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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.
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 ?
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.
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/
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
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.
...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
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 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.
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
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
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?
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.
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'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.
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.
If you aren't the issue, why do we get all of the "got tons of very intelligent, interesting, thoughful, e-mail about this column which, as usual, is being linked all over the place."
;o)) are the moderators.
Ooh, Jon's being linked all over the place... guess that means we better listen up, huh!
If you can't take the time to read through the comments and find the "real" discussion, or click the little button to restrict your view (reflecting moderation), why complain? There is a *reason* that functionality was put into slashdot.
I'm so glad you can take the time to tell us that you're being linked all over the place, but we (the posters) are a joke.
Ever read a newsgroup? Are newsgroups the "joke of the 'net"? Newsgroups are much more prone to flames, BS, and all around nonsense than slashdot, yet I see no one laugh them out of existence. With slashdot, we have a unique community of people who are willing to think for themselves (generalizing here), and use the voice they were given to 'share' their opinion. Sure, sometimes that might be in the form of a flame, but right behind them (and probably me
If you wish to look at someone being "laughed at", try yourself, that's what's happening here. The difference: slashdot readers don't really *care* what the "rest of the web" thinks, while you feel the need to come in and defend yourself, insulting those that read your column in the first place.
Doesn't the fact that they READ your column say something in itself? They took the time to read the thing, instead of just ignoring it and moving on. It probably made them think about the issue, if even just a little bit you *did* get some of your point across.
Insulting your "target audience" doesn't get you far... of course, you seem to be more interested in getting yourself brilliant e-mail responses and 'linked everywhere' than respecting the very people who read your columns in the first place.
-nicole
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.
I think you're very fast on judging this article. Kevin Mitnick was not a cracker. Crackers destroy things and wreak havoc on computers they penetrate. Kevin did not do that. He might not have acted the best way by getting some proprietary source code such as Solaris, but he nonetheless deserves a fair trial, something he hasn't gotten yet (in 4 years!).
Maybe you want to call him a cracker, but don't forget his case is making history for everyone working with computers. Taking such basic rights from a human being is the first step towards totalitarism, and I suggest you protest this kind of behavior before it affects you directly (and it can, just read the Hacker Crackdown)!!!
"Code free or die!"
If it weren't so tough to pull off, I would suggest that you set up an extra account, so you could get more valid feedback on your stories, and less flaming simply because people are used to you posting drivel. That being said, I think there are some pretty valid critiques of this story. Mitnick commited several very morally questionable activities, and is being held for them. Yes, the FBI's current paranoia on computer crime is abhorrent, but I think you obscured the essentials of the problem by writing several more pages of unrelated stuff. And I think the responses that you get back show that to a certain degree, /.ers DON'T think this is important. There's not a lot you can do about it, their priorities are their own.
Geek-grrl in training
"Leave it to the computer industry to shorten the year 2000 problem to Y2K. It was thinking like this that got us into this trouble to begin with."
To truly understand recursion, you must first truly understand recursion.
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...
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Behold the Power of Cheese!
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
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.
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
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
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.
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Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!