Mini-rant
Oxford pair suspended for hacking.
This is just a little mini-rant about the media; its perception of technology and its use of terminology.
I've come to accept that the words 'hacker', 'hacking', 'hack' and 'hacked', when used by non-geeks, will always pertain to be descriptive of illegally gaining access to a computer system, the right to which one does not legally have; and possibly doing damage to data and/or computer systems which do(es) not belong to the user.
Fine. Every time I mention the difference between a hacker and a cracker to somebody, I get funny looks and my less-than-learned pupil dismisses the lesson as wrong and based on bad information. If it was the right terminology, they wouldn't use any other terms on the TV, of course.
So I've taken to using ThinkGeek's Black/White Hacker Hats to describe a 'hacker'; The Black Hat Hacker being of course nasty and evil (they often run Windows but have a good understanding of UNIX -- Their ideologies are dismissed by the open-source and Linux communities, so they stick to Windows -- but they're not stupid.) and the White Hat Hacker being the naturally inquisitive ('What Happens If I Do This...?') geek with an undying passion to solve technical problems (often creating them out of thin air when there appears there are none to be solved).
But again the media don't know what they're talking about. This is different from labelling someone the wrong kind of hacker. The students in the linked article apparently downloaded a program which was freely available from a mere Google search. That to me is not hacking. In either sense of the word. Black Hat Hacking, which is presumably what the article intends to reference, would be pulling up Emacs, Vi, or pico, or your favourite text editor, and writing a hack in your favourite language.
As I said, these two students are not White Hat Hackers trying to expose security flaws in the network; They're not even Black Hat Hackers trying to spy on everyone from the comfort of an isolated terminal -- these students are no more than Script Kiddies. The lowest of the low on the computing annoyance scale.* These people barely know a line of BASIC, have little knowledge of networks or security and are usually just as vulnerable a target as their intended victims. The only way they're able to harm anybody is with scripts they download from various sites or IRC channels; Usually proof-of-concept stuff when a new security hole props up.
* Might be worth a note that these students appear not to have intended on doing any damage, and their whole expedition was just to expose security holes in the network. (A mixture of Script Kiddies and White Hat Hacking, in a way, I guess.) My advice to anybody who notices such holes in a network like this, is to try and take your own measures to protect your own data (such as, don't let the master copy anywhere near such a network), but ignore the fact that the problem is there.
In my experience, SysAdmins (I mean here, the ones who aren't offended to be called 'IT Support'. My apologies to any SysAdmin who reads Slashdot. You're likely exempt from my judgement) are thick, don't understand how things work, and don't care for your complaints that there are holes in the system. You will be ignored.
Sometimes however, the Script Kiddie may know a bit of code, and may write their own scripts. Well bravo for learning to code, but -1000 gk pts for being a pain in the ass.
I guess it's my own fault, being wound up. Reading tech news at a site other than Slashdot.
I must be mad.
Anyway. That's all I came here to say. That, and, in other news, progress on the blog project, the whole point of this blog being here in the first place, is coming along very nicely indeed.
posted by Techmonkey at
8:04 PM
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