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DOJ Fights Hackers with Brainwashing
OKolzig37 writes "I won't even bother to comment on this one: Justice Department begins antihacking campaign. Oh brother. " Now kindergarten classes (the campaign is targeted to kids 12 and under, obviously an extreme threat to national security) will be visited by McGruff the Crime Dog, Smokey the Bear, and Mitnick, the Anti-Hacking Gerbil. Maybe someone should tell the DOJ that the reason for our current national prosperity is a generation of kids that grew up...hacking. The original press release is online also.
>Anybody remember that movie? An old anti-pot >propaganda flick the govt put together.
Where did you get this? The government had nothing to do with "Reefer Madness."
Stop listening to the Libertarians-- not every idiocy in this society comes from the government.
I was afraid something like this would happen sooner or later... The gov gets this great idea that if they told kids cracking is wrong that it will be stopped. Two major problems with this. First off, if you were a kid would you listen to some loser forty-year old who knows next to nothing about comps? I would laugh at the poor guy until his face turned red. Second: Crackers do what they do because they just don't realise the extent of damage that they deal. I am a semi-programmer and have had my problems with crackers nuking my code, it takes a LONG time and much effort to fix. Most people just don't realise how much work this takes. Instead, the gov should get kids to program stuff and then crack the KIDS code. I'm very certain you won't get crackers from kids who have been cracked, especially talented kids who make a wiz web page that was scrambled!
Excuse me? As far as I know, Alan Cox likes being called a Kernel Hacker. It's a term of respect, of knowlege and understanding. The gurus are the hackers.
Oh no! Without this initiative, your kids could spend long hours staring at computer screens and reading! They might even learn something Big Brother doesn't want them to!
So sorry, you're too late.
The problem with the word hacker is that it sounds evil to the general public. It conjures up images of psychopaths "hacking" limbs off of innocent people. They neither know nor care about your specialized definition. You are wasting your time trying to clarify the term. Just drop it and move on. Or at least don't use it outside the "hacker" community and expect everyone to know what it means. And by all means, don't waste your energy getting upset when the mass media fails to conform to your special definition!
shut the fuck up you babies. *wah* he called me a cracker.
Deal with it, when you get older, you'll understand.
Please read the Jargon File entries on hacker and cracker, so you can use the proper terms in the future. In the quote above, what you mean is The argument that cracking should be some sort of protected activity...
Thank you, come again.
"Several Los Angelos police officers were witnessed on streaming video repeatedly striking a man. When MSNBC2 News e-mailed the officers, they claimed that they thought the man was on TCP. Next up, we'll interview the man named "Rodney Ping" at the hospital."
Keep using the words hacker/cracker it works. martin
Well, we have to look on the bright side of this Bad Thing; it'll weed out most of the grammaticaclly challenged 31337 d00dz that haunt IRC and what have you.
/. should have our own mascots as well. We need plush RMS and Linus dolls; those little toy boxing figures with RMS and ESR battling over free software and open source. And of course we cannot foreget Rob the Talking Taco and Hemos the Happy Hamster.
Now we'll have a new organization MAC (Mothers Against Computers) trying to ban the internet (Oh wait that's already happening...).
If anyone was at Def Con in July they must've seen 2600's clip for the film they're working on that featured "Freddy the Fone Fraud Fox" or something to that effect. We need to support Freddy to combat the DOJ!
I suppose we at
-A. Comstock
Are we, the United States, publically
admitting that we are at the MERCY of
12 year olds? That National Security can
be compromised by angsty disgruntled
teenagers (who of course, the War on Drugs was
aimed at saving)?
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHACHAHAHHAHAHA
Fight the disease, not the symptoms. Idiots.
--Michael Bacarella
dude, basically i think you are right on but i feel that you weren't doing much of anything in the late 80s anyway; granted there was not so much to do with 286s and 386s but c and assembling short programs(nudge). maybe you are generation x, whatever that means, well why don't you all tag lovin people just herd together so that the media could identify you easier. as to the doj, although they rarely know what they are talking about, and they have missed it again, i don't believe this will have much of an impact anyway, especially considering how little money they are alotting for this; alex
Heck yeah, we SHOULD be keeping kids away from computers. They're a menace to society. Why can't they just blend in and be brainless drones like the rest of us!?!
Why when I was their age, I was drinking, doing drugs, and having sex. I wasn't hurting ANYBODY with this "hacking" bullshit.
These daggon literate intelligent kids! Someday they'll want to rule the world. We can't let them grow up and think independantly! Then we'll lose control!
^-- Laments of a concerned citizen who wants to help this campaign...
I dunno, on the flip side... i can hardly wait to get my "take a byte out of crime" t-shirt. Kick ass eh?
I would like to comment on the hacker/cracker confusion in the public mind. The reason "hacker" means to the public what "cracker" means to you hackers is very simple. To the non-nerd public, the word "hacker" conjures up images of psychopaths "hacking" legs off of innocent people, or "hacking" into computer systems. You know, like in the horror movies. It's a rough word, and non-nerds just don't know about your nuanced definition. And they never will. Give it up. You just picked the wrong word, plain and simple. You blew it. It's time to cut your losses. If you continue to call yourselves hackers, the public will always consider you fundamentally evil, particularly as computer security becomes more and more critical to our society. That's just reality.
You might find this interesting. Especially the third example.
As you can see, Billy, the computer looks very complicated -- that's because it is. So complicated in fact, that you could not possibly understand all the things it is capable of. So, Billy, we're going to tell you exactly what you need to know, and anything we don't is not important or even EVIL. Yes, that's right, Billy. Understanding all those complicated things that a computer can do is EVIL. But we won't worry about that will we? No, because we're going to show you the bare necessities to keep you placated and fearful of this mysterious whirring box. Now repeat after me...
"You got mail"
"File's Done"
.....
"
learning is 'brainwashing'.
first post!
beowulf!
hacker!
It is impossible to teach kids morality or ethics without having a basis/reason for believing it. Otherwise, the kids will see right through it.
cr4cker!
Give it up. You are fighting a lost cause. As I explained in another post on this topic, the problem with the word "hacker" in the public mind is that it is associated with psychopaths "hacking" legs off of innocent people, as in horror movies. It's a rough word. Find another word, or spend the rest of your life explaining that a "hacker" is not necessarily evil. The choice is yours. As computer security becomes more critical in our society, the problem will only get worse.
Russ
In fact, all of the money that we spend getting upset about this plan is comparable to the amount of money the doj is spending:
Say, (for the sake of argument) 4,000 people read all of these posts, and they are primarily technology professionals who are worth, on average, 25 bucks an hour. If they spend an hour to read all the posts, BAM! (in batman style) There's a hundred thousand dollars.
"Why can't somebody *please* think of the children?"
-k
The US school system is aimed at the lowest common denominator. Highly intelligent kids are, at best, bored out of their minds, and at worst, ostracized and oppressed. Is it any surprise that many begin to teach themselves and, at the same time, escape into a community where they are valued for their intelligence?
Likewise, why do kids do drugs? Its not because they're unaware of the consequences. The same kids who were leaders of the drug free club in 8th grade were alcoholics by the end of high school. Why? Because of a desperate urge to fit in, to try to escape problems, boredom.
I don't claim to know the solution, but I do know that trying to treat the symptoms of a system that attempts to drive everyone towards the middle ground is simply going to lead to a generation of kids blindly spouting "Just Say No to Hacking" in elementary school then going out and doing it anyway as they get older.
OTOH, teaching kids how not to be such obnoxious twerps online wouldn't be such a bad thing :)
Pepsi, Jolt and coffe are alternate sources of caffine, and little debbie has been competing w/hostess for years
two points: 1) In cases like murder and rape and assult that require more than one person, who's rights are more important? The victim or the attacker? Too often the victim gets blamed because he/she had his/her rights ignored. 2) Ethics is also about understand different view points, and being able to at least attempt to see past prejudices
The excuse that hacking only points out shortcomings in security ranks right up there with the Concentration Camp Guards who "only followed orders". Hacking may be enjoyable and you may get enjoyment from the actual hacking into the system. What you don't see is the people who are not able to access the internet or whose email is disrupted because you have corrupted a file on their server. I am not claiming that any life endangering activity has occured or that anything was done with malice. I am claiming that the people who use the server you disrupt use it for personal purposes and don't appreciate it being disrupted so you can enjoy yourself. Rationalization does't change the facts. I commend anyone who has enough knowledge and skill to hack a server, but just having this knowledge and skill doesn't mean you should use it on other's equipment. Perhaps a sign of responsibility and wisdom would be to "not" hack the server. I work tech support for an ISP and have had to deal with upset customers while we tried to fix the damage caused by the hacking. We can tighten security on the server, but that would only make it more difficult for some customers to get on. Try restraint. It works.
"Faced with a security breach, law enforcement officials don't know at first if they're confronting a foreign terrorist, a college student or a couple of sixth-graders who are having some fun with Dad's computer. But an ITAA official said that, upon investigation, a surprising number of cases involve child hackers."
Uhm...no? For starters...there is this little thing called....traceroute? Oh, I forgot, that's an evil Linux command. And exactly how did they conduct said "investigation" that it later "revealed" the offenders to be kids? This article is full of it, and I can only agree with the 1984 reference. Pretty soon, they'll start fighting the open source movement too. And aren't we surprised that Microbrain is also mentioned?
"to instill a healthy disdain for hacking" - What kind of mealy-mouthed idiot wrote that! And in the final move of brilliance, hacking is equated with looking for porn online....
The whole weeding out thing, isn't exactly encouraging either...."you know, we'll just weed out the bad people, and then we'll have no crime"...where have we heard that, I wonder...must've been the same place they tatooed your number on your forearm.
-There are three kinds of lies - lies, damned lies, and benchmarks.
do is teach kids is how insecure their family computer is, or even worse, how to secure it. That is the real threat to national security, since obviously their parents, and brothers and sisters, might be a porn star, a terrorist or a drug dealer.
As for the article, all I got to say is, two out of three ain't bad. " ... In addition to the funding from Justice, the ITAA also plans to pass the hat among its own membership, a who's-who list of the high-tech industry that includes Microsoft, America Online and IBM.... " Choose your friends carefully.
Bit by bit, we watch ...
"Sorry mam, Johnny cant go to school today, he crashed and we're waiting for him to reboot again"... Yes, another microsoft programmed kid...
Cant tell kids not to do something.
Martha Stewart is practically a cyborg. She owns more hardware and homes than about 15 people put together. She uses technology a lot more than the average person and does more work than the average computer worker. I once saw her drinking with Conan and I think that she has probably has some pot recipes. In her secret cybered rooms with cracking machines, she probably already has the Colonel's recipes and Le Cordon Bleu databases. She might even play a few games of Civ.
The news article uses the term hacker, while the press release calls the act of breaking in to computers bad ethic.
Computer language skills can and will solve social conundrums because it is closer to buddhism than general language can go.
Smokey doesn't like preventative security firewall testing. McGruff, the freak in an untouchable trench coat who has a thing for blood, is now joined by Officer Powertrip. Officer Powertrip is afraid of gerbils going into backdoors so he goes nypd and backdoors everyone with his night stick. Officer Powertrip shows kids his hardware that he took and his skills that he ripped off to impress the kids with what he can get away with. His wants to promote his gang identity and signs with logos all over his clothes and hardware. Officer Powertrip tries to impress the kids with information that only he can access so that he appears godlike. The kids have never seen things like this because everyone else who tries is blaspheming. Officer Powertrip postures by casually resting his hand on a barcode tattoo machine on his belt while talking to the kid who asked him a question.
The concept of what to call a drug is warped by drug programs. The concept of what a diet is has been warped by people abusing food. The supermodel program will be the best because of the stories about the morbidly obese and smuggling. The programs for kids had better be open. The kids that don't conform will either have to just be deleted or recompiled.
This could work so well that the FBI could hand out all of the profiles of what bad people are like so people could turn each other in for money. Wait about a month and whoever is left must be jailed because nobody understands them. The police are going to want money all around them just like the drug war they are dependant on.
Government just isn't a very scaleable technology right now. Functional government should be looked at from a cracking perspective. The Founding Fathers covered some of this by the use of fractions and taking representation from the number of people and number of states.
Most people have trouble separating the cracking computer from the user who isn't doing that much cracking or hacking. Big Nanny is already running an abusive orphanage.
Cracking requires that there is a possible method of getting something to work.
It isn't so much about breaking security as it is all about being kept from knowledge and holding that over someone. The Freedom of Information Act didn't have to use cracking or hacking knowledge. The Cold War had people interested in where they stood on matters. The most important thing is that each individual can watch out for theirself. The contradictions aren't such a problem if you go from one person to people.
Fight Club looks interesting.
I suppose you'd trust the dictionary to give you the proper meaning of medical jargon as well, instead of the actual way doctors use them? Or aviator's jargon, ranter than the way aviators actually use the words? Or any other group's jargon, rather than the people who're actually members of that group?
Breaking into computer systems makes me a SAAAD Panda.
Good points. I wonder if I am the only one who see through the following fallacy:
Cracking into a system through some buffer overrun or some other bug is expensive as then the adminstrator is forced to reinstall everything.
Explanation of the fallacy: Of course it shouldn't be more expensive than finding about the hole on bugtraq, because someone could already have used that hole to install his/hers own backdoor to the system (but nobody just would have noticed him/her breaking in).
And a cracker is not a computer user. A cracker is a snack food, or a piece of white trash from ol' Virginny. I wonder why the rest of us have to keep explaining that.
I've been saying that about Matt Drudge for months but you're the first person who's seen the light. Thank you!
They are nuts. I think they are just doing this campaign because they are bored with the other stuff that makes their days so dull, like prosecuting anti-trust cases for months upon months. They are bored and will do this to simply entertain themselves. Everyone wants in on the techno craze.
Here's your choice, numnuts.
.mil webpages defaced with pRon and "we 0wn j00" script over having our missiles turned against us because you idiots started an anti-intellect campaign on our own soil?
a) Smart nationals w/ skillz and who do relatively little harm,
b) Smart foreign nationals w/ skillz who take your info and use it to cripple and undermine your infrastructure to the point where they 0wn j00.
In the case of b), without a national group of hackers to WARN YOU about the weaknesses, YOU JUST LOST.
Don't you realize that the average national would far prefer to see a few
My God, I knew our country had idiots in high places, but this kind of thinking isn't just embarrassing, it threatens a countries' ability to survive.
If anything, we need more 'leet haxx0rs to show how lames some of our systems are. In the big picture, foreign pros are far more dangerous than national hacks.
I'm not so convinced that what you propose: good society through ignorance is any better.
"Rember dont learn anything about the technical world we live in. Let big coorporations deal with the details of computers and software." i wonder if people are similarly afraid of young kids pursuing auto-mechanics for a living. As "dangerous" as computers are, cars kill and maim far more people yearly then do even the most bug filled win98 box. People are just freaked out because 'kids' know and control things which most adults dont know how to deal with.
Hahahahahahaha Good one.
