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Ezine
Ezine
Hello,
I just want to state that this article only reflects my opinion,
no blackbox or blacksun members, since you might relate me to them, state
their opinion in this article, so it's possible that their ideas and
opinions might diverge from mine. If you have any problem at all
regarding this article, the first flaming post should be attacking me and
only me.
After setting this straight, here is what I'll try to discuss in the few
lines written below, the way the media exploits the computer world and the way
they use the word hacker and finally the hackers of today.
Anyway, I think everyone will agree with what I'll be writing here,
if you are one of the those persons, I just ask you to stop for a while
and think about what I'm saying. Try to understand it, because I'm open
to hear your opinion and discuss it with you.
And I'll definitely not give you a lecture about the subject, I'll keep
this straight, small and simple as an opinion should be.
My best wishes to the readers,
We can't deny that the media rules the masses. If someone is seen as
fraud by the media, even if not being one, the chances to get their life
up and running again is really reduced. In a way that also happens in the
computer world, the world that many of us spend hours in due to our passion
for it.
How many times a journalist with little or no experience on the
subject wrote an article for a newspaper or a magazine talking about the
problems over the Internet "fear the hackers...they'll steal your credit
card #", "Hacker Group crashed 1000 computers putting company X in
financial troubles"... The word hacker is misused, I'm aware that I'm not
the first person to write about that, but I won't be the
last. Hackers are now seen as cyber-thieves, terrorists and the worst scum
you can imagine... Everything because in the headlines we see Hackers,
instead of crackers. If you prefer black-hat hackers, I think the last
term is better, since the Black and White forces show up everywhere,
when you have the power to do something you can get corrupted and use it
to do harm, or in the other hand you can just keep in the "white side" and
make things go further...
But what we have to face is that black, white, gray, X colored
hat hackers, those guys are the ones that make our world move. Those are
the ones that discover new things, get new protocols working, correct the
bugs that we might find in programs. If it weren't for the hackers heck, we
wouldn't even have Linux (hey I just pick this like an example, BSD and
other *nix variants don't come flamming me for this) not even Unix.
But nooooo, the media said "hackers are bad guys they don't deserve any
merit, they are scum" so that's the way people see them.
Unfortunately, this situation tends not to change, since such writers won't
get informed about how things really work and also because the persons
they mostly talk to think that they are hackers, are the so-called script
kiddies that are the ones looking for fame... The ones that only have to
click a mouse to cause a DoS because it's coolll... What can we do,
teach the journalists?
But hey, even if they really start knowing what's happening, where's
the sensationalism that they need in their articles? They would keep with
the old head lines because it's what it sells, "14 stupid script kiddies
clicked a mouse and got inside a company and since he didn't know what he
was doing he got busted" doesn't give the impact that "Hacker hacks into
Company" does, besides the last one is shorter.
o Hackers' of Today
.EOF