Re: Cracking the hacker underground

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: Jason Scott <jason () textfiles com>

Wow, where do you start.

First of all, I don't know where Tippett is getting 1993 as the year
that "Hacking" is last called "Tinkering with Computers" and that it
was the last decade in which the term is completely blown over to a
criminal and malicious definition. Certainly the deadly
lexicon-killing triumvirate of Time, Newsweek and People had a hand in
that from 1982 onward, with a major amount of "blame" being laid at
the feet of the PR machine surrounding the release of the film
"Wargames" in 1983.

The "battle" over Hacking as a friendly vs. malicious term flares for
years past 1983, but like everything else, it's not until massive
amounts of speculative cash start pouring into the industry in the
early 1990's that the battle starts to gain the interest of anyone
media-wise. Until then, it's on the level of Qwerty vs. Dvorak, TCP/IP
vs. ATM, 40 columns vs. 80 columns: a relatively small battle among a
tiny group of folks waving their fists in the air. It's only later
when it becomes something that's the province of moneymakers that you
see this sort of issue be treated as if it's "serious", when really,
on the scale of things, it is not.

The rest of the article is crap-tacular number-make-up crap. 16 of
4,200 vulnerabilities in use last year? 900 hacking "groups"? Teams of
5-10 "hacker trackers" with 20-30 "personalities" apiece? Woo hoo,
where's my checkbook, let me sign up today.

Does this sort of blustering still work with companies? Is there
something about this individual I don't know or understand? Is this a
BBC reporter needing to make deadline and going for a classic
one-source no-backup article?

> "We could say what dorm and what floor the author of the LoveSan virus
> was on," Mr Tippett says.

nslookup - the choice of the net's "a-team".

- Jason Scott
  TEXTFILES.COM

On Fri, 14 Nov 2003, InfoSec News wrote:

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3246375.stm
>
> By Jo Twist
> BBC News Online technology reporter
> 14 November, 2003
>
> A simple search reveals a plethora of resources, tools, and personal
> homepages, most claiming to "hack" for legitimate reasons, within the
> law.
>
> But there is also an entire underground network of hackers honing
> their tools and skills with malicious damage in mind.

[...]



-
ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org

To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn'
in the BODY of the mail.