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Friday, August 30, 2002 |
The Ninth Circuit has now adopted the Fifth
Circuit's approach |Ê employer accessing employee's password-protected website
without the employee's permission | applying "intercepting electronic communcations"
to communications in storage [Orin Kerr]
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The Ninth Circuit has now adopted the Fifth
Circuit's approach |Ê employer accessing employee's password-protected website
without the employee's permission | applying "intercepting electronic communcations"
to communications in storage [Orin Kerr]
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By Sam Costello, IDG News Service, Thursday, July 18, 2002
Internet security incidents for the first half of 2002 are up sharply
over 2001 and are on pace to substantially exceed last year's figures,
according to new statistics released Thursday by the Computer
Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC).
This increase, however, may be due to better reporting and awareness,
and not due to substantially increased attack activity, according to a
CERT/CC representative.
The CERT/CC is a federally-funded computer and network security
research organization that tracks security incidents and software
vulnerabilities and is based at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh. CERT/CC coordinates the disclosure and response to some
security vulnerabilities, attempting to ensure that vendors have fixes
or patches for vulnerabilities ready before those flaws are disclosed
to the public.
Steady Increase
For the first half of 2002, CERT/CC reported that it logged 43,136
security incidents. The group defines a security incident as any
related set of security events. 2001 saw 52,658 security incidents for
the entire year.
Security incidents have been steadily increasing since 1988, when
CERT/CC first started tracking them. Their number exploded in 1999,
which had nearly 10,000 incidents, as opposed to nearly 4000 in 1998.
There were 21,756 security incidents in 2000.
Also up in the first half of 2002 are security vulnerabilities, holes
in software that could lead to attack, CERT/CC reported. So far this
year, 2148 such vulnerabilities have been disclosed, almost equaling
the 2437 announced in all of 2001. There were 1090 vulnerabilities
reported by CERT/CC in 2000.
Awareness Credited The numbers are up for a variety of reasons, but
one of the biggest reasons is that CERT/CC has more people reporting
incidents to it, and more users have a better awareness of what
constitutes a security incident, said Chad Dougherty, Internet
security analyst at CERT/CC.
The vulnerability numbers are up, he said, because more people are
searching for flaws than in the past.
The growth of Internet use also plays into the increase, he said.
Despite the increases in users reporting to CERT/CC, the group still
isn't getting all the available information, Dougherty said.
"It's always been our position that the amount of incident activity
reported to us was only a small indication of what was going on, on
the Internet," he said. "We are still only getting a portion of the
total amount of security incidents."
[via "ISN"]
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By Sam Costello, IDG News Service, Thursday, July 18, 2002
Internet security incidents for the first half of 2002 are up sharply
over 2001 and are on pace to substantially exceed last year's figures,
according to new statistics released Thursday by the Computer
Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC).
This increase, however, may be due to better reporting and awareness,
and not due to substantially increased attack activity, according to a
CERT/CC representative.
The CERT/CC is a federally-funded computer and network security
research organization that tracks security incidents and software
vulnerabilities and is based at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh. CERT/CC coordinates the disclosure and response to some
security vulnerabilities, attempting to ensure that vendors have fixes
or patches for vulnerabilities ready before those flaws are disclosed
to the public.
Steady Increase
For the first half of 2002, CERT/CC reported that it logged 43,136
security incidents. The group defines a security incident as any
related set of security events. 2001 saw 52,658 security incidents for
the entire year.
Security incidents have been steadily increasing since 1988, when
CERT/CC first started tracking them. Their number exploded in 1999,
which had nearly 10,000 incidents, as opposed to nearly 4000 in 1998.
There were 21,756 security incidents in 2000.
Also up in the first half of 2002 are security vulnerabilities, holes
in software that could lead to attack, CERT/CC reported. So far this
year, 2148 such vulnerabilities have been disclosed, almost equaling
the 2437 announced in all of 2001. There were 1090 vulnerabilities
reported by CERT/CC in 2000.
Awareness Credited The numbers are up for a variety of reasons, but
one of the biggest reasons is that CERT/CC has more people reporting
incidents to it, and more users have a better awareness of what
constitutes a security incident, said Chad Dougherty, Internet
security analyst at CERT/CC.
