attempting to capture in his writing, they will look through the posts and find the non "katz sucks" stuff in there, or completely ignore them all together and take what they want from his writing alone. Sincere interest in the 'geeky internet' community, IMHO, will come with a grain of salt: someone willing to delve into the depths of the insides of the internet will have seen the newsgroups, seen other websites, read plenty of 'hackers are bad' crap. They're coming to slashdot via Katz' article for a better understanding.
Why are the message boards such a big deal if the ARTICLES are getting linked elsewhere? You don't *have* to read the message boards to read 'featured' articles. Clicking on the "xxxxx bytes in body" eliminates messages, you can *choose* to read them or not. Same with the "Voices from the Hellmouth" series that got so many people here.
If someone has been around the 'net world long enough to find slashdot and take in a sincere interest in reading, they know all of the BS that goes along with a "public" message board, and if they aren't participating, they'll take it all with a grain of salt and a slight roll of the eyes.
I'm not discounting Katz as an author, he is providing insight for the 'mundane' world into the 'geeky' world the rest of us live in. However, he IS posting his articles to Slashdot, and thus his intent should be FOR the Slashdot audience, not for some greater "I'm gonna get linked and get all sorts of brilliant e-mail then tell my 'target audience' they can't post worth crap and are getting laughed off in my higher plane of existence".
-nicole
If we've lost the war of calling crackers
crackers then we should perhaps figure out
ways to define the communitites. It seems
to me we have
1) These Christ like people that John talks about.
The ones that want to fly out to his house to
install Linux on his boxen. Just for fun we could
call these Lawful Good. RMS, Larry Wall and maybe
a few others may live up to this lofty goal.
2) The people that hack for hack's sake and have
their own private definitions of what laws should
be ignored and which should be obeyed. They may
decide to ignore a law against attacking a FBI
web site if the cause of bringing light upon the
FBI's misdeeds requires it. We could call these
Chaotic Good. Lots of hackers in this group. Lots
of arguing among them since they each have their
own private morality and, well, all hackers like
to argue.
3) People who really don't give a fsck about
anything except their own fun. Script kiddies
that would gut their grandmother's web site
just to count coup. They invariably lack the
discipline to accomplish much more than get
media attention. Let's call these.. what...
Chaotic Neutral? Since the attitude is endemic
in teenage boys many of them grow out of this
and evolve into one of the other groups.
4) People that really want to do harm. That
really want to rip off money from banks, trash
their neighbor's credit rating etc. Still mostly
clueless kids that get caught and go to jail
without causing much harm. The Mitnicks of the
world fall in this class. Chaotic Evil. As John
points out they are overly hyped and overly
punished based on the actual damage they cause.
5) the real Black Hats. If the FBI/CIA/KGB/NSA
can't protect themselves against the CEs above,
these guys are going to nuke them till they glow.
Most of these guys actually *work* for FBI/CIA/KGB/NSA
or the Russian Mafia of course. When the above
hackers say "we just broke into your system
to show how easy it is so that you can learn to better protect yourselves from the Real Bad Guys"
- these are the guys they mean. they are disciplined, well trained, properly equipped.
Garyr(CG)
Everything I needed to know I learned from TSR
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Of course you do.
Back when I was a youngster...
In the 80's, my understanding of the word hacker was someone who broke into systems. A cracker was someone who could disable (crack) copy protection. I didn't qualify for either, at the time.
I should also note that crackers were mostly respected at the time. Obviously, the illegal abuse aspect was fairly clear, piracy. What was respected was the techical skill needed. There were even "professional" crackers, like Central Point who would sell you programs to make the copies. To make your own backups for personal use, of course.
I wasn't introduced to any other definition of hacker until the 90's. This definition was people who had the skill to "hack" (break) into systems, but didn't do so for systems they didn't have permission to. Well, usually.
So, as I see it today, a hacker is someone who can. A cracker is someone who does. The poor programmers who work out clever "hacks" have lost use of the word.
Word meanings are decided by majority vote. So, no matter how emphatically we try to educate, we lose. I give up trying to get anyone to use cracker instead of hacker. "Hacker" now means someone who breaks into systems.
We might as well start calling the clever programmers "foobars" or something.
Ryan
If I find someone is traipsing through my servers without permission, how exactly am I going to determine whether they are there for criminal reasons, or if they are simply being 'mischevious'?
I can't. There's no way to tell the difference between someone benignly poking around, and someone looking around for things to steal, or weaknesses to exploit later.
