Oh my!
This Thomas C Greene guy at The Reg needs some adult supervision. Apparently he heard some signifyin’ from a guy named “Gweeds”, and he’s now an expert on hacker sellouts. Greene is immobilizedby slavish admirationin his first article, lapping at the feet of “Gweeds” like a dog. It is really shameful, and embarassing for The Reg. Some of the choice bits:
- Hacker conferences exaggerate security threats in order to get more money for sellout hackers. Oh, really? Mr. Greene can keep his head in the sand if he wants, butrational people need only look at the billions of dollars of cost incurred by the last crop of worms — all of which were created by amateur hobbyists. The threat of professional hackers is even greater, and most of the plausible scenarios considered by the defense information warfare agencies are certainly not public knowledge, let alone proffered up at conferences.
- Hackers are corrupted by greed and abandon their roots in “liberating data”. This is so pathetic. I know far more about hacking and hackers than I know about Java, and I can unequivocally say that hacking has nothing to do with “liberating data”. Silly phrases like “information wants to be free” were fun and rebellious, but nobody is actually motivated by that crap. Hackers are motivated by ego, period. Sometimes for the selfish pleasure of solving a tough technical challenge, but more often externally-directed ego. Exercising your control over the system, proving that you are smarter than everyone else, smiting a competitor, having the entire system trying to stop you but coming through with something to brag about — that is what keeps hackers going. Hackers are incredibly egotistical, and the whole idea of a “Robin Hood” hacker was just a joke hatched up by hackers to get more attention. Nobody who actually has any skills would take such crap seriously.
- Mudge, Hobbit, and Weld are sellouts. This is one of the strangest parts of the “Gweeds” rant. He makes up an inane definition of what a “true hacker” is, and then proceeds to excoriate anyone more famous than him for “abandoning” the philosophy. But if they never espoused it, how could they abandon it? I have news forGreene –hackers get respect in the community from one thing and one thing only: skills. And that is what is consistent across “sellouts” like Weld Pond, ReDragon, and especially Mudge and Hobbit. They demonstrate skills, technique, and raw mental horsepower that go far beyond the average hacker. As far as I know, none of them ever claimed to be opposed to making money, and I don’t think that any of them would have wasted valuable time arguing about “philisophical purity” when they could better spend the time sharpening skills.
Anyway, Greene got some flames, and got really defensive. He starts out by claiming that he was “just the messenger”, as if that somehow absolves him of stupidity for being so credulous in the first place. He the proceeds to launch into a paranoid rant about somebody’s brother’s cousin and the FBI or something. As if the FBI haven’t been openly recruiting hackers for decades. Greene claims to have evidence of some grand conspiracy, but strangely doesn’t offer to show us the evidence.He would make even Traficant proud.
This year’s Defcon looks to be the best one yet. The speaker lineup has some extremely technical content, far more expert speakers than years past. Unfortunately, I probably won’t be able to go this year. I could go for the Saturday and Sunday sessions (which look like the best ones anyway), but the thought of being in airports three weekends in a row is not too appealing. We’ll see…