The vulnerability numbers are up, he said, because more people are
searching for flaws than in the past.
The growth of Internet use also plays into the increase, he said.
Despite the increases in users reporting to CERT/CC, the group still
isn't getting all the available information, Dougherty said.
"It's always been our position that the amount of incident activity
reported to us was only a small indication of what was going on, on
the Internet," he said. "We are still only getting a portion of the
total amount of security incidents."
[via "ISN"]
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MIT - Der 24-j...hrige Hacker Christopher Tresco aus Massachusetts muss wegen der Mitgliedschaft in der Hackergruppe DOD (Drink or die) f[florin]r 33 Monate hinter Gitter. Ein Richter hat den Angeklagten daf[florin]r verurteilt, [florin]ber das MIT eigene Programme in die ganze Welt verteilt zu haben, die eine hohe Schadensroutine aufweisen. Christopher Tresco ist nur einer von 40 Hackern, die einer speziell gegr[florin]ndeten internationalen Fahndertruppe ins Netz ging. Einige der Hacker wurden bereits verurteilt, einige warten noch auf ein Urteil.
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MIT - Der 24-j...hrige Hacker Christopher Tresco aus Massachusetts muss wegen der Mitgliedschaft in der Hackergruppe DOD (Drink or die) f[florin]r 33 Monate hinter Gitter. Ein Richter hat den Angeklagten daf[florin]r verurteilt, [florin]ber das MIT eigene Programme in die ganze Welt verteilt zu haben, die eine hohe Schadensroutine aufweisen. Christopher Tresco ist nur einer von 40 Hackern, die einer speziell gegr[florin]ndeten internationalen Fahndertruppe ins Netz ging. Einige der Hacker wurden bereits verurteilt, einige warten noch auf ein Urteil.
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Corporate networks are becoming increasingly clogged by e-mail pitches for pornography, money-making schemes and health products, and there's little relief on the horizon. [Help Net Security - News]
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Corporate networks are becoming increasingly clogged by e-mail pitches for pornography, money-making schemes and health products, and there's little relief on the horizon. [Help Net Security - News]
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PARIS, Aug 29 (AFP) - French police are investigating a massive fraud in which the perpetrators have taken a email-style scam and put it to work duping mobile phone users using SMS text messages.
Hundreds of thousands of mobile owners have received an SMS on their screens reading "Someone secretly loves you and has asked us to tell you. Guess who's eyeing you over by calling 08..." and giving a number that costs around 50 eurocents a minute.
Those who do call aren't given an answer, but are instead asked to punch in the mobile numbers of five of their friends.
[via Moreover - moreover...]
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PARIS, Aug 29 (AFP) - French police are investigating a massive fraud in which the perpetrators have taken a email-style scam and put it to work duping mobile phone users using SMS text messages.
Hundreds of thousands of mobile owners have received an SMS on their screens reading "Someone secretly loves you and has asked us to tell you. Guess who's eyeing you over by calling 08..." and giving a number that costs around 50 eurocents a minute.
Those who do call aren't given an answer, but are instead asked to punch in the mobile numbers of five of their friends.
[via Moreover - moreover...]
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Former Xerox engineer Larry Benedict has been sentenced to 4 years in prison on child pornography charges , despite documentation showing that the evidence against him was tampered with in police custody. Allegations that evidence was fabricated will not be examined because Benedict chose to plead guilty. Benedict pleaded guilty to the child pornography charges in June 2001 after being refused full access to the hard drives, floppy disks and tape backups that federal agents seized in... [bplog]
Electronic evidence anchors porn case
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Former Xerox engineer Larry Benedict has been sentenced to 4 years in prison on child pornography charges , despite documentation showing that the evidence against him was tampered with in police custody. Allegations that evidence was fabricated will not be examined because Benedict chose to plead guilty. Benedict pleaded guilty to the child pornography charges in June 2001 after being refused full access to the hard drives, floppy disks and tape backups that federal agents seized in... [bplog]
Electronic evidence anchors porn case
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Das Fraunhofer-Institut f[florin]r Sichere Telekooperation
veranstaltet am 30. Oktober 2002 zum zweiten Mal den
"Darmst...dter Sicherheitstag". Auf der Agenda stehen
Perspektiven und Visionen zu Biometrie, PKI (Public Key
Infrastructure), E-Government und Mobile-Security. Die
Teilnahmegeb[florin]hr f[florin]r den Sicherheitstag betr...gt 150 Euro.