Therefore, why should they be cut any slack? They have no *right* to trespass in my machines, just like they have no *right* to trespass in my home.
Or would you be okay with people breaking into your home just to have a 'mischevious' look around?
The ambitions are: wake up, breathe, keep breathing.
I think you're putting too much into the association between OSS and "hacker". I think people will accept good quality, whoever gives it to them. You have the idea that most computer users are fairly ignorant about what OSS is, but you feel you can safely assume that they know enough to believe it's all built by hackers?
Although I think you do have a really good point, and that is that image does matter, I think that the least of the worries for OSS is that the public will even consider the cultural identity of its creators.
It seems around here that the "professionals" to whom you refer are all too eager to champion the "hacker" name, as if they become noble and good by association. That's the kind of image problem I was really addressing -- but I do think you're saying something really sensible, though maybe overstating its strength.
-schoitz
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
It's such an incredibly self-referential and arrogant response to something that just doesn't seem all that important. For all their posturing of strength, "hackers/crackers" get all bent out of shape when someone calls them the wrong freakin' word, as if their efforts for Good Things and Truth were instantly diluted when an outsider refers to them incorrectly.
Ever since computing hit the media, the word "hacker" has had lots of uses, as has "cracker." (I still think "cracker" just sounds silly, as it makes me envision some overall-clad hayseed saying, "Wimmin, fix me a sammich.") Now for hell's sake, are we so insecure that we have to fly off the handle when we think the general public might be misinformed?
If that's the case, we should all calm down and just pass around some beers, because the general public already has its perception.
[ now, before you flame me saying I would say there's no difference between, say, "nigger" and "african-american," let me just pre-empt you with a response: are you really that daft? ]
-schoitz
The hour of noon has passed. Let us go and get some Kentucky Fried Chicken.
The industry, the news, the whole hierarchy wants a public of born-to-die idiots. When we tell the luser community (much more existent than the linux "community" we're all here for diff reasons) to ype man man man man we are saying anyone can learn and we hope they have a sense of humour too. The ebsalishtment don't like that.
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
It seems you don't really understand what I'm saying. I am in no way condoning what Kevin Mitnick did. I am just saying that whatever you do, you deserve a fair trial. It's one of the bases of democracy, but it seems democracy has died when people like you talk like that.
So if I understand well, if you got a speeding ticket and get arrested a second time for speeding, I should consider you a total moron and we should throw you in jail without a chance to plead your cause!!!!
What Kevin Mitnick did was stupid. He clearly should have stopped after the first time. But this case is not about Kevin Mitnick. It's about everybody's rights to a fair trial and if you can't understand that, maybe you should go work for the NSA. They like people who think like you!!!
"Code free or die!"
The fact that you don't know how much ESR has done for the net is proof positive that ESR doesn't have a big ego.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Oh, so you mean that RMS isn't a hacker?
-russ
p.s. duh.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Now, it's quite possible that I'm terribly out of date, but if I recall correctly the confiscation of equipment is not based on conviction (or even arrest!), only suspicion, and that confiscated equiptment is non-recoverable. Is this still the case?
It seems to me that there is a genuinely usefull (and eminently abusable) power there. If the fear is of governement opression (as it so often is) then the FBI's ability to seize my computer systems without warning, explanation, or recourse, seems to represent a true ability to cripple my effectiveness as a hacker/cracker, social activist, or business person. Granted there are always resources to be had, but to get right down to it I could not afford to have my servers and workstations replaced. Certainly not right away. (or my DVD player, or play station, or speak'n'spell -- they take it all -- for that mater) Worse, even assuming a fairly paranoid set of offsite (unknown to the feds) backups, the amount of intelectual property (I almost hate to use the term in this context) loss can be immense.
Is there a way that this doesn't amount to unchecked punative action by the FBI? I figure I must be missing somthing, because I never hear anyone talk about this at all...
--
Behold the Power of Cheese!
although Jon's post is largely reminescent of a sermon -- in a very orthodox setting such as slashdot it is far too easy to err on the overly critical side. i see this happen a lot and often unnecessarily. stay a little from that flame button...fact is although opinion may be rife about Jon preaching to the converted, there's always fresh blood coming into any old church. besides that there's nothing wrong with a little reinforcement. hey, it's a classic marketing ploy...repetition...repetition...blip...blip.
hackers...crackers...whatever...fact is it's another much maligned and misunderstood group by society mainly due to fear and misrepresentation through media and the authorities. surely it is the duty of the slashdot and related communities to work on education and demystification for the ignorant masses. this will not be done by wanking off at the first breath over trivialities of finer terminology...it's surely irrelevant...it's the message not the package.
