Re:I don't get the whole Mitnick thing
on
Kevin Free
·
· Score: 2
The only thing unique about Kevin's case is that Kevin got caught.
It's amazing that people haven't started to realize there are hundreds like him who will never be caught. It's better to secure your systems against attacks in the first place than wait for the law to catch whoever wiped you out.
Hackers would not be able to get much done if people didn't store credit card numbers in plaintext files and then forget to properly set the user permissions.
Kevin did some illegal hacking, but the worst thing he did was get caught. His ability to do damage to the world was magnified by a incredible (yeah, exactly, nothing he said was credible) New York Times writer and prosecutors looking for somebody to make an example of. It's hard to prove that you're not able to do something... besides, in this country we punish for what you do, not what you were capable of doing but didn't do.
Hiding behind the law is the worst kind of security. Information that you don't want released should not be available for a hacker to get to, and it's up to you to take enough security precautions to make sure that's the case.
If you leave a $100 bill on the passenger seat of your unlocked car at the mall, there's a slight chance that everyone who passes the car is honest and it will still be there when you get back. If it's taken, you will have been robbed. However, unless you're lucky and there's a solid eyewitness or other giveaway clue, the police will take your report and then toss it in the "cold case" file where it likely will never be heard from again.
Why do the people who run computer systems expect that the online version of the same crime is going to get more priority?
MOD PARENT DOWN -1 Overrated
on
Kevin Free
·
· Score: 2
Yeah, just like he can whistle nuclear launch codes into any telephone.
Re:FuckKevin.com
on
Kevin Free
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
If he doesn't walk through the wide open security hole you leave, somebody else will eventually.
The moral of the story: Don't leave holes in your security. Be prepared for anything, including the imposters on the phone who claim to the be the CEO. Yeah, it means the insulting hassle of having to authenticate the CEO's identity every time he calls, but if you don't you're talking a risk.
To say it the negative way... he will enjoy no special protections from government snooping. They will be able to snoop on his activities just as easily as they can snoop on anybody else's.
Re:So where's the story here?
on
Kevin Free
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Kevin is in the news now because this week the FCC has ruled that he may renew his ham radio band license. Mitnick has had that license since he was a teenager, never used it in the course of his hacking, and this stays clear of his ban on networked computers because it doesn't need a computer.
The FCC ruled that he has done his time for his crimes, so there's no valid reason to deny the renewal. Unfortunately, it took Kevin thousands in legal fees to get them to reach that conclusion.
That still doesn't quite connect. Your history of avoiding electronic tablets in the past does not disprove the theory that the day in question was the day you broke down and agreed to use one for the first time.
It's more reliable to tell the judge that there's no way you made a purchase at the Best Buy in Syracuse because you were in another state at the time.
How exactly does one compromise a fingerprint? It must be attached to a living human in order to be acceptable, even the dumbest checkout operator can understand that one.
The LEGAL SYSTEM is your last line of defense against fraud.
Hate to tell you this, but the waitress who has a palm-size scanner on her belt can scan your credit card and get enough information to make signature-less transactions. Even though you sign for the meal, the fraud transactions can still get posted.
Even if you never get a credit card, you're still not safe from anybody who knows your social security number and can get to your mailbox before you. They can apply for a card, and you'll take longer to notice because you don't check your credit. Yeah, you'll likely notice something's up when the first bill comes, but that'll be quite the surprise.
What protects you is the law. If you accounts get compromised, the most you can owe by law is $50, and Speedpass and most credit card issuers will even forgive people that in an effort to prove that there's no liablity at all if their system goes haywire.
Becoming a millionaire happens in either a lucky burst (Lottery winner, game show winner, etc.) or by taking a risk with the modest resources you have and having it pay off. If you invested in the.coms before they were cool, and then got out while they were cool, you'd be a millionaire.
What the tech industry seriously lacks is any certification that says "This person does quality work." MSCE just says that the person knows how to sell you Microsoft products, CCNA does the same for Cisco... there is no credible certification that says you know when to use a Cisco product, and when all that's really needed is a Linksys.
"Look for the union label" is supposed to convey an image of quality. Especially in freelance fields, being hiring a union member means that the person qualifies for membership, and only performs work that complies with the union standard. More expensive, yeah. But it serves as a great way to convince others that the work complies with standards. "Yeah, we use subcontractors, but everybody we hire is union."
