Introductory questions

[scarfman]

Thursday evenings this semester I have Freedom and Security in a Digital-Divided Society. Pretty much the only homework assignment last week was to go to the university blog server, create your blog, and answer a couple of questions. Following the directions for creating the blog and logging on for the first time aren't working for me. I'm pretty sure it's not any lapse on my part, because it fails whether I'm trying from home or office, with Firefox or IE. The Wordpress stylesheet doesn't even load. When I emailed my trouble to my instructor I also suggested I could answer the questions at my LJ. He didn't respond to the suggestion, but here goes.

1. What would you like your classmates and instructors to know about you? Include a picture. (For picture see this entry's icon. If you see a cartoon instead of a photo, you're looking at the Recent Entries page instead of at the page for this specific entry.)

   I work in the office of the School of Nursing, and I draw a cartoon every day and put it on the internet. I have a wife, two grown stepchildren, two stepgrandsons and one stepstepgrandson. I'm a computer science major and I want to go into website design and maintenance. I'm a student of the modern screen action-adventure hero as the natural descendent of the fireside folklore hero of all of human history up until now, which means I go on the internet to read, write and draw stories about King Arthur, Captain Kirk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. [The assignment specifies securing this answer in a password-protected post, but that assumes that I got my Wordpress blog going, whereas this is Plan B.]

2. And, based on your reading for next week's class session: What would classify different hackers into categories of White Hat, Black Hat, and Gray Hat? Does a "sneaker" qualify as a Hacker?

   Well, according to the reading, a White Hat is someone who hacks in for entertainment purposes only, without any intent to perform mischief or malice, like Matthew Broderick in War Games (though of course for him It All Went Horribly Wrong). Black Hats are hacking in with mischievous or malicious intent, like the villains in the recent Harrison Ford movie I didn't see where he runs network security for a bank. Grey Hats hack into The Man's systems for information or to perform mischief that they believe is ethically sound even if illegal, like Willow on Buffy. I'd say sneakers are paid White Hats.

Comments

[kiri-l.livejournal.com]

Nice answers, and congrats fro going back to school. =) I'm curious - why not make a new LJ account for this class?

[scarfman]

Well, in theory my university blog will get straightened out tonight during or after class.

[misterbill.livejournal.com]

Well... I disagree slightly with those definitions...

White Hat: Do no harm. Many times they are problem solvers and security experts. If their warnings are unheeded they don't feel bad if the bad guys get you because you were warned.

Black Hats: These are the bad guys they are evil. They are phishing. They are stealing identities. They are stealing credit card numbers and using them. They are doing what they are doing for criminal purposes.

Grey hats: They aren't exactly evil, more like mischievous. But they can do damage intentionally or unintentionally. They break into computers for fun. Sometimes leaving taunting evidence such as defacing a web page to prove they broke in.

I personally take issue with using the word "hack" as a synonym for malicious activity. As in "he /hacked/ into the computer" instead of "he /illegally broke/ into the computer. A hack is not an evil thing a hack could generally be a quick job that produces what is needed, but not necessarily well. Example: "I created a workaround for the buffer overflow error, Its a hack, but at least we can get that report out on time." It could also be used to mean modifying or fixing something... Example: "I spent the day hacking Firefox so it works like I want it too."

[scarfman]

I personally take issue with using the word "hack" as a synonym for malicious activity.

Well, I haven't. I use the verb for what the White Hat, in which category I expressly include sneakers, does as well as for what the Black Hat does. (I didn't expressly define sneakers as hired White Hats, because I was writing for an audience who saw that definition in the textbook, but it's apparent in context I meant it that way, innit? At least to someone who knows what sneakers means?)