How many of you who wrote about government brainwashing through D.A.R.E even went through the program? 1, 2 out of 50? All they do in the program is tell you the effects of drugs. The program spawned partly from the fact that so many drug adicts were completely ignorant about the long term effects of their particular drug of choice. Of course kids are oging to make up their own mind, but at least they have some, some idea of what the drug will do to them in the long term before they make their decision. Its the same reason they teach you about std's in highschool. It's not to brainwash you against sex, its to teach you taht if you are going to have sex, you better be safe or you are going to pay for it. There are still many people ignorant to this fact. Hell, why should we even both to indoctrinate kids with science, considering every hundred or so years, we find out what we previously thought was correct was wrong. Let them decide on their own, why should we "brainwash" them? Please *give me* a break. Although I do think the anti-hacking campaign is overkill, because the problem is almost non-exisistant compared to the other problems (crime, drugs, spread of stds, etc.). To the posts protecting the juarez kids, are you completely idiotic? juarez kids are nothing more than petty theives. Software piracy is theivary, plain and simple. It the equivalent of shoplifting.
hmm, so the education system ins actually a brainwashing system.
Yes.
There was a rather interesting article on Slashdot recently relating to Mappers and Packers.
Mappers see the "Big Picture". They understand how everything interrelates together. And they find contradictions disturbing. Mappers hate politics. Blame is irrelevant. Success is paramount.
Packers have collections of disjoint facts, which they try to apply to situations using a best-fit (best-guess) approximation algorithm. Frequently generating contradictions, which Packers fail to recognize because they can NOT see the "Big Picture". Packers are political creatures. They survive and thrive on petty politics. Failure is acceptable. Who to blame is paramount.
Most Slashdot'ers are Mappers. Our government, and most of our corporations, are populated by Packers.
The success of this anti-hacking campaign is irrelevant. Just like success in the war on drugs was irrelevant. It serves (served) a purpose to the people in charge. It gives the appearance of doing something. For them, success is irrelevant. Failure is acceptable. And there's probably a nice chain of folks-to-blame already in place.
All of which leaves those of us who do see the "Big Picture" wondering "What the fuck???"
In the end, the Internet will provide Mappers with an education. It will take time. Only those who truly desire truth and knowledge will find it. The rest will continue to assume that our press is unbiased. They will believe whatever they are told. They will be cattle. And typically confined to the lower classes of our society. Chained by chains they can not see. Forever limited by concepts they can not conceive exist.
It sucks. And there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it.
This is just going to encourage a new generation of crackers, the exact opposite of the intended goal.
They should expand the project, to include spotting potential future hackers, and lock them up in camps, far away from electronics, and with only farm equipment to hack.
Anybody remember that movie? An old anti-pot
propaganda flick the govt put together.
Do we really want the govt threatening little
kids?
"If you do this, people like me will
track you down and throw you in jail."
That's all the message will be. Except that it
will be sugarcoated in some cheezy "fun" theme.
This amounts to nothing more than harassment.
Forced education of laws you shouldn't break.
Disgusting.
How about a dancing, singing, old green-screen Terminal named Snitchy? "Hi kids, I'm Snitchy!"
Kid: "Whenever I want games I call my friend on the phone....."
Snitchy: "No, no, no, no, go out and buy your own!"
Kid: "I give the CD back, so it's really just a loan......"
Snitchy: "No, no, no, no, go out and buy your own!"
Kid: "I don't have $50, so I can't afford Quake 4."
Snitchy: "You can buy it when you're older and work at the party store!"
Kid: "I didn't do my homework cause I didn't have Excel."
Snitchy: "Go ask your mom for money, just cry and scream and yell."
Kid: "She told me to go find someone to get the CD from."
Snitchy: "Ooooooh! Call the police and they'll be sure to help your mom."
Kid: "Help her? She's fine. Though sometimes she gets mad..."
Snitchy: "She can live with the police, and you can live with your Dad!"
"Thanks, Snitchy!", the kid says. "I've learned a valuable lesson today. Don't copy software, and be sure to report anyone who does! It's just as bad to copy software as it is to steal it from the store!"
"Remember the warning signs, kids!", Snitchy says, pointing at a big blackboard.
1) Weird looking programs like HEDIT.exe, SuperDASM32.exe, MSDEV.exe are often used by COPIERS! Report them to your teacher or friendly police officer!
2) A CD player that RECORDS? Copiers use these! If you know somebody who has one and you think he's a COPIER, report him!
3) COPIERS do weird, CRAZY things on their computers! If it isn't something normal like e-mail or homework, he might be a COPIER! Report the user to the police or your teacher!
Thanks kids, and remember, COPIERS are THE WORST THIEVES OF ALL!
>Great. Now, not only will I have to deal with the popular >misconception of what a hacker is, but I'll have to deal with an >entire generation trained to believe that I'm a bad person. I fear >that, despite some small victories, we're losing the hacker/cracker >nomenclature battle on the large scale.
What's the big deal here people? So the DOJ wants to wipe out Script Kiddies. Quite frankly I don't see anything wrong with this. I think it's past time that it was taught that wanting to be a Script Kiddie is a bad thing. And let's be clear here, this is exactly what the whinning is really about. It really has nothing to do with being a old-school hacker at all, as most of the comments in this thread is clearly showing.
"They" have tried to shut down the internet
for years now.
Why can't they find a solid lie that the
public will buy? I mean really, they are
masters at this game. Look at the TWA 800 crash,
that was an outstanding coverup.
Here's a plan for the gov: 1) Instead of convicting highly intelligeable hackers for exaggurated crimes, such as a script kiddie who caused a 1billion dollar DoS, send them to Quantico and train them more properly, then have them work for the NSA. 2) While all their networks are being intruded left and right, have the same hackers they catch, secure their networks as community service. 3) Stop spending money on bogus programs and use those funds to hire properly trained personnel in the MIS/IT section. Is it me or does anyone else notice the emerging trend of security through obsurity coupled with a sense of prejudism towards talented hackers, byt the DOJ who'd rather assassinate the notion of someone more talented than their expert employees? I see it as some sort of envy on their behalf, since they never mention any means of securing their own servers and would rather sentence someone instead of gaining that persons knowledge to better themselves. ugh ... gotta love these early morning half ass rants ;)
Want Root?
Another lame program that doesn't work. Much like the 'War On Drugs' propaganda.
Of course we've all have heard of security through obscurity, but what it sounds like the government is pushing for here is security through stupidity. The government has the need to know more about things than the average Joe Blow and this is the basis of its power. It looks like we got them running scared. No longer can they push people around just because they know more than everyone else.
If they want to resolve the security issues that they have, why don't they put the money towards training some of the government bureaucrats basic network/computer security protocol.
Hey even better, why don't they get rid of also of those really, really stupid crypto export regulations. Then maybe progress on things like IPsec and so on can continue without any problems with export laws and so forth....
Of course, that's the same "war" that brought you the wonderful comparisons that pot is as bad for you as heroin.. The war on hacking will be just as successful. Why not put all that money into getting systems more secure in the first place!
When I was 13 and just getting into modems and the like, if something like this went on, I would have gone even more hardcore into hacking activities than I already was :). So maybe this is good thing! All of those playing with unpassworded SCO boxen and HP gear contibuted directly to where I am today. Mind you - I didn't get caught. Nor am I american (ah, the great white north).
Mind you, they should promote giving kids Linux and other multiuser systems that they are free to play around on - those things just didn't exist in the late 80's and early 90's when I was learning. Rather than government-sponsored brainwashing programs (which work until kids wanna rebel as a result of excessive hormones), this money would be better spent on giving each school a linux machine and saying "Here, fsck with this box, we have it backed up.."
The world watches on with amusement..
Another Canadian AC
That part was a joke.
Would you want your kids being programmed by the likes of MS and AOL?
--
C'mon - 300K won't go very far toward their goal, but it earns the current occupants of the Justice Department (and, of course, their boss (the Molester-in-Chief)) a lot of good publicity at others' expense.
That surely makes it worthwhile for them, though it won't do the rest of us any good.
...that way Spaf can teach the kiddies proper nettiquette while he's crushing the ability to think for one's self out of them.
I can just see it now...
Yeah, I've seen the future, and the future is Happynet...
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Bah. /me waves hand in a dismissive fashion.
When I finally have enough balls to consult on my own, I'm going to put the H word right on my goddamn business card, and I've said as much to every suit (or otherwise) who asks me what I want to do with my life. Sure, I get the inevitable "you're a WHAT?" from the norms, but hey, Thats Fine By Me. I get a chance to tell them what I do, where I see technology going, how I can help them get Useful And Interesting Things Done. If people get confused by the Hacker/Cracker dichotomy, I spread the Ethic: Think for yourself, use what you know, learn what you don't, and try to understand everything. Don't hurt anyone and have fun, because otherwise it just isn't worth it (way too boring sometimes, like right now as I'm trying to get glibc installed, only I'm doing it by hand).
IT'S SPIN, BABY!!! This is mediawar, and we can fight, too. Hell, we can even win. Yeah, I'm a hacker. I do interesting shit with a computer. Let me tell you about it. Etc. That's called Good Advertising, thankyouverymuch, because the word hacker not only connotes DARKEST EVIL, but massive sk1lz. And I'm "such a NICE boy" that people forget about the EVIL part, and as soon as I can socially engineer them for about five minutes, I have them well on the way to being convinced that I'm pretty damn smart, QED.
The ultimate exploit. No sticky mess to clean up, no syslogs to erase. The pure power of communication, which is why I'm into computers in the first place. Take THAT, Madison Avenue!
Rev. Dr. Xenophon Fenderson, the Carbon(d)ated, KSC, DEATH, SubGenius, mhm21x16
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
And who cares about the difference between memory and storage? We all know that most users use them interchangeably... If gangsters called themselves
"warriors" do you think that US Marines might object? Language is living, absolutely, but that doesn't mean that words can'tbe used incorrectly.
Look at the confusion most people have regarding "drugs" and "narcotics", thanks to our "war on drugs". But the *real* authorities on these subjects, the medical establishment, still uses them correctly. Is part of the government's plan to deliberately confuse hacker & cracker, or are they just stupid?
Uh... hacking is not a crime. Hacking means playing, taking apart, learning how something works, especially regarding computers. I am a geek, but I would not call myself a hacker only because that implies a certain level of expertise.
This is equivalent to the Chinese term "kung fu",
which properly translates as "one who has achieved mastery thru much hard work".
The DEA fights "drug use", yet most of them use antibiotics when prescribed, coffee, ethanol, aspirin, and/or cigarettes. And the "just say no" campaign is about as effective as you would expect from such confusion.
Now we have a new "war on hacking", even tho we all know that hacking is just playing and a search for excellence. Who's gonna write their programs?
The M$ marketing department?
- freehand, a proud user of drugs(coffee) and
a hacker wannabee
OK. I feel odd doing this, as I'm usually the one who looks at the folks who protest about folks getting "carried away" with anti-government issues and say "you don't get it", but in this case, what's the big deal?
Unlike, say, DARE, which does nothing but propagate an already unbalanced, defective, and freedom-restricting profit racket set up by the gov't, this issue actually makes some kind of sense.
Drop the hacker/cracker nonsense, first off. I will use cracker in this for clarity, that is all.
Most of us, I think, despise crackers (barring the AC k1dd1es). I, personally, would welcome a program in which someone told kids "Hey, this is bad, you don't want to be like this", if the "this" in that sentence was a little punk hax0r d00d. Again, unlike the War on Some Drugs, the War on Crackers is legitimate... as LONG as it stops at "don't do this", and doesn't branch into further persecution which *is* unwarranted.
I am usually very radically anti-government on issues such as this, but in this case, as long as it stays at "kids, this is bad, don't so this", big deal. I'd rather they spent the tax dollars they rob from me on that than on some pork barrel project sponsered by Senator Clitus for his little backwards hometown.
It might get rid of a lot of the skr1pt k1dd13z that are running around right now... Although considering the effectiveness of the "Don't Do Drugs" campaign (which, at least at my school, has not made too much of an impact), it might just weed out a few of the more benign ones.
-- K
Philby - whoops! that was long before the Reaganite era - 1940's. Ames - a better example, but these are spies, turning coat on other spies. Really, little to do with you or me. The fact still stands that "terrorism" in the 1980's as put forth by the popular media in the US was largely a fabrication, right along with the "drug war". "Terrorism" is simply convenient propaganda nomenclature, designed to stir up public fears and get them to support the police force instituted to "fight" it.
And then, what of US sponsored "terror" in third world coutries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Indonesia, Viet Nam)? Is terror "ok for me, but not for you"? It works both ways. The greatest madnesses of cultures are not apparent to them until much later.
Well, naturally the KGB was trying to stir up as much crap as they could, but WRT Viet Nam, they simply didn't need to. There was enough popular sentiment that they simply needn't get involved, so your assertion is dubious, to say the least. God forbid that the Viet Nam war might be considered unjust and odious (it was). You blithely ignore that most of the anti war sentiment had nothing to do with the KGB.
Pay an think tank enough money and they will tell you anything. That's what they're for. What does "could work" mean? Total global devastation?
I believe any honest student of Soviet history could not possibly come to any conclusion that the system was facing imminent and total collapse starting with the Brezhnev era.
The problem is that there is virtually no other way to communicate. People like Ralph Nader are almost silent in comparison to the media. As I said, the whole "problem" could be alleviated by corporations placing uncensored feedback forums on their sites. Instead we get the same one-way pipeline of marketing drivel supported by government sponsored "crackdowns". The gripe I have (which you did not even address, preferring to tangentize on government spies) is that vandals (a misdemeanor) are being persecuted as terrorists (a capital crime). The rebellion is incohate, groping, untutored and largely even unprincipled. But I'm not buying into the propaganda. The net isn't theirs, and their unwavering arrogance warrants action.
support gun control: take guns from cops
I forgot something.
The "science" of marketing has left rational discourse behind long ago. It's no longer a matter of which product is better or why one should buy it or how it could be useful to you. What does reason mean in an environment where it isn't GOOD/BAD or QUALITY/CRAP but GEEKY/SEXY and COOL/DORKY?
You have to fight fire with fire. Fighting the brazenly irrational market culture, which produces tons of useless trash by the shipfull, with rational argument is pointless. It's like using a spitball against an aircraft carrier. So yes, I support web site defacement, as well as bulletin board defacement, and whatever else you can think of. These thing have the effect of jarring one's conciousness slightly, hopefully enough to show it the absurdity of the image driven and completely irrational intellectual obscenity of the marketeer.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Interesting how dissenters and defacers of corporate web sites are now deemed "terrorists". Of course anyone who thinks knows that the "communist terrorist" scares of the Reagan years and beyond is largely a fiction of the corporate media and its government supported mechanisms and popular literature (Tom Clancy, Rambo movies, anyone?): exactly parallel to the "Red Scare" of the 50's. The language used in this article is positively alarming, and is supported by our governments treatment of these "vandals": they actually are being persecuted as terrorists criminals, not vandals, and are given the stiff penalties that would normally be reserved for hardened criminals. This is pure propaganda: designed to induce fear in the public to promote and excuse the incarceration and villification of the "menace". To be sure, there are criminals using cracking skills for truly immoral purposes, but the propaganda model is meant to obscure that - so that the public cannot make the distiction - that's the point.
