Not really, it's still intrusion. Complexity and aggressiveness of the attack doesn't matter much, not to non-tech people at the least. Just look at McKinnon.
It's Horrible Hour! All drinks at the bar cost their base price plus a random amount of cash between 10% and 90%. If you pay too little, you get fondled. If you pay too much, you get fondled. If you get caught bringing in liquor into the establishment, you are shot.
This is because the only ones that can really contribute to this discussion is those who have technical knowledge of computer security and those who have experience with government or IT security contracting. You should probably be happy that anyone here can contribute at all to the discussion.
From a cynical perspective, yes, but it could also just be a person who is naive about not being considered a threat or a target of a lawsuit regarding cleanup fees.
I trust my own morals. But it evidently becomes complicated when "I" becomes "We". I think I'm the kind of person who has a really limited or absent sense of "we", though, but I seem to get along fine by just cooperating with people in life. Why do people have to complicate things such that a "group" becomes "social"? It might sound crazy, but I can't explain it better.
Yeah, it would have been "mercenary" if they where contracted to do actual "computer espionage" but here they only built the tools. Maybe there are other firms that do that sort of stuff though? And I believe most mercenary firms would not hire out their services indiscriminately. Blackwater (now Xe) is considered to be "trash" by other mercs from what I've read, and it certainly fits the alleged cocaine parties and shooting wildly in the air.
I suppose they have to deal with stupidity as well as anyone else. Wonder how they handle it, what with their "saving face" culture? Or maybe their military/police has a different internal culture?
Okay, so you can be a black hat and still a good guy then. Problem is, the descriptions are not used in an amoral sense, so it becomes a bit contradictory.
That's just stupidity and people performing tasks without understanding the reasons behind them. But from what we've seen, "US intel" would evidently take advantage of the situation of confusion, I.E. install malware onto targets during border checks. They probably already are.
So hacking into the government systems of an oppressive government in order to cause it damage somehow as part of a larger campaign to topple it without invading and killing lots of people would be "evil"?
You could argue that "Hats" is a bad construct, and that if you understand the consequences of your actions conventional moral terms serve much better. The only reason the terms are used, I think, is because of the fact that it's so easy to get away with things. There's no external moral reinforcement because there's really no effective law enforcement and the anonymity is total. I think this is why all the security people I've met IRL have been "neurotic" or "twitchy".
Greg Hoglund is a leading expert on rootkits, and per the article it was he who did all the developement and research. If the article tells the truth, the firm sold advanced rootkits to the US government, and the latest iteration would have been one that used advanced memory management techniques to jump around in process memory and do it's thing without using any OS-managed structures, thus evading detection. I don't grok this at all, but it sounds like an advanced version of a technique I read about where the malware extracted the code from DLL files and ran things without having to go through the OS. So that part was entirely llegit, but the social networks part (which the government apparently wasn't at all interested in, presumably because they already got a contract with those Palantir guys) was evidently a catastrophe in the making.
People sneer at "cyberwarfare", but once i came across this I sort of rethought the concept. If they're aiming to basically network everything and everyone to increase reaction times and information availability, it really makes a bit more sense.
Does it ever! Not only does it cause autism, it will cause all children under 16 years of age to mutate into cannibalistic 30-feet-tall ivory-skinned humanoids with six fingers and large feathery wings! Buy a batch now - our special Rapture(TM) offering lasts only until the breaking of the Seventh Seal or the destruction of our facilities and board members by fire and brimstone, whichever comes first!
I live in sweden and have done so for my whole life, and I've never actually experienced this kind of thing. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but "uncaring underfunded incompetence" has never once been the experience I or any of my relatives and friends (that I've heard about) have had with the swedish hospital system. Except for one time, but that doc was simply kooked in the head.
This is a disgrace in any case, and the only article in the main newspaper about it is a short clip about the children's wards in south-western sweden being desperately overcrowded, and apparently have been for some time now despite the staff's pleas for more resources.
That's not exactly how I've seen it used. "Crack" seems to be used almost exclusively for cracking protection mechanisms in software when reversing, and "hack" seems to be used as a shorthand for "manipulating a technological device or software in a highly technical and skilled manner, usually against the original designers intention and/or owner's wishes." The purest form of the verb seems to be "to break into and manipulate a computer remotely even though there is security in place to prevent this from happening."
The parent was not certain how blackhats used the word, and this is how I have seen professed blackhats use it, both in writing and by snooping on a few certain select forums. As in, people who write and sell software to botnet herders, who then steals grandma's pocket money.
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Not really, it's still intrusion. Complexity and aggressiveness of the attack doesn't matter much, not to non-tech people at the least. Just look at McKinnon.
It's Horrible Hour! All drinks at the bar cost their base price plus a random amount of cash between 10% and 90%. If you pay too little, you get fondled. If you pay too much, you get fondled. If you get caught bringing in liquor into the establishment, you are shot.
