Impressive 'expose' on Hackers in US News

MrsMalkav writes "In light of all the other hacker 'exposes' that have been going on, this one article is really impressive. It even has the correct distinction between crackers and hackers (God forbid). They even mentioned 'script kiddies'..."

Comments

Could've been worse

[gavinhall]

Posted by Mike@ABC:

Yeah, this piece is an ad for ISS. They certainly should've called other so-called "white hats." And I would've liked to have seen comment from the cDc or other hackers in response -- they're NOT hard to reach, and they're generally nice folk.

However, this piece does give a pretty good thumbnail sketch of hackers, crackers and kiddies, and lays out the basics of how things work between them. U.S. News readers likely don't see much of that, and it's good that someone got that stuff right for a mass audience. I've covered the hacker community, and believe me, it's hard!

It really is a shame they didn't use more sources. That would've made this story truly l33t!

Some "black" hats really aren't

[jnik]

My main gripe is in grouping folks like cDc and Phrack in with the black hats; not even mentioning that Back Orifice serves two legit purposes: demonstrating the problems in MS security and doing remote admin. And more recent (last few years) issues of Phrack are actually quite interesting and useful.

Some groups and people are grey hats; shady characters, but still make useful contributions. I wonder what they'd say about L0pht...

offtopic grammatical-politcal nitpick

[Pascal Q. Porcupine]

All in all this is a very good article. I have one problem with it, though, based on a silly little thing which doesn't have anything to do with the topic of the article:

Last summer also witnessed the debut of "Back Orifice," which grants unauthorized users remote access to machines running either Windows 95 or Windows 98, the operating system of choice for most home computers.

Last I checked it wasn't the OS of choice, but of taciturn consent. Didn't work for Louis XIV... Ahwell. Otherwise I'd love to see more articles like this.

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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

Counterpoint

[GeorgeH]

Rather than claim to have an original bone in my body, I found Hacker News Networks description of the article a little less glowing. I also wonder if the Greg Shipley mentioned in the article is actually Pete Shipley.

From http://www.hackernews.com/arch.html?0608 99

ISS Gets Free Advertising
contributed by lamer
Here's a nice 'adverticle' for ISS. ISS must be really wonderful because they have "tangled" with cDc, that horrible hacker group that makes Microsoft's life "miserable". I don't suppose it's possible that MS makes its own life miserable by putting out 3rd rate software? Nah. And I don't suppose it is possible that the author of this article did any research other than contacting ISS? Nah.

Re:Crackers = White Folk?

[lar3ry]

I don't think that the Slashdot community will ever come up with a term for people that try to break into other computers that will satisfy everybody.

I think "cracker" is a much better term than "hacker," though.

George Orwell's _1984_ came up with an interesting way to "prevent" crime by removing words for the different categories of crime from the language (double speak). So, things like rape, murder, stealing, and presumably taking too large a deduction on your income tax could only be expressed by the word "crimethink." Apparently, if you can't express the exact nature of the crime, it may be harder to commit.

I think the term "script kiddies" is perfect for some of those with too much time on their hands, since the term is so patently offensive to those that are being described.

If you want a better word than "cracker," you might want to consider the much simpler (and more Orwellian) "low life." [smile]

My own opinion, of course.
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Why not Breackers???

[Le douanier]

The problem with Hacker is that it now have two different meanings in the same domain (computer science) and that these meanings are totally different (on refer to something illegal and stupid the other to something legal and not stupid at all).

If we use Crackers to refer to people that break into system computer we have the same problem but "less worse". I don't care that it may refer to people in the south of the USA because this meaning is not computer related and therefore isn't that annoying. I care more that it also refer to people breaking software security in order to copy them because they both are computer related.

So we end with either calling these two groups crackers and referring to them as people cracking software security and do a distinction between two or three groups, those that crack software securities to gain the control of a computer (the hacker/cracker crowd), those that crack software securities in order to be able to redistibute these softwares (the warez crowd) and optionnaly those that do DOS (Denial Of Service of course) and Script Kiddies (they often are the same i think).

Or we have another solution, find a new word for the hacker/cracker crowd (those that break into computers). If we choos this one I would propose breackers, not that I particulary like this word (but I don't care since I don't want to be one) but since they are breaking into computers that describe them pretty well. and if this word don't sound appealing why should we care? We don't have to make these things appealing.

Just my 2 cents.