I hate hackers
I am working on a contract in IT Security and Compliance, which is generally pretty boring. (Eh, it pays the bills.) But coincidentally, this week on Australia's Four Corners news documentary site there was a feature about hacking, cyber-threats and computer security. It featured some big trade event in Los Vegas where all these uber-geeks come together and try and hack into systems.
Anyway, this has lead to the realisation that I really hate this whole computer security business. This documentation I'm working on is being driven by a 460 page compliance report, which goes into the whole business of security, anti-virus, best practice, and so on - and I can't help but think what a massive waste of resources and time it all is. And it's because there are a lot of people out there who for some reason think that hacking into computer systems is 'clever' or 'cool' or something. Why don't they do something useful? And then there's the f****ing CCP who have a huge state-sponsored hacking department, the existence of which they routinely deny.
What a crock and total waste of human productivity this whole thing is. You have entire companies, like Symantec, who have thousands of executives on big salaries, who are just basically parasitic on all this nefarious and totally useless activity.
M'eh. If I didn't have bills to pay I would simply walk away from this although fortunately for me it's a short-term contract and it will be finished fairly soon. But it's all a load of complete bollocks as far as I am concerned.
Anyway, this has lead to the realisation that I really hate this whole computer security business. This documentation I'm working on is being driven by a 460 page compliance report, which goes into the whole business of security, anti-virus, best practice, and so on - and I can't help but think what a massive waste of resources and time it all is. And it's because there are a lot of people out there who for some reason think that hacking into computer systems is 'clever' or 'cool' or something. Why don't they do something useful? And then there's the f****ing CCP who have a huge state-sponsored hacking department, the existence of which they routinely deny.
What a crock and total waste of human productivity this whole thing is. You have entire companies, like Symantec, who have thousands of executives on big salaries, who are just basically parasitic on all this nefarious and totally useless activity.
M'eh. If I didn't have bills to pay I would simply walk away from this although fortunately for me it's a short-term contract and it will be finished fairly soon. But it's all a load of complete bollocks as far as I am concerned.
Comments (26)
Who knows, maybe the Y2K fear partly drove the economic boom of the nineties. Maybe all that work was necessary, maybe it wasn't, but it generated lots of low-physical-waste activity and kept people happy and engaged.
In his essay 'In Praise of Idleness' from around 1915, Bertrand Russell proposed that we should benefit from our increased productivity by sharing the work and wealth around, so that everybody worked only about sixteen hours a week. There seems to be too much greed around for that to happen so the next best thing may be relatively harmless make-work activities, to stop all the wealth from ending up in the hands of the running-dog capitalist pigs that own the means of production.
Oh that's for sure - but there was a big crash afterwards. The bubble effect.
Not if you can earn/lose huge sums of money. #FollowTheMoneyTrail
One only needs security if it is worth cracking. You seem to think that what you are doing is something different from what hackers do, but bankers and bank robbers have the exact same interest - money.
If Y2K had a bubble burst, then the inevitable loss of trust and integrity, of monetary transactions on the internet, will be akin to a 1000 year flood.
We are going to need a bigger boat.
You forgot sex. Other than that, a moment of rare agreement.
The hell it's not!
Problem mostly solved (depending on what programs you use).
Then there's always VM-ware.
My first ever tech-writing job, which was in 2004, I wrote a kind of mini-history of the Internet, starting from DARPA in the 1970's. At the time, I was amazed by how clever the basic design of TCP/IP is - Vincent Cerf and the others who devised it, were incredibly clever. But had they known what was coming (and who could?) then there would have been a lot more thought put into security and authentication from the beginning. But it was designed by scientists for defense communications, not for a interconnected worldwide commerce network, so the chance got missed.
I've been in the internet industry since the beginning - very much a bit player throughout - and it really is a two-edged sword. It has brought incredible benefits by way of communication and knowledge sharing, but it has a shadow side, and sometimes I wonder if the shadow is going to overwhelm the light.
Interesting. Now that you mention it, maybe human behavior in the internet can provide a good working model on how social norms in a new community develop.
It can go something like, at first, everyone is shy but eventually starts exploring the limits of what one can do. It develops into a free-for-all game, but then it gets out of hand and rules are gradually established to determine which set of behaviors are acceptable. However, the lack of monopoly of control/violence in the internet makes it especially difficult for one party to dictate the behavior of the rest of the community. Or something like that.
It could also give us an idea on the inner workings of humanity in its rawest and unhindered forms.
That is unfortunate but also true. The internet normalises a lot of activities and behaviours which the wise would do well to avoid.
I'm pretty sure this sense in which the word ''hacking'' could be used is not the sense in which the OP poster uses it, since clearly,hacking in this sense is not something anyone would have any reason to oppose.
[quote=Wayfarer]
And it's become normalised, we've lost sight of the fact that theft and destruction of property are actually unethical behaviours.
[/quote]
I wouldn't go that far. It's just that criminality is always with us as a species, so we take it seriously and minimize our risk. It does suck that we have to build so many fences and walls, literally and metaphorically, but "so it goes."
I was reading an article on a journalist who covers IT, whose Apple ID, and then all of his online files associated with it, were wiped out by a hacker - just because they could be. He never knew who did it, or why it was done. And that kind of thing is happening every day. (I know it's totally useless my kvetching about it, I just wanted to vent.)
The real story of Stuxnet
http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet
Inside the Cunning, Unprecedented Hack of Ukraine’s Power Grid
https://www.wired.com/2016/03/inside-cunning-unprecedented-hack-ukraines-power-grid/
NATO Recognizes Cyberspace as New Frontier in Defense
http://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-to-recognize-cyberspace-as-new-frontier-in-defense-1465908566
We had a cyberlocker attack today. Some lady in a branch office lost a lot of correspondence and other files. Of course had the procedures been better they would have been backed up. But it means someone has s lot of work to do, explanations to give, ground to make up. For nothing, basically.