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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.
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.