a message to all 1337 hax0rz redux

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

After giving it a day's thought and seeing some of the comments and conferring with a couple of other community memembers, I have decided to repost a link to my message to hackers (semi-NSFW due to language). If you don't want to read the background feel free to skip the first three paragraphs. Quite frankly I spend way too much time dealing with spyware and viruses (mainly spyware these days) and their fallout in my job. It seems that it's always just one new variant of Vundo or Smitfraud or CoolWebSearch and their ilk after another. This has been building for awhile and the event chronicled was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Since there's realistically nothing any one of us can do about the problem at its source, about all that's left is to vent.

I chose to share it here because, like me, I figure many of you spend your time dealing with the crap these losers put out, whether it's dealing with spyware and viruses on systems or trying to keep your network secure from hackers and malware and the like. I thought you might share some of the dislike and enjoy the venting.

If you don't like it or aren't interested, well, feel free to hit the back button or just scroll on past this post. There are plenty more entries in this community for you to read. If you are offended by what I have to say or my language well them I'm sorry you choose to get offended but I make no apologies for what I say. This has been building for a long time and I just felt the need to vent and get it all out there. If you do enjoy it, great. That's why I wanted to share it.

Comments

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

hackers, like, suck dude

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

Oh, this again.

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

I'm glad your bank stopped the charges before anything nasty happened to your $$$.

thanks for posting your story... sometimes a little reality check is a good thing for those people using their info online. Including, no especially, those in the support community.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

I know. They're far from perfect but all in all I have to say that I'm pretty happy with them. They've also got a zero liability policy so I wouldn't have had to pay it anyways, but it's just easier when they never show up at all. I just wish they had been able to let me know before I tried using the card. Then again, maybe they did. I work nights so they might not have reached me if I was asleep.

You're right, though. I know that I at least, sometimes feel that I know enough about computers and keeping myself safe that I often feel that something like this could never to me. I see that same sort of attitude quite a lot among my peers too. This is proof positive that even a lot of knowledge is no guarantee of not getting bit though.

[jecook]

Frankly, as long as it gets posted under a cut, I'd have no problem.

WHen I was at [isp], Boss and me would hang out in the smoking section of the parking lot with a couple folks from the network security department. They got away with dressing however the hell they wanted, and had a great deal of leeway, because they kept the company's net under control.

And when they found out that some dickwad contracter in one of the admin offices stole a hard drive with a dump of the HR database on it, they got _cranky_. Even the head of the department, who was normally very laid back and mellow.

This community was designed primarily for venting. Vent away.

As long as the mods (myself and geekgrrl_ca, liquidmercurial, and valiskeogh don't have a problem with it, pretty much carte blanc can be assumed.

My personal request, since a good chunk of us do browse from work, is if it's really, really long, or is NSFW, Please toss it under an LJ-Cut. But again, that's a personal request.

[jecook]

Oh, and your bank rox the house for noticing that.

My credit union is reasonably proactive about such things: they sent me a new card because they were notified of a possible comprimise with my card number. It would have been nice if they sent a letter explaining why a new card magically showed up in the mail, though. :)

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that the reason the OP got such a response is because he disallowed comments in the comm and directed people to his journal. It appears to be a 'look at me' approach, regardless of the actual intention.

[jecook]

Ah.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

Which I had only done to try to keep comments in one place. Still, though, I decided to go ahead and leave it open this time around.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

Just wish you'd explained it on the original post more like you'd explained it here, heh. We could have avoided a lot of scrambling into asbestos suits.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

*sheepishly* yeah, I kinda screwed the pooch on that one. Which is why I initially deleted it to head off a flame war.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

That was indeed a factor at least insofar as I am concerned. Another factor was that he didn't mention a word about tech support, either in reference to himself or his intended audience. If you're contributing to the community it's all fine and good, but it looked an awful lot like comment-fishing as it was posted initially.

[fiannnachruinne.livejournal.com]

I agree I definitely should have used more explanation the first time around and I do apologize about that.

[anivair.livejournal.com]

I am a cool perl hacker.

[fuzzyr.livejournal.com]

*sigh* hackers are not the bad guys, like the media would have you believe. The term hackers existed LONG before these punks showed up on the scene.

In short, don't call those losers hackers. I am a hacker and I'm proud of the fact that I have never done any damage, released any viruses or worms, or distributed any spyware.

http://catb.org/jargon/html/crackers.html

sigh

[irishmasms.livejournal.com]

IAWTAC; and I am sure most of the attendees from this past weekend's www.defcon.org would as well