BLAMMO shaken not stirred
whining because justice is harsh
Many of us are not disturbed that "justice is harsh," we're concerned that justice is blind and drunk.
A classic example from RL: in the mid-80's the Florida criminal justice system got inverted and it was better for a 7-11 robber to execute the clerk and any patrons than to simply rob it. The nominal penalty for murder was worse than armed robbery (execution vs. 20 years), but the practical effect was that murderers were harder to catch (no witnesses) and had better legal representation since it was a capital case. Armed robbery, in contrast, was practically a pro forma railroad. The cumulative effect was that the word on the street was that it was better to herd everyone into the freezer and shoot them... and a rash of such murders stopped only after the state printed (and distributed) signs basically saying that any cop who discovered such a robbery in progress would simply execute the robbers on the spot as they "resisted arrest."
The harsh de facto sentences against crackers are forming a similar inversion. Most cracker activities are non-violent white collar crimes; some involve modest risk to human life (e.g., taking down a 911 system), but for the most part these are crimes without violence and to a large extent without financial loss. (There is plenty of asserted financial loss, but much if not most of that loss would never be accepted in any other criminal case.)
How long until a cracker decides that if he has to serve time, he might as well make his crime fit the sentence? If he won't serve a longer sentence for carrying a gun, why not carry one? If the sentences approach that of armed robbery, why not simply commit armed robbery and have any cracking offense served concurrently?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Kevin Mitnick is the best known case, but 2600 magazine has discussed a number of similar cases; "Bernie S" is probably the best documented case over the past year or so.
I know that crackers could cause a lot more damage, but my original point remains. Consider an early episode of _Law and Order_ where the cops are chasing a murderer, and one cop comments that one of their few tools is the fact that the suspect is currently only facing life in prison. Kill a cop and he's facing the death sentence.
To touch on another slashdot thread, it's dangerous that the Georgia shooter is facing life in prison as an adult offender. What motivation will the next shooter have to not shoot to kill? Or to surrender? (What is fair? Perhaps a sentence of 20-25 years, about the same as that for many murders. It's stiff enough to be a deterrent, while not so stiff that the next shooter sees no reason to not take it to the same deadly extreme as Harris & Klebold.)
A cracker who knows how Kevin Mitnick and others have been treated may look at the situation and decide that there's no downside in escalating a minor crime to do as much damage as possible. From the available evidence he isn't gonna face a longer sentence and he just might be able to get away in the confusion. Then we'll know that the people who do serious damage intended to do so, and we can treat them appropriately.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Hackers are constantly patrolling the Net to keep it, and the vast information on it, free.
This is... interesting. The US (and others) will deliberately sail warships through waters claimed by other states, but recognized by most as international waters, to keep them free. They call it "showing the flag."
In the 60's, individual citizens did something similar to protest what they viewed as unjust laws. It was called "civil disobedience" and while many people were convicted, few people were felt (in retrospect) to have been criminals.
But in our brave new world we suddenly have everything cast as property rights, and not just on the net. For instance, most people don't realize that they can't picket many stores anymore since the mall is private property and protesters can be ejected. Picketing on the distant sidewalk, if it even exists, is still possible, but it exerts far less pressure on a store than the pickets of the 50's and 60's.
How do you picket a web site? Because of the emphasis on property rights, some decisions are going against protesters who register variants of the real domain name for protest sites. It sounds like this will be even more common in the future. We can still put up our protest sites under innoculous domain names, but what happens if no search engine will link to them out of fear of legal action?
I don't have a solution to this problem, and I don't know if a net-based solution even exists since there are related problems in p-space as well. But it does seem damning that the corporate media focuses on "hackers" instead of the bigger issues.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Personally, I think that the Fucking Bunch of Idiots' raids are just a way for the Bureau to solve its Y2K problems. Ever notice they take only the really good stuff from the alledged crackers? At least they are not taking the toasters and microwaves like the SS stormtroopers did back in the 1980's. Just ask LOD (Legion of Doom) or Steve Jackson games about that.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
So really, you don't think it's OK for "the government" who shall remain painfully faceless (I refer to the obvious blind accusation of an organization rather than individuals, for further expansion on this read on) to browse through your files, but it's OK for individuals to crack your server and browse through your files because you don't fear them. Government- no snoop, hacker- ok to snoop. What jr. high school crap.