This is because the only ones that can really contribute to this discussion is those who have technical knowledge of computer security and those who have experience with government or IT security contracting. You should probably be happy that anyone here can contribute at all to the discussion.
Or a Redcap
From a cynical perspective, yes, but it could also just be a person who is naive about not being considered a threat or a target of a lawsuit regarding cleanup fees.
It's only "common sense" because you have some technical understanding of the issues involved. To anyone else, it's "magic".
It could be Aaron Barr himself using a "persona" to "spark a verbal braul" to "bring the discussion into the public eye"? :3
Terms, no matter how loaded with power and prestige, are irrelevant generalizations. Life is not a game of Shadowrun, just something very similar.
I trust my own morals. But it evidently becomes complicated when "I" becomes "We". I think I'm the kind of person who has a really limited or absent sense of "we", though, but I seem to get along fine by just cooperating with people in life. Why do people have to complicate things such that a "group" becomes "social"? It might sound crazy, but I can't explain it better.
As long as it's consistent it isn't so troublesome. This is a discussion site after all.
Yeah, it would have been "mercenary" if they where contracted to do actual "computer espionage" but here they only built the tools. Maybe there are other firms that do that sort of stuff though? And I believe most mercenary firms would not hire out their services indiscriminately. Blackwater (now Xe) is considered to be "trash" by other mercs from what I've read, and it certainly fits the alleged cocaine parties and shooting wildly in the air.
I suppose they have to deal with stupidity as well as anyone else. Wonder how they handle it, what with their "saving face" culture? Or maybe their military/police has a different internal culture?
Okay, so you can be a black hat and still a good guy then. Problem is, the descriptions are not used in an amoral sense, so it becomes a bit contradictory.
"Good? Bad? I'm the one with the 0day." /
"The only law on the internet is assembly and RFCs."
That's just stupidity and people performing tasks without understanding the reasons behind them. But from what we've seen, "US intel" would evidently take advantage of the situation of confusion, I.E. install malware onto targets during border checks. They probably already are.
So hacking into the government systems of an oppressive government in order to cause it damage somehow as part of a larger campaign to topple it without invading and killing lots of people would be "evil"?
You could argue that "Hats" is a bad construct, and that if you understand the consequences of your actions conventional moral terms serve much better. The only reason the terms are used, I think, is because of the fact that it's so easy to get away with things. There's no external moral reinforcement because there's really no effective law enforcement and the anonymity is total. I think this is why all the security people I've met IRL have been "neurotic" or "twitchy".
Greg Hoglund is a leading expert on rootkits, and per the article it was he who did all the developement and research. If the article tells the truth, the firm sold advanced rootkits to the US government, and the latest iteration would have been one that used advanced memory management techniques to jump around in process memory and do it's thing without using any OS-managed structures, thus evading detection. I don't grok this at all, but it sounds like an advanced version of a technique I read about where the malware extracted the code from DLL files and ran things without having to go through the OS. So that part was entirely llegit, but the social networks part (which the government apparently wasn't at all interested in, presumably because they already got a contract with those Palantir guys) was evidently a catastrophe in the making.
People sneer at "cyberwarfare", but once i came across this I sort of rethought the concept. If they're aiming to basically network everything and everyone to increase reaction times and information availability, it really makes a bit more sense.
Does it ever! Not only does it cause autism, it will cause all children under 16 years of age to mutate into cannibalistic 30-feet-tall ivory-skinned humanoids with six fingers and large feathery wings! Buy a batch now - our special Rapture(TM) offering lasts only until the breaking of the Seventh Seal or the destruction of our facilities and board members by fire and brimstone, whichever comes first!
What's difficult about social engineering is probably just the shamelessness required to directly lie to and misdirect people.
I live in sweden and have done so for my whole life, and I've never actually experienced this kind of thing. Anecdotal evidence, I know, but "uncaring underfunded incompetence" has never once been the experience I or any of my relatives and friends (that I've heard about) have had with the swedish hospital system. Except for one time, but that doc was simply kooked in the head.
This is a disgrace in any case, and the only article in the main newspaper about it is a short clip about the children's wards in south-western sweden being desperately overcrowded, and apparently have been for some time now despite the staff's pleas for more resources.
That's not exactly how I've seen it used. "Crack" seems to be used almost exclusively for cracking protection mechanisms in software when reversing, and "hack" seems to be used as a shorthand for "manipulating a technological device or software in a highly technical and skilled manner, usually against the original designers intention and/or owner's wishes." The purest form of the verb seems to be "to break into and manipulate a computer remotely even though there is security in place to prevent this from happening."
The parent was not certain how blackhats used the word, and this is how I have seen professed blackhats use it, both in writing and by snooping on a few certain select forums. As in, people who write and sell software to botnet herders, who then steals grandma's pocket money.
Massive overanalysis paralysis in the swedish justice system?
...Nah. This is a world: it is made of confusion and stupid.