"True Hackers" can dismiss crackers as "script kiddies" all they want (and much of the characterizations are true), but dissent is a healthy part of a democracy. It is a good and necessary thing. It's not as if there isn't anything to be pissed about in our society. I personally like the fact that kids are defacing corporate web sites! It should be rigorously pointed out that most of the cracking done is harmless defacement and meant to embarass and deride, not destroy. This is culture jamming, not criminal activity. Anyone who subscribes to the "defaced" mailing list knows that.
I guess the final solution would be to dope everyone up on television, ritalin and zoloft (the drugs that our system condones out of hand of course - just don't smoke pot!!!) so that they just can't think anymore, a country of bleary eyes zombies getting their buttons pushed. It is only so long before the mind rebels against this sort of horrid nonsense.
The corps need to realize that the internet is NOT television. The days of manufactured infotainment (what a horrid term - I didn't come up with it) are numbered, they know that, and they're trying with all their might to turn the internet into a more muscular version of television, a vast theme park and entertainment delivery system for the mind.
The vertically integrated modern media corporation truly represents the greatest threat to free speech ever in our supposedly "free" society. They need to be cracked. They would have us think that the true dissenters of our society are the puffy lipped, slender, androgenous models that grace the slick pages of Details and GAP storefronts. Pretty soon we won't know better.
They need to know that we will talk back, by any means necessary. This is just the powerful plutocrat, disgusted that people have found a new weapon against their methods of order, authority and control (what charter of our country gave them any authority, anyway?). Personally, I'm tired of people having any power over me whatsoever.
The solution here is for crackers to organize better. What bother me a little is not the "horror of defaced sites" (OH MY GOD!) but the problem that most of this dissent is inarticulate and untutored. We are now presented with the amusing spectacle of the corporate media (I refuse to give them the moniker "Free Press" - they don't deserve it) telling us that the "black hat" hackers are the ones ridiculing the corporate machinery and the "white hat" hackers are the gainfully employed citizens ... er ... consumers using their "security skills" for the "greater good". I believe someone once said that if one looks hard enough, you will find the one who profits from something, and therein lies the spark that powers the machinery. If there was any honesty to this, the corporations would have uncensored feedback forums on their web sites, not the same bland conduits of market babble that we're so used to from the traditional media.
Now it's fairly obvious that they're lobbying the federal government to protect themselves - who will in turn, in an ironic twist, use our tax dollars to launch a media campaign in order to protect them. The sad truth is that there really isn't a damn thing anyone can do about it but keep cracking web sites. But that's our "democracy" for you.
support gun control: take guns from cops
The worst part of computer science education below college is that the teachers do not know how to program at all. I don't know how to remedy this, I wish I did. Even an independent study in computer science would be better than what is offered now.
--
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
hi, im chip, your friendly computer.
im here to tell you that breaking into me is bad. i hate it when you change the way im set up.
you should leave that to people who know better.
people like microsoft, a corporate sponsor of the C.A.R.E. (Computer Abuse Re-Education) program.
So please, don't try to learn how i work.
What you don't know can't hurt you!
and just remember k1dd13z.
just s4y n0! to l33t h4xx0R sploits!
I was actually expelled from high school for cracking the academic computer. I cracked the academic computer because I had pretty much exhausted the learning that I could do on it without cracking security (or so I thought). I became involved in the Free Software movement largely as a result of this - I don't think any student should see cracking as the only remaining productive use for their creative energy once they feel they exhausted the possibilities provided by their local environment. In joining the Free Software movement, and doing my best to provide cool stuff for fledgling hackers to hack on, I feel that I am providing an alternate creative path.
What the DOJ is doing is kind of silly, but I don't think it's wrong. They would be better advised to approach students constructively, instead of just propogandizing. Of course, propogandizing is arguably cheaper...
Sigh.
I suppose it depends on the dictionary: http://www.m-w.com/ gives both of these definitions among others.
I miss Meept.
Well, my high school had *no* programming courses at all. Zip, nada, nothing...you get the idea :)
A couple years after I left I hear they're finally getting a CS class, in C++ no less. Which surprised the hell out of me, since in my experience my school is as technologically inept as they come (they apparently consider changing the default start page of Netscape on a teacher's machine to be some 3l33t exploit. Seriously! They even offered me a position with them after I did that too. Which I politely declined (-: ).
Maybe they finally got somebody with half a brain in there - they now have relatively new PII machines (versus old 486 Win3.1 and even more ancient Mac systems when I was there), and are actually using them for something!
They also appear to be brainwashing them that "hacking" means doing something evil with computers. Gee... I thought it meant writing code.
Yay, another organ of "official truth". An army of revisionist historians, marching in lock step with no room for different drummers. Will Stephen Levy's "Hackers" be banned next? After all, it glorifies both the proper usage of the noun and the activities themselves, even the mindset of these Evil Beings. Perhaps a few parents will deliberately exclude their children from these sessions as some have done with the DARE programs; certainly some will see it as yet another reason to home-school. At the very least it should encourage some hard, rational discussions amongst parents and children about issues of right and wrong...ethics being a much more complex subject than "Hacking Is Bad".
Fuck Slashdot
It's a toy language. It's nice to start with if you don't have a lot of experience. Sure, you're not going to use it for any serious hacking, but it's nice to learn the basics with.
Yeah, I learned how to code in modula 2 (similar to Pascal) and while I cursed at it at the time for being so bloody picky about everything, looking back at it it's been good, because it teaches you to code in a halfway decent manner.
Right now they're teaching Java to people with no experience whatsoever. Imagine that, you don't know jack shit about coding and you get Java thrown at you! Kinda overwhelming, no?
Those toy languages are good for introducing people to programming. Then once you're capable of writing a bit of non-trivial stuff in such a language, and you want to start doing some real coding, you start using a real language.
The whole debate about whether the DOJ's education program will squash future hackers, or just stop them from being crackers, is a moot point. It's funny, by debating this, you give the DOJ way too much credit in their ability to affect the minds of kids.
I've been through a few animal-mascot 'education' programs in my time, and I thought they were as dumb then as I do now. The fact is that the people who concieve these campaigns have no understanding of the intelligence of the students they are trying to reach. Instead, they learn all the wrong lessons from Sesame Street (whose success was due to the respect with which it treated its viewers) and give us talking dogs with hackneyed, condescending messages like "Kids, say no to drugs," and hope we listen. However, the real message of these programs is "You can't be allowed to know the truth, so we'll lie to you with puppets," and most kids can see right through that at a very young age.
What makes this program even dumber is the target audience: potential crackers. The defining characteristics of crackers, even at that age, are high intelligence and a serious opposition to authority. The former means that they will see right to the heart of what the program is trying to do, and the latter means that they will totally reject the program once they realize where it's coming from (the authorities that they can't stand). If anything, this is likely to encourage them by giving them a target, a way of expressing their defiance.
Remember the "Just Say No" campaign? This totally unsuccessful program is the ultimate example of a government education program. Built on misguided stereotypes and incorrect, unverified theories (in that case, the notion that everybody got started on drugs because of peer pressure), and implemented heavy-handedly by beuraucrats and school adminsitrators who didn't even care if it worked, it had the net effect of boring a lot of students with tedious lectures, and making a lot of them start wondering what was so special about drugs, that the grown-ups were so afraid of them.
Of course, nobody can oppose such an obviously righteous program, and so the "Just Say No" campaign was universally hailed as the salvation of our kids, never mind that it doesn't work. The DOJ's anti-cracker campaign will meet with the same fate.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
This sounds an awfully lot like the DARE program. You know the .. let's go tell 6th graders there's this thing called Marijuana which makes you feel really good, BUT YOU SHOULDN'T BE USING, IT, AT ALL!@# WHY?! BECAUSE WE SAID SO! So congratulations to whoever came up with this anti-hacking campaign, you're going to perk up the interests of thousands of kids across the nation who are going to become even more interested in computers because they'll be thinking "whoa cool! I can do THAT?!".
Some time ago I faced a situation that suggested
:)
me a reason for the cracking fever we see today.
The main problem is not education. I saw even people on their 50's cracking computers. Nor it is culture, race or age. The problem goes around a psychological problem I would call the "Forbidden Fruit".
The recept for it is quite simple. Give a system
with several restrictions. They can be directly forced or be just "features". And secure all this with a relatively superficial security system.
This will forcefully create a wave of cracking. The level this "crimewave" may grow depends on how juicy are the results of circumventing the security.
Frankly I saw cracking waves at different levels of "prizes". In one case, when the relation restriction/prize was quite high, the cracking wave rose to levels that almost destroyed all the network. The only two choices to save the situation were either to establish administrative fascism, recurring even to Law, or to remake the whole conception of work.
We choose for remaking the whole thing. It was hard but the cracking wave dropped by nearly 10 times.
We didn't choose administrative fascism more for pragmatic reasons rather than moral. Frankly parallel networks suffered a lot with it. Besides
there was a need to be politically correct and technically sincere. These restrictions were mostly created from technical problems. And here we had some serious responsability to solve them.
Unfortunately the first type of system and OSes didn't give a clear chance to solve these problems. In some point we were also cracking one OS to solve some of these problems
Yeah, I agree that such a program teaching hacker ethics would be better, and at a latter age.
Also, on a side note, In my experence, High School Network admins, chooses a somebody who moderatly knows how to use a computer, as thier assistant, but they keep the hackers in their back pocket to help them out, find security holes, and fix the problems before anybody notices, because they will be the ones to notice the problems first
The problem is it's difficult to do anything but brainwash a first grader. The 3 parts of persuasion are pathos, ethos, and logos. They're to young to have the necessary knowledge for logos to work. So you use pathos and ethos. Pathos - this stuff is scary and will get you in trouble. Ethos - I'm a big person and in a position of authority. That basically amounts to brainwashing.
They need to recognize that they start a lot of this stuff too young. The average first grader's computer usage is limited to reader rabbit. By 6th grade a kid could concievably be interested in cracking, but even that seems young. It strikes me as something that's much more of a problem in high school, and possibly middle school.
I would not be nearly as concerned if they started a progrm like this in middle school.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
Concerned Slashdotters for the use of Encryption by Children.
We could teach young children how to use strong encryption and steganography to hide their interest in computers from their parents.
As a side benefit we'd be brainwashing them into encouraging less export restrictions on crypto when they grow up!
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
There's an awful lot of web 'literature' that glorifiys cracking. Some of it's trash, but the occasional essay is well written, and quite convincing. Particularly to a kid who feels like an outcast, and probably wants to a)prove he's better than the rest of the world, and b)make the rest of the world pay in some small way.
For example, read Consience of a Hacker, and think how it would appeal to someone who felt that way.
God does not play dice - Einstein
Not only does God play dice, he sometimes throws them where they
Maybe what they should do is send people over to TEACH them how it is done. Show them the how so there comes a time in which users actually care for their system's security, [not to mention the systems programmers]. In the meantime, we will live in interesting times, but then again, don't we now?
If anything, I bet this "anti-hacking" campaign will be just like the DARE campaign which didn't work well at all.
I hope they don't tell children things like "If you see someone who's on the computer too much, or they don't just look at websites your teacher tells you to look at, they're probably a hacker. Go tell Mom and Dad and your principal at your school."
Saying things like this will only discourage people who don't want to get labeled as a "hacker." This sort of approach may end up discouraging someone who could end up being the next Linus Torvalds.
It won't deter anyone though, and for the ones who would end up cracking systems later on anyway, it probably might just instill curiosity in them at an earlier age. If you leave a kid in a room and tell them "I'm going to leave this room now, and while I'm gone, don't push this red button," you'll probably return later to find that the kid pushed it because you told him not to.
All I think this will do is discourage good kids and encourage the bad ones even more.
Well, of course it is. Haven't you ever read the Illuminatus! Trilogy?
If you don't see the Fnords they can't eat you.
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
The cyberspace street lights are being removed because they help the thieves see our unlocked doors The thieves have been ghostlike and hard to see in the past, and now we blind everyone and ourselves in hopes of confusing those ghosts. I can't watch the traffic on my computer or my net. I can't browse DNS. I can't query sendmail daemons to debug the spelling of addresses. I can't finger. And the list grows and grows. My ability to see and correct my and my client's environment has been severely eroded in the name of security. (?!?)
But that makes the ghosts even harder for accidental witnesses to see. Unlike breaking in your front door in real life, where witnesses are hard to avoid, cyberspace is becoming more and more opaque, and cyberspace crimes harder and harder to witness by (nosey!) bystanders.
So! Given these trends, what other choice is there but to try to prevent the kids from doing this stuff in the first place?
If you want to fight the new puritanism, my suggestion is to instead build tools so bystanders can easily see all the script kiddies and their elders running around poking into places where they shouldn't. And start re-building a culture where they get redirected in more positive directions, instead of getting more and more punished at younger and younger ages.
How active is a script kiddy going to be when e "sees" hundreds or thousands of disapproving eyes staring and commenting on their every move?
A common OSS phrase applies here: if you want to make things better, why not help out? Offer to teach some after-school computer use or programming classes somewhere in your area. Find some of these bored kids on the 'net and offer them lessons. Teach them what it means to be a hacker. They'll acquire some useful, fun skills, and you'll benefit by having more intelligent, educated people around.
One of my friends started working on this recently. He cruised chat rooms and other places, contacting kids and offering them accounts on his Linux server, so long as they learned to use the machine and observed common courtesy and proper capitalization. He got several to accept his generousity, and he's given some lessons on, e.g. C. Unfortunately, he hasn't a whole lot of time to spend recruiting and teaching. He's got the machine--if you could help, you'd be doing everyone a favor (including yourself). There's a basic page up at qapcom.twistedmatrix.com.
The 'net allows us to share information not only in the form of code, but lessons as well. More of the latter will mean more of the former.
This kind of campaing probably won't stop the people who just download hacking tools and blindly apply them on every site until one falls. There are just too many a-holes like that round.
Here's an alternative idea: how about teaching hacker ethics? IMHO we need more "good hackers" who after finding a hole, publish it without first fucking up some website with dumb slogans and pr0n. Of course, the targer group should be a littele more mature (13, even 14-year olds ;-).
If someone attempts to sell me illegal drugs, I'm encouraged to report them, right? So should I report the company that tries to sell me Windows? :)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
It sucks. And there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it.
While I'm not exactly yer cheery optimistic sort, defeatist attitudes like the above just give the bastards what they want. Power.
They won't get it from me without a fight. That is somehing I can do about it.
That and voting. There's got to be a few "mappers" running for office. Or at least some "packers" with the brains to delegate the important tasks to the mappers. Vote for them.
School is not the place for brainwashing.
It most certainly is. Shouldn't be, but is. What are you going to do about it? (a suggestion - find out which school administrators support this kind of nonsense, and then vote accordingly in school board elections. If more Kansans had done this, they wouldn't have had that evolution fiasco.)
Humanity as a whole does not like to be
controlled, we like to think for ourselves.
What's this "we" sh1t? You like to think for yourself, and I like to think for myself, but we're not all of humanity. I fear that too much of humanity is content to think what they're told what to think. It's so much easier....
