Where Have All the Hackers Gone? | Hacker News Reader

Where Have All the Hackers Gone?

strydehax.blogspot.com

97 pointsciscoriordan20 comments

His example is a poor one. The phone system was far from open and the hacking that Woz was doing against it was very much illegal.

Instead, the availability of these types of devices (iPhone, Smartphones) has increased the level of technical knowledge in every day society. For example, there are more people that know how to jailbreak an iPhone than there are hackers. For some non-technical people, this very technical process has become something commonplace.

The reports from DARPA and the US Air Force are suspect in their relevance to this discussion. There are several factors that could weigh upon their low projections: military recruitment rate is down in the US and there is general displeasure with the government.

Also, computer science has become ubiquitous in several fields. For example, all of the majors at my engineering university are required to take some form of computer science. Creating tools and solving problems with software has become an everyday part of any engineers' tool belt. Perhaps the hackers are migrating to domain specific areas?

And, finally, that doesn't mean we should be complacent. It is still (and always will be) our charge to engage younger generations in the fulfillment and excitement that comes from solving tough problems.

A fair number of programmers I respect have broken the law.

Sometimes the law is an ass, and needs to be broken.

And sometimes you're just so damn curious you have to figure out how it works, and you break it for the rush of both solving the problem and sticking it to the man.

Most people outgrow the latter, but I would think twice about the credentials of any programmer that did not do things of questionable legality growing up.

Curiosity is to be encouraged.

A lot of the early hacking was before there were laws against it.

I did nothing illegal related to computers growing up because my family didn't even own one until I was 15 (which was 1997). I didn't know enough to cause any damage until after my freshman year of college, at which point I was legally an adult.

I am, of course, one anecdote. But I think that your test is a poor one.

I'm fairly sure I've mentioned it with respect to the high school webcam controversy before, but I think it bears repeating: read Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. I can't say much about it that wikipedia doesn't without giving things away, but I assure you that you won't be disappointed; way too relevant...

Read it online:

http://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Br...

They're still there, and they're always there. Consumer devices are always available since the age of tinkering is easier.

Tinkering people don't represent the majority of device users. If they want to learn and tinker, there are ways (e.g. Linux).

Exactly. I assume telephone was in the nearly every house in US in seventies, but not everyone became Woz and Jobs. Now computers are in the every home, and phones are in everyone's pocket. Should we expect everyone to become a hacker all of the sudden? I'd argue that now we have a lot lot more hackers than 40 years ago—and just the number of them makes them "invisible".

Again… Was US phone system open when Jobs and Woz were hacking it? If not, why is this example there.

  And most importantly, your attempts to delve into the
  mysteries of how the device functions will be punished.

Grab the SDK and delve into the mysteries.

Once upon a time, the POTS system used something called 'in-band signaling'. An example of that was really old coin telephones, where the devices would send certain tones to tell the operator which coins you had deposited. John Draper (aka Capt Crunch) exploited this in-band signaling to access the toll network, and make long distance calls as tho he had trunk signaling and origination. I assume that anything Woz was doing was similar to this. Bell Labs responded by moving the toll signaling out-of-band. Out of all this, and for other more important reasons, was born SS7.

edit: from the wiki article on SS7 ...

SS5 and earlier systems used in-band signaling, in which the call-setup information was sent by playing special multi-frequency tones into the telephone lines, known as bearer channels in the parlance of the telecom industry. This led to security problems with blue boxes. Modern designs of telephone equipment that implement out-of-band signaling protocols explicitly keep the end-user's audio path—the so-called speech path—separate from the signaling phase to eliminate the possibility that end users may introduce tones that would be mistaken for those used for signaling.

"grab the sdk...."

Man, you are doing it wrong.

The Kindle runs on Linux, so the issue is more: Why did they screw up the GPL (< version 3) to allow an open-source operating system to run on a jailed device?

In 1989, why would jailed devices be a concern for Stallman? Copyleft was still a novel and uncertain idea, used only on a few GNU projects; if the GPL's smashing popularity since '89 is a screw up, may God grant us a success!

If you're going to convince me that the sky is falling, you need to show me bits of falling sky. Arguing why it makes sense that the sky is falling is not the same thing and also not convincing.

I mean, I totally hear the point about the importance of a "computer defense department", especially in the context of the recent shots fired between google and china... But to conflate explicitly-installed software that allows admins to watch peoples' screens and monitor their activity with the existence and everyday use of devices like the iphone and kindle seems like a stretch. I think if anything, the case with this school will bring more attention to the issue -- and with any luck -- greater understanding.

Devices like the Amazon Kindle and Apple iPhone are jailed against any unauthorized consumer use, guarded by strict but unproven new federal laws against jailbreaking them.

What laws is he referring to? DCMA?

>the inherent advantage that this generation of tinkers gave America

I think he meant to write: "the inherent advantage that this generation of tinkerers gave America"

On the contrary:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22a%20person%20who...

All the hackers are busy trying to use iPhone jailbreak tools to gain root access on a MacBook. They are very confused and so am I.

doo doo doo. doo doo doo.

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