Re: Deciphering the hacker myth

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

Forwarded from: John Q. Public <tpublic () dimensional com>
Cc: Aj Effin Reznor <aj () reznor com>

sorry, this really turned into a general rant...

On Fri, 8 Feb 2002, InfoSec News wrote:

|Forwarded from: Aj Effin Reznor <aj () reznor com>
|
|"InfoSec News was known to say....."
| 
|> http://news.com.com/2008-1082-829812.html
|> 
|> By Rachel Konrad 
|> Staff Writer, CNET News.com
|> February 5, 2002, 12:00 PM PT
|> 
|> Newsmakers - Sarah Gordon doesn't dye her hair black or wear a nose
|> ring, and neither do the people she studies.
|
|
|Wow, I've never seen an entire subculture so rapidly reduced to a
|formulaic equation in such a short exspanse of words!
|
|It seems as tho much confusion exists within the researcher between
|hackers, crackers, virus writers, and any true criminal subsets of
|those classes, as well as the existant ignorance that many people
|straddle lines between two or even three of those classifications!

You must still hold a distance, I read that as words from the
journalist. Tell me you're not surprised that a journalist can take a
researcher and twist their findings into something that's more of a
current-event social expectation.

However:

> Paint a picture of the garden-variety hacker, as opposed to a
> virus-writing kid. Are they nerdy, loners, social outcasts?
>
> No, not at all. The people who get attention, who make it into the
> news, are a bit different, and a lot of them have dyed black hair
> and pierced noses. They make good pictures on the front page, but
> really most hacking is done by the guy next door--the guy who
> doesn't make good news.

These would clearly be her words.  She wouldn't be that far off.  I
don't understand why it was mentioned, as it certainly builds a
stereotype against anyone that looks like that, and anyone claiming to
be a computer criminal.

You still can't deny the truth about the media-wrangling 14-22 year
olds who attend cons and wave their stink in the air.  While I
wouldn't call them all hackers or even coders, those are the people
that come into her mind when she's asked to describe "typical" in her
research.

This is her flaw.  Not just pointing out fashion statements, but
assuming they are the majority around the globe.  Her research appears
to be global in basis, but she clearly only has interacted with con
kids, probably all Americans, and probably all in the US.

|I once said something to the effect of "I just love labels, it makes
|pigeonholing people so much easier without taking the effort of
|actually getting to know them."  I feel that applies to this article.

I'll still offer a partial defense and say she may have been wrangled
into such a description by the journalist.  We both know they don't
ask questions, they ask statements and look for confirmation.  They
also steer the interview, as they have done here by making much more
of a stink about viruses than we would think is important in "the
scene."

|And I personally feel it'd be criminal to waste any more words on such
|rubbish.

I may be wrong and could conclude that Ms. Gordon is a fraud like
every other anthropologist/psychologist/sociologist/thesis author has
turned out to be. You and I have been involved in this subculture for
more than half of our lives, and I still don't have any clue of how to
generalize us.

I feel that it's important to figure out this behavior for so many
reasons. The two biggest reasons I can think of right now are legal
and medical.  If I might take a HUGE step in all the wrong directions,
let's look at an act that was treated as both criminal and
psychologically unstable for decades (and still is illegal in many
states of the US)...  sodomy.  I realize this might get silly to some
right about now, but please hold on for a second.

I wandered to www.sodomylaws.org from a Denver BDSM club's page and
was enlightened about how sodomy was outlawed in every state, and
still is in many.  The excuses of some were just flat out poor.  It
stretched from public decencey all the way to moral and psychological
misconduct.

My coorelation to "hacking" is that both actions appear to be widely
misunderstood outside of the participants.  Therefore, we have seen
huge punishments for both, but so far psychology has only come into
hacking as "addiction" and not some ass backward pre-domination of
social downfall.

We just might have those years of dealing with "socially unacceptable"
crimes that have saved computer criminals from the funny house, but
governments are still far from being able to appropriately handle
young miscreants because they are misunderstood.

Medically, I'm as interested in the short and long term affects of our
habits as NASA is about the effects of space travel.  I realize
they've taken a long time to determine even simple results, and I
realize that will probably happen here as well.

There are clear rules that should be laid down to our children,
similar to what was mentioned in this article.  Elementary school kids
are getting an education on computers and networks, and they need to
realize what should not be acceptable.  Journalists sensationalizing
hacking cases are compariable, in my mind, to gratuitous violence on
television.  But my fear is that some of the laws are so strict that
children will not understand the full legal impact of something as
simple as jokingly sifting through their friend's email messages.

I'm all for this kind of research, but it clearly needs to stay away
from hair color and clothing style.  Certainly Ms. Gordon's assumption
that all haxors have darker fashion senses is not in the right step,
but it's parallel to every other outsider that has taken an interest
in our dissection.  There's a hell of a lot more to us than fashion
interests.  Just as their was with beatniks, hippies, punks and
ravers.

And I wish someone would figure out why bell bottoms are coming
back...

PLUR, baby.

|-aj.

.nhoJ



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