If your going to accuse an organization of having no integrity, at least have the common sense to name those you are accusing. "The government" has more inept computer users than the general populace. Most of those I know in government can't install an application with a M$ wizard to guide them, and the ones who are computer literate are contracted through head hunters or temp agencies. "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" is more true now than ever before. Quit blaming shadows for your fear and start facing those you would be afraid of. You will be pleasently supprised.
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
i just have this one comment: why does the government try so hard to try to catch hackers who do simple nearly harmless things like steal their internet connection and then they spend nearly no time catching other interner criminals like child porn peddlers/distributors, hate group promoters/supporters, and weapons information distributors??? heck that would be too easy, lets just blame the violent video games and call it a night...
> ERROR: IEXPLORE caused an invalid page fault in module MSCONV97.DLL at 0137:01212d19. Stack dumped:
I disagree strongly. Hacking isn't all glory, but involves the nitty-gritty of making things work. Hacking termcap isn't exactly a glorious high-profile activity, but I wouldn't disqualify it out of hand as hacking.
But fetchmail is a different matter entirely. He started with a pretty typical pop-mail client. What he did was make the leap to change it from
a simple pop-mail client to a sendmail interface. Rather than just acting like a typical client, he hacked together a very cool tool that reads messages from pop (and a dozen different protocols), and injects them into the local sendmail stream. That's one heck of a cool hack. If you don't grasp the elegance and creativity of that, then, well, there's no real point in arguing with you, because you just don't get it.
While I often find Eric Raymond to be annoyingly
/etc on your linux box sometime, and search for esr. Talk to any of the people who
arrogant and full of himself, the claim that he's not a hacker is simply ridiculous.
Take a look in
use fetchmail to access their pop-mail accounts.
He's a hacker all right. And a pretty darned good one.
Well JonKatz is trying to stir up the muck yet again. Im sorry but the "Hackers" that you are mainly speaking of have realy deserved what hey as Crackersget. Yes they are doing things that a lot of us agree with but when you start destroying our own countries infrastructure you deserve whatever comes your way. Especially if you get caught "and we all know how stupid the Feds are". So keep in mind that when you buy into this garbage about Mitnick and the other script kiddies that you are nolonger a part of the solution but become more of a piece of herded government shit. Even Katz is because he is reporting on it...
Ya like i'd believe me if I was you!
Check http://www.2600.com for details in your neck of the universe.
Live stream from the US Supreme Court http://www.SteveNet.net/2600/
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/1997 5.html
2 67633,00.html
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2
The DC demo will be video streamed live, http://www.SteveNet.net/2600/
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
So, how can Katz pillory the media for making this same mistake? Answer: the media do it out of ignorance, while Katz is deliberately equivocating to draw a specious connection between the criminals the FBI is pursuing (who often make no useful contribution to the hacker community) and the people who ``built the web.''
You see, it's hard to get people worked up over the FBI arresting actual criminals, but if you hint that they're really after the benign sort of ``hacker,'' well, then, that's a different story. Then it's us they're after.
Katz also engages in the most pernicious form of rationalizing when he states that ``Many hackers believe that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the hacker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality,'' and ``few hackers have ever done any serious damage to government or any other institutions, and have never to my knowledge caused any sort of physical harm to a real human being.'' First, the notion that you have to cause physical harm to a real human being in order to cause any harm at all is ridiculous. Second, implicit in the second statement is the admission that some people do break into systems and cause harm, and this is where the first statement falls down. Since harmful intruders do exist any intrusion must be treated seriously. Causing time and resources to be diverted to respond to these supposedly "harmless" attacks is itself causing harm. There is no such thing as a benign computer break-in, any more than there is such a thing as a benign home or business break-in.
It seems to me that the time wasted breaking into other people's computers is better spent hacking on systems that we have legitimate access to. Best of all, when you do that you have no FBI raids, no media demonization, and best of all you don't have to sacrifice your intellectual integrity concocting specious arguments to justify behaviors that no real hacker should condone.
-r
Freedom begins when you tell Mrs Grundy to go fly a kite. _R.A.Heinlein
Having a WIDER audience with the power to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT read and discuss the Hellmouth series or this article is damn important if it gets them to do something about the problems described in the article. Otherwise, you're preaching more or less to the converted.
