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Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

zdnet.com

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Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#31

Post by prepend »

hintymad wrote: post #20
hintymad wrote: post #9

It is offensive because the word "black" in the phrase has negative connotation, right? If so, the stance Google engineer took was not progressive enough. I suggest a purge with rigorous examination on at least the following phrases on top of my mind: black cat black money black sheep black frost black market black humor black plague black widow black monday black ops black hand black death black magic black propagan…

And I don't understand the downvote. The Google justice fighter didn't ask to rename "black hat" because of negative connotation? If it is about negative connotation, why is it wrong to examine all phrases, especially the ones like "black market" and "black hand"?

It’s wrong because of bikeshedding and spends resources on unimportant things.

Racism is important. Hacking is important. Spending cycles working in these areas is better than helping those who struggle with googling “is blackhat a racist term?”

In this case the speaker shut off discussion anyway by not participating. So he’s not “examining all phrases,” he’s issuing judgement on a phrase. And his judgement seems silly to me.

I don’t know the subject so perhaps his material is great, but based on this one action it seems unlikely that his judgement would be great on blackhat hacking, but ridiculous in this area.

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#32

Post by dang »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #2

No, it isn’t.

The submitted title was "Is the title of the Black Hat conf offensive? Google sec. researcher withdraws", which broke the HN guidelines.

Submitters: "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#33

Post by rbecker »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #8

"> Discussions about the topic started late last night after David Kleidermacher[1], VP of Engineering at Google, and in charge of Android Security and the Google Play Store, withdrew from a scheduled talk he was set to give in August at the Black Hat USA 2020 security conference." it's usually entitled white people who feel immediately offended by this. With entitled I mean, finished university working at a top posi…

> it's usually entitled white people who feel immediately offended by this

Judging by the name, David Kleidermacher is Jewish.

Edit: Flagged? But it was the parent post that brought up race, yet it remains unflagged. Why was that instance OK, but this isn't?

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#34

Post by dang »

MintelIE wrote: post #3

Hehehe while SV is busy with their struggle session, the rest of the world is laughing. Xi and Vlad are proud of this cultural revolution.

Please stop posting dross to HN.

Edit: since you've already ignored multiple requests to stop posting flamebait, I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break the site guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#35

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tdeck wrote: post #29
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make hyperbolic comparisons because the previous hyperbolic comparisons keep coming true. A decade or two ago, "activists want us to examine all black-colored things to make sure they're not racist" was a ridiculous hyperbolic claim.

As far as I can tell, that's a bad-faith misrepresentation of the position. The position is more like "we've got lots of expressions that associate `black` with `bad`, and maybe we should move away from them in a professional context." The claim isn't that the origin of these terms itself is necessarily racist (e.g. a black sheep is a sheep whose wool can't be dyed), only that their use helps to an unconscious climat…

Can you go into more detail? I'm not sure I see how it isn't the same. If we think any use of the word "black" to describe something negative causes "an unconscious climate of anti-blackness", it seems like that implies a commitment to examine every black-colored thing.

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#36

Post by twic »

claudeganon wrote: post #16

Does this sudden upswell in irrelevant language policing not seem like some kind of coordinated op to discredit BLM? I don’t question that real people fall for it, but considering how wildly successful it’s been at distracting from material demands, like ending police violence, and how much the media has embraced these stories while ignoring ongoing protests, has me a little tinfoily...

Hey, please don't engage in hate speech against tin foil.

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#37

Post by crucialfelix »

burlesona wrote: post #14

My understanding is that the terms “black hat” and “white hat” stem from Western movies where the villains and heroes would typically wear black and white hats, respectively. I’m not aware of a racial association, but perhaps I just don’t know about it?

I thought it came from the six thinking hats

http://www.debonogroup.com/six_thinking_hats.php#:~:text=The....

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#38

Post by cheesecracker »

dmtroyer wrote: post #28
burlesona wrote: post #14

My understanding is that the terms “black hat” and “white hat” stem from Western movies where the villains and heroes would typically wear black and white hats, respectively. I’m not aware of a racial association, but perhaps I just don’t know about it?

I think it is worthwhile to examine why westerns chose to use the symbolism of black and white hats.

Christianity perhaps?

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#39

Post by fzeroracer »

I'm not sure what the problem is.

I've refactored methods and functions all the time to try and improve clarity. Removing words, changing meaning so that people who read it grok it.

I don't have a problem with changing terms. But people take a hard-line ideological stance against it because they perceive change as being weak or a slippery slope or something.

Re: Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term

#40

Post by toyg »

dmtroyer wrote: post #28
burlesona wrote: post #14

My understanding is that the terms “black hat” and “white hat” stem from Western movies where the villains and heroes would typically wear black and white hats, respectively. I’m not aware of a racial association, but perhaps I just don’t know about it?

I think it is worthwhile to examine why westerns chose to use the symbolism of black and white hats.

Probably because black has been associated to “death” for millennia (it’s the color of night, which is traditionally dangerous), while white is associated to cleanliness and light. We’re talking Egyptian times, Ancient Greece, etc, when there wasn’t really a concept of “white skin” (more or less everyone in highly-populated European and North-African regions had brown skin, to survive under the sun; very few people even lived in Northern climates). What do you wear when somebody dies, in the Mediterranean region? Black. What do you wear when you celebrate? White.

The symbolism is extremely obvious and pre-dating even the “discovery of America”.

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