When "Hackers" go bad

[lazygamer]

Perhaps this belongs in the lounge? Forgive me but I must. Sure there is a true difference between hackers and crackers to you guys, but explain this article.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/768843.asp?pne=msn

To pull all that off? Must be a bunch of 15-25 year old "l33t d00d" crackers eh? Maybe in mindset POSSIBLY, but to be this good they must either be super crackers or evil "hackers".(Using the defition presented at MSE forums).

I would quote the article here, but it's alot of rigamaroll to avoid quoting un-related crap on the screen. Sorry it's MSN related, but they do provide some good articles I must admit.

Some hackers(crackers) say they do what they do to prove to the world just how vunerable the internet REALLY is, and how a truly devious person could really f**k you up and choose not to get caught. These guys however have no anti-corporate "free your mind" message, as there somewhat similar message is presented at the corporations and not the general public.

[voidmain]

Yes, this belongs in the "Lounge".  And I don't read anything coming from a site that starts with "MS".

[lazygamer]

Well I was trying to point out the possibly "grey area" in the hacker/cracker thing.

http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/h/hackerethic.html

 

quote:2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of
confidentiality.

 

quote:Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering.  But
the belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also samurai). On this view, it may be one of    the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, exactly how it was done and how the hole    can be plugged -- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) tiger team.

http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/h/hacker.html

 

quote:It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see hacker ethic).

http://www.science.uva.nl/~mes/jargon/s/samurai.html

 

quote:samurai: n.  A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith. In 1991, mainstream media reported the existence of a loose-knit culture of
samurai that meets electronically on BBS systems, mostly bright teenagers with personal micros; they have modeled themselves explicitly on the historical samurai of Japan and on the "net
cowboys" of William Gibson's cyberpunk novels.  Those interviewed claim to adhere to a rigid ethic of loyalty to their employers and
to disdain the vandalism and theft practiced by    criminal crackers as beneath them and contrary to the hacker ethic; some quote Miyamoto Musashi's "Book of Five Rings", a classic of historical samurai doctrine, in support of these principles.     See also sneaker, Stupids, social engineering,    cracker, hacker ethic, and Dark-side hacker.

What im getting at is that there is grey area. To say that "hackers=fine" and "crackers=immature, low skill wannabes" is ALL wrong. Sure crackers will tend(on average anyways) to be less skilled and intelligent then hackers, but you cannot, for a moment, reduce them to the abyssmal depths of the script kiddy category. Script kiddies are below crackers, if you can program your own tools or modify someone else's tools to a great degree you are a SOMEBODY. It doesn't matter whether you do horrible, immature, malicious things with it, you are still a something worth at least a little bit of respect as a rival or advesary.

Move this to the lounge if you will, but I feel what I have said should satisfy and enlighten both those who feels hackers=crackers and those who feel hackers=awesome and curious coders.

[voidmain]

And if you read my previous post in this forum (in another thread) you will find that I stated this forum was intended for "programmers" and that the webmaster picked some bad synonyms for the word "programmer" when naming this forum.  The other meanings of hacker draw rif raf and this is not the intent of this forum.  This thread is a perfect example of what this forum is "not" about.

When the request was made for this forum it was to be for people to discuss programming languages (C, C++, Perl, PHP, JAVA, SQL, Python, Shell scripts/awk/sed/etc, Pascal, FORTRAN, PL, FORTH, ADA, PV-WAVE, IDL, SAS, CLIST, COBOL, SNOBOL, BASIC, TCL/TK, REXX, etc, etc, etc). It was not in any way requested to discuss such things about how to break into a system.  Those fuck heads should all be taken out back and shot!

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[lazygamer]

Lol ok, well then the name needs to be changed and this thread moved.

[Master of Reality]

this does belong on the lounge. Its too bad the only mods for this  are:
1. gone away for a while (calum)
2. actually doing something useful? (webmaster)

[tratan]

Of course all unethical programmers can't be script-kiddies, because somebody has to write the scripts.  I tend to call the writers of the scripts "crackers", and the users of the scripts "script-kiddies", and both groups combined "losers".  Oh, I'm only refering to people who do damage or take data.  Those who crack for fun or to see if they can count as hackers in my book.  See www.hackerslap.org.

[Bazoukas]

I am with VoidMan on this one.

  The original request for this forum was for C and C++ and other high level languages.

  Besides a hacker is not only a person who does Malicious things.

  Everybody is a hacker more or less. Even by tweaking your X server makes you a hacker ( a low level hacker of course).

  Lets dont get stupid here and start posting shit that will put the webmaster and the website in trouble.

 I like this FUCKING Forum, because the majority of people here are smart and they know what the FUCK they are talking about.


 Do a Fucking Search in Google about Hacking or Cracking. Trust me you can find a shitload of them.

[lazygamer]

Ok well it's moved, I feel we've learnt a lesson since the inception of the coding forum, so let's just forgive and forget.... oh yes, what is everyone's thoughts on this article?

[LorKorub]

I agree with VoidMain as well.

I don't read anything from a site that starts with MS.

Plus, I can only imagine the tone of that article coming from Microsoft: "Hackers are bad bad people...bad."  

You guys are being too rough on the hackers.  Without them, we wouldn't get all the laughs we do when we read about yet another Mico$oft server's security being compromised.

[ July 30, 2002: Message edited by: LorKorub / BOB ]

[lazygamer]

Well i'll be honest here, sure it comes from Microsoft, but facts are facts. We just have the wisdom to label them BAD crackers.

Once again, i'd just like to apoligize for me pushing the whole hacker/cracker issue in the wrong forum. I felt I had a point to make, but it was rude of me.  

Hey it's Microsoft, but it's more like a Microsoft owned network(msn.com msn.ca)who sucks up stories from privately owned information sites. They have had so many interesting articles ya know. It doesn't mean it was written by MS, in fact it pretty much isn't. In some cases, they directly link to a toally different site!

I'll tell you what, I'll switch to a new homepage on one condition. Give me some sites that every day or so provides 5-10 links to great articles about varying topics and discoveries. Stuff involving news, life, fitness, science, and health.

[Master of Reality]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
Yes, this belongs in the "Lounge".  And I don't read anything coming from a site that starts with "MS".

what about http://www.mssociety.org.uk/

[voidmain]

http://www.theregus.com/

And it really is no big deal about posting in the wrong forum. I don't beleive anyone was angry, it's just that the point needed to be made about to purpose of the forum.