Article:		Fear and Loathing in Information Security
Subject:		Hacking
Date:		2005-02-17 10:33:22
From:		Mick.Bauer
Response to: Hacking
No, no, no. The point of my essay is that most hackers are too ethical to hack into even the most poorly-secured system or network, unless they've been paid to do a penetration test or vulnerability assessment, by the system's/network's rightful owners. Most real hackers are too smart and too ethical to behave otherwise, in my experience. To say "unsecured sites deserve to be hacked" is naive, immature, and unethical -- the police don't care, particularly, whether the person you mugged was 200 lbs and heavily armed, or 130 lbs and helpless. But the poster you're responding too isn't really saying otherwise -- I think the point instead is that like it or not, we need to pay attention to security, regardless of who we think the attackers are likely to be. Also, we've still got some vocabulary-confusion, here. As I said in the essay, hacking is bigger than penetration-testing and virus proof-of-concept code; it's a mindset, a culture, and an approach to problem-solving, of which computer security is only a subset. (I know, most people don't know or care about this distinction, but the title of the essay is "Fear and Loathing in Information Security," NOT "Fear and Loathing in the Mainstream Media & Popular Consciousness.")

Showing messages 1 through 7 of 7.

• Hacking
  2005-05-11 12:56:41  crash15139 [View]
  
  
  I "get" the point of our essay. And I come from a reference of having poked into a few systems in my day starting with the old Tandy's & AS400's. Even an old hacker like Steve Wozniak is a hero of mine & I get the mindset. Now, the culture part of it is your own opinion. My experience is that the crews I knew or ran with were not about solving problems, but about getting around the "rules" everyone else had to succumb to. You are making these people out to be more important than they are. If you really wanted to help, you would gather all these ethical hackers & petition Microsoft to stop binding every important process/service to TCP/IP, let's start there, & start knocking down why their OS is so vulnerable, why haven't any of your ethical hackers banded together to do this?? I'll tell you why, they need Mircosoft to be a step behind, oh yeah, for their own curiosity.....
• Hacking
  2006-07-15 20:25:36  hack0r [View]
  
  
  i have been hacking seince i was 7 (im 13 now) my parents supported it, and it has helped many people, i have helped add security to sites by testing security, and there is a whole group of hackers im a part of at hackthissite.org hackers arnt bad, those are "crakers" who are mindless morons, you sir are the idiot, you trust the media, you didnt research you are the bad one. i have hacked many things but, for good. are you saying a site about killing people becuse of there race and supports it should stay up?? is that better than hacking?? i have hacked a site like that and shut it down. think im bad? F*ck you!!
  i have broken some laws but, for good reasons, the government makes you think hacking is bad because the govrnment fears us, but us hackers dont fear them, so the government uses people whot think there hackers and shows them on tv then, people think thats what a hacker is. hacker acually means "one who is experienced in computers and problem solving" i think i have done good, and that i dont hack like black hats who are morons (pretty much "crackers") i hope i will change your opinion.
• Hacking
  2006-07-15 20:24:57  hack0r [View]
  
  
  i have been hacking seince i was 7 (im 13 now) my parents supported it, and it has helped many people, i have helped add security to sites by testing security, and there is a whole group of hackers im a part of at hackthissite.org hackers arnt bad, those are "crakers" who are mindless morons, you sir are the idiot, you trust the media, you didnt research you are the bad one. i have hacked many things but, for good. are you saying a site about killing people becuse of there race and supports it should stay up?? is that better than hacking?? i have hacked a site like that and shut it down. think im bad? F*ck you!!
  i have broken some laws but, for good reasons, the government makes you think hacking is bad because the govrnment fears us, but us hackers dont fear them, so the government uses people whot think there hackers and shows them on tv then, people think thats what a hacker is. hacker acually means "one who is experienced in computers and problem solving" i think i have done good, and that i dont hack like black hats who are morons (pretty much "crackers") i hope i will change your opinion.
• Hacking
  2006-07-15 20:27:10  hack0r [View]
  
  
  opps sorry for double post... dumb computer...
• Hacking
  2007-04-23 21:31:24  JediToker [View]
  
  
  I know this is an old post but i cant pass by and not say anything to this thread, the only point id like to make is the terminology that you guys are using like the term hacker to band all kinds of hackers into one category
  As far as i know there are three types of computer hackers:
  Black hat or crackers - These are the bad guys, the ones that do the evil shit like writing viruses, break into your computer to steal your credit card info an stuff like that.
  White hat - These are the ethical hackers, the guys that do penetration testing for companies and generally dont go around sneaking into places they shouldnt be.
  Grey hat - These guys are a mixture of the two, they are ethical in there means like our 13 yr old friend above, do honorable things by illegal means, like the fucking over nasty websites n stuff (i think its Hacktivism but dont quote me on that, it might be something else :P) There was a guy in the states who posted child porn infected with a trojan so that anyone who downloaded the pictures would get infected and enable access to the hacker who would then go about gathering information for the cops.
  Labeling all these types into one type "hackers" is an insult really and would be like calling a locksmith a burgalar, just because the locksmith has all the tools he needs to get into your house and f**k with your s**t doesnt mean that he's going to
• Hacking
  2007-06-21 13:39:23  crash15139 [View]
  
  
  so then why aren't there different ethical labels for the different type of locksmith's??? I mean they have all the tools....they also have to be "REGISTERED" dumbass....a real locksmith doesn't have the luxury of hiding in underground chat rooms & irc channels like the coward hacker... a locksmith that has the tools & breaks into your house is a "criminal", a hacker with script tools that breaks into a system is also a criminal....case closed
• Hacking
  2007-06-21 13:37:58  crash15139 [View]
  
  
  so then why aren't there different ethical labels for the different type of locksmith's??? I mean they have all the tools....they also have to be "REGISTERED" dumbass....a "locksmith" that has the tools & breaks into your house is a "criminal", a hacker with script tools that breaks into a system is also a criminal....case closed