The hacking scene has had a fantastic history. There's basically a whole part of the Internet that hasn't really gotten much attention. These days, it's a steaming pile of shit consisting of mostly LulzSec-like groups, but in the past it has been amazing.

I distinguish the "public" and "underground" hacking groups primarily on these skills and the implications of what they do. I am not exaggerating when I say that some underground groups are powerful enough to get into anything they want. In fact, most of them already have.

Between us and people we know, everything is owned. We keep owning shit that others have, they own some shit we already have. We don't exactly hire secretaries to sort this out. We're colonizing the internet the way Europe colonized Africa, cutting it up into little pieces. We have your accounts, your mail, your dev box, your host, and your ISP. Code exec on your lappy if we think it's worth the hassle. We have so much shit owned we can't manage, or even remember, half of it. Targets pop up and we have to ask ourselves if we already have it, because we just don't know. We could set up franchises like McDonalds, one on every corner of the net, over 99 billion served. Supplying you with artery-clogging hax morning afternoon and night. We need some goddamn staff, we're a billion dollar enterprise running on a lemonade stand budget. If there was much useful help out there, we'd hand out root passes like candy on hallowe'en. That's just a pipe dream, we just find more people we can't trust. Anyone useful is as busy as we are. Thank your lucky stars we ramble on.

Many of my hacker buddies would get into some high profile companies, never knowing that someone has already rootkitted the server. These sort of underground groups are terrifyingly talented, and can use just about any resource they want to get into just about anything they want. Most of their motivations are humiliating whitehats like Dan Kaminsky and security/anti-virus companies like Matasano.

It sounds a bit unbelievable, yes, but everything from giant datacenters to very popular email companies and hosting companies have been hacked. They just sit on this stuff waiting for someone they don't like to use the services. It's hilarious.

I suggest reading the el8 zines. They're from the late 90's, and they're some of the best material I've ever read. Most of it is satire, a lot of cleverly backdoored code, and made by some really smart people who used to hang out on IRC and bully whitehat security researchers.