Think about it, how many companies will want a Linux server set up, but then not be willing to pay you to patch it or and don't know how patch it themselves. A union standard could prevent such a situation, by refusing to set up servers for people who do not committ to also have them supported by a union member. Yeah, they could go the cheap way by having non-union techies set it up, but that may hinder the company when trying to impress other companies.
I don't think decent programs for the US audience can be created anywhere other than here.
Remember "All your bases are belong to us." Where did that come from again? Woefully bad translation. There's just no way you can have decent human-computer interaction with an English speaking human if the programmer can't speak english.
There is a mass of people in college who will go for whatever the highest earning field turns out to be. They're not the brightest, just the most greedy.
Right now, it's those people cloging up our field and giving it a bad name. Over time, these people will wash out, a new top field will be declared, and the problem will go away.
The requirement isn't "news" but "non-fiction". Any purely fictional show is straight-out no matter what its origin.
Eye Drops always contains one profile of an artist who designs the animation that is seen in the show, therefore barely salvaging a "non-fiction" claim. TechnoGames is a made-for-TV competition, but it's not fictional at all so that works too.
I think TechTV Canada's requirement is at 20% CanCon right now, increasing 10% each year so that in its 5th year of operation they'll need to be at 50%.
In Canada, cable networks must get a license from the CRTC in order to operate, and those licenses must be specific in describing the format of the network.
TechTV Canada asked for a license based on the TechTV of 2001, which was entirely a news and infomation channel. Therefore, they declared that TechTV Canada would be entirely nonfiction programming, mainly drawing on the TechTV content from the USA, with a few additonal Canadian-made shows to satisfy the CanCon rules.
Therefore, when TechTV USA realized that the all-day TechLive format wasn't going to survive, the flagship network could change directions without having to ask for permission. Canada couldn't, so they're stuck replaying what nonfiction the USA group is producing over and over again to fill their day.
In order for Thunderbirds, Max Headroom, or Anime Unleashed to make it to Canada, they need to clear that regulartory hurdle first.
The crazy thing is, broadcasters can demand payment for being retransmitted by cable companies... their "free signal" isn't so free when you get it over cable even at the wholesale level. What's more, if a a cable company deems a station that pumps out religous programming that hardly anybody watches as having negative value, the broadcast can then demand that the cable company take the channel for free with no way to turn it down.
The payment isn't per viewer, it's per dollar in sales. Buy something from QVC, get $5 off your bill. (Of course, QVC's prices are usually higher than what you find in stores for the same thing, which is why they jump over the chance to get "exclusive" label things that aren't in stores.)
Right now, you're just lucky that there's some dolt elsewhere in your town who is buing more than her fair share of QVC products, so that the pennies are getting averaged into everybody's bill.
Funny... I'm now to the point that whenever I walk into a room with a logo-free channel on, the first thing I ask is what channel it is so I can later find the show on my own TV if I'm interested.
The problem is, you can't get a Digital-cable ready TV, or a box from anybody other than the cable system because it's a closed standard right now. It's the $500 box or nothing.
Think of how much a telephone costed when AT&T was the only place you could buy one. On episodes of Press Your Luck from 1984 that are now running on Game Show Network, contestants win $750 phones!
In the places where they've actually upgraded the system. Here, my city's system is analog all the way, using equipment that was installed in the 1970s.
They say they're gonna upgrade, but they're about to blow right through a contractual committment to have it done by the end of Winter.
That $10 penalty fee was created because the FCC fell alseep at the wheel.
They have ruled cable modems as an "information service" rather than a "cable service". This difference means that all of the regulations that apply to cable TV do not apply to cable modem services, so they can can charge people who refuse to accept their other services more than people who don't. If there were regulations that required them not to charge punative fees to those who refuse to buy their cable service, they'd actually have to do the work to install traps so that cable modem lines didn't have to have the low-tier cable service on them... that's simple equipment, but it costs money to get it and install it, and they're just lazy.
If the FCC would classify cable modems as a "cable service", then that would mean local regulators would also have the ability to regulate the quality of the service... speeds, which ports are blocked and which aren't, etc. That'd be a good thing.
That'd be beautiful, yet the content owners won't go for that.
See, the content owners get paid by the cable companies for each subscriber who could watch their channels, not for those who actually do. Most people already only really watch 10-15 cable networks and wouldn't miss the others, however that means marginal cable networks would see their number of households slashed dramatically.