In addition to the funding from Justice, the ITAA also plans to pass the hat among its own membership, a who's-who list of the high-tech industry that includes Microsoft (MSFT), America Online (AOL) and IBM (IBM).
Why am I not surprised? Maybe because I know that D.A.R.E is sponsored in a big way by the tobacco industry. This anti-hacking (why'd they have to use that word?) movement seems a close parallel. Just say no to drugs...except the ones provided by our sponsors. Just say no to computers and software... except the ones provided by our sponsors.
well...I know myself (some days at least). But then again, I didn't become an MCSE by going to class. I became one by knocking around NT boxes, breaking them, and fixing them. After I knew my way around, I went out and got some books to study so that I could answer the stupid exam questions that Microsoft thinks are important. NT may not be the best OS in the world, but it pays my bills an allows me to have my computers to run linux on at home :)
I'm a senior in high school right now, and I took AP Computer Science last year (the first year that they taught C++ instead of Pascal), and I'm glad I took it. Not only did I learn a lot, I also got to know the school's network administrator who offered me a job over the summer and I'm still working for him doing stuff with our school's computers.
-OnyxArrow
I never even had the option of BASIC. In grade school, LOGO was the only language offered. In high school i didn't bother with the class [yes, singular], IIRC it was programming "mac hypercard" or something like that.
Besides, i taught myself BASIC at age 10, some basic 8086 assembler a few years later, C after i got on the 'net and someone gave me an old Borland DOS compiler... Spent my time in math class programming games into my TI-85.
The schools say they don't have the money to spend on more than one or two computer classes, and they have to target those classes to the majority of [semi-computer-illiterate] students. "How to use Windows 95 and M$ Office" and such.
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IIRC, it was because the kids thought they could handle experimenting since they had the class...
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It's all about money. Most schools don't have enough to hire even a part-time CS teacher, so at best they have to rely on some Math teacher that has a minor interest in computing. Combine that with the fact that buisnesses tend to pay several times better than schools, and almost no one with a real CS background is interested in teaching.
It's the same thing with Theatre in many schools, an English teacher ends up heading the program because there's not enough money to hire someone to specialize. Although the situation isn't quite as bad, since there's more teachers with a theater interest and background than teachers with a CS interest and background. And it's easier to accomodate both beginning and advanced students in theater than CS. ("I still don't understand binary/octal/hexidecimal!" for the 10th time. Teacher has to explain. I take a nap. For the whole week.)
It seems to me that CS work below college level is truely independant study, since it's completely independant of school.
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However, look at the terminology they're using. "Hacking is bad." "Kids shouldn't hack." Etc. So all these kids are brainwashed into thinking that hacking (our definition as well as cracking, since the DOJ makes no distinction) is bad. Then micros~1 starts an ad campaign saying Linux, FreeBSD, and any other Open Source OS is a hacker OS--technically true, but not when the incorrect meaning of hacker is inferred. So all these kids think hacker==bad, Open Source==hackers, so Open Source==bad and by M$ products.
Yes, that is a little extreme of a prediction. Most predictions are inherently extreme, those that aren't tend to be widely ignored.
As a side note, will Mitnick the Gerbil stop script kiddies any more than McGruff the Dog stops crime? Far too many kids do drugs, hurt and steal even with McGruff's messages...
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Actually, I wish them luck to half the program, they DO say they're trying to teach 'online ettiquete.' At least then they can 0wN y00 in StYl3.
Note: Previous statement was partially tounge in cheek. Personally, I wish there WERE more civilized people on the net. This probably isn't the way to do it.
Well, I think you've gotten a bit mixed up.
How is someone cracking your system and looking through your files any different than someone breaking into your house and looking through your filing cabinet? (ethically, that is.)
It's true that intellectual electronic property can be copied without denying it of the producer, but this is quite different than saying that its ok for anyone to steal someone else's work or information. People have the rights to their own work. This is what allows you to put your work under the GPL, for instance. But regardless of what all the socialists will tell you, you do not have the right to my work. That's the difference.
Oh, and BTW, This holds equally as well for any kind of information digital or otherwise.
..that only people outside the US are gonna be hackers? i was raised in central america, and i didnt hear about smokey or mcGruff or whatever they're called 'til i came here, and they seemed like a joke to me.
considering that any kid from 6th grade up starts making up his/her own mind on what they're gonna do with their time, the idea of "brainwashing" seems a bit extravagant.. sure, you'll have the usual goodie-2-shoes being nice and polite and following a big dog's advice about crime and a teddy bear's advice about fire, but most others already went beyond what their parents and teachers tell them.
hell, how many of us belong to that 98% of high schoolers who know the basic way to get through school: nod and pretend your listening to the teacher while you draw on a notebook or stare off into the wall...
SOME kids will be influenced, but they would've been influenced to one thing or another anyway.. the true creative ones will always find amusement in the futile attempts by their elders to control them.
------ Poo-tee-weet?
Today hackers can bring down giant, multinational banking systems, brokerage houses and even TRW. So you have to ask yourself, do you REALLY want a joy-riding hormone handicapped teen drooling over your financial records?
No, I would rather the institution involved run a secure and stable OS, with a trained admin who know what he/she is doing! Any business whose records/databases can be accessed by a teenaged script kiddy deserves to be out of business in a hurry.
My only suggestion would be: While the DOJ is all hot-to-trot on preventing hacking they might want to toss in some additional anti-drug messages as well :-)
Um, let's not and say we did. This whole "Government as Mummy and Daddy" business has gone WAYYYY too far as it is. How about Personal Responsibility? I know it is out of fashion these days, but it's a Really Neat concept ;)
I would rather have these kids testing the limits of the software that is in use, finding the bugs and security holes now, rather than a real threat; like maybe some terrorist wacko bent on destroying the Great Satan, finding the same...
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
> It's all about money. Most schools don't have
> enough to hire even a part-time CS teacher, so
> at best they have to rely on some Math teacher
> that has a minor interest in computing. Combine
> that with the fact that buisnesses tend to pay
> several times better than schools, and almost
> no one with a real CS background is interested
> in teaching.
Plus the fact that most colleges don't offer a degree specializing in CS. I actually want to teach CS on the HS level, but I have to get a degree teaching math and just fill in my electives with CS stuff. True, it increases my desirability, but I'd rather have CS be my main focus, with math on the side then the other way around.
Why wont the media stop labeling crackers as Hackers? It makes as much sense as labeling bathroom graffiti writers journalists.
I wasn't referring to complex choices. Keeping it simple, building the foundation. Definitely keeping religion out of it. How about:
Hurting people is wrong.
Helping people is right.
This is the wrong tact. Public schools need to go or be reformed. They are just babysitters now and are meant to force group conformity.
At the very least simple ethics should be brought back. Teach choices with consequences and the difference between right and wrong.
That was not my read of this at all. The reporting of the DOJ program as targeting would-be hackers is, I think, correct, since this is exactly what the DOJ program is going to do. No matter how much we scream and holler that hacker != cracker, the common perception is that hacker == cracker. If the the DOJ program is actually targeting would-be crackers, but calling 'em hackers, then what it really does is further demonize hacking.
I can see it now... The "War on Drugs" becomes the "War on Hackers" and half of us end up in jail for "intent to distribute" illicit information.
Where the value of X-Mailer: is the true measure of a man...
You know, I'd almost support an anti-cracking program by the government except for one thing.
They're going to misinform those kids.
"Okay, Johnny. Now what's wrong with hacking?" "It hurts other people's work and it's illegal." "Very good. Now what is hacking?" "When you try to break into someone's computer or you try to take apart their program."
Anti-cracking my ass; we all know that the government will use it as not only that, but as a way to push other 'morals' on these poor kids. Morals like 'reverse engineering is wrong' and 'taking apart somebody else's work to make it work better is illegal.' Not to mention ruining the definition of hacker vs cracker.
We all know that the government is about as computer-saavy as, say, Martha Stewart. Like hell I'm going to trust them to 'educate' any kids I know about 'hacking'. My suggestion to parents is to simply call your kids in sick when they send the NSA/DOJ puppets around, because you're going to have to reeducate your kids right afterwards. And I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that they plan to run it like 'DARE' out here where you have to go through it in every grade, and in at least two grades, you're forcefed the crap for a full week and then tested on it.
*sigh* Sometimes the government gets so close, but falls so damn far. Where's the receipt for our current government? I wanna take it back and get one that works in exchange.
-RISCy Business | Rabid unix guy, networking guru
your company here.
shelby != ford
That's the premiss to all what made Linux possible. Electronical/Intellectual Property is completly unrelated to 'Real', 'Physical' property.
You advise people not to compare DARE and this program, but make a gross comparaison between crackers and robbers on the only fact that you find their behaviour equally wrong.
Then I feel authorised to say that Cars are Guns, because they both kill peoples. And I could make a lot of silly analogies like this.
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
There are those who say all killing is wrong; there are those who say that some killing is justified; I even know a few chaps who see naught wrong with killing if it is convenient (scary, but c'est la vie). Who's correct? Whose version of ethics should be taught?
The solution is to allow the student or his agents (i.e. his parents) make that decision by selecting the appropriate school. I might disagree with some of the schools and with some of their teaching, but that is not my business.
I look at ethics education as I look at prayer in schools: I don't want just any random 'ethics facilitator' any more than I want my kids (should I ever have any) being led in prayer by just anyone. Prayer, religion and ethics do have a place in schools, but not in public schools.
That's why everyone (Christian, Jewish, Moslem, atheist, liberal, conservative, science-oriented, liberal srts-focused &c.) needs to decide to abandon public schooling and embrace choice in education. Only in that manner can students receive the education they need in a fair manner. Public schooling is a compromise which cannot satisfy anyone completely. Private schools cannot completely satisfy either, but they come much closer. If you'd rather your kid not get indoctrinated into this or that belief, send him to a school that doesn't teach it. Not only that, but at a private school the opinions of parents matter somewhat; if you voice a complaint about an item on the curriculum (say, the vilification of hackers), you might just cause a change.
I'd like to start of by stating my agreement with your little rant. The DOJ is out of hand with this situation. They might as well go back to that Nuclear emergency "FLASH, get under your desks!" After all, that would work so so well...
.. pretty stupid considering it fucking said HEWLETT PACKARD all over the monitors). Anways, my future project in Pascal class is to write a program that will open and close the cdrom drives all over the school at once. I'm not sure how this will be done, but I'm thinking about once I make this program, I'll distribute it to all the machines that have CDROM drives. With that in hand, I'll try to make my main program send a signal over the network to open the drive bay. I don't think this is the work of a script kiddy, or a cracker, or a hacker. I think its just kinda funny when the ADMIN's look in the computer rooms and see the CDROM Drives opening and closing to a nice sync. I don't consider this lame, but I wouldn't do it to disrupt people work. I'd do it just to prove how insecure my school's network is. Now I just have to pray that this is a possible thing to do in Pascal.
Currently, I'm a senior in High School. I took Pascal in 9th grade, and horribly failed it. I'm taking it again now, and blowing the HELL out of everyone in my class. My school's computer network is horribly insecure. I've found several ways to access anyones account or in the past the administrator password. (It was "Hewlett"
As a further note I'd just like to say, I'm not a script kiddy, nor a hacker, or even a cracker. I'm just a regular internet user. I use a local ISP for surfing, IRC chatting, and online multiplayer gaming. I've encountered several script kiddies before. I don't even come close to their species.
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PovRayMan
prm@[remove.this.no.spam]alignment.net
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Check out my blackbox styles
I agree. It's time for a new term. It worked for other groups. When the term "Negro" went too far in seprating blacks from other Americans Cival Rights activists substituted Black or African-American for it. When "Homosexual" no longer presented the image that Gay rights leaders wanted to portray, they introduced "Gay" It's a lot easier to introduce a new term than to change the perception of an old term.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
In my mind, the DoJ are attacking the wrong problem. Rather than investing their money and effort into "brainwashing" youngsters, the ressources would be much better spend on investigating network security issues - and training their personal.
:) ) reveal the source for most vounerabilities to be incomplete and incompetent (in lack of better terms) setup by the people in charge.
I am unaware of the situation in the US - however my experiences from 8 years of consulting work here in Denmark (in case you don't know: Denmark is a beautifull, cute little country in Europe - visit some day
Government sys.adms are not exactly well-paied here in Denmark - at least not compared to the saleries one can get in industry. So that's where the better qualified people usually go.
I believe that the investment would yield better results if invested in training/paying(?) the sys.adms better.
This reminds me of the stuff about "security through obscurity" not being real security. Telling (brainwashing - whatever) people not to be crackers doesn't solve the security issues - they may just become a bit less apparent and thereby not discovered as easilly....and thus left open for the real bad guys to exploit....
Again, my experiences are strictly from Denmark, but they may apply elsewhere too.
-- "Life is a bitch - and she hates me..."
No. Tailors help fix breeches.
The Jargon File states that 'cracker' is now the correct name for those who break into computers. I don't totally agree with this, as crackers who break copy protection and password schemes without any malicious intent are okay. Yet calling them crackers makes them sound evil and morally degenerate. Perhaps we need to add another term for those who crack but for malicious purposes, as opposed to those who do it just for the sake of knowing how. Hacker and script kiddie would maintain their current definitions, but cracker would basicially mean 'one who can break security and copy protection schemes, and does so only for the sake of learning how'.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. --Douglas Adams, _Mostly
According to the jargon file, the term 'hacker' originated at MIT in the 1960s, whereas the term 'cracker' was coined by hackers around 1985 to describe those who break into computers. Journalists were clueless then (as if they aren't now) about the real meaning of the word 'hacker' and used it to mean "one who commits computer crime". That's when the term 'cracker' originated.
It is true that 90% of the population also has the two definitions mixed up, but your statement that the term 'hacker's previous definition was that which is now ascribed to 'cracker' is completely false. The incorrect usage of 'hacker' was started by the media, who continue to use it incorrectly.
If you still have these words confused, check the jargon file.
Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. --Douglas Adams, _Mostly
If these same kids had the opportunity to take computer science classes early on, they could find the challenge they needed in producing good software. Computer science education in high schools is terrible; it should be offered at multiple levels and even begun in middle school.
I'll have to agree with both points. Our high school was run on a network of Macs. Out of desperation, the computer geeks of the high school got our hands on a couple of old PCs and began doing whatever we could with them. (Now that I think about it, I think the administration gave us those just to keep us off the network.)
As to computing classes - I didn't take any until I got to university. In high school I had a friend taking them and I was helping him with them. At the highest level he was learning to program in basic. Since I've come to university, I've learned that there are other schools which teach other languages such as Pascal and even some C/C++ to the students that want to learn.
It was tons of fun growing up as a computer geek in rural, redneck Alberta, Canada...
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Now this is ironic.
It sounds like the government has taken up Microsoft's view of the computer world. Don't ask questions. Nothing is wrong. If something is wrong, it's not the software, it's you.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I'm in the same boat that you are in. I got my first "real" job based on skills that I had aquired by myself. (meaning that I had never taken a formal networking class) This may sound a bit harsh, but this kind of ignorant brainwashing will make us more valuable in the long run. Think about it - how many MCSE's do you know that can solve a problem that isn't outlined in one of the NT bibles printed by MS press? Creative problem solving is not a process that can be taught in week-long classes. True, it is a tragedy that a generation of kids will be "disarmed", but it will cause a demand for real hackers in the future.
