May 12, 2005

Cracking the IMC

Category: Politics — Biella @ 9:02 pm

So so so, this article is on a blackhat, right-winged hacker by the name of Colorx who hacked into the Boulder IMC site (among others) only to find ou that there are many savvy a-hacker among IMC-istas, who hacked back, found out his identity and this eventually got him in trouble with the FBI
(and though the exact mechanism is unknown, there is something a little ironic in having the IMC work lead to FBI investigation not on them, as is usually the case, but on some other hackers).

There is a section in the article that was eerily resonant with one of the all time great books on hackers, The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling.

So compare:

On the bright side, says Clorox, his run-in with the feds reinforced his idea of a dream job: working for the FBI.

“There were a few times during the conversation I was like, wow, this has to be the coolest job. I would probably get the same thrill out of that that I do out of the black-hat stuff,” he says. “How ironic is that. I’ve always wanted to be the one who catches the bad guy, even if sometimes I am the bad guy.” Mahon, however, has some bad news for clorox.

“He’s deluding himself into thinking that we would hire him,” he says. “There’s a lot of good things a person like that can do that make them stand out that doesn’t involve criminal activity.”

With this section from the Hacker Crackdown:

“In my opinion, any teenager enthralled by computers, fascinated by the ins and outs of computer security, and attracted to the lure of specialized forms of knowledge and power would do well to forget all about hacking and set his (or her) sights on becoming a fed. Feds can trump hackers at almost every single thing hackers do, including gathering intelligence, undercover disguise, trashing, phone-tapping,building dossiers, networking, and infiltrating computer systems” (1993: 207).

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