For example, I know there's an audience for ESPN Classic, but it's certainly nowhere close to the number of people who'd put ESPN itself in their top 10 list. However, why is ESPN Classic on all of our cable systems now? Because Disney insists that cable systems that want ESPN must accept paying for and give a good channel position to ESPN Classic. Don't want ESPN Classic, you lose ESPN too... no cable operator can get away with that.
Sure, providers would love to offer a "Pick 10 for $15/mo, Pick 20 for $25/mo." type package, but the channel owners simply will not allow that to exist because some of the marginal networks will find themselves without the critcal mass needed to survive. The money consumers would save would come from them, so they're not budging. They don't want to see that kind of package offered, so they won't let it be offered.
Until an a la carte pricing scheme is required at the wholesale level, you'll never be able to get one at the retail level.
The law is a good law. The problem is, the cable companies are dragging their feet a tech standard that once in place will end this racket.
Here's the rule: The only tier everybody has to buy is the "basic" tier, and the local regulators get to set the price of that tier. By law, that tier must contain the local broadcasters and local access stations, and usually that's all it contains.
Every other tier has to be sold one-by-one. Multi-tier discounts are illegal. They can't make you get the "digital basic" tier in order to get HBO... they can't even make you get the analog standard tier.
But in order to get anything digital off the system, you need a digital decoder. And right now, the digital decoders are a closed spec, so the only place you can get it is to rent it from the cable company. This is why it seems like you have to buy a $10.99 "digital basic" package in order to keep your HBO subscription. Really, you're paying $10/mo to rent the reciever, and 99 cents for the useless channels. You can drop the useless channels and keep your 99 cents, but there's not much you can do about the equipment rental...
However, the FCC is requiring the cable companies to come up with a standard for digital cable boxes, so that you can buy the hardware at your local electronics store, and then they hit it with the authorization codes telling it what it can and can't decode. This'll mean you can buy your way out of that decoder rental fee, and only pay for the content tiers you want.
Of course, technical problems are very easy to find when you want to roadblock a project, so the cable companies have an interest in keeping the decoder setup the way it is now. Hopefully lawmakers will put an end to this feet dragging soon.
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The only thing unique about Kevin's case is that Kevin got caught.
It's amazing that people haven't started to realize there are hundreds like him who will never be caught. It's better to secure your systems against attacks in the first place than wait for the law to catch whoever wiped you out.
Hackers would not be able to get much done if people didn't store credit card numbers in plaintext files and then forget to properly set the user permissions.
Kevin did some illegal hacking, but the worst thing he did was get caught. His ability to do damage to the world was magnified by a incredible (yeah, exactly, nothing he said was credible) New York Times writer and prosecutors looking for somebody to make an example of. It's hard to prove that you're not able to do something... besides, in this country we punish for what you do, not what you were capable of doing but didn't do.
Hiding behind the law is the worst kind of security. Information that you don't want released should not be available for a hacker to get to, and it's up to you to take enough security precautions to make sure that's the case.
If you leave a $100 bill on the passenger seat of your unlocked car at the mall, there's a slight chance that everyone who passes the car is honest and it will still be there when you get back. If it's taken, you will have been robbed. However, unless you're lucky and there's a solid eyewitness or other giveaway clue, the police will take your report and then toss it in the "cold case" file where it likely will never be heard from again.
Why do the people who run computer systems expect that the online version of the same crime is going to get more priority?
Yeah, just like he can whistle nuclear launch codes into any telephone.
If he doesn't walk through the wide open security hole you leave, somebody else will eventually.
The moral of the story: Don't leave holes in your security. Be prepared for anything, including the imposters on the phone who claim to the be the CEO. Yeah, it means the insulting hassle of having to authenticate the CEO's identity every time he calls, but if you don't you're talking a risk.
To say it the negative way... he will enjoy no special protections from government snooping. They will be able to snoop on his activities just as easily as they can snoop on anybody else's.
Kevin is in the news now because this week the FCC has ruled that he may renew his ham radio band license. Mitnick has had that license since he was a teenager, never used it in the course of his hacking, and this stays clear of his ban on networked computers because it doesn't need a computer.
The FCC ruled that he has done his time for his crimes, so there's no valid reason to deny the renewal. Unfortunately, it took Kevin thousands in legal fees to get them to reach that conclusion.
