Infosec community disagrees with changing 'black hat' term • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by fzeroracer » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #42

el_nahual wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without commenting on whether or not "black hat" is offensive, you're straw-manning the argument. The argument isn't that "black" is offensive, but rather that it's connotation with negative things is. To use your The Office example, it would be as if "bad" hackers were called "Mexican hat" hackers, forbidden lists "Mexican lists", etc. (Except not, because "Mexican" only means a kind of person, whereas "black" means…

Boulderdash. There is not a damn thing offensive about a combination of . We use constructs like that all the time. Or are we going to start saying "red lights" are offensive? Or "yellow lights"? Around yellow proceed with caution! Red means Stop! Danger! How about "Dark rooms"? Should we avoid that? Change red-black trees to green purple? Or hell, lets rope the electrical engineers into it. How dare black be the col…

> There is not a damn thing offensive about a combination of .

Do I ever have a new word for you. Have you ever heard of the term 'yellow peril'? Color coding is a remarkably easy and efficient way to encode racial stereotypes and spread propaganda.

Nowadays the association with said color is lessened (though some elements still appear among racists) but it seems rather ignorant of history to ignore the uses of color coding for racial dogwhistles.

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

#52

Post by sukilot » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 8:57 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #15

galvin wrote: post #13

It's clear that some of the language we use needed to be changed, the previously used terms for primary and secondary hard drives are an obvious example. It seems to me that the notions related to black and white have broader cultural associations though. Light and dark or day and night have long been associated with good and bad. White similarly has associations with good and innocence hence the use for wedding dres…

You're still giving the idea too much credit, I think. Black is just a color. The attitude that all black-colored things are intrinsically associated with black people is itself bizarre and problematic.

"Black" people aren't black. "White" people aren't white. Having white skin is a rare disease (albinism). So why did pink people invent the term "negro"/"black" to describe Africans? And why did the pink people call themselves "white"?

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

#53

Post by fzeroracer » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 8:58 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #46

fzeroracer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people see a man wearing pink, they think of them as being gay or effeminate. Men wearing pink might be assaulted because of this association. Things are ultimately not 'just colors' because culture and society inform our reactions to color. That's one of the reasons why they want to avoid the connotations of black = evil because on some level that does tune our bias in a certain way.

I’m sorry, I really do want to try and understand, but I’m just completely lost on how to seriously engage with this argument.

Per my previous comment then, how about 'yellow peril'?

Color coding for racist elements has a long and storied history across the world. Nothing exists as simply just a color in many environments because the usage of color matters in context.

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

#54

Post by BoiledCabbage » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 8:59 PM UTC

motohagiography wrote: post #24

I'm sorry, this is bonkers. I have presented at more than one Blackhat conference and since then I have seen the hacker scene reduced to nothing but a farm team for surveillance companies, domestic spy agencies, and totalitarian movements in academia because they think merely being against-bad is sufficient to be good. Hacking was always about individual competence as a check on technological dominion and absolute po…

Slow your horses. I happen to agree, and feel that this isn't the most impactful/helpful place to affect change.

But we all agree that symbols have meanings. Confederate emblems on state flags have meaning. The fact that you feel this case isn't worthwhile is fine, and you're entitled to your view and sharing it. But that doesn't magically change the concept of symbols into some plot of Kim Jong Il totalitarianistic mythology. You disagree with the changing of that symbol as an effective method for improving things. That's fine.

Instead of just the symbolic, are you just as fired up about addressing the structural issues of discrimination that people of color in your field experience? Is the extent of your ire just the terminology change? Because many people feel they don't have the luxury of that being the largest issues they are facing in tech. That's just one small pebble of many issues out there. Are you helping out in those efforts? Are you only willing to get upset about a name change but none of the other issues present in our field?

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

#55

Post by sukilot » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

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…

You got it precisely backwards. using "black" to mean both "African" and "evil", instead of using a separate word for the idea of evil, is a perfect example of Newspeak.

The design of Newspeak is to force unintended meanings into words. Please get a copy of 1984 and read the appendix on Newspeak.

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

#56

Post by throwaway25789 » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

wazoox wrote: post #21

Also "MITM" (man in the middle), "Whitelist" and "Blacklist", even "Sanity Check". This is all very aligned with a general trend of cheap moralization and virtue signalling that actually achieves nothing but makes as much noise as possible and poison every discussion with identity politics, by seeing prejudice and bigotry everywhere.

> actually achieves nothing

It's worse than nothing. It sucks up oxygen that could be used elsewhere.

