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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

#101

Post by Volundr »

foogazi wrote: post #44
fennecfoxen wrote: post #5

It's offensive in the same way as Call of Duty: Black Ops is offensive, which is "generally not actually offensive". However, it is possible to derive professional advancement from claiming that it is, so expect to see more of this in tech. Also not offensive: Black Friday, black holes, black beans, black tea, black-eyed peas, black gold (aka oil), Black Mirror, black swans.

What about black beans and white rice: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/moors-and-chri...

While I think some of the name changes going around the community at the moment aren't productive, it's not a good comparison. The black and white in black beans and white rice are accurate descriptions of their color. "Black" is not being used to signify that these are malicious beans, out to cause harm.

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

#102

Post by Brian_K_White »

Volundr wrote: post #101
foogazi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about black beans and white rice: https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/moors-and-chri...

While I think some of the name changes going around the community at the moment aren't productive, it's not a good comparison. The black and white in black beans and white rice are accurate descriptions of their color. "Black" is not being used to signify that these are malicious beans, out to cause harm.

Neither is the malice of black hats associated in any tiniest way with anyone's skin color.

The black==bad is a fundamental feature of all humans. Black people also fear the dark and not the sun.

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

#103

Post by Brian_K_White »

el_nahual wrote: post #25
mikenew wrote: post #17

Someone please explain to me how labeling the word 'black' as offensive represents some kind of social progress. It reminds me of that joke from The Office where Michael acts like the term "Mexican" is problematic. If there is a real problem here I am genuinely happy to hear about it and try to understand. I would love to see more diversity in computer science and I think the entire industry would benefit. But it sur…

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…

Black people also find darkness and black things scary and bad vs light and white things. Night time and spiders etc are universal.

THAT's what makes this an argument that fails a "sanity check".

(They proposed "incoherent" as an alternative to sanity. Well, people can be insane and people can also be incoherent, and both are negative labels when applied to a person. What does the one improve over the other? I say nothing.

It's a mixed bag. I don't see anything wrong with at least starting to steer the great ship of inertia away from "him" and "man" for everything when we do have perfectly servicable, not ridiculous, not confusing alternatives without even resorting to hir/sie/etc. It hurts no one to say their in place of his. Even "person-hours" is fine even though it's an extra syllable. In fact the new term is simply the truth. It's simply the more accurate communication, which all these supposed rationalists should be all for.

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

#104

Post by tasssko »

catalogia wrote: post #83
tasssko wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I think black and white I think night and day and not evil and good.

It's an unfortunate quirk of human brains that fear of the dark is a familiar experience to most children and many adults. I suppose it has something to do with nocturnal tigers hunting our ancestors. Association between nighttime and fear seems biologically unavoidable.

Agree completely, I remember the books by brothers grimm as a young child. Trolls and goblins and all manner of imaginative creatures used to keep me up at night.

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

#105

Post by sumedh »

josteink wrote: post #100
sumedh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Framing this as a "black" issue and not a general issue which everyone can unite on, is divisive. Everyone is united, why do you think they are not. A racist person obviously would not be united on this issue. > The solution is obviously to provide better training for new police officers So why wasn't this done earlier? > (as opposed to in the past) Ok, so what is your solution to fix the effects of past systematic…

> Ok, so what is your solution to fix the effects of past systematic racism. Whats your solution to fixing past inequality of wealth? Shall we disown the rich of their personal property? Some problems we just decide not to fix and just move on, trying to create something with a more fair, and level playing field from here on. I don’t see how we can handle this any differently. Implementing systematic new racism in ou…

I see that you conveniently ignored my question.

> trying to create something with a more fair, and level playing field from here on.

Saying it easy, those words are empty if you chose not to implement it.

Who wants to implement new systematic racism, do you?

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

#106

Post by dariusj18 »

jointpdf wrote: post #48
fennecfoxen wrote: post #5

It's offensive in the same way as Call of Duty: Black Ops is offensive, which is "generally not actually offensive". However, it is possible to derive professional advancement from claiming that it is, so expect to see more of this in tech. Also not offensive: Black Friday, black holes, black beans, black tea, black-eyed peas, black gold (aka oil), Black Mirror, black swans.

I’m not taking a stance on the issue, but this quote from the article illustrates how blacklist vs. whitelist is different than the examples you gave: > “Others pointed to the dualism between black and white as representing evil and good, concepts that have been around since the dawn of civilizations, long before racial divides even existed between humans.” The supporters of the current terminology use this to bolste…

I think the real solutions is to stop using the terms black and white to describe people. Especially since it is so inaccurate.

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

#107

Post by _8j50 »

cheesecracker wrote: post #99
_8j50 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No,this is a universal concept. Night vs day, dark vs light. A strong light is associated with the color white, if you grew up in a Christian culture then you should know the Bible does speak a lot against judging people by appearances. I am not on a high horse, but you picked a belief out of nowhere as if it was particularly significant to the topic, so boogeyman seemed an appropriate characterization.

We were discussing good vs evil, though, not "strong light makes things white". Sure, there are probably some basic properties that make white a likely choice for purity - after all, you see dirt stains on white clothing much better than on dark clothing. I don't know what you mean by "judging people by appearances", how is that relevant? I haven't read the bible, I personally ma not a Christian. I just grew up in Ch…

Infosec developed globally but even just in the west, it's hard to call Finland and Denmark for example having a Christian culture. Even in the US, it's less than 50/50 chance even in the 80s to find and an infosec person raised in a Christian household.

The color white as I am sure you know is not a color, it's what you see when all spectrums of visible light are observed. Similarly, black is the lack of reflected light. You're typically at increased danger when you lack visible light, that said human skin is never actual pure black. To an European person it is relatively much darker but with african societies you will hear lighter skinned peoppe called white. Treating people worse because their relative skin tone approximates lack of light more than your skin is not unique to west european culture.

We are talking about hats, old western hats. It was never a religious thing. Saying religion has something to do with it even when similar patterns of color preference are seen throught most cultures makes me think you have an adverse bias against religion affecting your opinion. But to your point, this bias is not uncommon within infosec or western tech in general. I criticized you simply because I find the ignorance and justification of blaming entire groups even for other people's biases without a modicum of factuality was something I felt was unfair and to be honest less than what I expect of well studied intellectuals such as the typical HN user. That said, apologies for coming of snarky and judgy.

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