Blackhat/Defcon Report 305
Joe Barr writes "NewsForge [ed. note: part of OSTG along with Slashdot] is running its concluding piece on the week-long Blackhat/DEFCON hackerfest in Las Vegas. Want to know how little our police/intelligence agencies seem to have learned from their failures prior to 9/11? Or how a very large goon known only as Priest prevented outright political violence at a DEFCON presentation on Civil Disobedience? Or which of the two conferences is right for you? It's all here in the Blackhat/Defcon: Final report." Reader M. Curphey writes "The Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) announced at Blackhat the release of a 'Threat Classifications' document. This document attempts to clarify web security terminology such as Cross Site Scripting, Session Fixation, Cookie poisoning, and HTTP response splitting (to name a few)."
Crimethinc (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus. No wonder he looked like he was expecting to be arrested.
Re:Just one thing that very few learn... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oxymoronic Priest Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
Civil disobedience is, by definition, illegal. That's the whole point of it.
Re:What police/intelligence agencies have learned. (Score:3, Insightful)
I think all that means is that the terrorists are going on scouting missions. IOW, scout possible targets, determine some facts about them, etc. It's the same thing militaries have done for centuries: figure out what to attack and what impact it might have.
The question is whether the targets scouted are still considered relevant by the terrorists. This is the type of stuff intelligence services need to find out, and in a timely manner. And if it is still a relevant target, find out if attacks are planned or are being planned. Get info on those plans, etc etc until an attack can be thwarted.
Now whether or not our gov't should be reacting the way it is to this info (orange alerts in NYC, Newark, Washington, etc) I dont really know. They (the gov't) might have other info not releasable to the public, and keep in mind the RNC will be at Madison Square Gardens later this month.
Re:Crimethinc (Score:1, Insightful)
Idiots like this may as well go on the Republican payroll. It's all fine to be a mindlessly enthusiastic twit, but when you have the skills and ability to do serious damage to things, you lose that option and have to THINK seriously about the consequences of your actions.
What did he think would be likely to happen in the wake of acts of political vandalism, such as he advocates? Reductions in police powers in the governtment? Reduced government action against hackers? A more permissive government attitude towards legitimate, nonviolent, nondestructive acts of protest?
In any area I can think of, the consequences of the sort of infantile tactics he advocates would be a setback, by DECADES, of any civil rights cause even remotely associated with computing and activism.
The thing that pisses me off the most about this is that the damn twit could have spent that session brainstorming with the crowd, coming up with forms of protest that both got a message out and were PERSUASIVE, while also respecting the times we live in. Any angry four year old can come up with something as inventive as breaking someone else's toys. Not to mention the fact that the authorities don't need another group of terrorists/large-scale vandals to track.
The problem, of course, is that running a session like that would require a display of a) respect b) creativity and c) intelligence, all of which this speaker seems to lack.
Protest is great, but counter-productive protest is just masturbation. And if you are reading this and getting angry at me, take a minute, step back, and think. I'm not saying not to protest, i'm saying "protest smart, not hard", if I can paraphrase the old "work smart, not hard" saying. If you are enthusiastic enough to protest, you deserve to have that protest make a real difference, a real change for the better.
Think of it as avoiding the Nader Error, which is going to great lengths to set your own cause back.
Re:What police/intelligence agencies have learned. (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you mean start to ignore terror alerts? I haven't listened to one since the beginning!
Cue the Herman Goering quote about keeping people in fear. . .
um... how little did we learn since 9/11? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Again, the Left is inciting violence (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not as one sided as you make it out to be.
Wrong opinions (Score:3, Insightful)
Free speech ends when you're inciting violence.
Re:Just one thing that very few learn... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Again, the Left is inciting violence (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never heard of militias, have you? Listen to some of the right-wing crud that they spew and you'll see how wrong your comment is.
Southern Michigan Regional Militia [michiganmilitia.org]
Militia of Montana [militiaofmontana.com]
Those are just two to get you started but feel free to do your own research.
Re:Just one thing that very few learn... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure what motivates the more talented black hats to create easy-to-use programs for script kiddies. Someone suggested that they didn't want to bother deploying them. It also occurred to me that the script kiddies would be more likely to get caught and prosecuted if anything went wrong.
Violence is both Leftist and Rightist (Score:5, Insightful)
For the same reason that the radical right are always the ones who seem to be inciting violence against their domestic enemies. Tim McVee is hardly unique in his political stance and aspirations, nor have you cited anyone on the left that equals his level of destructiveness or intent (there are such people, but CrimeThinc is hardly of that caliber. He is not advocating mass murder).