I know that a lot of people would like to shut their eyes and pretend the Outside World from their particular interests doesn't exist. Hell, I'm as guilty of that as the next person. But that's not going to happen. We (whatever "we" is comprised of) DO need to interact with the "outside world" once in a while.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
The point isn't that Jon Katz, author, is getting linked all over the Web. The point is that the articles he wrote are getting linked all over the Web. Some of these articles are on some pretty important topics. The Hellmouth series was one (and was how I found
And the default moderation for
Which means that someone following a link to the site might end up seeing a bunch of "Why Katz Sucks" appended to the bottom of the Katz's writing. Or worse yet, just plain "Katz sucks" (though admittedly that's more likely to get the negative 1 rating).
I don't think Katz is tooting his own horn here. I'm a writer myself and recently got accused of doing the same thing. I think the point he is trying to make is the exact opposite: this stuff is important to him, it's getting talked about outside the usual
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Society likes the label 'hacker'. It has been bombarded by media, to the point where most people associate it with destruction and theft of computer services.
In high school, I was a 'hacker' in the classic sense, I taught myself Netware and C/C++ (my school only taught pascal, so instantly i was labelled). Since the school network was the 'baby' of the head of computers, anyone who had any knowledge of Netware was in his eyes a hacker. Word spreads quickly through the teachers, to the point where by simply standing in the doorway of the library when a computer 30 feet away crashed, I was dragged along with 2 friends to the principals office and accused of everything from tampering with grades to breaking the computers, to hacking the network.
It took a meeting with 5 staff members, 4 of whom had never used a computer, that lasted over 4 hours to explain that 'computer telepathy' hadn't been invented yet.
Ignorance must be bliss,
but it sure annoys the rest of us.
KotK
That's my complaint, though. I would have no argument at all if he kept the word away from those who break into computer systems, but instead he continues to use it to refer to them as well as those who, I believe, we all would agree truly qualify for it.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I've long been angered at the repeated journalistic misuse of the honorable term "hacker" to include those who break into computer systems. Jon appears to understand the distinction, but he confuses the issue by misusing the term anyway. Please, Jon, call 'em anything but hackers, and reserve the term for the true hackers you've come to appreciate.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
If you guys wanna know why there's such a fuss made about crackers, and why the judges tend to try to put them away for as long as they can get away with, you have to remember the stupidity of the Common Man(TM). Look at the journalists writing stories about this stuff in the big, mainstream media. 99% of the time, they don't have the slightest clue what they're talking about, and don't understand the how, the why, or even the what of the subject at hand. They know "hackers" attacked the FBI's webpage. FBI COMPUTER SYSTEMS UNDER ATTACK BY VINDICTIVE HACKERS! It's a website, it's all about PR. There's no sensitive material there. But people are afraid of what they don't understand. People are afraid of computers, and they're afraid of hackers. Most of them (including reporters, jurors, judges, and lawmakers) don't understand what computers CAN do, and what computers can do over the internet. Ask the man on the street if he thinks that if a "hacker" could break into a DoD computer, he could launch nuclear missles, or crash spy sattelites. I bet a good number of them would say yes, and many honestly wouldn't know.
The people at large don't understand hackers OR crackers, and what each of them can and will do. They see strange, incredibly smart, indecipherable people, with the power to collapse their world with a few keystrokes. Do you really blame them for erring on the side of greater caution than tolerance?
Andrew
There is a real problem here... and it is related to morality and integrity, not necessarily to definitions of words.
Let me use just one of the examples from what you have said, and I quote:
"Real hackers don't steal, vandalize or damage."
And at the end of the posting you said:
"Hackers don't buy computer games, but they get online anyway, managing to get their hands on registration access codes."
This is somewhat of a contradiction... and it brings truth to the statement that there is no exactly defined division between cracker and hacker. To use an old western movie symbol, There are some who wear white hats, some who wear black hats, and some who wear many shades in between.
Is it not stealing to gain access codes to a game that one has not legitimately purchased?
If the software is not freeware, and is marketed for a price, and the price is not given, then usage is stealing.
This country, and the world for that matter has lost its sense of integrity. The definition of honesty is lost. Not that honesty does not exist, but that people define it to their advantage, and therefore the differences between "the black hat and the white hat" are very blurred.
