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YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

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Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#141

Post by 8bitchemistry »

realusername wrote: post #59
no-like-no-sub wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Be sure to hit that like button and subscribe!" When I hear this standard YouTuber meme, I always trip hard over the dislike button and never quite make it to subscribe. :^)

They have to say it because otherwise people don't subscribe. I know some youtubers who never did it hut had to resort to saying it because their subscriber numbers where stagnating otherwise.

Then there are refreshing youtube channels like "Primitive Technology" where he never says a word and manages to end up with 9.5 million subscribers...

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#142

Post by Sabinus »

thevardanian wrote: post #127
xtracto wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I am worried is that a lot of the "cool stuff" is disappearing from the web. I remember back in the day (late 90's) we had CrackStore, Phrack, Fravia, DeCSS, the box.sk domains a vibrant reverse-eng. community and a lot of really cool content. Nowadays with the USA policing a lot of that content has disappeared, and slowly people are pushed not to do new content. There are some very small efforts in some subredd…

In fact are there any other good gathering places than some obscure subreddits?

Can anyone recommend any good obscure subreddits? I have trouble finding new content.

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#143

Post by komali2 »

cy6erlion wrote: post #126
IceWreck wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNU doesn't have the money to pull this off

What they need the most is contribution from coders

Eventually, somebody has to pay for electricity to spin the disks.

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#145

Post by cyphar »

ohazi wrote: post #84
userbinator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was a bit off with regards to source code/open source, because while having source code helps in understanding and modification, it's not essential; you could similarly imagine a world in which open-source wasn't a huge movement but instead the right to reverse-engineer (or basically, understand ) software was guaranteed, and it would have as great an effect on freedom; perhaps even more so, because now it…

Sometimes I wish people had developed an expectation that commercial software should come with the source code, rather than as (only) a binary blob. Licensing terms could be the same, but people would look at you funny and feel cheated if you tried to sell them a binary blob.

This was a shift in viewpoint -- earlier in the life of computers, the hardware was seen as the really valuable part of a computer. So companies would provide the source code because that was simpler (the software was "just a toy"). But then software became the valuable component, and so businesses (as is a recurring theme in capitalism) didn't want to give away something that might be potentially profitable. And so we now have proprietary software. This shift in viewpoint by users was an intentional move, pushed by soon-to-be proprietary software businesses.

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#146

Post by captainredbeard »

w8rbt wrote: post #68
captainredbeard wrote: post #66

Next, they'll refer to these as "military grade software techniques" or "military grade tools".

End to end encryption was once classified as a munition. If the data is not end to end encrypted, then it is public. Everyone should understand this.

Encryption is still treated as munitions under ITAR.

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#147

Post by cyphar »

userbinator wrote: post #41
jammygit wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think he’s mostly right, but a little too uncompromising, but then everything he says comes true. I don’t know how he predicted so far ahead at the time, it’s humbling. As a software author working at startups, am I part of the problem? I don’t understand how to make a good living without locking down the code to some extent, with few exceptions (it’s hard to found red hat)

I think he was a bit off with regards to source code/open source, because while having source code helps in understanding and modification, it's not essential; you could similarly imagine a world in which open-source wasn't a huge movement but instead the right to reverse-engineer (or basically, understand ) software was guaranteed, and it would have as great an effect on freedom; perhaps even more so, because now it…

> because while having source code helps in understanding and modification, it's not essential

You're right that it's not essential -- and he does mention this in most of his talks. But reverse engineering is very time-consuming and difficult, especially if you need to do it for every program you use.

So his view that software freedom requires the source code to be available to users is much more of a practical requirement than a philosophical one. This is why the GPL requires the preferred form of modifying the program be provided -- to ensure it's just as easy for users to modify the program as it is for the developers.

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#148

Post by montecarl »

ohazi wrote: post #84
userbinator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was a bit off with regards to source code/open source, because while having source code helps in understanding and modification, it's not essential; you could similarly imagine a world in which open-source wasn't a huge movement but instead the right to reverse-engineer (or basically, understand ) software was guaranteed, and it would have as great an effect on freedom; perhaps even more so, because now it…

Sometimes I wish people had developed an expectation that commercial software should come with the source code, rather than as (only) a binary blob. Licensing terms could be the same, but people would look at you funny and feel cheated if you tried to sell them a binary blob.

The only domain where I have seen this is with commercial scientific software that is designed to be run on supercomputers. This is mostly due to the difficulty of producing high performance binaries that work with the MPI implementation.

One interesting implication is that since people can view and modify the source code, patches and modifications to the software are shared.

This has always lead me to wonder if a diff file violates copyright as it includes some of the original source as context.

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#149

Post by cyphar »

StillBored wrote: post #87
userbinator wrote: post #7

What's next, cracking and reverse-engineering? Debugging? (Anti-authoritarian) programming ? As usual, Stallman tends to be quite prescient: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html (perhaps more like "right to watch" in this context.)

The big thing RMS misses in that article is all the bio-identification that has been happening the last couple years. Dan is going to get caught because the machine takes a picture of him when he logs in with a password instead of the fingerprint reader, cause you know can't have a PC without a camera pointed at the user..

For an article written in 1997, it's pretty damn prescient. The article also isn't focused on surveillance. I would argue that modern bio-identification was at least somewhat predicted by 1984 (though Orwell assumed that humans would be doing the identification, not computers).

Re: YouTube's ban on “hacking techniques” threatens to shut down infosec YouTube

#150

Post by gear54rus »

ohazi wrote: post #84
userbinator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he was a bit off with regards to source code/open source, because while having source code helps in understanding and modification, it's not essential; you could similarly imagine a world in which open-source wasn't a huge movement but instead the right to reverse-engineer (or basically, understand ) software was guaranteed, and it would have as great an effect on freedom; perhaps even more so, because now it…

Sometimes I wish people had developed an expectation that commercial software should come with the source code, rather than as (only) a binary blob. Licensing terms could be the same, but people would look at you funny and feel cheated if you tried to sell them a binary blob.

I also wish everybody would install adblock on all their devices etc.

It's one of those problems that are solved only at the individual level but because of that are not going to be solved at all.

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