101–110 of 195 posts
And I just realized what it is about LuLzSec that's bothered me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but now I realize deep down they are nihilists. That's a damn shame. What seemed most admirable about Anonymous is that as much as they were also in it for lulz and pure chaos, underneath there seemed to be a kind of idealism. Idealism is seductive, nihilism is off-putting.
Adorable. They're bullies and proud of it. It's one thing to call out security exploits, and quite another to take great joy in causing others pain.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love it when the economically illiterate attack others for "price gouging" as if the third party doesn't have a choice in the matter or they aren't "unenlightened" enough to properly appraise the value of what they are buying. How do I know that my jeweler isn't gouging me on my fiancee's 2 caret diamond ring? Because I know that there's a fixed quantity of available diamonds, and almost everyone would buy them at…
Funny that you use diamonds as an example, when the diamond market is one of the most rigged institutions on the planet. Your jeweler is always gouging you when you buy diamonds.
For the rest of us, it's pretty tedious.
There's another situation that fits the general parameters of what they describe. Almost no one is protected against it. Being a gunshot victim.
At least in the US, pretty much anyone can get their hands on a handgun either legally or illegally. Almost anyone can use one with a bare minimum of instruction. And almost no one is protected - if you pick a name out of a hat of all america, pretty much any possible outcome will be dead easy to track down, stalk, find the right opportunity and shoot dead. And a vanishingly small numbers of shooters make an announcement about the whole incident on the Internet.
But, all that said, if you go around shooting people for no real reason and bragging about it you're assuredly a psycopathic asshole.
And I just realized what it is about LuLzSec that's bothered me. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but now I realize deep down they are nihilists. That's a damn shame. What seemed most admirable about Anonymous is that as much as they were also in it for lulz and pure chaos, underneath there seemed to be a kind of idealism. Idealism is seductive, nihilism is off-putting.
It seemed like there was idealism lurking because there was!
OK, so for the remaining 3 people out there who were pathologically not paying attention, computer hacking is easy. The state of computer security is poor. Lulzsec deserves a medal and a chest to pin it on for breaking this news to all of the people who don't have a facebook account, have never been on irc, didn't see the movie wargames, don't know anyone who plays world of warcraft, has never read the new york times…
Mind you, these processes aren't perfect. Things fall through the cracks, and effectively nothing will keep out a significantly determined attacker, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't follow well-established security methodologies. In the vast majority of cases, they hold up well.
Edit: I want to note that, in all likelihood, no amount of secure development and review would've kept people out of Sony -- there were just too many people that wanted to attack them, and too large an attack surface. It could've diminished the number of successful attacks, and it could have reduced the amount of data stolen, but in all likelihood attackers would've still made it in to some extent. However, things like the Brink attack might have been stopped entirely, since they didn't seem to be terribly determined to get in.
Why we do what we do: We're 15, unsupervised, and behaving badly. Do they really need a manifesto?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But, only one of them is the foundation of our society.
I'm not sure which one you think it is, but I sure hope it's the one that does it for fun. A society driven by preying on the weak for profit is far more distressing.
I don't think it's as visible to us as it used to be, but I think it's still very much there.
OK, so for the remaining 3 people out there who were pathologically not paying attention, computer hacking is easy. The state of computer security is poor. Lulzsec deserves a medal and a chest to pin it on for breaking this news to all of the people who don't have a facebook account, have never been on irc, didn't see the movie wargames, don't know anyone who plays world of warcraft, has never read the new york times…
Unlike gunshot wound, where a person lands in a hospital, or morgue, or goes missing, data can be, and indeed is, copied quietly. Of gunshots, people are informed most of the time; of security breaches, barely ever. Cops investigate most gunshots, but do they know of most security breaches?
The big hope is the press will at last start paying attention to (in)security of our data. Thus the headline-grabbing tactics.
The other half is that corporations don't shoot people, people shoot people. And to the wit, people don't store 200.000 bank accounts on a web server, corporations do. You can -- and should -- hold corporations to a somewhat higher standard when it comes to affording decent protection for customers. It's no coincidence LulzSec weren't after granny-loves-her-cat blogs, but after commercial services.