That still doesn't quite connect. Your history of avoiding electronic tablets in the past does not disprove the theory that the day in question was the day you broke down and agreed to use one for the first time.
It's more reliable to tell the judge that there's no way you made a purchase at the Best Buy in Syracuse because you were in another state at the time.
How exactly does one compromise a fingerprint? It must be attached to a living human in order to be acceptable, even the dumbest checkout operator can understand that one.
The LEGAL SYSTEM is your last line of defense against fraud.
Hate to tell you this, but the waitress who has a palm-size scanner on her belt can scan your credit card and get enough information to make signature-less transactions. Even though you sign for the meal, the fraud transactions can still get posted.
Even if you never get a credit card, you're still not safe from anybody who knows your social security number and can get to your mailbox before you. They can apply for a card, and you'll take longer to notice because you don't check your credit. Yeah, you'll likely notice something's up when the first bill comes, but that'll be quite the surprise.
What protects you is the law. If you accounts get compromised, the most you can owe by law is $50, and Speedpass and most credit card issuers will even forgive people that in an effort to prove that there's no liablity at all if their system goes haywire.
I think that's true. Give a geek bandwidth, a computer, and unlimited free time and he'll almost always find a way to make money.
Becoming a millionaire happens in either a lucky burst (Lottery winner, game show winner, etc.) or by taking a risk with the modest resources you have and having it pay off. If you invested in the .coms before they were cool, and then got out while they were cool, you'd be a millionaire.
What the tech industry seriously lacks is any certification that says "This person does quality work." MSCE just says that the person knows how to sell you Microsoft products, CCNA does the same for Cisco... there is no credible certification that says you know when to use a Cisco product, and when all that's really needed is a Linksys.
"Look for the union label" is supposed to convey an image of quality. Especially in freelance fields, being hiring a union member means that the person qualifies for membership, and only performs work that complies with the union standard. More expensive, yeah. But it serves as a great way to convince others that the work complies with standards. "Yeah, we use subcontractors, but everybody we hire is union."
Think about it, how many companies will want a Linux server set up, but then not be willing to pay you to patch it or and don't know how patch it themselves. A union standard could prevent such a situation, by refusing to set up servers for people who do not committ to also have them supported by a union member. Yeah, they could go the cheap way by having non-union techies set it up, but that may hinder the company when trying to impress other companies.
I don't think decent programs for the US audience can be created anywhere other than here.
Remember "All your bases are belong to us." Where did that come from again? Woefully bad translation. There's just no way you can have decent human-computer interaction with an English speaking human if the programmer can't speak english.
There is a mass of people in college who will go for whatever the highest earning field turns out to be. They're not the brightest, just the most greedy.
Right now, it's those people cloging up our field and giving it a bad name. Over time, these people will wash out, a new top field will be declared, and the problem will go away.
The requirement isn't "news" but "non-fiction". Any purely fictional show is straight-out no matter what its origin.
Eye Drops always contains one profile of an artist who designs the animation that is seen in the show, therefore barely salvaging a "non-fiction" claim. TechnoGames is a made-for-TV competition, but it's not fictional at all so that works too.
I think TechTV Canada's requirement is at 20% CanCon right now, increasing 10% each year so that in its 5th year of operation they'll need to be at 50%.
In Canada, cable networks must get a license from the CRTC in order to operate, and those licenses must be specific in describing the format of the network.
TechTV Canada asked for a license based on the TechTV of 2001, which was entirely a news and infomation channel. Therefore, they declared that TechTV Canada would be entirely nonfiction programming, mainly drawing on the TechTV content from the USA, with a few additonal Canadian-made shows to satisfy the CanCon rules.
Therefore, when TechTV USA realized that the all-day TechLive format wasn't going to survive, the flagship network could change directions without having to ask for permission. Canada couldn't, so they're stuck replaying what nonfiction the USA group is producing over and over again to fill their day.
In order for Thunderbirds, Max Headroom, or Anime Unleashed to make it to Canada, they need to clear that regulartory hurdle first.
The crazy thing is, broadcasters can demand payment for being retransmitted by cable companies... their "free signal" isn't so free when you get it over cable even at the wholesale level. What's more, if a a cable company deems a station that pumps out religous programming that hardly anybody watches as having negative value, the broadcast can then demand that the cable company take the channel for free with no way to turn it down.