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Das Fraunhofer-Institut f[florin]r Sichere Telekooperation
veranstaltet am 30. Oktober 2002 zum zweiten Mal den
"Darmst...dter Sicherheitstag". Auf der Agenda stehen
Perspektiven und Visionen zu Biometrie, PKI (Public Key
Infrastructure), E-Government und Mobile-Security. Die
Teilnahmegeb[florin]hr f[florin]r den Sicherheitstag betr...gt 150 Euro.
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Marktforscher geben 13,000 Mail-Adressen preis. Datenschutz - Sprichw[ring]rtlich "dicke Post" erhielten die Abonnenten des niederl...ndischen Marktforschungsinstituts OpinionWorld. Ein E-Mail, das an die Abonnenten verschickt wurde, enthielt im Text der Nachricht 13,000 Adressen, was die komplette Mailing-Liste des Unternehmens f[florin]r Grossbritannien ist. Es handelt sich dabei um eine fahrl...ssige Verletzung der Datenschutzgesetze. Dieser Fehler ist beinahe schon allt...glich, wenn ein unbedarfter Versender die Adressen in Headerfeld "Cc." (f[florin]r "copy") anstatt "Bcc." (f[florin]r "blind copy") einf[florin]gt. [Newsbyte.ch]
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Marktforscher geben 13,000 Mail-Adressen preis. Datenschutz - Sprichw[ring]rtlich "dicke Post" erhielten die Abonnenten des niederl...ndischen Marktforschungsinstituts OpinionWorld. Ein E-Mail, das an die Abonnenten verschickt wurde, enthielt im Text der Nachricht 13,000 Adressen, was die komplette Mailing-Liste des Unternehmens f[florin]r Grossbritannien ist. Es handelt sich dabei um eine fahrl...ssige Verletzung der Datenschutzgesetze. Dieser Fehler ist beinahe schon allt...glich, wenn ein unbedarfter Versender die Adressen in Headerfeld "Cc." (f[florin]r "copy") anstatt "Bcc." (f[florin]r "blind copy") einf[florin]gt. [Newsbyte.ch]
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Vor dem Regierungswechsel 1998 hat es im Bonner Kanzleramt nach einem Bericht der Welt am Sonntag keine systematischen L[ring]schungen von Computer-Dateien gegeben. Das gehe aus einem Gutachten der Fraunhofer Gesellschaft f[florin]r die Bonner Staatsanwaltschaft hervor, berichtet das Blatt. Eine Vertreterin des Kanzleramts konnte den Bericht bislang weder best...tigen noch dementieren. Der von der rot-gr[florin]nen Bundesregierung eingesetzte Sonderermittler Burkhard Hirsch (FDP) bekr...ftigte dagegen seine Aussage, dass Computerdateien in gro§em Umfang gel[ring]scht wurden. [heise online news]
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Vor dem Regierungswechsel 1998 hat es im Bonner Kanzleramt nach einem Bericht der Welt am Sonntag keine systematischen L[ring]schungen von Computer-Dateien gegeben. Das gehe aus einem Gutachten der Fraunhofer Gesellschaft f[florin]r die Bonner Staatsanwaltschaft hervor, berichtet das Blatt. Eine Vertreterin des Kanzleramts konnte den Bericht bislang weder best...tigen noch dementieren. Der von der rot-gr[florin]nen Bundesregierung eingesetzte Sonderermittler Burkhard Hirsch (FDP) bekr...ftigte dagegen seine Aussage, dass Computerdateien in gro§em Umfang gel[ring]scht wurden. [heise online news]
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Everybody is talking about Canada's new snoop proposal:
CNET NEWS.COM By Declan McCullagh - Will Canada's ISPs become spies? The Canadian government is considering a proposal that would force Internet providers to rewire their networks for easy surveillance by police and spy agencies. A discussion draft released Sunday also contemplates creating a national database of every Canadian with an Internet account, a plan that could sharply curtail the right to be anonymous online. The Canadian government, including the Department of Justice and Industry Canada, wrote the 21-page blueprint as a near-final step in a process that seeks to give law enforcement agents more authority to conduct electronic surveillance. A proposed law based on the discussion draft is expected to be introduced in Parliament late this year or in early 2003. Arguing that more and more communications take place in electronic form, Canadian officials say such laws are necessary to fight terrorism and combat even run-of-the-mill crimes. They also claim that by enacting these proposals, Canada will be following its obligations under the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty, which the country is in the process of considering. If the discussion draft were to become law, it would outlaw the possession of computer viruses, authorize police to order Internet providers to retain logs of all Web browsing for up to six months, and permit police to obtain a search warrant allowing them to find "hidden electronic and digital devices" that a suspect might be concealing. In most circumstances, a court order would be required for government agents to conduct Internet monitoring. Canada and the United States are nonvoting members of the Council of Europe, and representatives from both countries' police agencies have endorsed the controversial cybercrime treaty, which has drawn protests from human rights activists and civil liberties groups. Of nearly 50 participating nations, only Albania has formally adopted, or ratified, the treaty. Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in e-commerce law, says that the justification for adopting such sweeping changes to Canadian law seems weak. "It seems to me that the main justification they've given for all the changes is that we want to ratify the cybercrime treaty and we need to make changes," Geist said. "To me that's not a particularly convincing argument. If there are new powers needed for law enforcement authority, make that case." Geist added that "there's nothing in the document that indicates (new powers) are needed. I don't know that there have been a significant number of cases where police have run into problems." [Privacy Digest]
