RE: Re: Hacking's American as Apple Cider

[surreal () delusory org]

Marcus J. Ranum wrote:
> You write:
> > But hacking is clearly cool. So I don't get it.
>
> Convince me it's cool. If it's so "clearly cool" that ought to be pretty easy.
>
> Or did you mean "it's *FUN*" -- no arguments there. Lots of other antisocial
> pastimes are fun. I probably left myself open to nitpicking and wordsmithing
> by trying to make my commentary amusing on that issue. What I guess I
> should have said is that "hacking's utility to society is less than the damage
> it causes."
>
> mjr.

I'm butting in, but as you can easily delete this and/or ignore me, I'll
blunder onward.

I think the issue here is a very ambiguous definition of "hacking". My
impression is that Marcus refers to "hacking into other's systems, sans
permission, possibly with malicious intent" or perhaps "exposing
vulnerabilities, and/or creating tools that others can use illegally".

I won't try to channel Dave, but since I'm in the "hacking is clearly
cool" camp I'll try to make my case. Marcus, you might just as well
describe chess as training for mass-murder on a battlefield, or fencing
as honing one's swordplay, the better to skewer innocent victims. Maybe
those things happen sometimes, but it doesn't make chess or fencing
antisocial pursuits.

For me, hacking is a need to learn and understand how systems work and
how they can be made to behave in ways that the designers never
intended. Hacking security is especially fun, since you've got
opponents trying to outwit you.

I was a hacker before the word was in my vocabulary. In the early 1980s
at Great Stinking Desert University (ASU) I took a programming class
that came equipped with authorization to use the computer lab. I
noticed that I had access to a very limited subset of the installed
software; I wanted to know how the access control worked.  Within the
week I'd bypassed the lame protection, downloaded the entire suite of
software to a box of floppies and reported my results to the wise and
powerful keepers of the lab.  They didn't care, or didn't understand,
and didn't even demand that I surrender the copies I'd made. Way
anticlimactic. I never even ran the "stolen" software. I owned my C
compiler, MASM came with DOS, and I had a legit copy of WordStar. The
evidence of my heinous crime may be in my garage to this day.

These days, the hacking mindset allows me to earn a comfy living doing
what I'd be doing for fun anyway: playing with computers, learning, and
solving problems. That is, I submit, "cool". Spending a few hours
learning the Way of the Kiddie is also valuable. It allows me to
demonstrate "live and in person" that vulnerabilities are real, and
must be addressed lest the kiddies wrest the helm from us.

Crackers aren't cool. nor s'kiddies, nor bicycle thieves. Hacking is
clearly cool, though.  You said ""hacking's utility to society is less
than the damage it causes.". I couldn't disagree more! Hackers are
responsible for innovation, progress, and new ways of tackling old
problems. Hackers think! That's Good For Society, imho. Some hackers
are criminals, but so are some policemen, priests and pastry chefs.

Now that I've convinced everyone, I'd like to thank Marcus for "The Six
Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security". It's a fun read, and I look
forward to adding the term "Artificial Ignorance" to our local
vocabulary.

Regards,

Surreal

Finally, please don't infer that I advocate "university training" as
particularly valuable. Maybe it's good for some people in some fields,
but all it did for me was suck up my scarce cash before I had a decent
job. Maybe I'll go back for a BS in Psych; these day's that'll bump up
my pay a little, and I'll have an excuse to play with rats and build a
maze ;-)

Oh, and Dave: _rats_ are great pets; I don't have the temperament to
appreciate herbivores.