Article:		Fear and Loathing in Information Security
Subject:		Hacking
Date:		2005-02-11 17:00:25
From:		coolspot
Ok... you might think that hacking is all "boundary pushing" and "an infinite level of posibilities within networks" but c'mon man... thats not what hacking ACTUALLY means to people. Hacking is sending people viruses, creating worms, defacing websites, stealig personal info. Ther is no two ways about it... hacking is bad. You can shout your whit hat hacker rubbish till your blue in the face.. but face it, hacking is bad. Bad. fine the ocasional "nice" hacker (if there truely is such a thing) may discover a security flaw in a program or service ansd tell the company involved... but the only reason its an issue is because of hackers in the first place. If there were no hackers there would be no problem. (that day will never come) im really quite bemused that you think you can just say hacking is ok because its deep and meaningfull, and networks are infinite and all that. Hacking is bad because people loose money, programs get screwed up, computers get damaged, information is lost and people are screwed over. THat is the plain hard facts of it. Fine, hackers may not be weirdo geeky kids messing with other peoples trojans, causing trouble, or uber geeks stealing money off people, or total gits who just want to mess up peoples computer or websites, but lets be honest... most of them are. So fine, if your going to be a hacker, be a hacker... but expect no sympathy of those who have ther computers or websites hacked. *apologies for spelling mistakes. Im not a retard because i cant type, its just late.

Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.

• Hacking - The Press/Media is the problem
  2005-02-13 08:58:25  j.f.m. [Reply | View]
  
  
  Just to repeat it once again. The term "Hacker" is far older than the first articles in mainstream papers, magazines or TV. Some ignorant (or lazy) journalists used the term in a too narrow or even wrong context when the first "prime time breakins" happened in the early 8ies. The correct term for people breaking into computer systems or circumventing protection mechanisms has always been "crackers" - it's as simple as that.
  
  It just as moronic as when Nixon said "nucular" instead of "nuclear". Many people copied it because he was Prez at the time! You would not change your name because all people or the media get it wrong, or would you?

• Hacking
  2005-02-11 18:24:53  Mick.Bauer [Reply | View]
  
  
  You've missed two key points in my essay.
  
  First, "hacker" doesn't mean "someone who tries to break stuff;" it's a very broad term that goes way beyond penetration-testing. I don't care to re-type the definition I devoted an entire paragraph to in the essay (see above), but suffice it to say that neither Linus Torvalds nor Lord Kelvin ever spent any appreciable time trying to break into systems, overflow buffers, etc.
  
  To hack is to solve problems and expand one's knowledge; this may involve skills and pastimes that can be (ab)used to "hack into" computers, but more often it simply means figuring out elegant solutions to mundane computing problems not covered in the manual.
  
  Second, I said that in my professional opinion, the vast majority of people who call themselves hackers (in the broad sense!) are not criminally inclined. Your experience may be different than mine, but I've been in this business for the better part of a decade, and my opinion is based on near-daily interactions with hackers who are both skilled and ethical. Again, many of them have no aptitude for or even interest in penetration testing, virus-writing, etc.; most of my hacker friends are in fact much more skilled at defending than attacking (myself included).
  
  But hey, if you still prefer to fear all umpteen-thousand of us regardless of our actual behavior, I guess I can't stop you.