Slashdot Mirror
Interview: The Punk Hacker Kid Who Starred on MTV
When the producers of the MTV show Road Rules asked 18-year-old Abe Ingersoll to describe his job, he wrote, "Im a full time systems analyst (a.k.a. "punk hacker kid") for an Internet connectivity company thats run by a bunch of old Berkley hippies." Last month Salon did a feature story about how Abe's hacking (and cracking) skills helped him get on the show and later helped him get close to one of the female cast members. Want to be a TV star? Ask Abe how he did it. Or ask him anything else. Post your questions below. Slashdot Moderators (you know who you are) will choose the most interesting ones. Abe's answers will appear Friday.
There are several reasons why I don't care to hear this guy's answers to questions:
1. I have no respect for him. Someone does not gain my appreciation or attention by being on television. In fact, I am likely to respect them less.
2. If I want to know how he feels about things, I'll watch tho show or read the interview. The formula for Real World / Road Rules is well-known. He has been sucked into it and has lost perspective on reality. He's simply a pawn. "The Real World" is really quite an ironic title.
3. He will say nothing interesting. I read slashdot for information that is interesting to technical folk (it doesn't have to be technical itself, mind you, just interesting to nerds). This guy has no unique insight. How to use CDC software doesn't count.
4. Slashdot is closely tied with the Open Source community. OSS is involved in subverting the dominant, commercially driven, poorly done products. MTV fits these all perfectly. Why support it?
It's not an issue of hacking/cracking skills. A beginner with good insight is worth listening to . It's a matter of respect and ideals. I respect many of the non glory seeking oss people much more. I'd care to hear their opinions instead -- they have a truly unique perspective.
Would you consider yourself a script kiddie? (why or why not?)
You claim to have been running ProComm Plus on an 8086 toshiba laptop when you were younger. What model laptop was this?
Are you concerned that your cracking shenanigans and illegal actions as a youth were glorified by MTV and will result in other youth emulating your criminal actions?
Do you ever expect to have a normal life now after MTV?
What line of work do you plan to persue after your 15 minutes of fame with MTV?
Would you recommend that others use your tactics of cracking boxes and breaking into future employers boxes and so on to get a job with them?
How did you use Back Orifice to crack the boxes at Bunim/Murray? The Salon article does not make any sense about how you owned the boxes at Bunim/Murray. In fact, the Salon Article sounds like complete BS on this point (BO is not a tool to get in, its a trojan). So how did you really own their boxes?
It sounds like, in the Salon Article, that you were very cynical about the show and realized it was all BS once you broke into their boxes, so why did you join the show after you figured that out?
You also sound somewhat bitter about the way the show treated you and the way MTV over focuses on violence and conflict in the show. Would you recommend that other people join the show, knowing what you know now about it?
What does Susie think about you now?
--
Python
Python
I'm one of the people who suggested Abe Ingersoll as an interview subject on Slashdot. The guy snuck into the unsecured network of the Road Rules producers and used the information he gained to (a) improve his odds of getting on the show, (b) play head games with people on the show, and (c) improve his odds of getting laid while on the show. Millions of TV viewers know the guy as a "computer hacker" or "computer cracker."
Add all of this up, and I think it's worthwhile to see what's rattling around in the guy's head. Besides, he's not much more of an MTV fan than people making comments here, comparing Road Rules to "looking up someone's asshole" in the Salon article.
Some questions:
Rogers Cadenhead (Web: http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench)
I read the Salon article, and it wasn't exactly kind to you. Do you think it was fair or a hatchet job?
J
Dear so-called punk so-called hacker kid,
Do you feel that having a Slashdot interview about an 18 year old who got to be on MTV is sad evidence of Slashdot's decline into media-whoring pablum? I mean, sure there are countless programmers, writers, artists, thinkers, or developers with something intelligent to say, but dude, have any of THEM been on MTV?
Stuff that matters indeed.
Questions for Abe:
/. people who can't stand this topic - grow up. So what it has nothing to do with REAL computers, it's interesting nonetheless. If you don't like him, or you don't like this interview, then don't write about it. Jesus said it best when he said "You who have done no wrong cast the first stone." (who cares if I mangled the quote, it's cause I don't go to church anymore) Also, don't be as stupid as MTV would want you to be and realize the fact that any of the stuff on that show should be taken with a grain of salt. I hope the moderators come back with a vengeance and deduct points from all these "MTV sux" posts.
If they're good for anything at all, I think that one of the better aspects of "The Real World" and "Road Rules" is that they are about watching and helping young people improve and mature into adults. It seemed that at the beginning you were immature, abrasive, and somewhat anti-social, and that's just about the nicest way for me to say it. Not to say that you were the Antichrist, but some people have a knack for rubbing people the wrong way and they suffer unfair social consequences because of it. It also seemed that one of your personal goals for the experience was to try to become mature and learn how to interact with people better, which I felt was very respectable of you. Did you feel that you achieved any maturity from your Road Rules trip? Do you feel that the Road Rules trip helped you move beyond some of your difficulties with your personal interactions, or was the whole thing such a terrible mess that you went home without any positive social improvement whatsoever? Do you feel today that you still need to work on improving your social interactions with others?
Also, you're a person who had a rough childhood who happens to be good at computers. What are your thoughts on making computers and the Internet accessible to the "financially challenged?" What can people do to make sure that no one misses out on the computer age, including those who are poor and/or homeless?
Finally, do you think that Bunim-Murray purposely casts volatile, disruptive, and downright dangerous people in its shows? Or do you think that they're totally oblivious to any clues that someone might be violent, dirty, offensive, an alcoholic/drug addict, sick, anti-social, destructive, irresponsible, dishonest, highly immature, mentally ill, etc. Seems to me that making normal people live with the worst-of-the-worst is no more like the REAL world than living in an absurdly beautiful and expensive house for free.
Oh and to all you
I look forward to reading your responses.
-- $SIGNATURE
Chicks are an immense headache to hack, at least if you define "good hacking skills" as persistence, determination, intelligence, persistence and determination. Those skills will get you nowhere. The target system is usually behind a large firewall on a very distant subnet. Usually all communications are encrypted and undecipherable. You can only hope for a middle-man attack. Brute force attacks usually end up in services being reassigned to random ports or shut down for an indeterminate amount of time. Output is terribly inconsistent.
Where the heck is SATAN for chicks?
I'll go back to hacking chargens.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Why does MTV suck so hard?
"It used to be about the music, man", but now it is just ads, screaming, and blowhard documentaries.
Hey, leave comments about my mother out of this!