a href="http://www.hideaway.net/home/public_html/article.php?story=20020827190543668">Canada Ponders ISP Monitoring Laws [Hideaway.Net]
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Everybody is talking about Canada's new snoop proposal:
CNET NEWS.COM By Declan McCullagh - Will Canada's ISPs become spies? The Canadian government is considering a proposal that would force Internet providers to rewire their networks for easy surveillance by police and spy agencies. A discussion draft released Sunday also contemplates creating a national database of every Canadian with an Internet account, a plan that could sharply curtail the right to be anonymous online. The Canadian government, including the Department of Justice and Industry Canada, wrote the 21-page blueprint as a near-final step in a process that seeks to give law enforcement agents more authority to conduct electronic surveillance. A proposed law based on the discussion draft is expected to be introduced in Parliament late this year or in early 2003. Arguing that more and more communications take place in electronic form, Canadian officials say such laws are necessary to fight terrorism and combat even run-of-the-mill crimes. They also claim that by enacting these proposals, Canada will be following its obligations under the Council of Europe's cybercrime treaty, which the country is in the process of considering. If the discussion draft were to become law, it would outlaw the possession of computer viruses, authorize police to order Internet providers to retain logs of all Web browsing for up to six months, and permit police to obtain a search warrant allowing them to find "hidden electronic and digital devices" that a suspect might be concealing. In most circumstances, a court order would be required for government agents to conduct Internet monitoring. Canada and the United States are nonvoting members of the Council of Europe, and representatives from both countries' police agencies have endorsed the controversial cybercrime treaty, which has drawn protests from human rights activists and civil liberties groups. Of nearly 50 participating nations, only Albania has formally adopted, or ratified, the treaty. Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa who specializes in e-commerce law, says that the justification for adopting such sweeping changes to Canadian law seems weak. "It seems to me that the main justification they've given for all the changes is that we want to ratify the cybercrime treaty and we need to make changes," Geist said. "To me that's not a particularly convincing argument. If there are new powers needed for law enforcement authority, make that case." Geist added that "there's nothing in the document that indicates (new powers) are needed. I don't know that there have been a significant number of cases where police have run into problems." [Privacy Digest]
a href="http://www.hideaway.net/home/public_html/article.php?story=20020827190543668">Canada Ponders ISP Monitoring Laws [Hideaway.Net]
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RAND reports that chinese dissidents don't profit from using the internet and everybody talks about it:
RAND report - You've Got Dissent! Chinese Dissident Use of he Internet and Beijing's Counter-Strategies. by Michael S. Chase, James C. Mulvenon $20.00, (paperback, 130 pp.) ISBN: 0-8330-3179-1 MR-1543, © 2002 All materials are available as free, downloadable PDF files. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view them [Privacy Digest]
Political News from Wired News - China Dissidents Thwarted on Net. Chinese dissidents are doing their best to use the Internet to bring democratic change to their society, but government crackdowns and the nation's rural demographics mean that more freedoms are unlikely to come soon, says a private study. Released by RAND, the report, "You've Got Dissent," said that while dissidents use the Internet for liberation, the Chinese government uses the same tools to keep an eye on activists. "There was a lot of very loose talk about how the Internet was going to bring down all the authoritarian regimes," said James Mulvenon, one of the authors of the report released this week. However, he said, "the Chinese government has proven surprisingly nimble over the past five or six years in surpassing the technological challenges the dissidents have presented them." [Privacy Digest]
ap: China Dissidents Thwarted on Net. A Rand report claims Chinese dissidents have been relatively unsuccesful in using the internet to avoid government censorship. "There was a lot of very loose talk about how the Internet was going to bring down all the authoritarian regimes," said James Mulvenon, one of the authors of the report released this week. However, he said, "the Chinese government has proven surprisingly nimble over the past five or six years in surpassing the technological challenges the... [bplog]
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[allNetDevices via Moreover - moreover...]
