Are you a hacker?

[Dr. Z]

http://www.adequacy.org/stories/2001.12.2.42056.2147.html

Oh dear, looks like I am a hacker :(

[petemc]

Hacker maybe, but sorely lacking on staying up to date :p Dec 2001! :D

[Dr. Z]

Yeah its old but ZOMG! If you buy an AMD processor, it lets you hack!

[Justsomebloke]

If your son has requested a new "processor" from a company called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm. AMD is a third-world based company who make inferior, "knock-off" copies of American processor chips. They use child labor extensively in their third world sweatshops, and they deliberately disable the security features that American processor makers, such as Intel, use to prevent hacking. AMD chips are never sold in stores, and you will most likely be told that you have to order them from internet sites. Do not buy this chip! This is one request that you must refuse your son, if you are to have any hope of raising him well.

If your son spends more than thirty minutes each day on the computer, he may be using it to DOS other peoples sites

As a child enters the electronic world of hacking, he may become disaffected with the real world. He may lose the ability to control his actions, or judge the rightness or wrongness of a course of behaviour. This will manifest itself soonest in the way he treats others. Those whom he disagrees with will be met with scorn, bitterness, and even foul language. He may utter threats of violence of a real or electronic nature.

If your son has undergone a sudden change in his style of dress, you may have a hacker on your hands. Hackers tend to dress in bright, day-glo colors. They may wear baggy pants, bright colored shirts and spiky hair dyed in bright colors to match their clothes. They may take to carrying "glow-sticks" and some wear pacifiers around their necks. (I have no idea why they do this) There are many such hackers in schools today, and your son may have started to associate with them. If you notice that your son's group of friends includes people dressed like this, it is time to think about a severe curfew, to protect him from dangerous influences.

:jawdrop:

[Garp]

but you can usually find any new programs by reading through the programs listed under "Install/Remove Programs" in your control panel. Popular hacker software includes "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy" and "Flash".

WTF? Any sensible hacker a) knows how to remove programs from the Add/Remove Programs window, and b) wouldn't be stupid enough to install such spyware infested software as "Comet Cursor" or "Bonzi Buddy".

[Del Lardo]

I am going to fly to the US on Monday and hand myself into the FBI as I am clearly a master criminal ;D

[Davey_Pitch]

WTF? Any sensible hacker a) knows how to remove programs from the Add/Remove Programs window, and b) wouldn't be stupid enough to install such spyware infested software as "Comet Cursor" or "Bonzi Buddy".
You're not buying that as a real article are you?

[Goose]

I'm sure people like that exist, even if the page is a joke.

[Haly]

You're not buying that as a real article are you?

It'd be nearly as funny as the article if so :D

[Garp]

Amusingly, using basic techniques:


telnet www.adequacy.org 22

SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_3.8.1p1 Debian-8.sarge.6

Even their website hosts are hackers, oh gnoes!

You're not buying that as a real article are you?

You mean its not?!

*calls the FBI and tells them it was a false alarm*


edit: In all seriousness, that OpenSSH has at least 3 fairly important security vulnerabilities that I've been able to dig up in fairly easy fashion. Hackers could potentially get access to that box.

[Dr. Z]

The site is only semi-serious I hope (but this IS the internet, you never know!)

Hacking the site would be both funny and bad, mmkay.

/me boots up a machine...

[Stan_Lite]

Technically, it's all nonsense anyway. The term "Hacker" was originally coined to describe someone who is deeply interested in how the computer and OS works - basically a geek. The name for someone who breaks into other people's systems is "Cracker".

The following quote from here (searchwindowssecurity.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid45_gci998037,00.html) explains it much better than I can.

* A hacker is a person intensely interested in the arcane and recondite workings of any computer operating system. Hackers are most often programmers. As such, hackers obtain advanced knowledge of operating systems and programming languages. They might discover holes within systems and the reasons for such holes. Hackers constantly seek further knowledge, freely share what they have discovered, and never intentionally damage data.

* A cracker is one who breaks into or otherwise violates the system integrity of remote machines with malicious intent. Having gained unauthorized access, crackers destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, or cause problems for their targets. Crackers can easily be identified because their actions are malicious.

[Mark]

Blows own trumpet...

In the past I've deliberately set out to break into software licensing systems - and succeeded I might add (though I was asked to do it and the software got better security as a result - still not good enough as it turned out). Also written device drivers and such. So yes, I'm a hacker, and I don't need some half-baked site to tell me. ;D :p ;D

Cracking, however. That'd be a no then. :)

[MarcLister]

DRZ linked me to this last night. I thought it was a joke. :D

Reminds me of a story that a lecturer told me earlier this year. DRZ knows the guy. ;)

Anyway for one of the modules we have to track the hops between us and an IP address given to us at random. In previous years this lecturer has made this module more interesting by challenging the students to "hack" each other. The first person to devise a trick to get another student's username and password got an extra 10% on the module. :D

So a few years ago someone did this. The victim realised what had happened but didn't realise who it was who had perpetrated this. So they contacted the FBI, I think. ;D

The FBI investigated and contact the Greater Manchester Police who did some investigatin' of their own. They then knocked on the door of the student who did this at a very early hour in the morning to ask him what he'd been doing. Naturally his classic "oh its for a uni assignment" excuse wasn't quite expected so the GMP went to Uni and spoke to the lecturer to check the story out and were satisfied no malice was involved. The lecturer told me he was quite impressed that the student doing the tricking had managed to get not just the GMP involved but also the FBI and gave him extra marks for that! ;D:D

[Jasper]

isn't the host -l command deemed as hacking (http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/01/17/n-dakota-judge-rules-that-host-l-command-constitutes-hacking/) now, too?

[Justsomebloke]

The lecturer told me he was quite impressed that the student doing the tricking had managed to get not just the GMP involved but also the FBI and gave him extra marks for that! ;D:D

What a Cool guy :)