I just got through watching a program on Channel 34, The Learning Channel,
entitled; "Hackers: Outlaws and Angles".
I cannot believe someone with as little knowledge about computing in
general and system security in particular would waste the amount of money
it cost to produce a program like that.
Let me enlighten you with some of the terms used in this program.
Good Guys; "White Hats" (also former Black Hats).
Bad Guys; "Black Hats" (White Hats in training)
"Electronic Pearl Harbor" (Used numerous times, aka Denial of Service
Attack)
"Automated Info War" (Distributed Denial of Service Attack)
"Hackers" (Used instead of Crackers)
We, the viewing audience, were informed that a "bunch of Chinese hackers"
banded together to launch an "attack worm" know as "code red" (they did not
describe this as a Distributed Denial of Service attack) against the White
House but the problem was solved by someone at the White House obtaining a
new IP Address. (Good thinking!)
Two characters exhibited in this epic (Sorry) are introduced as being the
greatest "hackers of all time. One, known as "Captain Zap", a man of at
least 50, is seen riding around somewhere in the open back of a pickup
truck. In the bed of the pickup is a table with two laptops upon which he
is beating the hell out of the keyboards. This, I guess, means that
somehow he is "hacking" someone. His claim to fame is he is the one who
set the clocks 12 hours off at AT&T and saved the general public tons of
money until the bills went out. The people did not know they had been
saved but AT&T soon learned that they had been had.
(I remember "Captain Crunch" who learned that a whistle found in the
Captain Crunch cereal box produced the tone necessary to obtain access into
the international long distance cable but I don't know this Captain Zap.)
Anyway the final guy who is portrayed as an expert is some young guy riding
around in Washington, D.C. with a wireless scanner hooked up in his car to
a laptop in the back seat. Every time he passes a wireless network the
scanner beeps and he says, "Look! Another hit". He then turns around to
look at the screen on the laptop and confirms that he could break into 6 of
the 10 hits he got because only four of the networks used encryption. (He
may have done better if he had a sniffer)
This whole episode was entertaining for the sole purpose of confirming the
fact that very few people out there in the world have the slightest clue
how things work, never the less how to stop someone from looking up your
skirt.
I guess a few of us "White Hats" can still make a decent living keeping the
"cracks" out of the foundation.
Joseph
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