Now this idea I like. Teach them thoes tho spam are the worst folks around, group them withe drug dealers and such. Hopefully when the spammers hear about it, it might at least slow them up.
What company would want to do that when every one in turn will hate them... At least the (come see my new xxx page) they might get the point.
Just another Techno-geek lost in cyberspace.
If anyone bothered to read the artical it states that funds will be provided to educate people on "lawful on-line behavior." Now assuming that the artical really means "Hackers" in the sense that it is intended (breaking into a system to do damage, steal, etc...)I don't have any problems with it. It also wants to stop stalking and harrasment. I don't have a problem with this either. Hackers (and crackers) of the past knew that they really weren't supposed to do what they were doing, but they did it anyway. Telling the ingnorant populous what is legal and what is not doesn't have a real down side (See the case Creation Vs. Caine :-)
Quazix
So you have to ask yourself, do you REALLY want a joy-riding hormone handicapped teen drooling over your financial records?
The things is, the person drooling over your financial records isn't going to be some "joy-riding hormone handicapped teen," it's going to be a professional cracker. (Which apparently some people haven't realized exist.) What teen do you know would give a damn about what groceries you bought where? They might care about your credit card numbers, but still, credit card fraud is a little bit beyond where most kids are willing to go I think. So an insecure network is more likely to allow people who would actually care about your personal affairs easier access to them. Those people include business rivals and (surprise, surprise) the government (just in case you might be a criminal). My guess is the "teen" crackers seriously piss off the "professional" crackers because the teens actually get caught and that means holes get plugged. Think about it.
You misunderstand me. I'm not saying it's "OK" to break into a house and just poke around. I'm saying that a bad thief is more likely to get caught, and hence you'll know that your lock sucks. On the other hand a good thief leaves no trace that they were there (in the case of stealing copies of important documents and such). Neither of these refers to the case of the "destructive" cracker, which I consider to be (philosophically) the least important. They're easy to see and easy to recover from (you do have backups right?). It's the subtle thief / cracker who leaves a way back in who is more dangerious because you don't know that it the crime happened once and that it could happen a second time even easier.
The drug war is just a political and propaganda tool that the government uses to further the enslavement of the middle class and the dehumanization of the lower class.
Not to mention turning neighborhoods where racial and ethnic minorities live into battlegrounds. Between gang wars over turf and police swat raids on suspected drug houses, the smart ones who live there tend to keep their heads down and hope they don't get hit by a stray bullet.
What burns me up is that a white stockbroker caught with ounces of powder cocaine will usually get probation while minorities caught with a few grams of crack usually get hard time. If the government insists on prosecuting the drug war, it should do it FAIRLY, or not at all!
--
A man who wants nothing is invincible
We blow millions of dollars on the DARE program to get kids off drugs, so that they can get older and use them anyway.
If millions of dollars of propaganda doesn't make a dent on the level of drug use by America's teens, does anyone really think that a lousy $300K will make anyone think twice before they try to crack into government computers? I personally don't think it will make one iota of difference...
--
A man who wants nothing is invincible
Hacker as "programming enthusiast" not "computer terrorist" is the /old school definition/.
Yes. The original meaning of "hacker" was completely benign. Now, however, with the popularization of the internet, and the ignorance of the media, it has undergone a semantic change. While we might cling to our original definiton, the word has now become synonomous with "criminal."
This type of semantic change is common, though it usually takes a much longer time. The word "villian," for example, used to mean simply "farm laborer." Gradually, it began to take on all sorts of negative connotations until it reached its present meaning.
We can keep using our own definitions of words, but in popular culture, the meaning of the word has shifted. Bleh.
-- Be alert. The world needs more lerts.
Resistance to change, that is. And it seems the gov't is resisting change in this case; change towards the better, as people begin to explore, and learn [by trial and error], to expand the flexibility of their mind. This program isn't going to work, any more than D.A.R.E. ever worked, or Smokey the Bear. I was never discouraged from drug use by D.A.R.E.; I'm not going to use them, though I'd certainly love to try them sometime. Smokey the Bear didn't discourage me from forest firing; I just don't like to kill trees, and I've just never had the urge to set a forest on fire (but my books.. heh.. that's another thought altogether ;-)
- -
The thing is, they're wasting their money. As I feel, and as I've read many others feel, it's simply going to forceable expose them to what hacking is at that age, because of the program, and then they're going to wonder, if they haven't already, and explore, if they haven't already, and then look: we have more of these brilliantly educated, explorative children on "our hands." What, oh what, will our disorganized, crackheaded gov't do then?
Punish them, if at all possible. Or hire them to do their work that the gov't is too incompetent to handle themselves.
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If you've ever read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, you'll remember how Ender knew exactly what his teachers were trying to do, and played along harder, stronger, cleverer than they expected... he knew _everything_, acted accordingly, and, in doing so, changed all the rules and WON.
Perhaps, in some excellent twist of fate, the gov't can inspire such genius.
Then again, maybe not.
--my $2/100 worth
Insert mind here.
It seems to me that the Goverment (Big Brother) has very carefully arranged society so that all of us are brainwashed, programmed to think only inside "the Box".
There are those who can see this and who do not think within certain confines. It is our responciblity to help others break through the box.
This is yet another tactic of Big Brother to program us. To program us in our early years in school where the rest of such programming is also done.
Why? For control, for control of everything. This is why the government wants to ban encryption as well.
Fortunately, there are those of us that are not part of Big Brother that *are* in the know. Hackers included. It is we that fight for our freedom and keep the goverment in check.
Furthering the gap in technology awareness and skills between the poor/lower middle class and the upper/middle class. Hmm, and I thought just a few months ago the government was claiming it was going to be taking action to combat this.
However, this nails it, I won't be having kids until I can afford to put them through private school. My overall distaste for most public school systems combined with a government funded canpaign to basically ensure my kids don't grow up to be like me will keep my future children out of their grasp.
-- trolld
Oh, please Mr. Government, take my tax money and spend it on yet another pseudo-DARE campaign. After all, you know how great it's been so far in keeping kids from using drugs...
And since when is spam the "modern-day equivalent of prank telephone calls"? I'm sorry, the internet community is currently using that word, please don't redefine it.
As for the mascot, maybe they can get Sexual Harrassment Panda (excuse me, Don't-Sue-People Panda) to become No Hacking Panda, and sing about the evils of hacking to all the good little boys and girls.
-- "God, Root, what is difference?" - Pitr, "User Friendly"
School is not the place for brainwashing. School is the place for teaching kids all the information so that they can make intelligent decisions themselves. Eventually the government is going to learn that by trying to force kids into a certain mold, they're going to get more rebels. Humanity as a whole does not like to be controlled, we like to think for ourselves.
Exactly. Sure, to the people who know being a hacker isn't neccasary bad, but to the general public, it is. And since the general public is the majority, the word meaning gets changed. You can hang on to the original definitions, but don't expect the rest of the world to follow suit. It's just one of those things.
I'm learning C as a Junior. I'm behind the normal schedule though because I moved this year, and my old school and new school have their system set up differently. At my old school, it was BASIC as a Junior, and then Computer Science AP (C) as a Senior. But due to lack of intrest, they were considering cutting CS AP out. At my new school, you learn BASIC as a Freshman, and C for the next three years cummulating with CS AP. I have learned in a lot so far in there though because I had done very little programming before this year. All I did was just a little Visual Basic and programming math equations into my TI-86. But as I understand it, the teacher sucks once you get past the basics. The CS department is horrible at my school. We get old crappy machines that have network cards, yet aren't networked. And because we fall under the math department, we get jack diddly in funds. And this is the first year that school has had a computer club, which really suprised me.
The real kicker is my Web Design 2 class. We have a total of 4 computers with browsers on them, and I can only use one of them, that I have to share with 5 other kids. All the other computers are just for the "advanced" students (A bunch of BS by the teacher, I'm new, so I'm automatically not advanced). That leaves about 10 Win3.1 computers for me to write the HTML on. And there is no internet connection in the room, she has to take them home to upload our files onto the server. She's promised us new computers and that she'd network them all together, but I still haven't seen it happening, and I doubt it ever will. She's also incompetent as a teacher, saying that computer programing was invented after HTML. Uh huh.
It's sorta funny that the sports get all the money, yet they say academics is the most important. If that were so true, they would have "academic pep-rallys". Of course, most of the student body would think it's dumb, but at least the school board will be telling the truth that academics is more important. The way I figure it, it's us smart and technical guys who make most of the money, so we pay more taxes, so the school gets more money from us. I don't think we're being represented fairly.
Here's the thing - and it's why the term cracker will never be used. For many people the term has negative connotations refering to white people. Nigger is to black people as cracker is to white poeple. That is why it is taking so long to be used by the press, and may never be.
I'm from Austria and I am really scared about this development in your country.
:)
Tell those 6-year-kids about "hacking"! They wouldn't understand it, they would try to find it out for themselfes what it's all about hacking and there they are - hackers!
I mean I think hackers are no bad guys, no, no. Who would have written Linux
The question that is:
Is it already too late for the real meaning of hacker? (Think villain, it lost, just like hacker might.)
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"I already have all the latest software."
What do we call yourselves now? "Ethical Hacker" and all those excessively descriptive things plain suck. Let the crackers have "hacker" if we can have something better. Somebody PLEASE coin a phrase that isn't cheezy.
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"I already have all the latest software."
What's worse is the dictionary doesn't use either of the definitions we have for hacker. A hacker is someone who either makes furniture with an axe, or just is plain not good at something.
I'm not implying anything here. I just found it amusing.
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"I already have all the latest software."
... oh brother...
More like oh Big Brother.
Wow. I can't believe this is happening.
"Good job coloring that man in Jail, little Winston."
Erhm, everyone _already_ hates spammers.
Who wants to take a wager that Jon Katz posts a big old story on this very subject sometime next week? "The Justice Department is committing pseudo-digital-cyber-genocide against this latest new wave of young, hip, cyber-generation-cyber geeks! Geeks like me! Jon Katz!"
Mark my words. He'll be there.
Well, if you were the goverment, and something posed a threat to your so-called "national security" (reminds me more of an open safe), what would YOU do?
1) Anybody else find the name "Mitnick" a little ironic for an anti-hacking character? Of course, that was probably intentional.
2) Why a gerbil? Am I missing something here? Is the gerbil a sign of security and integrity, and I just never knew it? Seems rather random to me...
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
interesting, how the government really shapes your mind through school eh? think of it this way: if you were in private school, the gov. would be screwed, and you could grow up to be the biggest hacker known? but this 'brainwashing' will 'calm you down'?
hmm, so the education system ins actually a brainwashing system.
ie. you shouldn't want to learn from the current education system.
What good did the Don't Do Drugs! campaign accomplish? Not much.
Don't they have any parenting skills at all? Telling kids to not do something only makes them want to do it more... But I guess if they are brought up with good values and moral obligations, this could be a good thing, as the NSA applauding of good hackers shows.
----
Lyell E. Haynes
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
"Oh, we're sorry- too bad. We'll just force-feed you Windows© and make you as dumb and mindless as the rest of the non-thinking world."
Before you all yell about me to stop my b*tching and deal with life as you moderate me down, you have to consider this- it's LIFE for a huge amount of population of the US. It's the sh*t we get to deal with day in and day out. And personally, I already have been lost over to the "dark side" as far as hacking/cracking goes. I use alternative OS's and like it. I write free software and like it. I USE free software and like it. And I think for myself, and I like it too. But how many people do you know that don't?
If they brain wash everyone out of hackerdom - where will the NSA get its techies from? Seems to me they're shooting themselves in the foot again.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
Oh well, at least it may stop the 11 or 12yr old script kiddies !! Wow I'm a l33t w4r3z d00d and a h4x0r ... I run winnuke.exe *grin*
"Bastard Operators From Hell" is an anagram for "Shatterproof Armored Balls". =)
There are a few things in this world that I just can't stand... One of them is misue of the word hacker.
I am a 15 year old swedish born american who is currently living in the States, but I spend my summers in sweden. I bring this up because on the two sides of the ocean...
hacker !=hacker.
During the summer I held a position as an in house tech sup at one of swedens largest IT companies, where my title was "Mac Hacker". I was the inhouse mac guru. The hacker. The guy that knew what he was doing. When family friends asked what I did, I said I was tech sup, fearing the use of the word hacker, because I didnt want them to think I was a cracker. In some cases they would reply-- "Oh, so your a real hacker when it comes to Macs then?" Damn straight.
My past fear of the word hacker explained Well you see, Here in the States, the words hacker and cracker are all to often confused. One doesnt want to be known as a hacker for fear of being known as a cracker. In sweden, a hacker is someone that is good with computers.
This is kind of like the word hack. A hack is something neat on computers, but many people think of it as an exploit.
good example: "I wote a nice perl hack late last night" is what i say if i wrote a nice little script for my webpage that does logins.
bad example: "I just scripted a ritious hack... that server will be down for at least 3 days..." NO! that was a crack. your EVIL!
When my American friends ask me if im a hacker I'll respond: "Im a hacker yes, but Im not what your asking for..." I then explain the difference. Spread the message that hacking isn't cracking. PLEASE!
But after my experience this past summer, I now call my self a hacker. Im a proud one at that. If the government wants to arrest me for doing soemthing neat, then thats their problem.
/nutt
Heh high school CS is terrible, I haven't taken CS yet but at my school they teach BASIC. What kind of challenge is that? You can go to another school and take C classes in the evening but thats a hassle.
Wow. Proof you've read 1984. At least, a few pages of it. Your parents must be proud. It gets a little tiring to see people cite 1984 regardless of it's actual relevance to the situation, just to show the world that yes, they've read it. Good for you. Most high school students have.
I did read the article, which is why I used the word consistently with the publication's use. The article used the word hacker as cracker. There is only so much a person can do to fight the irresistible tide of language - maybe I give in to the hacker/cracker fight so easy because I still have scars over the plural/singular use of Data. ("Data: is, and always will be, singular and damn the ivory tower intellectual English snobs who infringed on my right to use it so!)
I did think about it. Using your logic it's OK for me to break into your house, poke around a little bit and leave so long as I don't take anything. Shoot, I'd be doing you a favor because then you'd know that padlock you bought was so easy to pick. It would save you from a "professional thief" later on. That little note on the bathroom mirror that your daughter discovers at 2am on a dark and stormy night might even scare you enough to install a REAL security system.
:-)
But somewhere along the line it gets a bit boring just breaking in. It's so easy!! Why there's no challenge at all. Where is the line between hacker and cracker? "Professional Crackers" don't just pop into existence.
So, the answer is: no. The argument that Hacking should be some sort of protected activity just doesn't hold water when it's held up to it's RL analogy of breaking and entering eh?
No one, least of all me, is saying that this program is a panacea that will immediately rid the Internet of the evil hackers. But it's a much-needed start to help kids realize that it's not a game. There's even hope because if someone is bright enough to play hacker, maybe they're bright enough to get the message and do something productive like write a new Linux utility.