The article describes 'wireless honeypots' and what might happen there. At Blackhat the honeynet reveald that they hat up to now exactly zero incidents at their 'wireless honeypot'.
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[allNetDevices via Moreover - moreover...]
The article describes 'wireless honeypots' and what might happen there. At Blackhat the honeynet reveald that they hat up to now exactly zero incidents at their 'wireless honeypot'.
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There has been a lot of talk about Providers beeing asked by RIAA & Co. to block stuff. Verizon explains why they don't like to:
A Corporate Lawyer's perspective on P2P hacking - Sarah Deutsch is a VP and Associate General Counsel of Verizon. Perhaps you'd think she would be for the Berman-Coble bill. You'd be wrong. Here's what she says, speaking on behalf of Verizon:
We oppose the Berman bill. It's very troubling in that it essentially permits one particular segment of the U.S. industry to engage in vigilantism on the Internet. So, for example, the content community could engage in denial-of-service attacks, as long as they have a reasonable belief that they were defending their copyright.
And she points to other companies that share Verizon's view: "AT&T, WorldCom, together with U.S. Cable & Wireless, and the other Bell companies." Oh, and Verizon opposes most of the other legislation that we've been discussing here in blogland. Just go read the article. [Ernie the Attorney]
CNet: Why telecoms back the pirate cause. [Hack the Planet]
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There has been a lot of talk about Providers beeing asked by RIAA & Co. to block stuff. Verizon explains why they don't like to:
A Corporate Lawyer's perspective on P2P hacking - Sarah Deutsch is a VP and Associate General Counsel of Verizon. Perhaps you'd think she would be for the Berman-Coble bill. You'd be wrong. Here's what she says, speaking on behalf of Verizon:
We oppose the Berman bill. It's very troubling in that it essentially permits one particular segment of the U.S. industry to engage in vigilantism on the Internet. So, for example, the content community could engage in denial-of-service attacks, as long as they have a reasonable belief that they were defending their copyright.
And she points to other companies that share Verizon's view: "AT&T, WorldCom, together with U.S. Cable & Wireless, and the other Bell companies." Oh, and Verizon opposes most of the other legislation that we've been discussing here in blogland. Just go read the article. [Ernie the Attorney]
CNet: Why telecoms back the pirate cause. [Hack the Planet]
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  The Most Dangerous Software Ever Written : "While it's possible to tighten Internet Explorer (IE) security and prevent much of the damage occurring today, doing so is complicated-if you leave intact any of the features that make using IE engaging. But IE, together with Outlook, has turned the world of Internet security on its head.
IE can execute scripts received from remote sources. Because Outlook, Outlook Express, and news readers come linked to IE's HTML-rendering engine, they can also execute scripts. The ability to execute scripts makes IE dangerous, just as dangerous as hooking up command.com or cmd.exe as a network service and inviting an attacker to do his or her worst. You have no protection from miscreants set on harming you when your software provides the means to do so.