This is why it is a perception problem... Hacker and Cracker are defined by the people that use them purely on their own perception. Perhaps the usage of the word hacker has taken a connotation it never should have, but how can we blame them now? Every time the media mentions the bad things done, they use the word hacker. I don't think that will ever change now.
And this is also why it is an integrity problem.... had "TRUE HACKERS" never stained their hands in dishonest activity, no matter how slight, the words may have never taken on the shades that they did.
Reality is Relative.
Looks like I missed most of this discussion - but here goes anyway:
1) Confusion between "hackers" and "crackers". Ya know, this really reminds me of Edwin Newman-esqe statements about "proper" language which ignore common usage. Wake up, folks. This is no different from any other case where words understood by a small community of people to have a very specific meaning (for example, "evolution", "acceleration", etc) pass into common usage - the meaning gets distorted. If a large population of people use a word a certain way, and they all understand what they intend it to mean, then that (distorted) meaning _is_ a legitimate definition of the word by any sane standard. Or, to put it another way; this hacker vs cracker argument has been going on for years. If most people's minds haven't been changed by now, it just ain't gonna happen.
2) "Hackers don't intend any mischief when they break in, they just wanna look around." Really? How do I know what the intentions are of a hacker who breaks in? And even if I do establish that the intentions were benign (realistically, I'll never know for sure), real damage has still occurred; work time has been wasted chasing the threat (reduces profit, makes company less healthy; jeopardizes stockholders, creditors, and employees), the hacker may have seen things which are none of his business (jeopardizes client confidentiality agreements) - not to mention that the hacker may have accidentally deleted files, etc, without realizing it. There simply is _no_ such thing as a "harmless" intrusion.
3) "Hackers share". Hackers violate copyright laws and licensing agreements. This is strong language, but when you copy licensed software and give it to someone else, or accept such software, you are depriving the software company of its rightful revenue. In other words, you are committing _theft_. Pure and simple.
I enjoy my work, but I run my company in order to put food on my table and pay my rent. You hack into my site, you _will_ be prosecuted. No exceptions.
It's naive to believe that just because most
crackers cause no physical damage, therefore
crackers aren't criminals.
Horseshit. So long as *any* crackers are causing
physical damage, *all* crack attempts, unsuccessful or successful,
must be followed up
on and investigated by any site that values
its data integrity.
Investigating a crack takes horrible amounts of
valuable time.
It's the *time* that's being stolen by these
"innocent" crackers. I'd rather spend the time
hacking. It's not OK to force me to spend my
time verifying some script-kiddie's benign
intentions.
Katz, if you came home and found your door wide
open but there's a note on the front table
saying "hey, noticed the door was unlocked,
I just had a look around" -- are you telling me
you wouldn't be pissed off, and you wouldn't
feel the need to make sure nothing was stolen
or damaged? Are you telling me that
a defense against trespassing is "I didn't
hurt anything?"
To me, Hackers are alot like the "Bard's", and "Priest's" of the ancient mystery traditions.
Travelling the known world sharing information, news from far away lands, stories of people serviving against the odds, legends of ancient kings, and there adventures, or the myths of god's.
And just like the farmers, and vilagers of a 1000 years ago, the general public of today, like to here a good story, mythologised or not.
To the farmers of a 1000 years ago, most of the lore spread by the travelling bards, and the priest of the temple's of old, held a lofty "elitist" type position in society, as most of there information was too complicated to understand, that is, what common farmer has the knowledge base to understand the mathmatical philosophy of "Pythagoras", or understand plainly the intricacies of the symbology, and metaphore of the ancient "cosmologies", few if any!
To most they were just interesting stories, as with the mythology of the god's, the common (wo)man, does not want to here the detailes of what god's really are, and what they do, they only came to understand these abstract constucts when they were translated into forms more reckonisable, (i.e.) when they developed "personalities", and the god's became more like the common (wo)man, and there invisible cosmic activities where given forms like the day to day chores that the average farmer had to perform.
>
And as to the "net", to my mind, the network is a physical manifestation of what (we in magickal circles) refear to as the"ethyric plan", or the "near earth raelm", being a spiritual world that mirrors the physical, that is, every thing that exists in physical space/time, also exists on the ethyric plane, and vice versa (though one must know how to use the tools necassary to work in the ethyric) just like the net, and the tools we use to work with it.
I see the net as being a modern continuation of the "great work", which is the age long goal of uniting the physical with the spiritual, for now we have the tools that allow us to unite as one unified group of individuals as no other tool in the history of our tiny little world ever has.
end.