A Peek At Script Kiddie Culture 470
Brian Bruns writes "NewsForge is covering an article on the Script Kiddie Culture, in an interview with my co-admin Andrew Kirch. It provides insight into a culture that not many people fully understand, or get to see."
What is there to understand? (Score:4, Insightful)
Woho! Im leet!
Re:What is there to understand? (Score:4, Funny)
addendum to topic paragraph (Score:5, Funny)
Re:addendum to topic paragraph (Score:5, Funny)
If in doubt, search google. This "SOSDG" is hosted on someones cable modem, yet claims to run DNSBL's used by "Hundreds of government sites including
In conclusion, I have my own IRC logs:
[28/1806] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
[28/1809] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
[28/1812] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
[28/1812] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
[28/1812] [msg(trelane)] this is great stuff, keep spewing
[28/1812] [msg(trelane)] funny stuff
[28/1812] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
[28/1814] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
[28/1814] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.ame
(Despite their rantings, they can only hop on IRC and point fingers when their cable modem gets attacked)
Re:addendum to topic paragraph (Score:3, Funny)
Re:addendum to topic paragraph (Score:4, Informative)
not many people fully understand, or get to see.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see (Score:5, Interesting)
If Joe Average's cable modem bandwidth is getting sucked up by some kiddie script, he should care. Especially when his ISP sends him a warning letter saying hes using up too much bandwidth when the most graphic intense site he's visited that month is CNN.com.
Bob Businessman definately should care as well. That dedicated T3 line he uses at work is being used to get information to his consumers. If the site starts to get slow due to a worm causing him to download hundreds of gigs of pr0n, not only will his consumers get angry but his employees may suffer in effeciency...
Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see (Score:5, Funny)
because they are wanking off to said 'pr0n'
Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you kidding me?
I mean, I know we're all techies here, but lets break out of our shells for a second. This matters to people who make over 40k a year. Joe Average works in a factory and lets his kids use the internet for schooling. Do you think Joe Average, who was raised on libraries and encyclopedias, cares even for a second about whether his ISP goes down for 6 hours? Joe Average has to deal with bills, healthcare, school, drugs, gangs, crime, etc. etc. Joe Average needs tax dollars spent ensuring the welfare of our society, not the welfare of Bob Businessman's T3 lines so profit margins remain high.
Putting feds on the case of script kiddies is taking away from money and manpower that our society desperately needs. We need more concern over corporate accountability and less for corporate profits.
Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see (Score:5, Insightful)
Generally I agree, except...
Bob Businessman is Joe Average's boss's boss's boss. When his T-3 line for the site that sells whatever widgets Joe Average is putting together gets sucked dry, it costs the company money. Six months later, when they have a shareholder meeting coming up, that expensive worm might cost Joe Average his job in a layoff.
It's important to recognize that the resources needed by some people aren't the resources needed by everyone. But by the same token, it's also useful to recognize when the resources sucked up by one abuse end up costing others important resources down the line.
Let us bandy words, shall we? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anywho...with that said here's my $.02:
I think that everyone posting above me has their own valid points which I shall paraphrase here.
1. We don't want money being thrown away to fight a battle that may or may not be won, if winning is even a real possibility.2. We can agree that the actions of these "script kiddies" is to some degree detrimental to business. Seeing as how s#it rolls down hill, it can also have an impact on us blue collar folks. I think it's accurate to say that the negative impact will grow and become more noticeable as time passes.
So, what kind of happy medium can be found amidst the viewpoints which say either "It's a waste of resources to fight." or "Something must be done."?
Should officials not try to trim the fat from current programs and then allocate the new resources to fight this growing problem? I'm responding here off the cuff so I sheepishly admit I don't have a prepared list of potential candidates for severence. But, therein lies my question; Where is the government and general law enforcement concentrating that is perhaps irrelevant.
I know plenty of people here can come up with a long list of things our government wastes money on. Furthermore I'll bet'cha we can get over half those involved in the discussion to agree to the slashing of this or that. What say ye pantheon of knowledge?
---
Re:Let us bandy words, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately...
The liberal voters here will say that the tax cuts for millionaires are what we should get rid of.
The conservative voters will say that services for the poor (welfare, etc) are what we should get rid of.
