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MTV's Hacker Portrayal
fat_mike writes "Last night, MTV did a True Life show on Hackers. There are some interesting comments over at the Hacker News Network. " I was unable to see it, but it doesn't sound like it went very well - coverage that didn't understand the subject matter. Anyone else catch it?
Posted by Mike@ABC:
The l0pht, in my estimation, is a credible source of both technical and hacker-cultural knowledge. That doesn't mean that MTV actually listened to them.
And hey, if you're looking for credible journalism, why are you watching MTV?!
HACKMAN: The city's in peril! Quickly L33tl4d, to the Hackcave!
L33TL4D: You mean your basement?
HACKMAN: ... Yes.
o/~ da da da da da da da da Hackman! o/~
(log on next week as Hackman battles the mp3ster)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I unfortunately watched the program. I got what I was looking for (cheap laughs) though it still left a bad taste in my oral cavity. The best part was one of the scenes in some kids room.
Director: We want to get a shot of you doing
impressive. You know, lots of computer
code and stuff on the screen.
Kid: Um, okay. (types ps a)
Maybe I'm the only one that found this humorous.
Maybe you'll return to Minagua, You could go unnoticed in such a place. -FZ
(http://www.l0pht.com)
/. is what they had in mind.
"L0pht to be on MTV's True Life: I'm A Hacker
10.10.1999
On October 13th at 10 pm MTV will debut True Life: I'm a Hacker reported by MTV's Serena Altschul. Although most of this show will feature young hoodlums who get their kicks from breaking into other people's systems, the L0pht is also interviewed showing the more productive side of hacking."
I'm guessing MTV wasn't really interested in the productive side of hacking. The MTV press release (http://www.l0pht.com/misc/hackerrel.html) mentions it in only one sentence: "Finally, the show examines a more productive side of hacking, visiting The L0pht, a group of Boston hackers who develop security software for major companies, and act as advisors to the U.S. Government on how they can maximize security mechanisms on their own systems."
An exerp from elsewhere in the press release:
"Venturing into the inner-most sanctums of this cyber subculture, 'True Life: I'm a Hacker' explores how hackers communicate with one another and where they learn the tricks of the trade."
Hackers have inner-most sanctums? Boy, am I missing out...
Quoting one of their subjects: "It's like being God."
Geez, and here I am wasting my time sitting in a cubicle gaining weight when I could be Godlike, just because I know what int main(int argc, char *argv[]) means.
"Through on-line chats and talk shows cybercast to thousands of their peers worldwide, many young hackers, who otherwise would have simply blended in, have an opportunity to achieve major levels of recognition and adulation."
I wonder if
Sorry but if this comes accross as flamebait..
I sat down last night with my kids and watched that "show"...
To be honest, I know many people that fall into the catagory of hacker, my children tell me that they want to be hackers when they grow up.
That "Show" was not about hackers.
That was an attempt by MTV to capitalize not only on FUD, but it was a poor excuse for journalism. I am will to say that 95%+ of all hackers do not have blue hair(at least the ones I know), or stand out in anyway. Most of us are more concerned with being able to do our own thing, and learning as much as we can along the way.
My 4 year old daughter summed it up best, after watching the show, she started shaking her head and asked me "Daddy, they aren't like anybody we know", I told her that there were all kinds of hackers in the world, all she could say was the ones on the show were "not real hackers, they were dumb hackers"
(I have very bright children, so this is not added to in anyway)
After last nights "show" i am seriously thinking of taking my cable out.
Being the "haX0r" or "computer geek" at the party, when ever I break out the laptop to play mp3's everybody start saying "hack the FBI!" "crack some software for me" "break into my school and change my grades." I just wish once I would hear from someone something like "make this program run the way i want it to" or "help me secure my computer from evil people". It really bugs me. I have morals. I wouldn't steal from someone, trash someone's house, distroy what ever, turn off their power in real life just becuase I CAN, why would I do that in "cyber space"?
I believe it's really about the corruption in the world. People have to be good people in real life, just to get by, but when they get online it doesn't matter what they do. There's no big blue. They can do what they want and feel like a god when they DoS attack some lame server. Or setup a firewall that deny everything coming in with no services running and feel unstopable. Feeling powerful and unstopable is what people want to feel like. What is so great about spending 20 hours reading and writing code?!?! Nothing.
Thus, you will see what hacker really are in the news.
Of course hacker have nose rings, wear all black, listen to electrica, and are outcast of the world.
umm...
yeah...
MarNuke
At the risk of creating a stereotype, I would like to think that the individuals who frequent Slasdot are usually very intelligent, well spoken people. We thirst for knowledge of any kind, and strive to teach the "masses" about our culture and tear down as many pre-conceived notions as possible. Then, when something like this comes up very little gets done (if you don't count complaining here on slashdot). I'm not trying to start a flame war, I actually have a suggestion. With as many great minds as there are visiting this site, couldn't we get together and write some sort of treatise for the masses in general explaining the differences between crackers and hackers, and essentially address the fears and misinformation that make our lives so much more difficult than need be sometimes? We write things like the jargon file, and there are a million "how to be a hacker" faqs, but none of these address the non-technical people that really need the education.
This is how the media portrays hackers. As much as we should expect the media to dig a little deeper and get a grasp on the issues, they won't. To even try means to add a slant to the issue.
/.ers will just have to learn to cope. A cracker will always be called a hacker. The media will always have a slant on real life.
Just like /.ers do. :P
l0pht spent a FULL DAY being interviewed by MTV, which was edited down to the 50 seconds or so you see in the final piece. I'm sure they said a lot more, and I'm sure a lot of it was extremely interesting and relevant, but there's not much they can do about the heavy hand of the MTV editor, is there?