I don't know about any of you, but when you were a kid (10-16 roughly), wasn't defiance a part of your life? Like most of your course of action was _soley_ just to defy authority? All this program will do is introduce more children to hacking at an earlier age. How many burn-outs have you knew throughout your life, even though the D.A.R.E. program was crammed down our throats from grade 1 to high school? Good luck D.O.J.
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Amen to this brother, my point exactly. Just another lame program to waste our money.
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next semester I have computer programming. they teach you c++: declaring variables, cin, cout, if , maybey for.. thats IT!!.
You're pretty lucky, then. Like some others, I had the option of BASIC, no more. True, it sounds like they're actually teaching you C coding (procedural vs. OOP) in C++ with the exception of cin/cout, but that's lightyears ahead of what we had.
My old school is probably still plodding along with its "state-of-the-art" technology lab of non-networked 486/33's (networks "scared" the tech teacher, no joke) that was obsolete a year before they purchased the technology... *sigh*
Secondly, you have to consider the fact that people like this were the ones who built the Internet... Not the ones who destroy computer systems, but people who have the immense knowlege/skill that is needed. The only way they can discourage hacking effectively, is to discourage all forms of advanced computer learning, and if the campign suceeds, they will find that the shortage of high-tech workers will increase. But they will also find that the people that do hold high-tech jobs are not ones who are dedicated and love the work, but rather trainees of local technical college's who went into the computer industry because they heard it was full of 'oppurtunity'.
Telling 10 year-olds that hacking is bad won't make a differnce, for if anyone reads the newspaper of watches TV, they already know.
The schools say they don't have the money to spend on more than one or two computer classes, and they have to target those classes to the majority of [semi-computer-illiterate] students. "How to use Windows 95 and M$ Office" and such.
.net.
You think that's bad? In our local public school system, the eighth grade computer curriculum revolves around teaching students how to use Windows Help, of all things. They learn how to learn how to use Windows, of all OSes. Are there any worse CS curricula around?
awkwardone
ICQ: 13709677
You can't jump without a
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
As a kid, I was always interested in how computers worked and what I could do with them. I even got to participate in programs over the summer where I could learn BASIC at an early age at a local college (thank God I unlearned what little I did learn at an early age). It really brought out my creativity. I learned that a computer is not a scary black box, and that it was possible to understand how it works. Now whether your son or daughter would rather crack into a server to download credit card numbers or write their own video games is really up to the parents.
I understand where they're coming from. Cracking (not hacking -- they should get the terminology right at least) is a very serious crime, and unfortunately, you see all too much of it today. In every IS department I've ever worked in, there has always been at least some attempts at breaking our information systems security.
But, what makes them think this program will work any better than the DARE program, or other attempts at government brainwashing in schools? If you treat people like idiots and constantly try to brainwash them, alot of them will eventually turn against you. I bet you most crackers and warez d00dz are just people pissed off at society and government. Doing things like this will not accomplish anything.
Why don't they attack the root of problems instead of operating stupid programs like this?
End of thread. Why post if you never read.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Freudian slip: criminals increase law enforcement. Well,yeah criminals do increase law enforcement. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
why do you people keep going about about the whole cracker/hacker thing??? NOBODY BUT YOU CARES! Do you think anyone actually refers to themself as a hacker? If you are good with computers are were ever stupid enough to call yourself a "hacker" instead of just saying that you were good with computers, you pretty much just suck anyway.
lamer....
McGruff whines about crime, but there is still plenty of it. Smokey warns kids about fire, they still play with it. We blow millions of dollars on the DARE program to get kids off drugs, so that they can get older and use them anyway. Targeting young kids about this sort of thing just makes most of them curious about it, so that when they get older they will want to do it more. The ones that it actually scares away from hacking probably don't have the courage to be more than an AOHell using script kiddy anyway.
WOW! Think of how much money would be saved if the teaching them to not spam part manages to pay off! Eliminating the wasted bandwidth, hard drive space, and lost prodcutivity due to deleting spam would save IT companies billions!!!
SEND THEM CHECKS NOW!
Well, the article did say that they were solocitng M$ for fundage. I can just see it now: Pamphlets sent/maild home to parents so that they can look for "warning signs" of hacking such as external modems, books on TCP/IP settings, running operating systems like Linux, which are given away so that hackers can use them for illegal purposes, after all it can't be worth using since NT is so much better....
You know, today there is almost no pr on why not to crack into machines. There are a lot of kids out there that just surf the n.g.'s and find ways to get into trouble, not realizing the trouble they may get into. I think that this sort of stuff is going to be even more important in the future.
-- Moondog
I don't agree with the idea that "its just another government plot." However, I do not think that having a lack of 'hackers' is good. In the very near future we will see considerably more state sponsored electronic warfare than has ever been seen. Already people are using web sites with security holes to post their opinions about various political things. The chinese response to our 'accidental hit' of their embassy is a good example of this. Whether or not this was actually state sponsored is unclear, however I belive in the near future state sponsorship will become more and more common, and if America has no 'hackers' (i am trying to stay out of the whole hacker/cracker argument) we will not be in a very good position to defend our information systems, or strike back if the occasion is warranted.
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
Hacking doesn't hurt anyone! Hacking shows the security flaws in software and can then allow coders to fix it...sometimes.
Bye,
TYLER
"Clockwork orange" for "1984"? The paranoid must control everything government is starting already. Well, at least we can count on their general incompetence to help us prevent the destruction of the bane of all public education systems--thinking for yourself.
Don't get me wrong. I think kids should be educated, but also taught how to think rather than regurgitate info.
"Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy
Here is a true story that happened to me (Not a FOAF :)
General Cinema (the place I used to work years ago) had a special meeting for all it's employees one day. We were gathered together to be lectured at upon the topic of "Sexual Harassment In The Workplace" (TM)
During the meeting, several intelligent questions were asked, and brushed off (they were clearly not expecting intelligent questions from a bunch of 16 year olds, and no, they wern't MY questions) and some flat out stupid remarks were made by our 'educators'. If I recall correctly, one of the statements made was that, if you have a hazing ritual that only includes males, you could be in for a sexual harassment lawsuit (for not hazing the females, also.)
When it was pointed out by a staff menber that they were infact ADVOCATING illegal acts, (she knew from Band Camp that hazing is specifically illegal in Ohio) they just told us that it didn't matter, you should haze the girls too. (BTW, our site didn't have any such rituals, and as best as I knew, never had any sexual harassment problems before then)
For the next three months, anytime ANYONE mentioned ANYTHING that had to do with Gender, the whole staff freaked out. They would run to management to report the 'incident' (and thus showing what good employees they were, and distancing themselves from possible discpline) What had once been a fun workplace became a massivly tence, repressed, and screwed-up place to be.
When I read about this new "Education" program sponsored by out Friendly Neighborhood Government, this whole thing came back to mind. Children who may not yet be aware of the potentials of computing in general will be exposed to this chilling message. I wonder how many parents will be "Turned In" for being Hackers by their own children.
Nipok Nek
Why choose white shoes?
How many of you have been told that a gun or a knife is a dangerous thing, kids? How many of you have been told that a computer can be just as dangerous? That's right, that computer on daddy's desk is a dangerous thing. It's not a toy. Under no circumstances are you to use it outside of a very few carefully defined limits. Why how many of you have heard of computer programming? (pause) Good, good. Well something that you all should know is that computer programming can be a good thing or a bad thing. Because it can be bad, it is not something that should be attempted except for a very few professionals. Only they can properly program computers in a good way. What is a computer professional? I'm glag you asked. All of those nice men and women in Redmond who work for Microsoft are good programmers. They write software that is good for everyone. They're not like the bad people we call "Hackers." Hackers don't work for Microsoft. They aren't professional programmers at all. That means that instead of making useful programs, they make viruses. Does anyone know what a virus is? I know you've heard it before, but it seems to me that more and more frequently anyone who isn't a software engineer for a huge corporation is percieved as a near criminal. We're losing the propaganda war.
If hackers gave up on everything that was dear to them because someone else tried to twist it around, where do you think we'd be right now? Even though there are hordes of BSD lovers who slam the GPL on a daily basis, you think the BSD licensing would change the way the software industry percieves things? Not a chance in hell. Sure, Richard M. Stallman could have said, "Fuck it." and the world would be an even more dismal place for it. People lose things that are dear to them because they give up and don't even try. Might as well not have anything to begin with, if such is the case. There will never be another term like "hacker". It is steeped in history. The general public will eventually come to know the true meanings of the terms "hacker" and "cracker", even if it takes a while. The rise of free software can only help such enlightenment be reached, even if Joe Public has plugs in his ears. Eventually they will listen. Not that I'm saying this will happen any time soon.. But I imagine it shall. Especially since some media outlets are just now catching on somewhat to this terminology.
I had this idea, though.. I thought it might be cool if someone did a show where they interviewed all of the biggest names in the free software community (well, except ESR, maybe.. I don't even agree with much that Linus has to say, but.. ESR just goes too far for my tastes =P), and talked about stuff like "What does hacker really mean?" among the usual mumbo jumbo, and then aired the damn thing on public television (cable is just too obscure if you want to make this kind of point ;). I'm sure more than a few people would watch, thanks to all the hype about GNU/Linux and such.
~ Kish
I have absolutely no problem with the government discouraging crime committed via your favorite computer. A crime is a crime. I'm just bothered by the thought of an even more widespread usage of incorrect terminology. The slugs out in the "real world" still think that Linus Torvalds wrote the entire base GNU/Linux system, rather than simply the kernel (please don't even bother trying to argue about this damn thing again, anyone: you know what the truth is, and this is yet another excellent example of how misinformation warps the minds of the masses.. for the record I don't give a fuck if you call the entire system Linux.. I do too =P). It becomes more difficult for the truth to shine through the more you cloud the landscape with lies and misinformation.. Of course, from what I've seen, few people here or elsewhere seem to care about such misinformation unless it affects them directly (point in case, this guy once wrote an article on a BSD-related news site talking about the misconceptions about FreeBSD introduced here on Slashdot.. during the course of which he misinformed and lied about GNU/Linux.. cute, eh?).
In short, hackers are proud to be hackers, and don't really like having to explain themselves every time they refer to themselves as a hacker. It's kind of disheartening for a term you like so much to be applied to yourself twisted around to become synonymous with some of the worst lower network life around..
~ Kish
However, what /really/ concerns me is the number of idiots who post on Slashdot who /still/ don't appear to know the difference between "hackers" and "crackers". Talk about losing the nomenclature battle.. =P I mean, how clueless can one be on a site where links to the Jargon File are posted semi-regularly during everyday discussions?
~ Kish
That's utterly pointless. If we went by those standards (and by the way, we are not exactly talking about opinions here, but accepted definitions of words as defined by those /who originated them/.. i.e., the, gasp, hacking community), then what would be the point of jargon? You think Joe Public knows what even 1% of the words in the Jargon File mean to hackers? Would you not get pissed off if, say, your name was "Joe" and everyone called you "Bitch"? Or would that be ok, because /everyone/ thinks your name is "Bitch"?
Cracker /is/ an offensive term to hackers. I can't help but wonder why I would have to explain why.
~ Kish
Several people have tried to coin terms that are deragatory to white people in an effort to "get even", but none of them have really stuck. I think it's pointless, really. I mean, "You acted like a little child and called me a bad name, so I'm going to act like a little child and think of a new bad name to call you! Nyah nyah!" Not that I advocate the use of the word "nigger" or any other deragatory gesture, but rather do I condemn all such prejudiced insults. However, I find it rather laughable that anyone would be offended by the terms "cracker" or "white-bread". I could count the number of times I've been called either on a single hand. Chances are, white people who are subjected to terms like this on a regularly basis are either real prejudiced pricks, or have a bad habit of wandering around in the more dangerous parts of town. =P
In short, the press is stupid. Media people will always be mostly a bunch of clueless idiots, mainstream or not. Many tend to prove this point repeatedly whenever a "new and exciting" article about the OS holy wars comes out (and other related topics, I'm sure) by slowly dissecting all the drivel. They simply have no idea of what the hell they are talking about. And probably never will.
~ Kish
Doesn't this remind everyone the SEXUAL HARASSMENT PANDA episode from Southpark?
Up eher we have a little cartoon carachter (not sure of name) the tells little children about the dangers of drug use. he's a typical prevetnion thing, cute cudily etc. studies have now shown however that chidren going through these programs at school or more likly to do drugs than those that don't. telling kids about it will make them get interested in it when they rebel. this anti-cracker thing could reallly backfire on them.
metalgeek
metalgeek
windows, just another pane in the glass
Not Enough Hackers.
It's true, there arent.
No, no. Not based on the same principle of "Not Enough Murderers" so stay with me.
The Government is Anti-Education. That's always been a Principle of life. If there is a way to cause pain, Make sure no one knows about it.
That's the kind of thing that's holding our planet, back as a whole.
A Freedom of Information is something we all need, but no one is willing to give.
You can Kill a man, Fine, Do it, I dont care. But Torturing them to death by not letting them know how to end the pain is just not right.
Leagalize Drugs, Just think through the Logic that if you're using them for pleasure maybe you should try something else. And if there's nothing else, Fight Back until there is.
Hacking is just another thing the Government doesnt want you to do, Because of Fear. It's simple, primitive, Fear that holds us all back. It's their fear that if they let anyone Hack, then maybe, Just maybe, A few of those people will find something in it they like. Something that brings them actual Joy. The Art of Learning something they didnt already know.
And with that comes the spark that will give a new generation something to look up to. That maybe they dont have to Grow, And then Die, Never even opening their eyes.
The Governments of the world are all founded under one purpose: Control.
That in itself is Acceptable. But that Control Builds, And it grows, And it Evolves. But unlike Natural Evolution it does not follow the course that brings better life. It follows the course of the Original and Half-Stated Goal: Control.
All Educational Systems are Founded on the Idea of Giving The Next Generation what They Need to Continue, And in some, Even to Grow Beyond what they had.
But None, As I have seen, Are set up to Allow for Evolution Beyond what Anyone has.
And What allowed for that to happen?
The Ability to take apart what was and Rebuild it as your own more grand design?
The Freedom of Knowledge?
The Freedom of Thought?
Hackers gave us something, And their call must be heard.
No, I'm not a hacker. At least not in the accepted Sense. I am a Hacker of the Mind. A Hacker of Thought. I do not Invade and take over, I disasemble and resequence the patterns that have become us.
I can only hope that on some small scale I am Able to Spread my thoughts. A Freedom of Information is something we All must fight for. It is something Places like Slashdot Encorage. And I am surprised that some here would encourage the Destruction of Freedom.
I'm almost completely sure there was a meaning to that. Although I may have sub-conciously typed a raving rant.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Seriously, though, I don't see this as 'brainwashing,' any more than anything else that's taught in public schools. In spite of what anyone here may or may not do, however responsibly or irresponsibly, I'm pretty, without going to check, that hacking is a crime. Invading someone else's computer system without permission, regardless of intent, is a crime.