ActiveX controls have the same access to Windows the person using the Web browser has. If an ActiveX control executes delete tree, all the files the user can delete will be deleted. But deleting files is messy, and hardly subtle. Malicious software more commonly downloads and installs Trojan Horses, such as SubSeven or Back Orifice, or viruses.
Microsoft could make IE safer to use, but only by changing its design philosophy. If IE and other tools for working with content from the Internet ran in an environment that wasn't the same as the logged-in user, it could contain the damage caused by attackers. Unix OSs include methods for running software as another user, and in a different environment (chroot or jail), not present in Windows." [Network Magazine]
[GranneWeb] [dws.]
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The Most Dangerous Software Ever Written : "While it's possible to tighten Internet Explorer (IE) security and prevent much of the damage occurring today, doing so is complicated-if you leave intact any of the features that make using IE engaging. But IE, together with Outlook, has turned the world of Internet security on its head.
IE can execute scripts received from remote sources. Because Outlook, Outlook Express, and news readers come linked to IE's HTML-rendering engine, they can also execute scripts. The ability to execute scripts makes IE dangerous, just as dangerous as hooking up command.com or cmd.exe as a network service and inviting an attacker to do his or her worst. You have no protection from miscreants set on harming you when your software provides the means to do so.
ActiveX controls have the same access to Windows the person using the Web browser has. If an ActiveX control executes delete tree, all the files the user can delete will be deleted. But deleting files is messy, and hardly subtle. Malicious software more commonly downloads and installs Trojan Horses, such as SubSeven or Back Orifice, or viruses.
Microsoft could make IE safer to use, but only by changing its design philosophy. If IE and other tools for working with content from the Internet ran in an environment that wasn't the same as the logged-in user, it could contain the damage caused by attackers. Unix OSs include methods for running software as another user, and in a different environment (chroot or jail), not present in Windows." [Network Magazine]
[GranneWeb] [dws.]
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 Hacker Culture
Author: Douglas Thomas; $18.17 (Special Order)
 A View of the Views of Hackers and Views About Hackers
It may be that computer hackers, those who can break into someone else's computer system and take data, or fiddle with it, or just look around, are scary criminals who may collapse our baroque internet architecture. It may be that they are dangerous outlaws who, since they know computers so well, must be put into prison for years away from any keyboard or mouse. It may also be that they simply know people very well, and that stereotypes of hackers in the media (even in journalism) show nothing so much as our worry over the unprecedented new computer tools piped into our homes and offices. This last is the view of Douglas Thomas, who, in _Hacker Culture_ (University of Minnesota Press), has written a history of how hackers came to be, and how they came to be seen as villainous outcasts. It is a surprising look at hackers, but is more about how a society uses computers, and it takes in the entire short history of digital electronics.One of the surprising parts of this history is just how far antipathy between hackers and Microsoft goes, and it starts right at the beginning with the first personal computer. Bill Gates co-wrote a version of the BASIC programming language that could be run on the Altair, but Altair users had become used to sharing programs, not buying them. Gates thought of his BASIC as a secret that could be licensed or purchased, and hobbyists that shared it (the earliest hackers) were simply thieves. Ill feelings between Gates and hackers have continued for almost three decades now over similar issues. The reputation of hackers, forged in the popular media, is one of this book's strengths. _WarGames_, the 1983 release about the kid who nearly causes nuclear war by hacking into military supercomputers, gave hacker culture a national audience. The 1995 _Hackers_ showed hackers as young Robin Hoods, but had a freakish number of technical errors and it tried to promote erroneous hacker language and clothing styles. The film's website, therefore, became a focus for hacker attacks, with defacement of the photographs and replacement of ad-copy hype with such non-recommendations as "Hackers, the new action adventure movie from those idiots in Hollywood, takes you inside a world where there's no plot or creative thought, there's only boring rehashed ideas." The scariness of the depictions of hackers in the media has resulted in strange legal decisions. The famous Kevin Mitnick was trumpeted as such an "evil genius" and "cyberterrorist" that he was denied a bail hearing and was kept in jail for over four years awaiting trial, with the government denying his legal team access to evidence to be presented against him. (Some fellow hackers redesigned web sites as political pranks to call attention to his plight.) This sort of basic misunderstanding about what hackers are and what they do is what _Hacker Culture_ seeks to correct. Douglas Thomas, an academic who is able to use ideas from Plato, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, kindly does not use this talent too often, but restricts his entertaining depiction of hacker history to the important battles the information age has spawned concerning basic issues of privacy, property, and secrecy. He shows us that hackers have been at the edge of defining these issues, and in a remarkably well balanced account which refuses black and white labels, he shows that they are not always on the wrong side.