The reality is that the so-called political spectrum is more of a sphere than a line. The extreme right and far left meet and become one and the same. Consider the similiarities of Stalin and Hitler, for example. Kids blowing up toilets to protest vietnam bear a striking similiarity to skinheads defacing jewish tombstones. Republican thugs terrorizing librarians and volunteers during the Florida recount bear a striking resemblence to communists in China enforcing campus-wide political correctness vis-a-vis the One True Party(tm) system.
Radicalism is radicalism, whether dressed in a Liberal Left or Reactionary Right attire, just as religious fundamentalism is religious fundamentalism irrespective of its Christian, Jewish, or Islamic trappings.
You have simply chosen to filter your perceptions through your own political dogma, as many people on both sides of the aisle often do. However, the reality is that folks of all radical stripes, in all political, religious, social, and philosophical directions, employ similiar methods to achieve their goals, those methods correlating much more strongly to their degree of radicalism and fanaticism than their particular social, political, religious, or philosophical bent.
Hmm lots of pretending going on (Score:5, Insightful)
Only another anarchist or Fedcop would ever think that what an anarchist or Fedcop has to say is remotely interesting. I can't imagine anyone at DefCon suddenly deciding that either breaking thinks is kewl or that diversity of opinion has to be tolerated. Nor would I think that the self professed Grey-Hats are going to come out in favor of the PATRIOT act.
When we all talk to a room full of people who are our clones it's got to get pretty boring.
so how would you revolt? (Score:1, Insightful)
I might break the law by soap-boxing violent revolution, but I will do so knowing full well the consequences i am accepting if i fail to overthrow the government. Revolution is not meant to be easy, if it wasn't hard it wouldn't be effective; and regardless of lofty ideals, there is no such thing as justice - two forces collide and the stronger wins.
Re:About one of the articles posted... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Who defines what's sedition?"
Not you, and here's why.
"...Republicats are guilty of treason..."
"...for misleading Americans into war..."
"...selling the country to the Chinese..."
"...passing the Patriot Act..."
Someone who doesn't understand the errors in those phrases isn't in any position to determine sedition.
Re:How could you? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a debatable point, actually, and I think you're being a bit of a bigot (and this is from a guy who sometimes wishes much of the "South" would slip off into another dimension).
If I were a terrorist, I'd be looking for the *least* likely targets. I might even just throw a dart at a map. One of the aspects of terror is to, well, terrorize, and an implementation of random "can happen anywhere at anytime" strikes will accomplish that. So, yeah, a croipduster loaded with smallpox crashed into an anonymous waffle house in SaddleCloth, Iowa would have a pretty big effect. Especially if your current goal is to swing an election and not, say, upset financial markets.
Slight Correction in the interests of accuracy (Score:5, Insightful)
I apologize for the sloppy use of language.
If I had it to do over again, I would substitute zealotry for radicalism in the post above.
There are many people with radical notions (where radical = divergence from the society's mainstream assumptions) who are not at all fanatical and would never resort to violent means to achieve those changes (Richard Stallman is an example of someone who is radical and stubborn, but not zealous or fanatical in any real sense of the word
So, to recap: the reality is that folks of all fanatical stripes, in all political, religious, social, and philosophical directions, employ similiar methods to achieve their goals, those methods correlating much more strongly to their degree of zealotry and fanaticism than their political, social, relgiious, or phisophical bent, or their degree of divergence from the political "mainstream."
If you don't count... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the right wing is just *so* peaceful.
Re:Oxymoronic Priest Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
In a country that has no problem jailing more of its citizens than any other nation, it seems like going to prison in protest doesn't really inconvenience anyone in power.
Re:Oxymoronic Priest Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, always to start with.
A group of people staging a sit-down isn't initially illegal (your police state may vary).
Then it isn't civil disobedience yet. It's a lawful protest. Why do people insist on using the term "civil disobedience" as a synonym for "protest"?
Re:Again, the Left is inciting violence (Score:5, Insightful)
Setting bombs and robbing banks is hardly the same as smashing windows (not that I approve of either).
Discounting lone nuts like Timothy McVee
McVeigh.
(and remember that the Oklahoma City bombing was universally condemned among conservatives)
"condemned" like when Ann Coulter said "My only regret with
Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." ?
how is it that the half of America which owns guns is never the one calling for violence?
In my limited experience, the vast majority people who shoot other people tend to be in possession of guns at the time.
It seems you've never heard of (to only quote a few examples from the last 20 years, long after the Weather Underground and the SLA went out of business):