Do the Crime Do the Time. Dont be a cracker.

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leave it out Pooh..............the only reason you might know how to do it, was to stop it?

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Leave it out? I've been a grey hat since day one and still remain one. :) I became one not just to learn how to stop it (I'm not whitehat), but also because I was curious as to how it worked and wanted to learn so I could teach others where tutorials would not suffice.

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But if you just noticed someone had broken in your computer you'd be not certain whether (s)he still owns your computer or not despite possible countermesures.

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Still don't really agree. If I noticed someone broke into my computer I would look into their steps and see what happened. If they checked out to be fine and just curious/learning, I might notify them via the shell account email they gained off of me that I'm impressed. That level of respect would mean I wouldn't mind letting them keep the bash account so long as their ethical practices remained in line. That isn't a workplace thing, just a personal thing.

I think most of you "l33t h4x0rz" would be lieing to yourselves and everyone else if you said that you do things just for learning sake. Well why are you trying to learn things? Ahhh... the more knowledgeable you appear to others, the more of a respectable position in some cybernetic society you're in.

Also... I beleave that most of what other folks call computer related crime... is not a real crime. People act like when a site gets dafaced or yet another worm is out that its "oh so evil". But the way I see it... phyisical damage is almost non-existant unless you pop a cd-tray in and out intil the belt breaks or do something to the screens so that color quality eventually lacks or people begin to have seizures. And because actual phyisical harm to computers is almost non-existant and almost anything can be repaired in minutes... I think it's rather stupid to campair it to vandalism or toss the blame onto a company, software, the OS, some damn kid, & (ect). I get tired of that.

I mean come on, I've seen peaple get infected with MSblaster, sasser, & stuff we both know the patches were out weeks... months... before worms took advantage of these vulnerabilities. Yet alot of these people just COULD NOT step out of their pride for a moment & admit that they are the bottom the the PC food chain and are morons. They should not be real surprised when they are treated as such.

Specialist, not everyone is like you. Some of us are in this for the experience of learning, and then to give back to the community. Others, Specialist, are in it for the ego trip and the chance to berate/troll others.

I am in it because I am curious and because I enjoy teaching. Are you seriously going to say that my own thoughts and way of life is a lie? Rather pompus of you, even with your superpower of telepathy to read the minds of others.

Do not preassume why I (and yes, it's rather obvious who you were speaking about, as I'm the only person who said directly in this thread that they learned just to learn) do things and why I live my life. It's insulting.

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Originally posted here by TheSpecialist
I think most of you "l33t h4x0rz" would be lieing to yourselves and everyone else if you said that you do things just for learning sake. Well why are you trying to learn things? Ahhh... the more knowledgeable you appear to others, the more of a respectable position in some cybernetic society you're in.

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Nothing wrong with wanting to gain respect, that's human nature, but that's not what drives me. I, like Pooh, want to learn. I like disecting things (re.; hardware, systems, processes) in order to learn how they tick and come up with ways to improve it.

Another big reason I'm in infosec is the law enforcement mentality of "protection" and "investigation". No, I'm not in law enforcement, I just like figuring out how to protect my systems and services AND enjoy forensics and investigation. Maybe the protection thing is a game to try to out-smart or our-maneuver the "bad guy"...I dunno.

I'm sure there's a couple people here in it from one of these reasons as well.

Just my .00002 cents.

A friend of mine a few years back lost his RH box on the net. He was under the false guise that linux was secure out of the box and never patched it. Hence, it got "owned". He calls me up and says "Hey, here's a little bit of info, get it back if you can".

I do so, using the same techniques that the "crackers" did, *Price is Right sounds here* a WU-FTP exploit, and get root. Illegally, sure. But with the owner's knowledge and permission. Grey in action, white in nature...that's what I'd call myself.

My own intentions are to learn as much as I can, and the true definition of a hacker is that of one who wants to know "all" things about any one given subject. For computer hackers, that subject is computers, whether it's programming, networking, hardware, OS, etc... To know a LOT of things about computers, if we only learned the "good" things, we'd never know anything more than what we read in books and are taught in a school. By that same token, a person with 10 years experience in programming wouldn't know how to stop or patch a buffer overflow in a random program. That's not good. You learn everything in life through experience and more often than not, the experience comes from a bad decision, a bad action, etc...

Pros and cons with everything, computer law no different than anything else. The funny thing about those laws is the fact that these that get caught for doing "the crimes" won't serve time or be fined, but rather get offered jobs. That being said, I'll be right along with pooh...not changing my course, and continue to learn...