great article on computer security

A french hacker collected a lot of information about Twitter from Twitter employee accounts and sent it to TechCrunch. I especially liked the hacker's extreme but appropriate advice (in an apology letter translated from French):

I did not do this to profit from the information. Security is an area that fascinated me for many years and I want to do my job. In my everyday life, I help people to guard against the dangers of the Internet. I learned the basic rules .. For example: Be careful where you click the files that you download and what you type on the keyboard. Ensure that the computer is equipped with effective protection against viruses, external attacks, spam, phishing … Upgrading the operating system, software commonly used … Remember to use passwords without any similarity between them. Remember to change them regularly … Never store confidential information on the computer …

The Anatomy of the Twitter Attack (h/t Schneier)

There's a takeaway at the end of the article that's good advice too. I'm not sure this guy shares the hacker ethic but TechCrunch also has to deal with the ethical question.

who writes free software?

If you're a FOSS contributor, you're about 30 y.o. almost exclusively male (sic) from North America or Western Europe, with 12 years of programming experience and spending about 10h/week on 2 or 3 FLOSS projects. You feel strongly that the hacker community is the primary source of your identity.

* You're either self-taught (40%) of have been formally IT trained (51%).
* There are good chances (40%) that you're paid while contributing.
* Your primary motivation lies in your ability to express your creativity
* You belong to one of the following 4 clusters (names are MTG's not that of the study), identified along your secondary motivations.

[ 25% ] The Professional: (86% are paid) You need FLOSS for work-related issues
[ 27% ] The Hobbyist: You need FLOSS for non-work related issues
[ 29% ] The Intellectual: You like to improve your skills and need/like intellectual stimulations
[ 19% ] The Altruist: You like to give to the community and believe code should be free/open

Contrary to the mainstream sociological belief, extrinsic rewards (money) does not decrease your intrinsic motivation (here your feeling of creativity).

Why Hackers FLOSS

These criteria sound a little too familiar. The most interesting thing to me is "you feel strongly that the hacker community is the primary source of your identity".

Here's the longer paper the above post was summarizing-- Why hackers do what they do: Understanding Motivation and Effort in Free/Open Source Software projects

I'll have to read the whole essay when I get a chance.

hackers and the hacker ethic

This will probably be my last post (cut and paste really, at least I fixed some links!) from the jargon file. I plan to start posting more personal anecdotal remarks, relating open source and free software stories.

hacker

n. [originally, someone who makes furniture with an axe] 1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. 2. One who programs enthusiastically (even obsessively) or who enjoys programming rather than just theorizing about programming. 3. A person capable of appreciating hack value. 4. A person who is good at programming quickly. 5. An expert at a particular program, or one who frequently does work using it or on it; as in `a Unix hacker'. (Definitions 1 through 5 are correlated, and people who fit them congregate.) 6. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example. 7. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations. 8. [deprecated] A malicious meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. Hence `password hacker', `network hacker'. The correct term for this sense is cracker.

The term `hacker' also tends to connote membership in the global community defined by the net (see the network and Internet address). For discussion of some of the basics of this culture, see the How To Become A Hacker FAQ. It also implies that the person described is seen to subscribe to some version of the hacker ethic (see hacker ethic).

It is better to be described as a hacker by others than to describe oneself that way. Hackers consider themselves something of an elite (a meritocracy based on ability), though one to which new members are gladly welcome. There is thus a certain ego satisfaction to be had in identifying yourself as a hacker (but if you claim to be one and are not, you'll quickly be labeled bogus). See also geek, wannabee.

This term seems to have been first adopted as a badge in the 1960s by the hacker culture surrounding TMRC and the MIT AI Lab. We have a report that it was used in a sense close to this entry's by teenage radio hams and electronics tinkerers in the mid-1950s.


hacker ethic

n. 1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. 2. The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft, vandalism, or breach of confidentiality.

Both of these normative ethical principles are widely, but by no means universally, accepted among hackers. Most hackers subscribe to the hacker ethic in sense 1, and many act on it by writing and giving away open-source software. A few go further and assert that _all_ information should be free and _any_ proprietary control of it is bad; this is the philosophy behind the GNU project.

Sense 2 is more controversial: some people consider the act of cracking itself to be unethical, like breaking and entering. But the belief that `ethical' cracking excludes destruction at least moderates the behavior of people who see themselves as `benign' crackers (see also samurai, gray hat). On this view, it may be one of the highest forms of hackerly courtesy to (a) break into a system, and then (b) explain to the sysop, preferably by email from a superuser account, exactly how it was done and how the hole can be plugged -- acting as an unpaid (and unsolicited) tiger team.

