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Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

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Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#81

My bs meter was high for a number of reasons. This paragraph was the most notable: "Meanwhile she refuses to be chained to her computer, limiting herself to a few hours a night online. She rarely visits online forums "they’re boring"and a few days a week takes a course in college to further her goal of being a teacher. She lives in an English-speaking country not the U.K.but won’t say more about it" So the previous p…

"A few hours" could be anything between 2 and 8-10 hours. When I was a teenager I'd get in front of the computer as soon as I got back from school and keep the computer on until I went to bed. That added up to ~6 hours a day on average. Anything more would be unrealistic for someone who needs to go to school every day.

Some of the other discrepancies, though, look more suspicious. The very notion that a security-conscious person who has just committed a federal crime would spill so much about his/her life in a random newspaper article reeks of BS.

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#82
post #75
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the kids are cops. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1546789

That phrase is older than Hacker News. I could have sworn that it used to be on bash.org, but the best reference I can find is: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kids+are+the+... I'm pretty sure the phrase even predates 4chan though... Mostly likely originates from USENET or IRC.

Definitely older than Hacker News. I got it from Reddit, and I think Reddit got it from UseNet (possibly via 4chan or IRC).

I paraphrased though, and the grandparent post must have a better memory (or better Google skills) than me, which is probably why you can't find an exact match...

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#83
post #7

Since the girl is a person and not a thing, it should be "... girl who hacked hbgary". r11t copied the mistake from Forbes-- How do national magazines make grammatical errors like this? Don't these people have editors who at least earned a passing grade in middle school English?

"andyv, the man that knows little about modern grammar."

Oh the horror.

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#84
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Kids are smart and have time. 16 is not that young. I knew how to do SQL injection and buffer overflow exploitation at that age, although I also knew not to use those skills against someone who didn't ask for it. Basically, everyone is excited because she's a girl.

As one or two articles have pointed out, that kind of skill is generally lacking in girls in our culture. So it is somewhat noteworthy, I guess.

Her father is a software engineer, though. It's much easier to learn pretty high-level skills in a field when you're young if you have a parent in that field.

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#86
post #75
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the kids are cops. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1546789

That phrase is older than Hacker News. I could have sworn that it used to be on bash.org, but the best reference I can find is: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kids+are+the+... I'm pretty sure the phrase even predates 4chan though... Mostly likely originates from USENET or IRC.

Here's the bash.org quote you're thinking of:

http://bash.org/?2832

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#87

My bs meter was high for a number of reasons. This paragraph was the most notable: "Meanwhile she refuses to be chained to her computer, limiting herself to a few hours a night online. She rarely visits online forums "they’re boring"and a few days a week takes a course in college to further her goal of being a teacher. She lives in an English-speaking country not the U.K.but won’t say more about it" So the previous p…

"A few hours" could be anything between 2 and 8-10 hours. When I was a teenager I'd get in front of the computer as soon as I got back from school and keep the computer on until I went to bed. That added up to ~6 hours a day on average. Anything more would be unrealistic for someone who needs to go to school every day. Some of the other discrepancies, though, look more suspicious. The very notion that a security-cons…

8-10 isn't something you "limit" yourself to. From the context of the sentence "a few hours" suggests 2-3.

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#88
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phrase is older than Hacker News. I could have sworn that it used to be on bash.org, but the best reference I can find is: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kids+are+the+... I'm pretty sure the phrase even predates 4chan though... Mostly likely originates from USENET or IRC.

Definitely older than Hacker News. I got it from Reddit, and I think Reddit got it from UseNet (possibly via 4chan or IRC). I paraphrased though, and the grandparent post must have a better memory (or better Google skills) than me, which is probably why you can't find an exact match...

That the internet has been thus for a long time is disappointing, but not surprising.

I've studied oral-formulaic poetry, and one of the interesting aspects of it is that everyone tells the same stories over and over, and what makes one retelling superior is not the actual content, but the way it's delivered. I may well have seen it before. But long line lengths and easy Verdana text make HN good for memorable one-liners, and your retelling had punctuation, capitalization, and pithiness.

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#89
post #58
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US fill disk crypto is useless. They will just hold you in jail until you hand them the password.

This is where TrueCrypt comes in. If you are being extorted to reveal a password, you supply one that loads a "clean" OS/filesystem.

I've never understood this. Wouldn't a competent security professional know of the existence of TrueCrypt, who would then ask a competent psychologist to determine if you were withholding information (I sure as hell wouldn't be able to keep a straight face), who would then ask a competent interrogator to get the real password from you?

I don't even think plausible deniability would hold in court -- claiming that a large blob of random data on your hard drive is just there for no reason at all is not plausible.

Re: Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?

#90
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phrase is older than Hacker News. I could have sworn that it used to be on bash.org, but the best reference I can find is: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=kids+are+the+... I'm pretty sure the phrase even predates 4chan though... Mostly likely originates from USENET or IRC.

Definitely older than Hacker News. I got it from Reddit, and I think Reddit got it from UseNet (possibly via 4chan or IRC). I paraphrased though, and the grandparent post must have a better memory (or better Google skills) than me, which is probably why you can't find an exact match...

The oldest versions I've heard went something like “Welcome to the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents.”

Example from 2001: http://www.bash.org/?2832

Pretty sure the line goes back further than that though.

My guess is that it’s a parody of A Prairie Home Companion’s line about “Lake Wobegone, where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.” Though that might itself be playing on some earlier such line?

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