Neither side will agree with the other.
Re:Let us bandy words, shall we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see (Score:3, Informative)
Add to that list the front-line TSRs and CSRs who are often the first to hear of new discoveries and ignore them.
Imagine this: a young marginal power-user stumbles upon an unintentional feature that is repeatable. She can either seek approval from the software publisher, whose *SRs who aren't allowed to break from the script to actually respond to the problem properly (or they don't have the time to understand potential exploits/bugs
Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see (Score:5, Informative)
The point of DDoS is that it hits everyone. Sure we get huge numbers of DDoS attacks at work, sure none has ever taken us down. But the check that we have to write to ensure that is huge, millions a month.
Here [blogspot.com] is a take on this issue from Phill Hallam-Baker: [blogspot.com]
OK so a second bite at the same article, lets take a look at those DDoS schemes.
According to the article the ISPs are unresponsive to take down requests, the FBI do not take notice. I know that people keep making this complaint but there are high tech crimes units in the major cities and they are looking to takedown these guys. And at the moment the demand is such that DDoS is being treated as if it was a littering offense.
I think we need a better primer on how to prepare a case for law enforcement. I guess it is possible if you read the article carefully that the desk guy thought this particular person had been getting evidence by hacking.
We can't expect to do this with law enforcement in the loop every time. Lets change the model, law enforcement only get involved if the ISPs fail to act, and instead of just going after the hacker there is a liability for the ISP.
This is consistent with fire department model of government security regulations. You can do pretty much anything to your house decoration wise. Government only gets involved when safety is the issue. In particular the fire dept won't let you build a house that is a fire-trap, in part because it might set fire to buildings arround it.
Here we have ISPs that are forwarding bogons. It seems to me that this should not be that difficulty to prevent. A $500 box performing passive listening at the cable head end could sound an alert when there is a bogon attack. You don't have to look at every packet, all you need to do is to look at a sample. If you see an ethernet MAC spewing bogons you shut it down.
Another approach would be to push the bogon prevention right to the cable modem. Why on earth would these let bogon injection take place in the first place? Sure there will be some hacked modems, but DDoS is comming from hijacked machines.
Cable modems, NAT boxes and the like should have limiters built in to prevent the creation of ridiculous numbers of SYN packets or outgoing UDP packets to reserved system ports like DNS. It is pretty easy to think of numbers that should be no inconvenience to any legitimate use, and there could be an option to turn them off in any case. But why give every home user the equivalent of a loaded machine gun when they don't need or want one?
Reduce the value of your machine to a hacker, reduce the probability of attack?
How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think people watch too many movies. Or is defining 'script kiddies' as a culture an attempt to rationalize the level of ignorance we experience when trying to comprehend all of computing technology? Since nobody can be good at everything, is it a mental safety valve to create uber-computer users, who 'get it', who can do 'cool things', who are 'in the know'? Isn't this the same thing as creating Gods to explain otherwise unknown natural phenomena?
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
most of us then were total geeks that either couldn't hold his own at a jock party or was too nervous around girls. the one thing that we did have was power when it comes to telecommunications. and that power, because it wasn't to be enjoyed outside the computer, made us all arrogant little assholes.
i see nothing has changed.
of course, then we didn't call them script kiddies (which i find appropriate), we called them 'kidhacks'.
On a similar note... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who actually know what they're doing are much more dangerous, generally on the grey to white side of the law and don't bother with DDOS on somebody's little website, since if they really wanted to, they'd just take entire nations' Internet access down.
I mean, I could think of a 1/2 dozen ways to wipe out a whole country's internet access completely for a day or two (no, I'm not going into details here, but if use BGP in your work life, you can probably think of a few also), but most people who've spent the time to learn at that level also are mature enough to realize that there isn't much of a point to wanton destruction.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
The script kiddies we're talking about are those who are copy-and-pasting 0day hacks. A hack that the White Hats don't know about yet, and even most black hats don't know about yet. The big mysterious question: Just how did these kids get into the web-of-trust it takes to have this tool before the "good guys" do?
Afterall, the first "good guy" who gets this tool will hand it over to the white hat experts who will start the work on the patch that makes the hack worthless. So, the web of trust on these things has to be tight... so again, how do the new script kiddies get in the club?
