I guess at my work I am fortunate enough. They discouage overtime, let us wear clothes that we are comfortable with and we use a great language (PERL).
For me I like it here, the freedom to do my work without being bothered constantly and management that truly wants their employees to be happy.
But just over a month ago I went camping with some friends and actually thought of bringing my laptop with me. I decided against it because we were "Tring to get away from it all."
It was great the first night but the second day was disturbing. I basically went through a kind of tech withdrawl.
I ended up settling in and having a great time but just the thought of being so connected/reliant on tech disturbes me.
What kind of world are we living in right now? What kind of society are we turning into? Maybe we all should take a step back like that and see how we fair.
> Reminds me of most weapons makers who dissolve > themselves from blame as the creators by saying > that theirs is a tool that is misused.
Well, it is he how pulls the trigger that is blamed for the crime. But, in the electronic world flaws aren't fixed until someone points them out. There was no damage done by these attacks, no data lost, only down time. Don't think that I condon the use of these tools. In fact I look down upon those that do use them.
> There is more than a hint of ego in this guys > work (if indeed it was him) by putting it in a > public forum(albeit for good reasons) he knew > that people were going to abuse his creation.
Every good tool has a dark side. Should we only let those who are 'worthy' have the powerful ones? All good tools get abused, and those that do the abuseing should get punished.
> Maybe he should have let the relevant people > know about the problem before putting the code > in the public domain.
Why? Again, unless companies get a little kick in the pants they won't fix a damn thing. In this case the threat existed for a long time(and we knew about it) but no-one took the time to fix it because "It won't happen to me."
> In many ways I suspect he wanted an attack to > vindicate himself, show off his skills whilst > remaining on the side of the light and generally > bask in the publicity...
I would expect something more than pure speculation from someone that posts here.
And the gross use of the term hacker. I got an idea, why don't you goto the jargon files and lookup a good definition. Then maybe you will realize that little punks like the one(s) who did this attack are but a small percentage of our actual population. Remember that in ALL societies it is always about 5% of the population that is the troblemakers. Unfortunatly these are always the ones that get the presses attention.
It's a good thing that now The L0pht dosn't really have to worry that much about money anymore but have already paid somewhat of a price.
Still I do think that the community will come out for the better, but if this many changes have already been announced then how many more are planned that we don't know about? For better or worse?
I think that this is an amazing revolution in that feild and this research should continue, but we have to thing about the ethics. I can just hear the team now...
"Please let us do this. LET ME PLAY GOD!!!!... I mean, please?"
I think that Einstein was onto something here.
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has surpassed our humanity." --Einstein
Think of the benifits... think of the wepons that could be made. Does one outweigh the other? This is the true question.
Very true! The Canda Net can see speeds of 80 Gigs/sec and that's with only one color too!! I believe that they are adding another color as we speak doubling that to 160 Gigs/sec. Imagine when we get a dozen colors going!
But we shouldn't let that stop us from finding other forms of communication. Who knows, this might end up being faster.
I'm also from Canada and this does worry me as well.
If they are tapping routers in the States then any information that goes through them is compromised as well.
Do people think that just because the person on the other end is Canadian(or anywhere other than the states) they are just going to let it go. NO, they are going to log whatever pleases them.
And because we don't decide which routers our transmissions go through we don't know if we are being listened in on. Is it coming to the point that if we want privacy that we have to encrypt every transmission we send?
Well it just looks like the States is losing it's right to call itself "The Land of the Free!"
Well if yo do anything illegal there's a record on you. And you must be naive to think that those people aren't going to be targeted.
To much information to decode, Yes, But a selective attack makes things alot easier. And what kind of equipment do you think the gov. has. Gotta be things that we only know about in theory. The things that we think aren't breakable for years they might be able to break in hours.
And by the way, why would you want anyone gov. or not to intentionally put in a security hole? Just leaving another door for crackers.
Ok, I do agree that the media is talking to much. But this is one of the most important things to happen in our industry in a long time.
And there is something that you can do to block out all the noise. Don't watch TV or read the paper. If it really bothers you that much you should at least be willing to do that. And yes this is what I do.
My view is if you want something close to the truth then you are going to have to read the facts of everyone involved and make your own conclusions.
If you do nothing about it then you lose the right to complain.
How can you support this? Think of the implications!
There are already people out there that don't leave there house if there really don't need to. And do you think this is going to make things better? People need social contact, sun light, etc. and they aren't going to get it sitting infront of a computer all day.
Besides that, what do think is protecting those signatures? Probably the most popular is going to be PGP for the layman. Is this enough? Don't think so with a max of a 40-bit key for a layman with a buddy that thinks he knows what he is doing.
How about M$s' PPTP. It's one of the weakest protocols I've ever seen.
Some talk of making the internet more secure and then things like this get done. And we wonder why systems get cracked.
With such poor security, how easy is it going to be to hijack a signal?
It won't make a difference to anyone? It will make a difference to those who come after us! If we don't do something about this now, when we can, what kind of message does that send? It says "Hey, come walk all over us!" or "M$, do whatever you want!". Is this what we want to say? As far as I'm concerned, it's never to late to change. It's never to late to do the right thing. And if we don't, who will?!?
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I guess at my work I am fortunate enough. They discouage overtime, let us wear clothes that we are comfortable with and we use a great language (PERL).
For me I like it here, the freedom to do my work without being bothered constantly and management that truly wants their employees to be happy.
