The Evil That Hackers Do

Bob Hubbard

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I found this....was an interesting read IMHO...


The Evil That Hackers Do
------------------------

"I am a hacker."

If I ever told that to anyone, it would immediately be assumed that I am a
malicious, vandalising, thieving, pseudo-terrorist out to take over the
computers of the world for personal gain or quite possibly to glean some
morbid satisfaction from deleting megs upon megs of valuable data.

"I am associated with the computer underground."

If I ever told that to anyone, there would be a flash flood of foolish
associations in that person's mind between myself and The Mafia, with Saddam
Hussein, Syria, Libya, Abu Nidal, and who knows what else.

More excrement of an uncastrated male bovine.

Almost universally, among the ignorant majority, we hackers are considered to
be dangerous thugs whose sole purpose in life is to cause as much damage as we
can in as little time as possible to the largest number of people.

Need I repeat my picturesque opinion?

Sure, there are those little kiddies (mental and physical) who call themselves
"hackers" and fit the above descriptions. There are also people who call
themselves "human beings" that rape, murder, cheat, lie and steal every few
minutes (or is it seconds, now?). Does that mean that all "human beings"
should then be placed in prison?

Perhaps the term "hacker" has become a misnomer, but for my purposes in this
file, I will use that term to describe the way I view us hackers.

A hacker is always two things: curious and bored.

The boredom of a hacker is spawned by a society whose educational system is
designed mainly to get X number of students through the schools with the
average scores of X on tests; tests whose hardest challenge is to maintain
consciousness throughout the taking thereof.

There is no challenge in balancing the same binomial equations over and over
and over again. There is no challenge is learning to
print your name on a screen in BASIC, or PASCAL for that matter.

There is no challenge in being spoonfed such little bits of information as to
make it almost not worth one's while to even bother continuing education.
The lack of challenge, the minute bits of knowledge actually given to us, is
like a stake through our hearts. We are curious...So intensely curious that
we border on being nosy...They teach us NOTHING in schools. What is passed
off as education is nothing more than learning by rote. They pound the same
things into our heads, the things we learned the first time they pounded it,
and they pound and they pound, as if trying to knock our thirst for knowledge
right out of our heads!

We HAVE to be curious because we want to LEARN! Colleges take three semesters
to cover material that should take only three WEEKS! We cannot depend on our
educational system to quench our thirst, to satisfy our need for more and more
information! We are addicted to information and knowledge, and our drugs are
withheld from us.

We are forced to seek our precious information and knowledge elsewhere. We
have to find challenge somewhere, somehow, or it tears our very souls apart.
And we are, eventually, forced to enter someone's system...

Why? Because the system is new, unknown. How does one get in? What can be
found within? These are questions we can ask, with answers we must find for
ourselves...Oh, so different from school already!

Our boredom disappears as if it never existed. Our little spark of curiosity
becomes a bonfire within our minds. We have an open challenge to our
intellect, an opportunity to learn SOMEthing, and we cannot turn that
challenge down.

It doesn't happen like Wargames shows it. Oh no, it is so much different.
The geek in the movie....he had it so easy. No real hackers would exist if it
was that easy (perhaps therein lies the solution to the "problem").

No, we hack and hack at a system, like a man on a safari, clearing away the
vines of the jungle with his machete, trying to forge ahead to a destination
he cannot yet see. We keep on, torturing our brains and pounding our fingers
on the keyboard until at last...oh at long, sweet last... we are in.

We have already learned something...we know how to get into the system, we
know what kind of security the system has. We should, by now, have a general
idea how intelligent the operators of the system are or are not, and what kind
of information might be found within.

Something the nerd from Wargames could get into probably won't have any new AI
techniques, or other such things that help us to better our own programming
skills.

And at this point, many people assume we would then proceed to copy everything
we find and then trash the system so we could then sell the only remaining
copy of the data to the highest bidder, preferably a foreign agent or the
richest competitor of the company...

It makes no sense. We thirst for knowledge and information, and then you can
possibly think we are going to destroy that which is sacred to us? To take
away someone else's chance to succeed in getting in as we did? To fuel an
already terrible reputation and increase our chances of getting caught and
thus have our lives and careers effectively ruined?

Are you really THAT..DAMN..STUPID???

We value information as much as we value our systems, which is almost as much
as we value our lives, if not more so. We would no more destroy data than we
would chop off our own heads because we value our brains!