Nice question! (Score:5, Insightful)
And like the messenger, they are more likely to get shot by the good guys when the let a hack loose into the wild.
Could it be that a few black (and possibly white) hatters find that they serve a purpose?
Yes (Score:5, Interesting)
People will assume they are safe from the big time terrorist dude becouse "I'm not a sereous target".
DDoS attacks against major targets use hacked cable modem users desktops.
Spammers use Worms to establish a spamming network.
ID theft resulting from the simplist of mistakes.
That stuff happening today.
When telling people how important security is:
With out script kiddies
"Why would anyone attack me?"
"Your system can be used as a launching point for all sorts of attacks"
"Yeah right."
It's hard for a person to picture how "they alone" could be be a target and they'd be right becouse they aren't alone. But the details sound like SiFi to most people and they tune you out.
With script kiddies.
"Why would anyone want to attack me?"
"Becouse your an easy target. Script kiddies need no other reason"
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Funny)
I think they're appointed by the president, and after a confirmation hearing, they're in.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
I dont know how BGP works, but I heard that way back in the day, some dude at some ISP announced that he had a
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
A well setup core router will protect your network from most bad announcements from your downstream clients, but if one of your upstream providers gives you the right bad info because their router has been screwed with, you're out of luck until a real person figures it out and takes the link down.
Then of course, all the outgoing traffic for that link cascades over to your others.... and now that many people are blocking snmp due to Cisco vulnerabilities it gets a little harder to figure problems out.
And of course, much of the incoming traffic probably still sees the downed link as a valid ASN path, and since that's beyond your control... yeah, you can get screwed pretty easily by one router on an upstream provider's network that misbehaves in just the right ways.
Truthfully, most major ISPs' NOCs are pretty fast to respond to BGP screwups, but problems caused by a mistake vs. problems caused on purpose with a little forethought and topology knowledge are two different beasties...
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want to start another hacker/cracker flamewar but I think we should reserve the term script kiddies to people who effectively do nothing more than running other people's malicious scripts.
We need to find another term for describing these immature, yet skilled, adolescents that discover vulnerabilities by themselves in order to higher their social rank. (Cf article where they talk about '0day servers' with newly found vulnerabilities ready for kiddies' next war)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Interesting)
Better term: Cyber Punk (Score:3, Interesting)
(Not to be confused with 'punk rock', the style of music that embraces the point of view: "This is shit, everything is shit, life is shit, you are shit, I am shit".)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:3, Funny)
If only that applied to the guys in the Whitehouse, Dubyas boyz.
yeah yeah troll, flamebait, whatever.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a difference between doing something, and doing something and not getting caught. Are your ideas the kind that will end up you being in a federal prison (i.e. quite pointless) or the kind where you cannot get traced (i.e. you are then in fact quite dangerous)?
there's a difference between going to the bank with a shotgun and getting a lot of money, right before being either shot dead or hauled off to prison, and figuring out some way to siphon off bank funds into your account in a way where nobody ever detects it (or only does long after you're gone).
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if you've ever associated with them, script kiddies have their own rules (mostly unspoken), trends, and even something of their own language. It may all be borne of ignorance and immaturity, but the same could be said about a number of other cultures/subcultures.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a 0day really boils down to is a mistake that a programmer made that never got corrected and therefore got distributed, but this mistake has yet to be documented in any way. White hats announce what they've discovered in the form of a patch, or at worst a security alert to the public. Black hats announce what they've discovered in the form of a malware attack.
Really... we'd like to know what motivates black hats, because we'd like to find a way to get them to play on the white team.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)
Bored children break stuff for the sheer hell of it. To seek deeper meaning here is to completely fail to understand bored children. Distract (and that's all you can do, merely distract) child A from breaking a thing, and child B will come along and break it while you're still busy with child A. There's nothing to see here. Move along.
we'd like to know what motivates black hats
You're presuming to use logic (or something similar) to understand a non-logical phenomenon. Don't work. Human emotion is a manifestly NONlinear function and additionally changes from one state to another with about the same level of predictabliity as the position and momentum of a particular subatomic particle. Fuggabouddit.
we'd like to find a way to get them to play on the white team
That way has already been found: Let them grow up. They'll get over it. Or at least most of them will. But you can never predict with certainty exactly which ones. And every year a new crop is growing.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you Dr. Spock.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to raise a child not triggering its "do the opposite of what you say" when you ask it not to do something that really is bad, is to never say no if it really isn't a problem, and when saying no out of rreal need, allways motivate the no with good arguments that the child just can not ignore the truth of.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Desire to compete coupled with a strong fear of rejection. All you have to do to 'win' is be hated.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Funny)
After R'ing TFA, I'd guess that the most efficient way to take away their motivation would be for the major ISPs to chip into a fund to get hookers for them.
Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Give a kid a felt-tip pen and he thinks he's Bastiat, give the same kid a computer and he thinks he's Kevin Mitnick.
Two implications (Score:5, Insightful)
a) Its a culture.
b) Someone would actually want to see it.
10 years ago I did the script kid thing for a bit (before having a life). Its a bunch of kids who's parents are not really involved in their lives, and have nothing better to do than look for a digital mate by typing "A/S/L?!?!??! and talking about their privates.
I could seriously care less.
Re:Two implications (Score:5, Funny)
a) Its a culture.
So is yogurt.
b) Someone would actually want to see it.
Somebody somewhere paid money to watch Gigli as well.
Did you miss the part... (Score:5, Insightful)
Try a little reading comprehension first.
h4h4h4h4h4 (Score:4, Funny)
_xXx_h4x0r3rZer0_xXx [#31337] d00d sl4shd0t p0st1d 0ur sh1zzl3 m4h n1zz73
XxX-|-Ne()-|-XxX [#31337]
XxX-|-Ne()-|-XxX [#31337] l4m3rz!@_!@
A peak at script kiddie culture.. (Score:5, Funny)
Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)
Bahh, these kids today... (Score:5, Funny)
Takes the fun out of being a kid if you ask me. Hmmmpphh
WTF (Score:3, Interesting)
Just how do you stop a DDoS? (Score:5, Interesting)
An admin whose network is being DDoSed really doesn't have much hope of doing anything. Their inbound communication line to the outside world is being flooded with so much garbage information, the signals that they want to get over that line are simply drowned out. Incoming connections can't get a turn going down the pipe, so they time out. He's powerless, everything in his shop is nice and secure, but can't function without geting any useful requests. That poor admin can call his ISP... but there's really not much the ISP can do from their side of the line.
The real problem in a DDoS attack is not that the final victim's security has gone wrong, but the security of other computers elsewhere on the Internet have been compromised, and they've been turned into zombies contributing to the DDoS flood. The DDoS will not subside until nearly all those machines are all patched, but that's not something the victim's people can do. They have to wait for the Anti-Virus providers and software providers to knock down the flamethrowers that are all being shot in the same direction.
Any time you're relying on third parties who don't work for you to save your business, you're really up a creek and are throwing yourself on the mercy of the tech world. Hopefully they'll save you in time, because there's really not much you can do from your own datacenter.
Re:Just how do you stop a DDoS? (Score:3, Interesting)
It slows things down, to a crawl or a dead stop, its irritating, and all you can do is sit it out, but in the end, what did it really do, again from the admins perspective? Nothing, it didn't do anything. You don't now have to worry about machines being used as zombies or otherwise compromised and there's next to no cleanup. And as for the
Re:Just how do you stop a DDoS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just how do you stop a DDoS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sniff the garbage, analyze it, block IPs somewhere upstream. Worst case, if the zombies are randomly spoofing IP addresses you could still trace them back hop by hop. A giant pain in the ass, but possible. Steve Gibson has a great article [grc.com] about dealing with a DDoSing script kiddie.
Baseball BATS ! (Score:5, Funny)
Translation (Score:5, Funny)
reckognized = recognized
mne = me
Im = I'm
andd = and
gfod = god
Damn... I sure as hell hope you're not a programmer at your job. If so, I'd love to see some of your code
#!/usr/been/purl
opin(INFILE,"/etc/paswd") || die("Fil naught fownd");
Sorry about making fun of you, please don't bring your dad to my house.
Re:Translation (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Translation (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Baseball BATS ! (Score:3, Interesting)
Law and Order Episode (Score:3, Interesting)
This young white dude, computer programmer family man is found shot dead. In his house. With an exotic WW-II German pistol.