The most reliable manifestation of either version of the hacker ethic is that almost all hackers are actively willing to share technical tricks, software, and (where possible) computing resources with other hackers. Huge cooperative networks such as Usenet, FidoNet and the Internet itself can function without central control because of this trait; they both rely on and reinforce a sense of community that may be hackerdom's most valuable intangible asset.

(from Dict.org)

Eternal September and Godwin's Law

I'm going to write a few more posts introducing people to geek culture. Not that I'm an expert on it, but I've been on the net as a technician, sysadmin or programmer consistently since '95.

Usenet predates the Internet and a few of its rules have been adopted for web discussions. Tech people who have been on the net a long time have recognized certain patterns in dialog and interaction on the net. These aren't the types of conversations had by 'sane' people in 'formal' discussion. This is the raw meat of human expression, where desires are allowed to run a bit too wild probably because of an often assumed anonymity. Also in IRC if you can't come up with interesting or relevant rhetoric a lot of hackers would prefer you stay quiet. At some point or another the more adept hackers make their own elite domains where they can quickly get the type of information they need and speak immediately to other experts. Note that for programmers on the net another programmer isn't an 'expert' because of something on paper, it's all about problem solving ability and demonstrating knowledge. A lot can be gleaned from the information sent over the wire and as a culture, hackers have made a few of their own, often unstated, rules. Godwin's Law is an example of one such rule, another that's commonly assumed on link sharing sites these days is that you shouldn't use link sharing sites for self promotion. Collectively I guess these rules are usually called netiquette. More likely though, whoever is in control of some resource, the tech in charge, will have whatever rules he wants and define what is going to happen where. If he makes sane rules, people stick around, if he makes crazy rules, people take off. In that way everything is fairly democratic.

Anyhow, at some point in USENET history (September 1993 supposedly) the people who tried to have some control over this beast they had created realized their method of acculturation was getting shot to hell. It used to be that students got on the net at universities for the first time every September but as the net became ubiquitous, there was no longer one singular timeperiod for "newbies" to arrive. Ever since then the net in some ways is just one big free for all. So those who have been using these networks for quite some time refer to this stage as Eternal September.

The most important thing to remember about hackers on the net is that they are all problem solvers. That's their job and their passion. If you just think on that for a while everything else makes sense (or nonsense, in either case you start to understand).

The average user of the Internet is no longer a hacker (or even a geek probably) but these are still the people shaping the net. (well, even the programmer pool has been diluted as people pursue programming for the money instead of as a peculiar obsessive outgrowth of personality)

I love this portrait of J. Random Hacker.

geeks and neophilia

More jargon file definitions for geeks who don't know they're geeks.

geek n. A person who has chosen concentration rather than conformity; one who pursues skill (especially technical skill) and imagination, not mainstream social acceptance. Geeks usually have a strong case of neophilia. Most geeks are adept with computers and treat hacker as a term of respect, but not all are hackers themselves - and some who are in fact hackers normally call themselves geeks anyway, because they (quite properly) regard `hacker' as a label that should be bestowed by others rather than self-assumed.

One description (http://www.darkwater.com/omni/geek.html) accurately if a little breathlessly enumerates "gamers, ravers, science fiction fans, punks, perverts, programmers, nerds, subgenii, and trekkies. These are people who did not go to their high school proms, and many would be offended by the suggestion that they should have even wanted to."

Originally, a `geek' was a carnival performer who bit the heads off chickens. Before about 1990 usage of this term was rather negative. Earlier versions of this lexicon defined a `computer geek' as one who eats (computer) bugs for a living - an asocial, malodorous, pasty-faced monomaniac with all the personality of a cheese grater. This is often still the way geeks are regarded by non-geeks, but as the mainstream culture becomes more dependent on technology and technical skill mainstream attitudes have tended to shift towards grudging respect.

Correspondingly, there are now `geek pride' festivals (the implied reference to `gay pride' is not accidental).

See also propeller head, clustergeeking, geek out, wannabee,terminal junkie, spod, weenie, geek code.

neophilia

The trait of being excited and pleased by novelty. Common among most hackers, SF fans, and members of several other connected leading-edge subcultures, including the pro-technology "Whole Earth" wing of the ecology movement, space activists, many members of Mensa, and the Discordian/neo-pagan underground. All these groups overlap heavily and (where evidence is available) seem to share characteristic hacker tropisms for science fiction, music, and oriental food. The opposite tendency is "neophobia".

"interesting"

interesting adj. In hacker parlance, this word has strong connotations of `annoying', or `difficult', or both. Hackers relish a challenge, and enjoy wringing all the irony possible out of the ancient Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Oppose trivial, uninteresting.

from the Jargon file on dict.org [source query]

Linux hackers usually have a program called "dict" installed on their systems. They run it from the shell ("command line" or "terminal" for the laypeople). The devil's dictionary usually has my favorite output but for this term the jargon file is the most insightful.