Most, if not all, of us think information should be exchanged freely... If
everyone is kept abreast of the newest technologies, techniques, what have
you, then everyone can benefit...The more each of us knows, the fewer past
mistakes we will repeat, the greater knowledge base we will have for future
developments.

Can you really believe that we are so hypocritical that we would SELL that
which we demand the free exchange of?

But, even as I type this, I begin to realize just why we are such a feared
group of people...

We are misunderstood by the majority.

You cannot understand someone who is driven by the thirst for knowledge, not
for money and power. You cannot understand someone who wants to learn, and to
teach, instead of putting away more and more money into a bank account.


You cannot understand someone who judges others by what they say, think, and
do, rather than how they look or how large their income is.

You cannot understand someone who wants to be honest and sharing, instead of
lying, stealing, and cheating.

You cannot understand us because we are different. Different in a society
where conformity is the demanded norm. We seek to rise above the rest, and
then to pull everyone else up to the same new heights. We seek to innovate,
to invent. We, quite seriously, seek to boldly go where no one has gone
before.


We refuse to be herded like the sheep which make up this society. We choose
to think for ourselves. We demand the respect of our individuality. And we
are slandered and shunned, condemned without a trial, because of these things.
We are misunderstood, misinterpreted, misrepresented.

All because we simply want to learn. We simply want to increase the flow of
information and knowledge, so that EVERYONE can learn and benefit.
And that is the terrible, evil, malign thing that we truly are. Intelligent
and inquisitive. Seeking improvement in the lot of all mankind. Seeking
equality. Seeking respect for individual freedom.

Oppression is our only reward....yet if it were not for people like us, all of
you who wake up each day to an alarm clock, or drive to work in your fine new
car after cutting on your security system, while drinking that cup of coffee
you didn't have to get up to prepare, would still be living in a cave,
somewhere near Africa, grunting and reproducing, eating the raw meat of some
beast you hunted down with clubs, trying to ignore the cold that seeps in
through the animal skins you wear, and wondering when some curious person with
some intelligence, creativity, and ingenuity would come along and invent the
wheel.
 

Rich Parsons

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Hacker = Curious and Bored - like to get in just for the challenge, nothing personal - no damage should be done

Cracker = someone who breaks in, or targets a spefic company or person and then tries to let everyone know that this happens. This is an ego or revenge thing, or just plain malicious.

I used to "know' Hackers and it was an underground in the sense that you kept it a secret, and you could talk and let things slide and if someone understood a smile or a follow up comment would let you know just how far they had gone or were letting you know how far they wanted you to know. ;)

I stopped hanging out or "knowing" these guys around college and turning 18 as many had crossed over into the grey area between Hacker and Cracker.

A friend of a friend (* this is true *) was at a different college and was under investiagation by the Feds, for the illegal use of special phone numbers (* read 800 toll free *) to make calls. Many of the students were busted and some saw jail time, otheres just had to pay back for the calls and their records showed this event. No federal jobs for them :(

I relaized the my curiousity could be used elsewhere. :cool:

'It Wasn't Me";)
 
E

Elfan

Guest
hacker n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker...

This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.

From the jargon file
 

phlaw

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Not Bad, but I always like originals better than copies: (This is from the Phrack website, I use to have it framed on my wall)






The following was written shortly after my arrest...

\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/

by

+++The Mentor+++

Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"...
Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?
I am a hacker, enter my world...
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me...
Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms.
Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..."
Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I
screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me...
Or feels threatened by me...
Or thinks I'm a smart ***...
Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here...
Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.

And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is
found.
"This is it... this is where I belong..."
I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again... I know you all...
Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your *** we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.

+++The Mentor+++
 
C

Cliarlaoch

Guest
Love the manifesto... And it's appropo, for those individuals who are hacking because they seek knowledge. For the other guys, the crackers, I don't know. Why do they do what they do, and why don't the rest of us realize there's a difference between them and the rest of the hacking community?

I'm not a cracker or a hacker, just another average everyday joe who's tired of taking crap from too many people, of being treated like an imbecile because I choose to talk about what I think is different or exciting or new, and ready and willing to branch out whatever it takes. But I turned my own needs for newness and creativity into poetry and writing, and trying to break down the system that destroys people like me. So we've all got our vents and breakouts, I guess.
 

Cryozombie

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Originally posted by Cliarlaoch
, just another average everyday joe who's tired of taking crap from too many people,

AND THE RIAA!

BE TIRED OF THE RIAA TOO, AND WE CAN BOTH FEEL THE SAME WAY!

No, seriously, I agree with that statement man. 100% (Plus I hate the RIAA)
 

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