The crack team of Briscoe and Green do their leg work, and they come across an old black dude who is somehow connected to the young white dude in a financial scam. The cops think "salt and pepper" team and one crime guy turning on his partner.
The D.A.'s off
Re:Law and Order Episode (Score:4, Insightful)
Now police are the only ones authorized to provide consequences or even make judgements which means anything that doesn't have critical mass slips under the radar.
Re:Baseball BATS ! (Score:5, Funny)
Your revenge is measured in pounds, mine is measured in grains.
Re:Baseball BATS ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Baseball BATS ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Baseball BATS ! (Score:4, Funny)
You *did* check to see if he wasn't a card-carrying member of the NRA, did you?
Not a culture (Score:5, Insightful)
I think I have a comparison to sum this up.
Script Kiddies is as much a Culture as 1337 5p34k is a Language.
Re:Not a culture (Score:3, Insightful)
When I was 15 I had a friend give me a few scripts which i ran randomly for a few days. I didn't go to chat rooms for that stuff. I didn't talk online with those people, and I didn't become involved in the alliances of groups. I was given a program, and I used it to get me some earthlink passwords. That's a script-kiddie.
The des
bah (Score:4, Funny)
"Dude that DOS attack was so seven-three-three-plus sign!"
Re:bah (Score:3, Funny)
Innate Security of Windows vs Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading this I knew that SOMEONE would bring it up, so I might as well be the first
I think that as linux sits right at this moment, it does make one smarting to be using it, simple because it requires the user to be more aware of their system. I do not see this changing in the near future either, not because of the technical inability of linux to emulate Windows automagic configuration, but because the people who write the software do not seem to want that (I know I don't).
So does this mean Linux is more secure by default? I would have said yes if you asked me a week ago, but this last weekend I was at a LAN party and installed Linux on several machines of friends who were interested in learning about it. What I saw made me realize that in the hands of an average (l)user, Linux can be LESS secure
The thing is, even after my lecure I still had people choosing root passwords like "poopoo" and "iforgotit". Not only that, after a brief tutorial on how to do basic system administration through YaST (I installed SuSE 9 on their boxen), I had at least 3 people go in and turn on every single network service that was offered. One of these people even set up his box as an anonymous FTP server with read and WRITE priviliges to the root directory!
At the same time I had another guy logging on to IRC as root and downloading files, while I was taking care of these machines someone else had already created a user account and given the user name and password out to several people in his AIM buddy list.
I'm the last person to say that we should include less software with a distrobution. I think the fact that most distorbutions contain a complete operating environment is a good thing, but with a little bit of knowledge these people had already made their system much much less secure than a windows box with the security updates applied would have been.
The whole point of that rant being (other than just getting that off my chest), as linux becomes more popular I can easily see scripts writen to take advantage of clueless linux users just the same as there are scripts to take advantage of clueless windows users.
wasn't this... (Score:3, Funny)
Society Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Society Problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I've known quite a few kids/teens who got into loads of mischief with their PC, despite having otherwise caring and pretty observant parents.
Their folks were just sucked into the idea that their kids spending a lot of time on the computer had to be a "good thing", since they were learning "useful skills" and "doing something more educational than sitting around, watching TV".
There are plenty of things to blame parents for, but this is probably not really one of them. If you're the parent of a kid who is of "above average intelligence" and generally seems to stay out of trouble (not doing drugs and partying all night long, etc. etc.), and you're not too computer literate yourself -- just how much are you supposed to do when he/she figures out how to DoS corporate networks with his/her newfound online buddies?
Exactamundo (Score:5, Insightful)
Here in a decent-sized city in the (yay) midwest, the evening activities available to those under eighteen are: bowling, cruising, wandering the streets aimlessly, and, ummm, well that's pretty much it.
Everything in town closes at 9:00. *Public* parks close. There's a constant crackdown on 'cruising' for some reason. There's an 11:00 curfew for everyone under-18.
So, the choices for a kid growing up around here are: 'sit in your room all evening with your computer' or 'break some sort of law'. Apparently, now our fearless leaders have found a way to make 'sitting in your room' against the law as if they would rather these kids be roaming the streets vandalizing cars and buildings. Great.
