*cough* Don't argue semantics with me!! You know, HACK is a derogatory term and so is hacker in its origin. (To be a hack, is to be someone who solves problems through trial and error with limited thought or strategy... IE brute force hacks.) And it's not the small group of law abiding people who call themselves "hackers" that determine what the word will mean out in the wild. Therefore, I will continue to use hacker to describe the few nitwits who make life so hard for the rest of us.
Some hackers like to wave curiosity around like a banner proclaiming their honor. This attitude is fairly prevalent and I've seen it first hand. These hackers with their curious badges tend to berate a law abiding citizen who wants to see a hacker who got caught breaking the law brought to justice. IE the UK idiot who hacked into an American nuclear power plant computer. All the things the government should have done aside, this kids defense basically was "I didn't know it was a government computer." That simply doesn't matter. Hacking another computer and using it to store stolen videos is illegal, doing it on a government computer just means you should be made an example of. Of course, the shitty UK judge let the kid off pretty easy. Why?? Because he probably thought the kid had some talent or ability if he could hack a computer, and was just suffering from a bad case of curiosity, which is more honorable than it is bad as we all know *sarcasm*... Of course I admire the Linux people, the GIMP people, the IRC people, I've used all these and they work well enough. But, if they're hackers what are the people at Microsoft? At Adobe?? See my problem is with this sense of honor that hangs around the word hacker like a foul stench. The whole curiosity thing is a big part of that. Thing is, these people really believe their delusions, that because they are curious, it's okay the law doesn't apply anymore, they're part of the uber elite class of "hackers" now, and if you get one of their viruses, it's because your an idiot newbie, just plain stupid, or maybe hackers are just that damn good... Although I concede, these people are products of our shitty educational system in the end. -Shawn -----Original Message----- From: D. Glenn Arthur Jr. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, May 21, 2004 1:05 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: OT: Virus Taxonomy Shawn K. wrote: > Hmm, I don't understand that "wonder if..." aspect of virus writing. Set your way-back machine to the early days of networking, when the idea of a self-propogating program sounded like either a science fiction plot device or a mathematical puzzle, and that "wonder if" aspect makes more sense. It just doesn't make so much sense _now_, when such things are everyday nuisances. > think the value of curiosity is over stated constantly. I know a lot of > "hackers" consider themselves on the side of good because they are acting > out of "curiosity" and they use that to justify their actions. *cough* _Who_ do? The hackers I know are in fact motivated by curiosity and challenge. Then again, they don't generally go breaking into systems or writing viruses and worms. For most of them, the most ethically questionable things they've done as part of being hackers are to want to be able to play a legally-purchased DVD on a computer running Linux, and to illustrate the idiocy of a government policy by printing T-shirts that (at the time) were legally classified as munitions (solely by virtue of what was printed on them). You may have two different groups confused. _Hackers_ do explain a lot of their motivation as curiosity. They also tend to look down on crackers and script-kiddies. Hackers are the people who brought us Usenet, IRC, Linux, gcc, Emacs, GIMP, and at least some of the popular blogging tools. The hacking urge is inherently creative, not destructive. > I think the > real answer is that it's sheer idiocy combined with an undeserved talent > that results in all this criminal activity. Uh, not even ... From what I've read, it turns out that there are "virus kits", and apparently a significant number of the people creating viruses aren't really even all that talented or skilled. "Sheer idiocy combined with [...] talent" might describe the RTFM worm, which was supposed to stay contained to a campus network (to demonstrate a vulnerability0 but escaped due to a bug in it -- we can call that hubris. But the author was properly embarrassed at the result; he didn't take delight in causing destruction or think it earned him l33tness points the way script-kiddies seem to. I don't think most of the people writing worms today are doing so because they're curious. At least not the ones who release them into the wild. -- Glenn
