thechangelab.com

Not A Year In Review

For my first blog of the year, I thought some reflection should be in order. Instead, I found myself reminiscing about the past. In particular, my first experiences with the Internet. Note my use of the word Internet and not the word World Wide Web.

Many have heard of crackers and script kiddies. Few have heard of phone phreaks, or remember a time when the meaning of the word “geek” had an insignificant relationship to people who used computers.

My Time With The cDc

A very long, long time ago, I was in my last year of university. There, finishing off a degree that would have little use for me today. It was around that time that, I finally discovered the INTERNET. Of course, it wasn’t really the WWW that it is today. It was more like using Lynx to handle protocols such as Gopher, scanning newsgroups and the occassional time-limited anonymous chat session.

At the time, the depth of my knowledge was considerably less than it is today. However, I was much more affected in both an emotional and intellectual manner by the circulation of ideas that would spark the brain.

And so it was under these circumstances, that I originally came across the Cult of the Dead Cow. While they had posted some genuinely shocking writing, it wasn’t without merit. Here was a bunch of genuine hackers putting out their own creative writing. They also wrote about their various technical feats.

What defined them as true hackers — for people like myself — was their creative spirit. A very strong anti-authoritarian, intellectual spirit that challenged you to think for yourself.

They had their electronic publication, some even claim it to be the first e-zine. Ut was like a glowing voice in a dark wood. I had a hard time finding anything comparable being published (electronically or not) from someone who wasn’t dead. Fortunately, I did come across two. EIDOS and FTH. The former has changed a great deal since its beginnings. The latter ceased publication several years ago.

Anyway, this is about cDc. I decided to check up on their existence and found their web site at the top of a Google search.

I miss the old text-only e-zine, but that was then and this is now. Now they have a lovely page of links of “Associated SexXxee Sites“. Here are some highlights:

Lady Ada
This is one seriously technically inclined individual. She has the heart of a real hacker.
* her Wave Bubble device designed to counteract those annoying cellphones around you.
* or you can check out her Fresh Air project designed around the same objective.
* her Minty Boost device which acts as a portable USB power supply using two AA batteries.
* her USB/Serial Adapter
* her “Game Grrl A portable Nintendo game”

Whitedust Security
The self-proclaimed leading independent security news portal – and it probably is.

If you check out cDc’s Killa Appz page, you’ll find their infamous Back Orifice software. Part of what made it so famous was yet another disinformation campaign. Another piece of software written by some “hacker(s)” intent on destroying the computers of the world.

The fact remains that any software can be misused. The point is understanding why the software was written. Also, enforcing comp security will never have any solid relationship with mass media based warnings. Millions of users get infected with the oldest to the latest thing everyday. It might be useful to start taking a different approach to security.

Regardless of what happens, there’s also a sequel to Back Oriffice. It’s aptly named Back Orifice 2000. Note: it’s open source and can be found on Sourceforge.

However, for something more current and/or relevant to your friends, check out their Torpark. A customized portable Firefox app for anonymous web browsing. It uses the Tor network of onion routers.

Anyway, enough of my rambling and hope you all have a good New Year.