Again, I don't pretend to be an expert, and I hope this isn't quickly moderated down to a -2 or so, but this whole hacking vs. cracking thing sounds like the difference between someone breaking into your house to read your diary and someone breaking into your house to burn it down and kill you and your family. One is a lot more serious than the other, but both are crimes, and should be. Hacking and cracking are both, in my mind, the electronic equivalents to breaking and entering. Just because a large portion of the /. community has done it, doesn't make it right.
As for the idea that this is kind of a 'spark,' which will get kids cracking, I don't really think so. I've never seen a study that's said DARE increased drug use. Alerting someone to what is a crime, and can get them incarcerated, is not brainwashing, and it does not increase crime.
In my less-than-educated guess, I would surmise that the children positively affected by this brainwashing are either going to be of the "good and never would have tried it because it's just plain wrong" mentality, and simply be reinforced in their beliefs, or the other "looking for something wrong to do with my time cause I'm a bad person... Cracking??? Yeah, sounds like fun. Thanks DOJ" type of person. If by some remarkable chance they ever actually DO get to teach someone already involved in either cracking or hacking, there's simply no way in hell some guy in a suit from the DOJ is going to dissuade them. No matter how bad they make it look, or how fun they make the class.. Anyway, told ya it was "less than educated", but there it is. My opinion. -I9mm-
Did you mean 'hacker' or 'cracker'?
Do you know the diffrence? I don't think you do.
Did you mean 'hacker' or 'cracker'?
Do you know the diffrence? I don't think you do.
Did you mean 'hacker' or 'cracker'?
Do you know the diffrence? I don't think you do.
I would like to know exactly WHEN this idea of cracking v. hacking started? For as long as I can remember, until quite recently, somebody who maliciously breaks into a computer system has been referred to as a hacker. Hacking should be what it always has been. Most of the people in the world view hacking as a form of terrorism.
If I went and asked somebody on "So, what do you think of cracking?" they'd probably say "What do you mean, cracking nuts? Personally I prefer cashews..." But if I asked them "What do you think of hacking?" they might say something along the lines of "It's preventing the internet from becoming what it could be because of it necessitates such a concentration on security..."
The way I see it, people that want to be called hackers usually want other people to be afraid of or impressed by them. The way that this happens is that most people make the "computer terrorism" link in their mind when they hear "hacker". If you want to be called a hacker, you should be willing to be associated with people that really are hackers! The word hacker should always keep the meaning and negative context that it originally had before it was transformed into cracking."
It seems no matter what program the US government comes up with regarding computers or the internet is always torn to pieces almost without a thought or even carefully examining it. I ask you this: at what time do people develop most of their habits, learn most of their manners? When they're young! A large part of this program is just to teach children proper internet "ettequete(sp)." This also brings up something else. Just because the article says the program aims "to discourage hacking" doesn't mean that the government wants to stop people from messing around with computers. To tell the truth, I'm somewhat fed up with the obsession that the word "Hacker" can not be used in the place of "Cracker". I'm certainly not old enough to remember the time when the very first person broke into somebody else's computer. However, I do know that the term "Hacker" was soon used to describe such a person. Where the whole business about this type of computer terrorist getting changed into a "Cracker" happened I don't know, but it seems to euphamize the word "Hacker" into a fun-loving computer guy who likes to find out how things work, ignoring the origins of the word and what 90% of the people on the planet THINK it means... My point is, There is NO EXCUSE for computer terrorism. This bill is designed to prevent that (as well as some of the more annoying things on the internet like SPAM). When are habits formed? When people are children! It's best to facilitate the formation of good habits when children are young. I don't see where you get the idea that it's bad to discourage children from being terrorists. Sometimes the government can get something right. I think that this has a chance of doing that, if it is taken seriously.
Alright, I can take some criticism. I was wrong, and I'm corrected; I was less than polite in my original statement so I deserve your less than polite reply. My point still stands, however, that the government is attempting to discourage computer vandals, which is a GOOD THING, no matter whether it's called "hacking" or "cracking" or whatever.
Oh, in case you didn't read the press release, ITAA is DOJ's partner in this venture.
in the article below this, NSA spooks are applauding and thanking L0pht for their hacking activities. L0pht have been celebrated by the government and senators have thanked them personally- and again, the ranking spook-house the NSA are grateful to them for what they do.
Why is industry and the DoJ trying to go against the desires of government, the Senate, and the National Security Agency? And what has industry been feeding the DoJ to provoke this seriously misguided adventure?
Let's take your last point first. Your assertion that "cracking" and viruses did not exist prior to the Internet shows your lack of knowledge on this subject. Phrack ezine, the most well-known phreaking/hacking ezine, was founded around 1984. Teenagers and college kids were breaking into computers using modems and corporate dialups as early as the late 70s and early 80s. Viruses began to appear around the same time. You most certainly could have been a "cracker" in 1982, if you had been knowledgeable about computers at the time.
Now let's get to the hacker vs. cracker argument. Using "cracker" to refer to those who break into computers is incorrect. The term was coined in 1984, according to the Jargon file, to describe these types of people, years after the term "hacker" was already being used to refer to them. I personally continue to use "hacker" to refer to those who break security and deserve the moniker (such as L0pht Heavy Industries), and "script kiddie" to refer to those who merely download some exploits and run them. "Cracker" when applied to computers refers to the extremely talented asm coders who remove the copy protection from software (usually shareware), and hence the term is not related to this discussion.
Finally, These people you call "crackers" have indeed greatly advanced computers, and not just in the field of security. Many people who had a great influence on the development of computers became interested in computers while teenagers through phreaking/hacking. Steve Wozniak, who created the Apple I and Apple ][ personal computers in his garage, comes to mind. During the 1970s he was involved in "red boxing," the technique of using tones to trick payphones into thinking you'd inserted payment. He designed and built red boxes out of radio shack parts, and later moved on to designing and building personal computers. There are countless other influential people who got their start in similar ways.
You need to read up on some history before making uninformed statements.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Your ability to break into a computer using flaws in the original programs running on these machines equals your ability to find bugs in your own programs. Cracking (as opposed to being a mere script kiddie) is just finding bugs in other peoples programs without their consent and their knowledge. Cracking is just debugging in a very scarce and hostile development envionment.
DOJ to Sponsor Anti-Cracking program
The Justice department announced today that it would sponser a program to discourage children from attempting to circumvent the security of other people's computers. Press release available here.
The only 'brainwashing' I see here is in the
So far, the main reaction I've seen is fear that the DOJ will lump all slightly 'non-conformist' computer uses in with script kiddies and crackers. However, I see no evidence for this in the press release, apart from the fact that the 'wrong term' was used (and seriously, how many people would understand if they had substituted "crackers" for every instance of "hackers"?)
Consider this. Most young children don't deal well with ambiguities. How often do you hear them told "don't get near the fire -- unless you don't touch any of the coals or the flames; you can get close enough to warm your hands up, but don't burn them -- and if a stick is burning on one end you can hold that end but not the other!"
I may be about to tromp on lots of child-development theory, but I think that children and early adolescents tend to form very polarized opinions about things which become more complex as they gain experience and knowledge enough to recognize where the ambiguities fall. I believe that in the absence of a continuous stream of information tailored to continue this black-and-white picture of things, this early opinionation decays, having served its purpose already. What purpose is that? Simple. Keeping children from blundering into fires, from doing things, the gray areas of which they are unable to calculate.
And on top of that, the sort of stuff discussed in the article -- particularly spam and computer cracking -- isn't much of a gray area; on the contrary, these are almost universally seen as negative activities. (with the possible exception of breaking-and-informing -- "free security audits" -- but I don't think that happens much in practice. It's more: (1) A breaks into B's computer, messes things up; (2) B gets mad at A; (3) A says "hey, I was trying to help!")
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Look, for once the government might actually have a point. I suppose it depends on their definition of "hacking" and exactly what they plan to teach in these assemblies. But is this going to be brainwashing? Probably not, no more than pro-safety or anti-drug assemblies are at any rate; having been to many of these over the course of my childhood I can say I wasn't brainwashed.
Let's wait and see what these assemblies actually involve before passing judgement. Hell, who knows, perhaps they might actually teach the kids some online manners. I do hope they get the hacker/cracker distinction right (they probably won't though). I agree that this sort of thing isn't the government's job, but in an age where the vast majority of parents are too damn lazy and/or selfish to even teach their kids right from wrong (and spend time with the kids), someone has to do it. The government's far from the ideal choice, indeed they're the last choice I'd make for someone to teach people right from wrong, but until we get a generation of parents who care (I'm hoping the next one will have more sense than this one) I really see no other alternative.
When I was in elementary school, everyone said that DARE stood for "Drugs Are Really Exciting." That's basically all we were taught, namely what the different drugs did and how they'd make you feel cool.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Quine "quine?
Great. Now, not only will I have to deal with the popular misconception of what a hacker is, but I'll have to deal with an entire generation trained to believe that I'm a bad person. I fear that, despite some small victories, we're losing the hacker/cracker nomenclature battle on the large scale.
This isn't to say I don't have other objections to his campaign, of course, and I doubt I'd feel an more positive about an anti-cracking campaign...
--
Ian Peters
Hey... I can stop any time I want! Really! I'm only a social Linux user. I only use linux when I'm slashdotting! They told me everyone was doing it. It was peer pressure!
Parents should teach/show kids the importance (and the benefits!) of courtesy and consideration for others. Do that, and as a consequence, specific violations like spam, cracking, etc. will be seen for what they are: something that assholes do.
But do we really need or trust government to teach kids "Don't be an asshole" (to cover cracking) or "Don't be stupid" (to cover drugs) or other non-academic lessons? I think it's time to get government out of this business altogether. Then maybe some parents will no longer be confused about what lessons are their responsibility, and what lessons are society's. Everyone has to eventually face up to the fact: "It's up to me. If I fail, it won't get done. If I don't teach my kid, he will suck." That's the case anyway, but our education system tries to hide it, by making false claims that they are going to take care of the situation. And every time another one of these stupid liberal programs comes, the lie just gets thicker and more established, and it becomes that much easier for parents to be tricked into believing that it's not their problem.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Second, my original post has nothing to do with whether the DOJ program is effective or desirable. It has to do with the slashdot summary of the article being misguided in saying that the DOJ attack against crackers is an attack against the foundation of the current computer prosperity (i.e. hackers). These are two different things.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
When a child turns into a cracker, it is because someone sparked his interest. Its not because they want to go out and cause trouble. Its not because they just suddenly said "Hey, I want to break computers." This program can easily be considered a spark. Kids don't care about causing trouble. My guess is that this is going to make kids ever MORE curios about the world of computers. This is going to be the biggest blunder in anti-cracker history.
Hell, this might ever be good for the computer industry down the line. Those 15 year old cracker morons always realize down the line that they are retarded. Then and there, they either give up or actually become hackers. With more kids going down this road, there will be more script kiddies. That equals more stupid attacks on computers, which eventually means vendors may fix software or write it better in the first place. Then, years from now, some of those same kids could be working for those vendors. End result, software quality goes up. More kids become crackers. More adults become hackers. And the whole plan backfired, but still had positive results.
---------------------------
"I'm not gonna say anything inspirational, I'm just gonna fucking swear a lot"
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Just to be the daemon's ... errr ... devil's advocate here :-), I'd like to ask where else do people get taught social mores and customs, internet or otherwise? For example, where was it picked up that it was not kosher to go around opening random neighbour's doors? (apart from those grisly TV reports a few years ago of people bing shot). Assuming that parents are the first stage in teaching kids the difference between right and wrong through the Pavlov technique of response-stimulus (ie a spank when they played up), then there is a fair chance that given the newness of the medium, they lack a few clues and therefore the community police see a small role to do some preemptive behaviour modification. How else would youngsters realise that certain behaviour is just not acceptable? Given the rate lawyers are inventing rules, I doubt whether anyone reads law books any more so how do people get shown the correct etiquette, and you can lump in all the silly things like mail pyramid schemes, procedures for not revealing passwords, etc.
That said, I suspect there are bigger problems that lead to cracker behaviour than a simple education campaign can solve. I recall a survey that noted crackers had a tendency to be poorly socialised with peers and come from broken households. Plastering over the results and ignoring the causes seem a little like taking the easy path. Also, given kids' usual attitude to authority, I wonder how effective any campaign would be, or whether it would make "hacking" cool and thus a legitimate activity for gaining peer respect and bragging rights.
I bet they had grafetti in caveman times as well. Oh well, technology comes and technology goes but social problems remain forever intractable.
LL
While you may debate the effectiveness of DARE and othter programs like it, I would argue that you're comparing apples to apricots.
Finally, I think you should consider that when this article says "hacking" they are definitely implying "cracking." An illegal and unethical act and if you have any doubts about the ethics, you should look up some of Gene Spafford's papers on the ethical nature of cracking.
I'm not so sure about that. AFAIK, there are two distinct groups in the minds of most Americans. There are those who know their way around computers, and there are those who know how to break into computers. They even understand that those in the former group often have the skills of the second.
We call the former "hackers" and the latter "crackers". Most people call the former "techies" or "computer whizzes" and the latter "hackers".
My take on this is that the DOJ is trying to say that the online world is a dangerous place. IMHO, it is, and it is much more dangerous than it was when I was posting on C-128 bboards in the 70s and 80s.
From what I read in the article, McGruff is more interested in keeping kids safe when they play on computers than in keeping them from learning about them. More than anything, this sounds like the computer equivalent of "How to walk around town without getting run over by cars."
--The basis of all love is respect
C'mon folks, let's be realistic. Language is a living, dynamic system, one which is not determined by the opinions of a few, but by the general usage. And although in our minds, there is a difference between the terms hacker and cracker, the common usage has passed us by. It's pretty much impossible to stem this tide.
It's one thing to keep using the term cracker; it's quite another to get so upset when someone uses hacker to mean the same thing.
Then again, where I come from, cracker is an extremely offensive term to refer to white people.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
Who is going to come out and say that the current war on freedom of information and intellect on the Internet is not another war on drugs now?
It might seem hard to imagine, since drugs and "computer crime" are in essense so different, but crackdown after crackdown after increased punishment after useless law out of touch with reality is taking us right down the same road we have walked with drugs - a road that has done more damage to our society then anything else since the last great war.
I think that as computer networks and the flow of information becomes more and more important to our lives, the danger in the criminalisation of our best and brightest will truly start being dangerous. We risk to do to our networks what the war on drugs has done to our city streets...
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No, you are very wrong here.
The actions that the American DOJ wants to stop may be cracking (there are those of us who believe this is an engineering, not a justice question, but forget that for the moment), but in effect campaigns like this are very much attacking the entire hacker mentality.
If we start pushing into our kids minds from the very beginning that playing with computers, security, networking etc is something bad and tabu, then that is what we will get. If parents start being concerned, not encouraging, when their kids are interested in communication, it will hurt the future Linus's much more than the future Mitnick's.
The people that are making these desitions, designing these campaigns, and even the target audiences are not informed enough on the topic to be able to draw the very thin line between experimenting and cracking. It should not be happening this way.