-tf
Normally I stay clear of the whole hacker/cracker thing, but did it ever occur to you that the guys from L0pht didn't raise the issue for a reason? Maybe L0pht doesn't give a rat's ass about the distinction and the perceived misuse by the press. Whatever the origin of either word, hacker has been in use for a relatively long time as a slang word for computer criminal. If I suddenly decide that I want people to refer to me as an Algorithm Distributor or Code Simian instead of programmer or developer, does that mean that anyone will actually start using those words? No. Not unless I found and fund a huge company of political correctness to trumpet the cause. Maybe the National Association for the Advancement of Algorithm Distributors.
You're right of course about the web servers. An expert - from L0pht or anywhere else - should have been consulted to enlighten MTV about the relative strengths and weaknesses of web servers.
Why should any of you (we) care what image is being portrayed of us. I mean it's not like any of us would call ourselves "hackers" or anything. It's not like any of us spend any time on computers.
(/sarcasm)
I watched the show, or I should say it was on the TV in the same room (I'm a multi-media-vore). Most of the guys on it were idiots. Shamrock was a joke, he wasn't picking up a Mysterious Disk, he was trying to hide his crystal. Ever see a group of folks with police scanners, just hanging out. Deep red eyes and shifty as hell. He was in jail for "possession with intent to distribute" and some other "information-related" stuff. It is really sad that this was one of the images portrayed, a freakin' meth dealer, nice job MTV.
Mantis, (the black kid) was by far the most positive image. He seemed intelligent, and lo and behold, they actually showed a CLI on his screen (UNIX-type files), most of the other shots were GUI's (and mostly win). At the very least he knew how to dress and interact in "normal" life. A positive image, surprise, surprise. He also mentioned that now he was a good guy, mostly, but good and bad mean different things to different people. He was the only one quoted "information wants to be free", which he mentioned in passing.
The other kid (Chameleon, his hair dyed blue for camo), who talked to Bin-Laden's agent and was awakened one morning with a gun in his face (his mom backs up the story So I'll give it the benny of the doubt) was the other side of the story. I'd guess he has other "issues", seemed like a pretty normal script kiddie who found something interesting, investigated and got slammed back into reality. With enough of 'em out there, one or two are bound to get into trouble.
Serena, while attractive, was totally out of her element, had no clue, no idea what questions to ask, and a total lack of anything resembling a grasp on any single idea represented in the half-hour (with 7 min. of commercials) tidbit. At the end of the show, during the credits, she couldn't login, and started immediately blaming "hackers!, grr". How many times, as a percentage, is a user not being able to login attributable to getting cracked? 1%, maybe 2?
I wouldn't even call it a full meal of info, just some random images, noise if you will. Unfortunately the younger generations of TV viewers often pick the signal out of the crap and this signal was crap.
I'm not sure where this post turned into a full-on review, but I watched the show so I figured I should share.
+&x
Well, I saw the show today (Thursday Oct 14 99). MTV re-aired it about noon EDT. Just so you all are more informed when you post about it, here's a synopsis/review of the show.
It centered around three self-proclaimed "hackers": Shamrock, Chameleon, and Mantis.
Shamrock told Serena Altschul (anyone remember her from Channel One?) that he was a "phone phreaker." One of the first shots of him in action was when he was talking on a payphone and had a cell phone laying on top of it. During the course of the program, one of his friends was arrested, and he and Serena had to make it to this guy's apartment to get a disk before the police got to it. Shamrock refused to tell what was on the disk, and while he and a friend left Serena on the street she commented to the camera that this was the most exciting news lead she had ever been on. I found that interesting. At least Shamrock carried around a scanner for police frequencies. That's kind of hacker-like, I guess. Oh, and he also sells pot, has a criminal record, and got into hacking to change his grades.
The next guy was Chameleon, who had blue hair. His strength was breaking into military systems. He alluded to cracking NASA and DOJ websites, but never really said it out right. A guy from AntiOnline told MTV all about Chameleon's downfall. Apparently he was alright poking around, until he started downloading the programs that control satellites. The FBI raided his house, arrested him, but didn't put him in jail. Instead, he has a job writing code to keep hackers out now. Near the end of the show, they showed him at Comdex in Las Vegas. It didn't have anything to do with anything.
The third guy, Mantis, was interesting. He's a host of the radio show Parse (with some other guys and a GIRL! Yay hacker girls!). He told Serena that he's not the stereotypical hacker at all. I've never seen a hacker in a necktie, so I guess he must be right. He talked a lot more about the culture than anything (Mantis was the source of most of the misinformation on the show).
I think the worst part of the show was how they didn't talk about any of the equipment/OS used. Ok, so it wasn't really catered to us geeks, but it wouldn't have been that hard to say as a sideline "And by the way, none of these hackers use Windows or AOL." The L0pht was interviewed too. They talked about "good hacking" like Mantis, but then Shamrock said that everyone's good and bad, that there are no good or bad, so that's the image Serena ended on. That all hacking is bad. It reminded me of all the DOJ kids anti-hacking pages.
I think MTV could have done more with it. Someone should make a series on good hackers and the hacker culture.
Venture Capitalist - Backer
Breaks into other peoples systems to damage them - Cracker
Enjoys exploring as a learning experience - Hacker
Picks up dead animals - Knacker
Puts things in boxes - Packer
Member of religious sect - Quaker
Content to run 'setup' and use all defaults - Slacker
That should clear things up!
Chuck
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