The payment isn't per viewer, it's per dollar in sales. Buy something from QVC, get $5 off your bill. (Of course, QVC's prices are usually higher than what you find in stores for the same thing, which is why they jump over the chance to get "exclusive" label things that aren't in stores.)
Right now, you're just lucky that there's some dolt elsewhere in your town who is buing more than her fair share of QVC products, so that the pennies are getting averaged into everybody's bill.
Funny... I'm now to the point that whenever I walk into a room with a logo-free channel on, the first thing I ask is what channel it is so I can later find the show on my own TV if I'm interested.
The problem is, you can't get a Digital-cable ready TV, or a box from anybody other than the cable system because it's a closed standard right now. It's the $500 box or nothing.
Think of how much a telephone costed when AT&T was the only place you could buy one. On episodes of Press Your Luck from 1984 that are now running on Game Show Network, contestants win $750 phones!
Unfortuately, the system is closer to 1 you want gets you 4 you don't.
In the places where they've actually upgraded the system. Here, my city's system is analog all the way, using equipment that was installed in the 1970s.
They say they're gonna upgrade, but they're about to blow right through a contractual committment to have it done by the end of Winter.
That $10 penalty fee was created because the FCC fell alseep at the wheel.
They have ruled cable modems as an "information service" rather than a "cable service". This difference means that all of the regulations that apply to cable TV do not apply to cable modem services, so they can can charge people who refuse to accept their other services more than people who don't. If there were regulations that required them not to charge punative fees to those who refuse to buy their cable service, they'd actually have to do the work to install traps so that cable modem lines didn't have to have the low-tier cable service on them... that's simple equipment, but it costs money to get it and install it, and they're just lazy.
If the FCC would classify cable modems as a "cable service", then that would mean local regulators would also have the ability to regulate the quality of the service... speeds, which ports are blocked and which aren't, etc. That'd be a good thing.
That'd be beautiful, yet the content owners won't go for that.
See, the content owners get paid by the cable companies for each subscriber who could watch their channels, not for those who actually do. Most people already only really watch 10-15 cable networks and wouldn't miss the others, however that means marginal cable networks would see their number of households slashed dramatically.
For example, I know there's an audience for ESPN Classic, but it's certainly nowhere close to the number of people who'd put ESPN itself in their top 10 list. However, why is ESPN Classic on all of our cable systems now? Because Disney insists that cable systems that want ESPN must accept paying for and give a good channel position to ESPN Classic. Don't want ESPN Classic, you lose ESPN too... no cable operator can get away with that.
Sure, providers would love to offer a "Pick 10 for $15/mo, Pick 20 for $25/mo." type package, but the channel owners simply will not allow that to exist because some of the marginal networks will find themselves without the critcal mass needed to survive. The money consumers would save would come from them, so they're not budging. They don't want to see that kind of package offered, so they won't let it be offered.
Until an a la carte pricing scheme is required at the wholesale level, you'll never be able to get one at the retail level.
The law is a good law. The problem is, the cable companies are dragging their feet a tech standard that once in place will end this racket.
Here's the rule: The only tier everybody has to buy is the "basic" tier, and the local regulators get to set the price of that tier. By law, that tier must contain the local broadcasters and local access stations, and usually that's all it contains.
Every other tier has to be sold one-by-one. Multi-tier discounts are illegal. They can't make you get the "digital basic" tier in order to get HBO... they can't even make you get the analog standard tier.
But in order to get anything digital off the system, you need a digital decoder. And right now, the digital decoders are a closed spec, so the only place you can get it is to rent it from the cable company. This is why it seems like you have to buy a $10.99 "digital basic" package in order to keep your HBO subscription. Really, you're paying $10/mo to rent the reciever, and 99 cents for the useless channels. You can drop the useless channels and keep your 99 cents, but there's not much you can do about the equipment rental...
However, the FCC is requiring the cable companies to come up with a standard for digital cable boxes, so that you can buy the hardware at your local electronics store, and then they hit it with the authorization codes telling it what it can and can't decode. This'll mean you can buy your way out of that decoder rental fee, and only pay for the content tiers you want.
Of course, technical problems are very easy to find when you want to roadblock a project, so the cable companies have an interest in keeping the decoder setup the way it is now. Hopefully lawmakers will put an end to this feet dragging soon.