But just over a month ago I went camping with some friends and actually thought of bringing my laptop with me. I decided against it because we were "Tring to get away from it all."
It was great the first night but the second day was disturbing. I basically went through a kind of tech withdrawl.
I ended up settling in and having a great time but just the thought of being so connected/reliant on tech disturbes me.
What kind of world are we living in right now?
What kind of society are we turning into?
Maybe we all should take a step back like that and see how we fair.
> Reminds me of most weapons makers who dissolve
> themselves from blame as the creators by saying
> that theirs is a tool that is misused.
Well, it is he how pulls the trigger that is blamed for the crime. But, in the electronic world flaws aren't fixed until someone points them out. There was no damage done by these attacks, no data lost, only down time.
Don't think that I condon the use of these tools. In fact I look down upon those that do use them.
> There is more than a hint of ego in this guys
> work (if indeed it was him) by putting it in a
> public forum(albeit for good reasons) he knew
> that people were going to abuse his creation.
Every good tool has a dark side. Should we only let those who are 'worthy' have the powerful ones? All good tools get abused, and those that do the abuseing should get punished.
> Maybe he should have let the relevant people
> know about the problem before putting the code
> in the public domain.
Why? Again, unless companies get a little kick in the pants they won't fix a damn thing. In this case the threat existed for a long time(and we knew about it) but no-one took the time to fix it because "It won't happen to me."
> In many ways I suspect he wanted an attack to
> vindicate himself, show off his skills whilst
> remaining on the side of the light and generally
> bask in the publicity...
I would expect something more than pure speculation from someone that posts here.
And the gross use of the term hacker. I got an idea, why don't you goto the jargon files and lookup a good definition. Then maybe you will realize that little punks like the one(s) who did this attack are but a small percentage of our actual population.
Remember that in ALL societies it is always about 5% of the population that is the troblemakers. Unfortunatly these are always the ones that get the presses attention.
It's a good thing that now The L0pht dosn't really have to worry that much about money anymore but have already paid somewhat of a price.
Still I do think that the community will come out for the better, but if this many changes have already been announced then how many more are planned that we don't know about? For better or worse?
As far as I know these kinds of theories have been around for a long time. But lets examine one quote.
>"They don't cause any disease, they are very >peaceful."
Have you ever known a malicious bacteria? I can just see it, walking down a back alley going home and getting mugged by that damned bacteria.
Just something funny that crossed my mind.
I think that this is an amazing revolution in that feild and this research should continue, but we have to thing about the ethics. I can just hear the team now...
"Please let us do this. LET ME PLAY GOD!!!!... I mean, please?"
I think that Einstein was onto something here.
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has surpassed our humanity."
--Einstein
Think of the benifits... think of the wepons that could be made. Does one outweigh the other? This is the true question.
Very true! The Canda Net can see speeds of 80 Gigs/sec and that's with only one color too!! I believe that they are adding another color as we speak doubling that to 160 Gigs/sec. Imagine when we get a dozen colors going!
But we shouldn't let that stop us from finding other forms of communication. Who knows, this might end up being faster.
I'm also from Canada and this does worry me as well.
If they are tapping routers in the States then any information that goes through them is compromised as well.
Do people think that just because the person on the other end is Canadian(or anywhere other than the states) they are just going to let it go. NO, they are going to log whatever pleases them.
And because we don't decide which routers our transmissions go through we don't know if we are being listened in on. Is it coming to the point that if we want privacy that we have to encrypt every transmission we send?
Well it just looks like the States is losing it's right to call itself "The Land of the Free!"
Well if yo do anything illegal there's a record on you. And you must be naive to think that those people aren't going to be targeted.
To much information to decode, Yes, But a selective attack makes things alot easier. And what kind of equipment do you think the gov. has. Gotta be things that we only know about in theory. The things that we think aren't breakable for years they might be able to break in hours.
And by the way, why would you want anyone gov. or not to intentionally put in a security hole? Just leaving another door for crackers.
Ok, I do agree that the media is talking to much. But this is one of the most important things to happen in our industry in a long time.
And there is something that you can do to block out all the noise. Don't watch TV or read the paper. If it really bothers you that much you should at least be willing to do that. And yes this is what I do.
My view is if you want something close to the truth then you are going to have to read the facts of everyone involved and make your own conclusions.
If you do nothing about it then you lose the right to complain.
I do think that this is a good idea but an article would not do the subject justice. There's just to much information to present here.
I look forward to your future postings. And yes, it will be great conversation.
How can you support this? Think of the implications!
There are already people out there that don't leave there house if there really don't need to. And do you think this is going to make things better? People need social contact, sun light, etc. and they aren't going to get it sitting infront of a computer all day.
Besides that, what do think is protecting those signatures? Probably the most popular is going to be PGP for the layman. Is this enough? Don't think so with a max of a 40-bit key for a layman with a buddy that thinks he knows what he is doing.
How about M$s' PPTP. It's one of the weakest
protocols I've ever seen.
Some talk of making the internet more secure and then things like this get done. And we wonder why systems get cracked.
With such poor security, how easy is it going to be to hijack a signal?
It won't make a difference to anyone? It will make a difference to those who come after us! If we don't do something about this now, when we can, what kind of message does that send? It says "Hey, come walk all over us!" or "M$, do whatever you want!". Is this what we want to say? As far as I'm concerned, it's never to late to change. It's never to late to do the right thing. And if we don't, who will?!?