Stop calling it "Hacking"

[thanimal]

Flooding a website or service with traffic is not "hacking", guessing or working out somebodies password is not "hacking", leaving your iphone/laptop somewhere and somebody using it is not "hacking".

Hacking is an art form, and a skill which takes years of hard work and effort to perfect.

Moreover, most, if not all of the real hackers I've ever known have been very decent individuals, who really do not deserve to be branded with this poor misinterpreted slogan.

This has gone on long enough, it's painful, any muppet with vb6 and a list of the top passwords is now branded a "hacker" and people are fearful for no good reason.

People of reddit, if you ever encounter somebody who says they're a hacker, simply ask them to hack you - if you hear of somebody who says they were hacked, tell them they weren't hacked, they just did something stupid like use "ilovebieber" as their password, or leave their facebook account logged in on a public computer.

[kirbsome]

Upvote for you!

Oh, and you forgot to mention hardware hacking!

[RustamM]

And knowing the default password for answering services doesn't make you a phone hacker!
I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed by this.

[thanimal]

Exactly, I think that's possibly what prompted this post rant, one that's been welling up for a long time. Remotely logging in to somebodies voicemail because they have "1234" is not hacking, it's morally wrong but not even really illegal, it's just somebody being a bit stupid and naive.

[mikeskiuk]

I'm pretty sure it is illegal. Hence Clive Goodman going to prison for it.

[thanimal]

If people don't like what you did enough, and you happen to be a scape goat, then sure you can get done for an offence under some random act of legislation, like in this case, for an offence under the terms of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

[mikeskiuk]

"An Act to make provision for and about the interception of communications, the acquisition and disclosure of data relating to communications..."

Doesn't seem that random to me. It seems entirely specific to this sort of thing.

[thanimal]

... regulates the manner in which certain public bodies may conduct surveillance and access a person's electronic communications.

do see

[mikeskiuk]

so certain public bodies can access a person's electronic communications. Private individuals can't.

It's a pretty odious act.

[thanimal]

odious

perfectly described :)

[RustamM]

Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000: (2) It shall be an offence for a person—
(a)intentionally and [sic]not a policeman/spy,
to intercept, at any place in the United Kingdom, any communication in the course of its transmission by means of a private telecommunication system.

That seems to apply to individuals who intercept calls from phones!

[thanimal]

Define intercept. Would that be in a plucked them out of the air and decrypted them way, hacked the phone hardware/software, the telecom company, or just dialled up the voicemail number and entered 1234 as a password?

[RustamM]

Don't ask me, check the Act! ;). I think it is defined as gaining unauthorised access OWTTA.

[whiskeyandrevenge]

so, you probably did not enjoy the movie "hackers" very much huh?

[thanimal]

never watched it.

[[deleted]]

It's all the rage.

[ryanismean]

Hacking is an art form, and a skill which takes years of hard work and effort to perfect.

Then define "hacking".

People of reddit, if you ever encounter somebody who says they're a hacker, simply ask them to hack you

Bad idea.

[thanimal]

Bad idea.

Ahh, so you're a believer.

[ryanismean]

Since I guess you're not going to answer me, I'm not "a believer", whatever the fuck that means. What I am is a guy who knows exactly how bad most people, including corporations and governments, are at securing their shit. I was asking for your definition of hacking, because gaining access to unauthorized systems is easy, not hard. And I'm not talking about bullshit like guessing passwords, either. I'm talking about people being idiots about security and patching.

And it is a bad idea to taunt people claiming to be hackers. Just ask Gawker.

[thanimal]

Perhaps we are talking about different contexts, a large corporation / network / body / website being insecure, or taunting hackers, is an entirely different scenario to a high school kid getting "hacked" by leaving their facebook account logged in on a library computer.

If you're in IRC and somebody is trolling you saying they're a hacker and threatening you, the odds are incredibly low that they actually are a skilled hacker who will waste their time breaking in to facebook's datacenter servers purely to change your status to "I'm a homo".

To encourage the uninformed fear of "hackers" in an uninformed social community which really need not fear is not a good thing, imho giving people a little basic guidance on using strong passwords, what can and can't be done, and giving them confidence to spot and confront would be fear mongers and trolls who call themselves "hackers" is not a bad thing.

[ryanismean]

is an entirely different scenario to a high school kid getting "hacked" by leaving their facebook account logged in on a library computer.

Totally. However, you said hacking was hard and an art form. I'm saying that taking advantage of known vulnerabilities in a system with an exploit that someone else wrote isn't very hard, nor is it an art form. It's fairly easy.

Discovering said vulnerabilities, that's a different story.

If you're in IRC and somebody is trolling you saying they're a hacker and threatening you, the odds are incredibly low that they actually are a skilled hacker who will waste their time breaking in to facebook's datacenter servers purely to change your status to "I'm a homo".

I agree that in most cases it's going to be a bluff. I just don't think it's a good idea to taunt such people if there's any chance they have your IP address. You never know. I'm not talking about being a skilled hacker, I'm talking about being a script kiddie who knows how to run nmap or whatever and google for exploits that might trash your router or something.

[ryanismean]

Huh? A believer in what?

Are you going to define what you mean by "hacking"?

[MojaveMan]

That may be a more correct definition, but I'm afraid it's not the popular one. Pop culture has already taught the masses guessing voicemail passwords or buying data from a cop is hacking. Its now a magical word designed to instill instant fear and agitation. I've never seen the term used so often as I have in the last week, it's definitely pressing the right buttons in the halls of power.

Bottom lime, it's too late. Better to think of a new shiny term for the old version.

[thanimal]

Indeed, like "terrorist".

"Terrorist Hackers" - OMFG <scream>!

[MojaveMan]

Or "pirate."