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'Steal everything' era of hacking

bbc.co.uk

11–18 of 18 posts

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#11

> "Your online banking site is much more sophisticated." > A bank would usually use two-factor authentication, where you've not just got a password. Your bank is secure because they keep their network patched and do secure coding, not because they use 2 factor authentication. PSN would get hacked even if they were using 234 factor authentication.

Bear in mind that Blizzard provides more robust authentication services than most banks.

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#12

> "Your online banking site is much more sophisticated." > A bank would usually use two-factor authentication, where you've not just got a password. Your bank is secure because they keep their network patched and do secure coding, not because they use 2 factor authentication. PSN would get hacked even if they were using 234 factor authentication.

> even if they were using 234 factor authentication Probably not, but mostly because nobody would be using them then, so there'd be no data to steal :)

[deleted]

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#13
This is a problem, too many unqualified tech journalist working for notable newspaper, writing in ignorance about technology and tech culture. And these newspaper don't hire a tech editor to fact check, the fact being (old news) Sony ran unpatched/obsolete Apache with a notorious security flaw.

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#14

Ah well, the same thing all over again. The hacker/cracker distinction is sadly never going to be mitigated, and the press doesn't know/care enough to change the way they report these things. The words hacker and cyber criminal are used interchangeably in this article (and just about any article on this topic). Sad, particularly for those of us who happen to be reading Hacker News .

A problem is that "hacker" is a good, short word. Descriptive competing phrases like "cyber criminal" are clumsy by comparison, and "cracker" is just equally good and short.

At least the French, by refusing to use English words, have found a much more interesting phrase for it: pirate informatique

http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_french/medical_general/...

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#15

Ah well, the same thing all over again. The hacker/cracker distinction is sadly never going to be mitigated, and the press doesn't know/care enough to change the way they report these things. The words hacker and cyber criminal are used interchangeably in this article (and just about any article on this topic). Sad, particularly for those of us who happen to be reading Hacker News .

To be fair, the people who the media call hackers also call themselves hackers. Language is defined by how we use it, not necessarily the way the person who originally coined the terms wanted.

Also, to me, crackers are people who break copy protection and other DRM systems.

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#16
I think we've seen enough to conclude that it's hopeless to think that all the entities that possess personal information are going to succeed in keeping it secure. Either through negligence or simple error, disclosures are going to happen and are going to continue to happen.

What we need to do is change our systems so that mere information is not enough to successfully "steal" an identity. I should be able to disclose my name, birthdate, SSN, mother's maiden name, and anything else to anyone without worry that it can be used to steal my identity. Now, I'm not sure how or if that can be done, but it seems to me that the current approach of trying to store the water in a sieve is never going to work.

Re: 'Steal everything' era of hacking

#18

Ah well, the same thing all over again. The hacker/cracker distinction is sadly never going to be mitigated, and the press doesn't know/care enough to change the way they report these things. The words hacker and cyber criminal are used interchangeably in this article (and just about any article on this topic). Sad, particularly for those of us who happen to be reading Hacker News .

I kind of disagree. I think PSN actually was attacked by "hackers" (this term still works, even in context of how it's used in this community). They had to be good at what they do to figure out how to get into PSN and steal that data. However, what I agree is wrong is that the media makes all "hackers" out to be folks with similar intentions. Just because you are a "hacker" doesn't mean you want to steal everyone's data -- even if you are able.
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