At least, this way, they are actually learning some things about computers and causing *very* little damage in the process. I think we all need to be a little more realistic: kids cost money and destroy things. The fact that *the internet* isn't a little more kid-proof should be of more concern to everyone than the slightly-less-than-moral decisions made by a bunch of teenagers.
*cue Steve Irwin aussie accent* (Score:5, Funny)
We musn't approach too quickly or we'll startle the little feller...
Configure your router/firewall correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Configure your router/firewall correctly (Score:3, Informative)
Back in general config:
Where the first two statements allow outbound packets with source addresses of 10.42.101.0/24 and 192.168.1.0/24 and the final statement (match all) denies any packet for which the src address was not matched in the previous two statements.
I
The thing that gets me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Like the attacks on the root servers, well done, bring the domain name system down, now update your hosts file by hand when you want to visit a website/chat on irc to your mates about how 31337 you are.
It doesn't sound right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people on IRC attack conference line services? Oh yes, I've seen it being done several times, and FoF is something of a wheel in this scene. Are said hijacked conference lines used for neferious purposes? I'm sure once in a while, but really they are mostly used for the purposes of socialization... same as has been the case with phreaking the past.
What do people do the first time they phreak? They call a faraway place and talk to someone just because it is neat to talk to someone in England, or Fiji or somewhere far away without cost.
What is the primary use of these phreak'd conference lines? Socialization, a way for people who are geographically distant who have got to know each other on IRC to talk to each other without cost. Believe you me, the content of these conversations is far more likely to contain dreary e/n stuff rather than Plots To Take Over The World.
The intimation that this culture could somehow be for sale to nefarious people and powers is frankly outrageous and hysterical at the very same time.
Now if only these kids had some direction.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know script kiddies are the bottom feeders of the hacker/cracker world, but most are still very young. But they obviously have enough technical knowledge to cause alot of trouble, and channeled in the right direction they could probably grow up to be fairly proficient developers and really become an asset to the tech community.
But then maybe I'm just being naive and optimistic.
Re:Now if only these kids had some direction.... (Score:3, Interesting)
You're not asking to get flamed; you're asking to get volunteered to start a mentoring program.
Kiddie sure fits (Score:3, Funny)
Script Kiddie Culture? (Score:5, Funny)
Script kiddie "Culture???" (Score:5, Insightful)
Vandalism is vandalism, and crime is crime, no matter how you dress it up. Criminals have a long history of pretending to walk to the beat of a different drummer, being misunderstood, put-down, trod on, etc.; but at the end of the day, they're just fucking criminals looking for a scapegoat instead of taking responsibility for their crimes.
Re:Script kiddie "Culture???" (Score:5, Insightful)
They meet every criteria for a looser definition of "culture", such as one might describe a hacker "culture" or a sports fan "culture". Of course, they aren't a seperate culture like "US culture" or "French culture", but from context, most people won't mistake the two.
You seem to be seeing an implicit claim that "all cultures are equally valuable", which is a post-modern conception. While there are some academics who would take it down to the finer-grained culture definition (e.g., "hacker" and "ecstasy"), most people apply that only to the coarser-grained one ("French", "Chinese", etc.). Most people would agree that there definately are some cases where one [fine-grained] culture is clearly inferior to another, so by calling the script kiddies a "culture" doesn't logically imply that there is a claim that their actions are OK because all cultures are equal. (There are even some atavists like myself who reject post-modernism entirely; makes it easier to ID implicit post-modernism it when I see it then those who are steeped in it.) Given a choice between a person joining script kiddie culture or joining a sports culture, I know which is more likely to turn out well for both the person and culture at large.
Thus, there are also graffiti cultures. I'm unsure about NAMBLA, I have no idea whether they qualify as a culture, but I doubt it. Similarly for "free speech activists"... other then similar beliefs on free speech issues, that doesn't otherwise imply an outlook, a unique jargon, dress patterns, frequent organized or semi-organized social encounters, etc. that one would normally associate with a "culture". (Script kiddies are odd in that their associations are strictly online, but their demographic similarity, speech patterns, thought patterns, and online meetings are enough, I'd say. Note I'm not trying to carefully define "culture" in this sense since it would be very difficult to match what me mean by the term.)
