Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
wired.com
Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#2What's really bad about stories like this is that social engineering is not new. I recall working on closing some of these types of loops at companies 10 years ago.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#3It's interesting to me how easy it is for some people to circumvent their ethics. This kid is intelligent enough to know what he's done is unethical but I've never been a teenage boy so I consider what would come with that feeling of discovering a sweet hack: a desire to use that knowledge to assert power above all costs.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#4What's really bad about stories like this is that social engineering is not new. I recall working on closing some of these types of loops at companies 10 years ago.
When I was reading this, I was thinking the same thing. Are the IT leads who put these systems in place forgetting the 90s?
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#5What's really bad about stories like this is that social engineering is not new. I recall working on closing some of these types of loops at companies 10 years ago.
When I was reading this, I was thinking the same thing. Are the IT leads who put these systems in place forgetting the 90s?
When the Wired author was hacked and it was first posted here about half of us jumped on 'shoulder surfed', 'is it possible to brute force' and half a dozen decent technical explanations. I think often people are now looking for the next over the top attack and forgetting the simplest tricks are often the most successful.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#6It's interesting to me how easy it is for some people to circumvent their ethics. This kid is intelligent enough to know what he's done is unethical but I've never been a teenage boy so I consider what would come with that feeling of discovering a sweet hack: a desire to use that knowledge to assert power above all costs.
Humans still have strong instinct. When you do something physical or violent you feel more like you're doing a lot, you feel more risk. But when you're doing something intellectual, well it just doesn't feel like it's that big a deal.
That's how a lot of young smart kids get sucked into serious crimes.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#7It's interesting to me how easy it is for some people to circumvent their ethics. This kid is intelligent enough to know what he's done is unethical but I've never been a teenage boy so I consider what would come with that feeling of discovering a sweet hack: a desire to use that knowledge to assert power above all costs.
The mind of a teenage boy can be a dangerous place. They are old enough to realize the possibilities and thrills associated with what they are doing, but not experienced enough to realize the consequences of their actions. I know I was a "knucklehead" from about age 15-20. I never did anything that got me into too much trouble, but I distinctly remember that the line between right and wrong seemed much hazier than it does to me now. I only wish I could figure out a way to impress upon my kids the consequences of their actions.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#8In 2005, I worked support for a company with a mobile offering. At the time, app purchases were handled exclusively by the carrier and were completely opaque. A little while prior, we had partnered with a shady marketing company, netting us a bunch of unintentional signups that I had the displeasure of fixing.
Since we didn't handle billing, I had to call AT&T with the customer on the line and talk them both through the process of removing the charges(AT&T was feeding customers a line about not handling billing either, for some reason). After doing it a few times, I realized I could do it without the customer, all I needed was a name and a phone number.
It never came down to impersonating the customer, instead, I would just say I was calling on behalf of a customer. Once, a call got escalated to a higher support tier, with the miscommunication that I was a VP of a partner company, which made the agents more responsive, making the process easier, so I just kept reusing that line.
Eventually, I just asked, "what do I tell the next agent I have to deal with so we can just bypass all the lies?" (regarding their inability to modify billing charges). This was happily given to me, and I could now call AT&T support and say, "I'm calling for user X with number Y. I need you to go into the tool and click on Z and then remove the charge from such and such service." Again, when delivered with authority, the rep would do it, no questions asked.
It's hard to fault them, I probably would have done the same in their position. Still, it's scary knowing how little it takes to get customer service to reveal/modify things without hard verification.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#9It's interesting to me how easy it is for some people to circumvent their ethics. This kid is intelligent enough to know what he's done is unethical but I've never been a teenage boy so I consider what would come with that feeling of discovering a sweet hack: a desire to use that knowledge to assert power above all costs.
I'm not sure it's so much "circumvent" as "it's not fully hooked up yet".
Ethics are intellectual, but they're grounded in a human moral sense that is rooted in biology. (For a readable start on how, de Waal's Good Natured is a good book.) When I was his age I was much more aware of mechanism than of morality. For me the motivation to hack wasn't power in the social sense; it was tinkering with systems.
It took me years for my moral sense to integrate well with my intellectual side to yield a proper system of ethics. In some ways that's still going on; the older I get, the more I have learned how to be compassionate. For me, the ethical framework is given force by very specific instances of compassion. For example, I was just looking again at Project Unbreakable:
http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/
It's not like I ever thought sexual assault was ethically ok. But reading bout each one of those people gives it more emotional power.
Re: Cosmo, the God who fell to Earth
#10It's interesting to me how easy it is for some people to circumvent their ethics. This kid is intelligent enough to know what he's done is unethical but I've never been a teenage boy so I consider what would come with that feeling of discovering a sweet hack: a desire to use that knowledge to assert power above all costs.
I'm not sure it's so much "circumvent" as "it's not fully hooked up yet". Ethics are intellectual, but they're grounded in a human moral sense that is rooted in biology. (For a readable start on how, de Waal's Good Natured is a good book.) When I was his age I was much more aware of mechanism than of morality. For me the motivation to hack wasn't power in the social sense; it was tinkering with systems. It took me ye…
Without incriminating myself, let's say that maybe I've seen some files belonging to other people that I shouldn't have when I was a teenager.
At the time, I justified it easily to myself - I don't care if someone sees the contents of my hard drive, so why should it be unethical for me to root through someone else's?
I'm 28, now, and a year ago my mom reminded me that I'd said that. I was pretty embarrassed at how I'd acted, and how I justified it to myself. I hope I remember that sequence of events when I have kids.