[Amazon Books: hacker]
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Hacker Culture
Author: Douglas Thomas; $18.17 (Special Order)
A View of the Views of Hackers and Views About Hackers
It may be that computer hackers, those who can break into someone else's computer system and take data, or fiddle with it, or just look around, are scary criminals who may collapse our baroque internet architecture. It may be that they are dangerous outlaws who, since they know computers so well, must be put into prison for years away from any keyboard or mouse. It may also be that they simply know people very well, and that stereotypes of hackers in the media (even in journalism) show nothing so much as our worry over the unprecedented new computer tools piped into our homes and offices. This last is the view of Douglas Thomas, who, in _Hacker Culture_ (University of Minnesota Press), has written a history of how hackers came to be, and how they came to be seen as villainous outcasts. It is a surprising look at hackers, but is more about how a society uses computers, and it takes in the entire short history of digital electronics.One of the surprising parts of this history is just how far antipathy between hackers and Microsoft goes, and it starts right at the beginning with the first personal computer. Bill Gates co-wrote a version of the BASIC programming language that could be run on the Altair, but Altair users had become used to sharing programs, not buying them. Gates thought of his BASIC as a secret that could be licensed or purchased, and hobbyists that shared it (the earliest hackers) were simply thieves. Ill feelings between Gates and hackers have continued for almost three decades now over similar issues. The reputation of hackers, forged in the popular media, is one of this book's strengths. _WarGames_, the 1983 release about the kid who nearly causes nuclear war by hacking into military supercomputers, gave hacker culture a national audience. The 1995 _Hackers_ showed hackers as young Robin Hoods, but had a freakish number of technical errors and it tried to promote erroneous hacker language and clothing styles. The film's website, therefore, became a focus for hacker attacks, with defacement of the photographs and replacement of ad-copy hype with such non-recommendations as "Hackers, the new action adventure movie from those idiots in Hollywood, takes you inside a world where there's no plot or creative thought, there's only boring rehashed ideas." The scariness of the depictions of hackers in the media has resulted in strange legal decisions. The famous Kevin Mitnick was trumpeted as such an "evil genius" and "cyberterrorist" that he was denied a bail hearing and was kept in jail for over four years awaiting trial, with the government denying his legal team access to evidence to be presented against him. (Some fellow hackers redesigned web sites as political pranks to call attention to his plight.) This sort of basic misunderstanding about what hackers are and what they do is what _Hacker Culture_ seeks to correct. Douglas Thomas, an academic who is able to use ideas from Plato, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, kindly does not use this talent too often, but restricts his entertaining depiction of hacker history to the important battles the information age has spawned concerning basic issues of privacy, property, and secrecy. He shows us that hackers have been at the edge of defining these issues, and in a remarkably well balanced account which refuses black and white labels, he shows that they are not always on the wrong side.
[Amazon Books: hacker]
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The Underground Web. Business Week has found out that there are bad things on the Internet. They fail to ask the interesting questions: Howmuch crime is there on the Internet? Is ist getting more or less? Should we count crimes per user per hour online, per Gigabyte transfered, per $ of commerce? There are many indications that with most ways to count it the chance of falling vixtim to most crimes on the Internet is decerasing. E.g. see An Analysis Of Security Incidents On The Internet 1989 - 1995
or ZaRD Statistiken.
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The Underground Web. Business Week has found out that there are bad things on the Internet. They fail to ask the interesting questions: Howmuch crime is there on the Internet? Is ist getting more or less? Should we count crimes per user per hour online, per Gigabyte transfered, per $ of commerce? There are many indications that with most ways to count it the chance of falling vixtim to most crimes on the Internet is decerasing. E.g. see An Analysis Of Security Incidents On The Internet 1989 - 1995
or ZaRD Statistiken.
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Maximillian Dornseif, 2002.
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