On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 4:24 AM, Mathieu ONeil
<mathieu.oneil anu.edu.au>wrote:
During the past two decades, hacking has chiefly been
associated with
software development. This is now changing as new walks of
life are being
explored with a hacker mindset, thus bringing back to memory
the origin of
hacking in hardware development. Now as then, the hacker is
characterised by
an active approach to technology, undaunted by hierarchies and
established> knowledge, and finally a commitment to sharing
information freely.
i wish I had any understanding of why this view can continue to be
promulgated.
i see so little of it from groups like anonymous and so on. to
the contrary,
contemporary hacking is characterised by:
- attempting to steal every bit of information and
financial property i
and you and every other person on this list has
earned or owns by whatever
means;
- doing so without any clear political program or
input from political
thinkers, but typically because there is something
they don't like about the
target, and/or the target has something of value
they want to steal;
- being absolutely antidemocratic and authoritarian
with regard to their
decisions and actions;
- keeping whatever profits they make solely for
themselves; - in many cases, working on behalf of
large multi-national corporations
and governments. the most famous recent example is
Stuxnet.
where is the special issue on that topic? why do we keep having
them, and
endless list and conference discussions, on this one, which does
not map
onto the reality i know at all?
it's not like this was in the news as recently as yesterday or
today or
anything...
Hardly a month has gone by this year without a multinational
company such as
Google Inc., EMC Corp. or Sony Corp. disclosing it’s been hacked
by cyber
intruders who infiltrated networks or stole customer
information. Yet no
hacker has been publicly identified, charged or arrested.
If past enforcement efforts are an indication, most of the
perpetrators will
never be prosecuted or punished.
“I don’t have a high level of confidence that they will be
brought to
justice,” said Peter George, chief executive of Fidelis Security
SystemsInc., a Bethesda, Md.-based data protection consulting
firm whose clients
include International Business Machines Corp., the U.S. Army and the
Department of Commerce. “The government is doing what they can,
but they
need to do a lot more.”
In the U.S., the FBI, the Secret Service and other law
enforcement agencies
are confronting what amounts to a massive crime wave that’s
highly organized
and hard to combat with traditional methods. The hacker
organizations are
well-funded and global, eluding arrest except in the rarest of cases.
Attacks are coming from organized crime groups based in Eastern
Europe and
Russia, from industrial spies in China and from groups such as
LulzSec,whose members appear to reside mostly in the U.S. and
Europe and seem more
interested in publicity than in making a profit from their
crimes. (By
Michael Riley, Greg Farrell and Ann Woolner, Bloomberg News, "Cyber
intruders confound: Few hackers are brought to
justice<http://www.telegram.com/article/20110612/NEWS/106129977/-1/NEWS05>,"
Jun 12 2011)
--
David Golumbia
dgolumbia gmail.com
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