u r c0nnected 2 cid Viscous

c0nnected 2 cid Viscous

okay. maybe i was a little hard on good ol' mr. levy, considering who he is and all. it just bothers me that people have no problem throwing the word 'hacker' around when talking about computer break-ins, but unless you go out and find independent forms of media (which i encourage you to do, anyway--go get as many sources as you can...more points of view.) you'll never hear the term applied to a hacker doing good things.

a hack is a clever solution to a problem. that's it. completely neutral. so, if a problem is getting video frame rates up to speed, it would be a hack. one would be hacking the video system of a computer (in one respect or another).

now, on the other hand, if the problem is how to get forty million credit card numbers out of a database (yes, pun is intended), then the solution to the problem would still be a hack, but instead of hacking video subroutines, you'd be hacking a database system to do something it was not originally designed to do.

imho, the person(s) who took those names and numbers (which should _never_ have been chillin' in cardsystems solutions' computers in the first place) probably did _not_ come up with a clever new exploit to get the info.

it's possible, mind you, but not bloody likely. it's far more plausible that he, she, or they used some canned attack discovered by someone else, and it worked because of lax security on the part of cs solutions.

i dunno. i guess i didn't mean to rake you through the coals like that, but i'd like to see more powerful (i.e. mainstream) journalists showing both sides of the story before its too late.

--cid

0wn your tongue