dagblog - Comments for "Hacking, Phreaking, Carding and ... Leaking?"

I figured he had to be, given

Donal — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 01:18:39 +0000

In reply to Great highlight. That was a

I figured he had to be, given the detail about hacker life.

My pappy always told me that

we are stardust — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:44:36 +0000

In reply to Lovely for you to brazenly

My pappy always told me that some people's degrees are worth more than other people's degrees. See?

Don't confuse liberals with

Desiderisive — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 23:41:46 +0000

In reply to Even my VERY conservative

Don't confuse liberals with private sex lives - they'll go all Clinton on you.

Lovely for you to brazenly

Desiderisive — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 23:38:25 +0000

In reply to To many of you this issue is

Lovely for you to brazenly take over my brain cells.

Sorry you don't consider my study and research and ability to read worth a shit.

Jesse James robbed banks - not much righteous there. Assange is exposing government malfeasance, carefully, with peer review. Sorry, a whole lot of cool there.

In short, you're obnoxious under you're "I'm so academic" flag. We went into Iraq, and none of our free press safety valves worked. Protests were held and ignored. Someone's sticking out the info a little harder - videos, texts, carefully curating info. But you can act smug. Be jolly, life's good.

Great highlight. That was a

kgb999 — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 23:10:51 +0000

In reply to Hacking, Phreaking, Carding and ... Leaking?

Great highlight. That was a totally enjoyable read ... fun to walk back in time to the BBS days. Kind of neurotic-Aussie-centric, but all and all that was an excellent little snapshot. One thing interesting that jumps out at me, the people focused on in this book appear to have a very common trait - they all seem to have aspects of their lives with MAJOR problems largely outside their own control. While they often wrapped it in philosophical frames common to the community at that time, it jumps out at me that the emotional aspect that was driving the folks highlighted here were all tied up in a strong sense of the ability/need to assert control ... they didn't want to do anything with it, they just wanted to feel they could have it.

Oh, and Assange is definitely Mendax. He was convicted in court and everything - it's public record.

Even my VERY conservative

quinn esq — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:14:50 +0000

In reply to Dunno who Martin Hess is ...

Even my VERY conservative family seems to get that if the media had been doing their jobs, Wikileaks wouldn't have been needed. And ditto me up on the 'irony' comments. People love the crazy-eyed rape-hacker storyline and believe it has something to do with their opposition to what he's doing to governments and corporations. All this after whining non-stop about Government secrecy this past decade, and a media overly fascinated by personal stuff like political and celebrity sex lives.

Dunno who Martin Hess is ...

kgb999 — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:23:23 +0000

In reply to Donal, nice, although I will

Dunno who Martin Hess is ... but from an admin standpoint, what exactly would you be protecting against from people like "the original Assange"? There is nothing Wikileaks does that IT professionals could possibly impact. They aren't hackers acquiring information by leveraging system exploits. I guess by this token, admins are equally trying to protect information from people like Bob Woodward.

Sure in the Manning example, the (complete lack of) security countermeasures he describes on a network supporting an active military operation in the combat theater are brutal. There are dozens of important security failures that can be identified and analyzed from what facts revealed say of our national data security. But that doesn't have anything to do with Wikileaks. Wilikeaks relies on people possessing legitimate access to information who decide they have a public duty to release it so any security issues are related to the source not Wikileaks.

This is a very, very difficult topic to address from a systems security standpoint. There's that old saying "Sure, I can design you a completely secure system .... but users won't be able to access it." The only way to entirely prevent authorized users from releasing information - if they set their minds to it - is by restricting access or implementing physical countermeasures. That gets to be a balance between the security needs and maintaining a policy that doesn't cripple the effectiveness of systems for the users (and let's not forget that the users themselves start to bypass excessively intrusive security protocols at some point - which can lead to even bigger problems).

I'm also not getting the "irony" bit as it relates to people approving of "what Assange does". It seems wrong to assert someone who believes in government transparency can't also believe in individual privacy. Wikileaks doesn't even publish personal details of individuals - just corporations and governments, so one could support Assange just fine and still expect personal privacy without any hypocrisy at all. But in the larger picture there are publications that *do* print tons and tons of private details every single day - scores of tabloids and gossip rags pick through every tidbit of personal information they can secure. Why don't these publications which *really* print intimate private details extracted from inside sources trigger the same type of irony response? Isn't whatever irony exists in this more derived from the nature of publishing than anything related to hacking or data security?

Regarding the "serious code" ... I think everybody holding the technical capacity to access large stores of personal/sensitive information without any true restraint ultimately must establish one (even within the microcosm of administering an email server and setting policy for accessing user's accounts). Hackers have 'em too - sometimes quite elaborate and formalized ones. Like it or not, some hackers possess access on a grand scale which raises very deep philosophical issues in a concrete way that must be answered which a professor would rarely ponder even in the abstract - beliefs run very deep. Just because one adopts a code does not intrinsically make that code meritorious - be it a conservative code or an anarchistic one. Adopting the "we" frame like this certainly does put words in the mouths of an awful lot of above-board professionals (not to mention most "gray" and "black" hats) who don't exactly agree with you.

I have participated in the

A Guy Called LULU — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 18:23:41 +0000

In reply to To many of you this issue is

I have participated in the argument about whether Manning is or is not a hero and probably will again. I don't, though, recall ever commenting on cyber- security and whether it is out of control and how that will affect the world going forward even though I read with interest when someone such as yourself does. That is because I don't feel qualified to add anything to that conversation.

I respect your opinion on the two subjects but I see them as that, two separate and distinct subjects.
I may think wrongly about the state of cyber-security, or not think about it at all, and that does not give evidence one way or the other about my opinion of whether or not Manning is a hero.

To many of you this issue is

tmccarthy0 — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:11:07 +0000

In reply to When they're suffering from

To many of you this issue is black and white, to many of us, who have devoted the better part of our lives to this issue it is not, I don't gather my information on this subject from opinionators and blogs, my opinion was developed over years of study and research and teaching in the field. I find the blogosphere repleat with misinformation and blog readers sorely misinformed. I rarely write about this issue, because I and my collegues are clearly in the minority. For you, Assange is some Jesse James, that is cool with me you can think that, you can believe he is a great man exposing information you needed to have. I believe quite differently than you, Assange is a mere blip in this war, relatively meaningless, except it exposes serious weaknesses in the system, a system that has been allowed to grow out of control with little or no real security controls. There are many reasons for this weakness, much stems from certain departments within the government were major failures, no cohesive plan for informaiton security with in many departments, in particular now, the military, DOD, etc. I won't go on, most people don't think critically about this issue as a whole, this Manning-Assange stuff is merely the tip of the iceburg of the larger cyber war going on, no one is the hero here, no one, at least this is how I present the issue to my classes.

But hell, you all just want to argue and make sure no one else is "right" except for the current blogosphere outrage about Assange as hero and Manning as hero, that is fine, it is your choice, but I get to have another opinion and when you are teaching your grad students, you can present it as you like.

When they're suffering from

Desiridoo — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 07:05:01 +0000

In reply to Donal, nice, although I will

When they're suffering from delusions that their personal information is safe, then it's even better when an Assange comes along.

Wellpoint and Wells Fargo have all this info, while Sprint & Verizon help the gov dragnet all communication.

This "government action" is by the biggest offenders.