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While there is a bit of Orwellian humor to the piece, what we're seeing here is analogous to the taming of the old west. In them olden days people with the guns made the rules and in the wild internet days hackers made their own rules. Like the old west, mom and pop have set up corner stores and don't appreciate all their hard work being held hostage to the whims of every two-bit dictator who hold up the stage or hack into their bank accounts.
:-)
Hacking was fine back in the days when nobody kept any money or credit card numbers on networked servers and the most interesting thing you could do was browse the source code to wampus hunt. Today hackers can bring down giant, multinational banking systems, brokerage houses and even TRW. So you have to ask yourself, do you REALLY want a joy-riding hormone handicapped teen drooling over your financial records?
Hacking today really is far more serious, with the possibility of doing far more damage than it was even a year ago. Way, way, WAY too much money has been pumped into the net (ask redhat and soon slashdot) and millions of people have a very vested interest in ensuring that things run as smoothly as they possibly can.
So yes, kids do need to be educated that breaking into a computer system isn't a game anymore. It may be fun and challenging but it's also illegal (and a felony to boot) and they better learn fast that if they want to play the game they better be willing to pay the price of admission if they're caught.
My only suggestion would be: While the DOJ is all hot-to-trot on preventing hacking they might want to toss in some additional anti-drug messages as well
Linux - the gateway operating system.
only im america...
This kind of thing should be in the church where it belongs.
Hacking is an abomination against God. Hack and be cast down with Satan and Mitnick. Can I get a Hallelujah and $1,000?
i'm seeing a lot of comparisons to the DARE program here, and that's not at all surprising. i think we're going to find that this campaign is going to suffer the same fate -- an excessive amount of the public's tax dollars wasted in a program that makes the situation worse.
of all the (non-biased) statistics i've ever seen, DARE graduates do more drugs than their non-DARE-educated peers. is this a surprise to anyone? children are fed drug propoganda, and kids aren't stupid -- they know they're not getting the full story. so a good chunk of the kids become more interested in finding out what this whole "drug thing" is about and start experimenting.
as mentioned above in the "this is going to backfire" thread, this program will probably have the same outcome -- a good chunk of the kids will become curious about "hacking" and start finding out what it's all about on their own. this entire program is going to waste a whole lot of money, and just end up with even more script kiddies to plague the internet.
what needs to be taught is ethics. and sorry, but i don't trust the DOJ to teach their twisted form of ethics to my kids -- i'll do that myself, thanks.
sorry i'm a little bitter -- though i don't blame it, DARE still played a pretty big part in some of my friends getting addicted to Crystal Methamphetamine. now they don't listen to any scientific drug research because all DARE taught them was that all drug information is propoganda.
- j
--
"The only guys who might buy [the Apple iBook] are the kind who wear those ludicrous baggy pants with the built-in rope that's used for a belt."
- John C Dvorak - PC Magazine
"Should be what it always has been"? The original definition of the term was the one that you would find in the Jargon File. It is a rather ancient term (sorry, RMS, not to say that you or anyone else from "back then" are ancient ;). I really can't explain the correct usage of the term beyond that. However.. when computing became mildly less difficult to learn, a number of people who didn't have the intelligence or creativity of hackers to learn how to do anything /useful/ with a computer decided it might be a good idea to crack into other people's computers, ostensibly to "prove their worth". To compound this ethical violation, they referred to themselves as "hackers" (which began a long tradition carried on by crackers, warez d00dz, and script kiddies today to refer to themselves in a glorified manner they clearly do /not/ deserve). It shouldn't be too hard to see how this quickly escalated..
You're blatantly trolling and obviously /quite/ clueless. Hacker as "programming enthusiast" not "computer terrorist" is the /old school definition/. Just because Joe Public is a fscking idiot doesn't mean we are going to trash our entire culture. Grr.
~ Kish
I would like to reassert my wish for filters that allow me to /not/ view comments from certain users. Like this "bright" individual here. Many people refer to themselves as hackers. The term is commonplace on Slashdot. Richard M. Stallman is a hacker. So is, well, everyone in the free software or open source movement that actually contributes decent code, I'd imagine.
I quote this sentence only to illustrate why ignorance and utter stupidity are self-perpetuating. This sentence doesn't make a lick of sense. Not exactly structurally sound. Obviously this person has a few self-esteem problems, as well. Oh, I mean.. what an intelligent message you have, there, sir.. We'll kindly relay that message to RMS, ESR, Linus Torvalds, and others. They really do suck. Real badly. What a bunch of posers. Grr.
~ Kish
Pardon my rather over-the-edge example, but you know, people who spread their own ignorance and stupidity around because they believe they're above the truth, or rather that they are the One Truth, and that everyone else should just shut the fuck up and believe whatever Joe Idiot believes even though he's an ignorant twit who doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.. Hopefully you won't think what I'm about to say is my actual opinion. It isn't.
Yeah, I agree completely. I'm also not old enough to remember the Holocaust. It never really happened, anyway, because I didn't experience it. I'm sick of people bitching about the Jews. I say, fuck them. They need to get over it. Stupid idiots.
Ugh.. At any rate. Calling a "hacker" a "cracker", or vice versa, is about as intelligent as calling an "apple" and "orange", or vice versa. They are two completely different things. Hacker is the original fscking definition, and likely, no one gives a damn if you are fed up with the truth . If you want to live in a world of lies, fine. But keep them to yourself. Or go into politics. Your choice, really.
~ Kish
Public Education System Ministry of Truth
If cracking is a crime at all (much less a very serious one), then a computer is property which can be trespassed on. The data I have on it is my property. I have no real problem with this as long as it is consistent.
However, if this is the case, then if I have a PC with Linux and Microsoft's OS install formats my disk, I can sue them and win because they destroyed my property. If I'm on Windows and I install Quicktime or MS Media Player, and it grabs control of all my image files, I can sue because it is disrupting my property in ways I didn't ask for or desire. In short, if cracking is a crime at all, then the computer industry are criminals, because so much of what they do invades your computer's 'space' and changes stuff around as if they owned it- sometimes causing data loss and other types of damage.
There's no way around this- even if the current situation isn't this clearcut, the trend toward smart updates and remote-disable copy protection completely goes into the same areas crackers go. In a situation where Microsoft wants to be able to block and withhold your computer use when _they_ think you've done something wrong, where is the difference? It obliterates the concept of computer data as property- and if computers are not property but a public resource you don't actually own, then there is no argument that crackers shouldn't be allowed to access them.
If computer data is property, then the computer industry is working very hard to make it effectively not be property anymore.
Isn't that the root of the problem?
There are times when I fear that there is no point trying to re-educate the world. "Hacking" is now so firmly established in the minds of the general populace as meaning cracking, that maybe we need to just give up and decide on a new name for monkeying around with computers. It's sad, but linguistic inertia can be very difficult to overcome.
Politas
I have a possible solution, however. If these same kids had the opportunity to take computer science classes early on, they could find the challenge they needed in producing good software. Computer science education in high schools is terrible; it should be offered at multiple levels and even begun in middle school. With the infusion of technology into the workplace, schools would be able to justify the change as useful. Hopefully someone will catch on that this would be a good thing, though with the current status of education, who knows.
--
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
Gregory J. Barlow
fight bloat. use blackbox.
Yes, I realize crackers do advance the state of the art in security. But that is only one aspect of computers---albeit a critical one---and cracker's methods can and frequently are highly questionable, when other methods of achieving security are perhaps as effective or more so. This actually opens up an intereseting debate: which is actually better for security, open source methodology for peer review or crackers forcing corporations to take security seriously? Can crackers use their skills in better ways that are not destructive? This question of course refers to crackers that actually want to advance security, not the purely malicious idiots that are only interested in destruction. (Political crackers are another category altogether.)
Regardless, criticizing the DOJ's move as anti-hacking is extremely misguided. The DOJ's move is anti-*cracking*, not anti-hacking. Our current prosperity is indeed in large part due to a generation of kids hacking... but not cracking.
Actually, there is one more interesting point to consider. All of us Gen X geek kid types, at the time, how many of us were really cracking anyway? Personal computers weren't really networked; did viruses even exist? I was definitely a young hacker, but now that I think about it, could I have been a cracker even if I wanted to? Until being exposed to the Internet at MIT in 1987, I don't think I could have been, or even really known what that was.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
The whole "War on Drugs", DARE, "Just Say No", and government-funded propaganda aimed at youth sickens me. Essentially, it's the two major parties cooperating to fund bipartisan (no, Americans, "bipartisan" does not mean universal) political advertising. The drug war is just a political and propaganda tool that the government uses to further the enslavement of the middle class and the dehumanization of the lower class. It's part of the political platform of those two parties, and as such shouldn't be funded with government money.
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
After browsing the hundred-odd replies, I'm struck by the fact that most people are not happy (one way or another) but nobody has suggested any viable alternative. Now, given the usual libertarian attitude (at least if that is what OpenSource is suppose to be in empowering individuals), if you were a parent, what would you physically do? I'd like to toss in an idea (which unfortunately fell through for lack of funding ... so what's new with local government :-( ) that I once discussed with a community liason with a police parent partnership group.
/.ers can think of other potential feasible solutions and have an idea bake-off. As the old saying goes, if you're not part of the solution, then you're the problem.
{Put on flame-retardent overalls}
The concept was to install a number of "playpen" computers that kids could use to "break in". Similar in principle to providing rollerblade rinks to avoid them killing themselves on the roads. Would select a mix of OSs like Linux, FreeBSD, TrustedIRIX in order of increasing difficulty and tools for hunting down security holes and the philosophy of true hackerdom. The goal is to immerse them into the cultural landscape by providing reading material of role models and what traits the hacker community admired (talent, knowledge, modesty?) Then encourage kids to form groups/tribes to alternatively protect and to penetrate as far as possible undetected (home/away game) whilst the machines were still in a relatively controlled environment (ie in the community centre overlooked by someone responsible). That way they could learn skills (can we say forensic computing here!) and understand the role of a civil society at the same time (the only cyberlaws are what you can technologically enforce yourself!). Remember the only difference between a locksmith and a burgler is intent. By turning their energy into a competitive attitude towards computer mastery rather than notoriety, positive traits can in theory be reinforced.
{Flame suit off}
While the idea hasn't found any gung-ho mainstream champions to get it off the ground as yet, instead of whinging about the ineffectiveness of governments (which afterall is collectively suppose to represent your desires no matter how klutzy the implementation) perhaps
LL
Not that any of the other government programs seem to be all that successful, but this is just another example of the feds overstepping their bounds. A few reasons (many of which have already been brought up):
There are more, but those are the only ones I can enumerate. I guess we can only hope that this program is as effective as DARE. At least in the town where I live, the DARE officer collects pot pipes and shows 'em off when he goes to school to discuss the evil of drugs. And he takes frequent breaks to go outside and smoke tobacco. Great example.
I think the good results of the DARE program are the bumper stickers:
So what's the slogan for the new program going to be? "BAAAHHHHHH...Microsoft good, shellcode bad"? "CARE...to leave the case on"? (CARE: Computer Abuse Resistance Education or Completely Absurd and Ridiculous anti-Education)
(The reason I bring up the DARE comparisons is the similarity in programs. Basically, it's just another form of brainwashing that we, the taxpayers, get to finance.)
This could be low signal/noise.. I just woke up and am now in a rather unhappy mood thanks to this latest idiocy.. You've been warned. :)
Ok, how many of us actually know /children/ who qualify for the term hacker? Or even cracker? I think the grand majority of these would be termed "script kiddies". And if these idiots can't even figure out the correct terminology, it's really no wonder they're so defenseless. =P
Ok, so.. Not only do they have to impose their flawed definition of the term "hacker" upon the public at large, now they have to twist it in the mind of small children? Shouldn't there be some kind of law that prohibits the government from /lying/ to small children on a massive scale? Argh.. I can't even think properly on this.. It's too fscking stupid.. Grr.
I mean, there are already enough clueless idiots out in the world who, upon being asked for the definition of the word hacker, get it.. enh!! dead wrong! But now whenever a person who went through the educational system during a time when this brainwashing campaign was in effect is exposed to the term "hacker", they might denounce the "offender" who brought it up as some kind of "drug dealer", and refuse to listen to their "subversive" or (religious children may choose to insert any religious word that attaches a strong stigma to the "subversive" or "hell-bound" individual) explanation of what the word really means? Or something equally ludicrous? Talk about.. stupid..
Sorry, but if some random script kiddies can bust into your system, you probably /deserved/ it. Perhaps someone more competent should be hired to replace you if you work the government or a company and find yourself in this situation? =P
No, hacking is clever and /sexy/.. And everything about that paragraph would be funny if it wasn't so sad.. And so.. stupid..
Oh joy.. another way for MS and AOL to spread evil across the land..
The first sentence was just awful.. "The Justice Department wants to save children before they turn into hackers." Um.. sure. The world could always use a few less programmers that actually have a passion for what they're doing.. Or not. Oh wait, they already discourage the production of more good programmers in school.. By teaching them Pascal. Better than Basic, I suppose, but not by a whole lot. You know, until I learned about C, I always thought programming sucked. Whoever had the bright idea to teach Pascal in recent years instead of C in high school needs to.. Well, nevermind. Let's just say something not very pretty..
~ Kish
I'm not sure I agree that the current United States computer prosperity is entirely due to crackers.
Crackers are certainly very interesting as they come in many shapes and sizes, but do they provide any real value to the computer industry?
When was the last time you were up at 3am working on some interesting problem and said "Man, I could really use a cracker about now"?
Now I realize that Keebler's would very much like you to believe that they rule the world by holding the reigns on the saltine monopoly.
But come on... let's get real here.
The real powers are Hostess and Coca-Cola. As long as they have hold of the distribution of Twinkies and Coke, they control the main source of energy behind the entire Internet revolution.
And I notice that the DOJ is doing nothing about this!!!!
Ok, it's time to come out of the closet. When I was a lad, I was a "cracker". Oh, not a good one, or even a terribly motivated one (my exploits in college mostly involved doing geurilla sys-admin when the real admins were away, and people needed to get work done). But that's not the point. I was one of the evil few who you should fear and despise.
Here's the scary part: in my daily work as a senior software engineer (oooh! a title, I get a title!) and all-around UNIX-monkey I use every scrap of knowledge that I gained back then. I *need* to know what kind of exploits people will look for in my software. I *need* to be able to put myself into the mind of the cracker. In previous jobs I've had to deal with active intrusions. No one else had a clue what to expect, and I had to spoon-feed them all.
I'm not saying that you should give every kid a "breaking in 101" class, but those who show the insight, skill and motivation to subvert security should be helped to find the "good path". Their skills should be respected. If you just turn a cold eye to them and tell them that what they are doing is evil, they will end up working against you. If you nurture their talent and push them to accept responsibility for their capabilities, they will be valuable members of the community.
As a closing thought, the most important lesson that I learned was when someone that I felt great respect for told me that he knew what I had been doing all along, and he didn't bother to stop me. But, when he took action was when I started telling others how to do it. I could have ended up writing exploit programs for script-kiddies, but that one conversation ended the possibility as firmly as a bullet. Say the right thing at the right time, and you can change someone's world.