Outrage/attention is a finite resource, and the more of it is blown on topics like this, the less is available to spend on things like income inequality, hiring biases, incarceration rates, police brutality, social programs, diversity/representation in media/politics, etc. At this moment in time the Black Lives Matter movement has precious momentum that must not be squandered.

To put it bluntly: distractions like this are actively harmful, and become more harmful the more attention they receive. Focus is crucial.

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

#57

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 9:10 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #54

motohagiography wrote: post #24

I'm sorry, this is bonkers. I have presented at more than one Blackhat conference and since then I have seen the hacker scene reduced to nothing but a farm team for surveillance companies, domestic spy agencies, and totalitarian movements in academia because they think merely being against-bad is sufficient to be good. Hacking was always about individual competence as a check on technological dominion and absolute po…

Slow your horses. I happen to agree, and feel that this isn't the most impactful/helpful place to affect change. But we all agree that symbols have meanings. Confederate emblems on state flags have meaning. The fact that you feel this case isn't worthwhile is fine, and you're entitled to your view and sharing it. But that doesn't magically change the concept of symbols into some plot of Kim Jong Il totalitarianistic…

I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm fired up about this issue because of my fire for addressing structural issues in my field. Do you remember the controversy last year about the manager who said "I won't hire anyone who doesn't send a thank-you email"? Language policing is another manifestation of the same problem. It's a minor hurdle for those of us who follow the latest trends in upper-middle-class professional culture, and a huge structural barrier for anyone who can't or doesn't.

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

#58

Post by tdeck » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #35

tdeck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think "thing" is too broad a term, the focus is specifically on a small set of negative expressions. For example, if I walk down the street and see a black mailbox or a black manhole cover, I don't see anyone arguing that those things might be racist.

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

#59

Post by motohagiography » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 9:25 PM UTC

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #54

motohagiography wrote: post #24

I'm sorry, this is bonkers. I have presented at more than one Blackhat conference and since then I have seen the hacker scene reduced to nothing but a farm team for surveillance companies, domestic spy agencies, and totalitarian movements in academia because they think merely being against-bad is sufficient to be good. Hacking was always about individual competence as a check on technological dominion and absolute po…

Slow your horses. I happen to agree, and feel that this isn't the most impactful/helpful place to affect change. But we all agree that symbols have meanings. Confederate emblems on state flags have meaning. The fact that you feel this case isn't worthwhile is fine, and you're entitled to your view and sharing it. But that doesn't magically change the concept of symbols into some plot of Kim Jong Il totalitarianistic…

Slow this. It's not the changing of the symbol, it's the legitimacy and standing of the people who wish to change it, the means they are using to do so, and the sincerity of their motives. This is the forum we have. I reject the standing of the critical theory underlying the problematizing of what it perceives as symbols in my field, because the ideology itself is designed to manufacture and inject conflict, as means to leverage itself into being an arbiter of purity, and its endgame has a lot of historical precedents. Dialectical materialism is an intellectual cancer.

This is where change happens. It's in the culture, and we respond in the culture. This forum is public discourse. If you are concerned because it sounds "angry," I would recommend revisiting how that reflects as a style of argument.

While this probably isn't the forum to re-litigate it, it is the forum to state unambiguously that the effort to hijack, co-opt, and subordinate Blackhat and the community it served to an ideology using an implied threat of political cancellation ( or "atomization" in the literature) has not gone unnoticed.

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

#60

Post by mnm1 » Sun, Jul 05, 2020, 9:32 PM UTC

throwaway25789 wrote: post #56

wazoox wrote: post #21

Also "MITM" (man in the middle), "Whitelist" and "Blacklist", even "Sanity Check". This is all very aligned with a general trend of cheap moralization and virtue signalling that actually achieves nothing but makes as much noise as possible and poison every discussion with identity politics, by seeing prejudice and bigotry everywhere.

> actually achieves nothing It's worse than nothing. It sucks up oxygen that could be used elsewhere. Outrage/attention is a finite resource, and the more of it is blown on topics like this, the less is available to spend on things like income inequality, hiring biases, incarceration rates, police brutality, social programs, diversity/representation in media/politics, etc. At this moment in time the Black Lives Matte…

Absolutely. BLM asks to put a stop to police brutality/racism and stupid white people decide to change the phrase "grandfathered" or "you guys" in response. Or to put down entire languages like Spanish because they use gendered nouns. A more tone deaf response would be hard to achieve. Even those of us who have supported the cause against police brutality and racism for years are now losing interest and energy. If this is the outcome of the protests, they were indeed all for naught, just spreading corona so a bunch of idiots can feel better about themselves thinking they made a change in the world by censoring others' speech. How absurd.