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Shout outs to: D0, alexbobp, Kevin Mitnick, Stephen Watt.

No shout to: anyone with cissp, ceh, or other lame certs that only prove that you lack skills.

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Letters to 2600

Letters 2600 Magazine | 12541 words

Reaching Out

Dear 2600:

I've been a fan of your publication for quite some time before subscriptions became available for Kindle, at which point I finally got myself a subscription. Part of what I love about 2600 is the sheer gravity of some of the great hacks, especially the ones that were serious risks to education systems and big businesses. What I don't understand, though, is how it seems that the talk of hackers being misrepresented in the mainstream media (a redundant issue at best) has overshadowed the fact that hackers should be seeking more allies, rather than distancing ourselves. It seems very easy to simply write off anonymous script kiddies and their DDoS tactics, but it also seems far too easy to lose the reasoning for these attacks in the arguments against the attacks themselves.

Just because they're not real hackers doesn't mean that they don't have anything to say on subjects that are clearly near and dear to the hacker community, especially in the realm of Internet censorship. It's easy to talk about how the world is becoming less free and how it's relevant to hacking. But it seems absurd to chastise people for using the only tactics they know when talking, writing letters to senators, and publicizing the truth clearly accomplishes nothing. And for those of us who condemn their tactics as crude - while admitting that going about things the legal way is completely ineffective - is it not a show of our own complacency to fail to present alternative options?

Hackers are depicted as villains in the media largely because of these kinds of blunt, poorly thought out attacks by non-hackers, but is it any better that we can only seem to depict ourselves as victims of this same media? Setting information free can be a heroic act, but at some point we may come to realize that information gives people a reason to fix things, not the ability to do so. At some point, we must realize that in a world where every aspect of the governments/businesses that run things - without our consent - is stored in a vast network of computers, every aspect of our own finance is controlled and stored in a vast network of computers, and (nearly) every aspect of our own social interaction is stored in a vast network of computers, (computer) hackers are the only people left with the power to enact any real change. The very existence of this power in an unjust society can only serve as a reminder of our responsibility to use it.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that as hackers, we need to stop whining and come to a very simple realization. We are freaking Spiderman, and it's now our job to go out and save the world whether we like it or not. And it probably wouldn't hurt if we recruited more Spidermen in the process, perhaps even from the swarm of script kiddies. What do you guys think?

And, as a side note, I thought I'd mention: Never bother composing an email on a Kindle. It's a serious pain in the ass.

D351

You raise good points in recognizing the potential value of anyone who understands what the issues are, along with the difficulty of emailing on Kindles. We certainly don’t want to dismiss anyone prematurely. However, to say that “talking, writing letters to senators, and publicizing the truth clearly accomplishes nothing” is doing precisely that to others, whether they be the “enemy” or the unenlightened masses. These methods should never be written off as pointless, no matter how frustrating the process may become. The very nature of hacking tells us to keep trying against the odds. Why should this be any different? Plus, we find that we win many allies by rationally presenting the facts, not by simply shutting down the opposition, which is all that DDoS attacks accomplish, apart from gaining