Re:Script kiddie "Culture???" (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't have a problem per se with the distinction between a formal and/or macro culture, vs. an informal microculture. The problem I see, though, boils down to this: You say,
"Most people would agree that there definately are some cases where one [fine-grained] culture is clearly inferior to another, so by calling the script kiddies a "culture" doesn't logically imply that there is a claim
Re:Script kiddie "Culture???" (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Script kiddie "Culture???" (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, a fellow student of mine is doing his thesis in Urban Planning on that very topic. Mostly he's looking at how graffitti and tagging are an attempt to claim public space in an increasingly privatized world.
Vandalism is usually a reaction to something. Instead of bitching, if you find out what it's a reaction to and then see what you can do to address the issue, you'll have a lot more success and peace in your life. It may not always be something under your control, but the gut reactions we tend to have to these types of acts often simply make the root causes worse, and perpetuate the situation.
Appropriately timed article (Score:5, Funny)
Posted by timothy on Saturday March 06, @06:03PM
We all know "5cr1p7 k1dd13z" don't have much of a social life, so there should be plenty of them around to comment on this article on a Saturday night. The Slashdot editors are smarter than a lot of people want to give them credit for.
Paul Vixie quoted in the article (via a link) (Score:5, Informative)
'Recommendation: upgrade your peering requirements to include language like:
Each peer agrees to emit only IP packets with accurate
source addresses, to require their customers to do likewise,
and to extend this requirement to all other peers by $DATE.
Where DATE = (now() + '6 months') or some other negotiated value.
Peering agreements are so thick with political BS, they can't even stop ISP's like UUNet who are the biggest spam friendly ISP's around.
Basically everyone is trying to use standards for protocols to correct this, engineers trying to correct political problems.
nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
I also remember when winnuke came out. It was nearly impossible to use the internet for about 6 weeks, until microsoft got a patch out. I put a linux machine up as a firewall and logged all of the attempts. It was like people were just winnuking all of the available ip space. After winnuke, it was teardrop, then smurf. I'd never seen a windows machine crash so fast.
ahh...the good old days. I'm suprised this is just now getting attention. It was no big deal when single computers would crash all over the internet, but when CNN.com or AOL.com gets attacked, it's a big deal all of the sudden.
Hm. Kinda like school yard bullies, but. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting!
Until now, the idiocy of the school yard jerk was something you had to put up with when you were a kid, but thankfully left behind when you graduated. But now juvenile crap overflows into the 'real' world, and can affect even the most insulated ivory tower type. Is this the first time?
I remember bullies and morons in school. The 'play'ground held a unique undercurrent of threat and horror for me as a kid. Going to school included genuinely believing that every day there was the possibility that you might be tortured and murdered by some half-wit big kid with a cruel streak, and that the safe world of adult supervision was unaware of most of the hells being perpetrated. Being a kid was a horror in many ways.
So what can be done about the skript-kiddie 'threat'?
Zip. Let the adult world suffer, I say. Think of it as payment for forcing kids through such a horrific 'education' system. There are only two other institutions which are so similar in structure and ideology, and they are the military and the penal system. School sucks, and aside from the handful of friends I made there, I hated nearly every aspect of it. The most valuable lessons I learned were how to survive it. Little else was of much use except shop class, typing class, art class and any time where there happened to be one of those very rare adults who inspired. You know the ones I mean. The good teachers who somehow defied the system and taught you valuable lessons in the face of all the state-ordained mind control. (Learn how to Obey and be Bored out of your mind doing repetetive tasks. A robot factory cranking out Perfect Workers.)
I also think it's neat that the Skript Kiddies are the geek version of 'Moe' type bullies. There's an ironic balancing in effect there somehow. .
-FL
Better explanations available? (Score:5, Insightful)
Some understandable explanations would be much appreciated...
Re:AOL H@x0rZ! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:You don't know you're born. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Being a script kiddie... (Score:3, Funny)
Bah, back in my day, i had to copy it by hand from a book into qbasic on windows 3.11. None of this fancy copy and paste bs. An i liked it.
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, essdodson! Heeeeeeeey, essdodson! Want to see a monkey? Do you want to see a funny funny monkey? Want to see the funnnnnnny funny monkey monkey?
*holds up a mirror*
essdodson: *delighted squeal*