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They wink at the fact that the hacker community has changed, but Phrack is also (afaik?) still run by old fogies who don't necessarily reflect "new" hacker comm

They wink at the fact that the hacker community has changed, but Phrack is also (afaik?) still run by old fogies who don't necessarily reflect "new" hacker communities. It could be that the "community" already has its own new "Phrack". One found only on live-streamed dark-web sites, or podcast, or whatever passes for a party line these days. The world is more antagonistic to the Black Hat ethos now. Those in the West that have gotten fat off of bug bounties and infosec contracting may not have anything to do with "real hacking" now. They probably assume the hacker community will always be anglo-centric. But I'm sure Russia and China is rife with underground wares, as is probably Brazil and large swaths of Eastern Europe. Many hackers are probably inspired more by religion or nationalistic fervor than a bug bounty, yet they still need to research to perform epic feats and compromise national defenses. Who knows what communities lie outside the domain of a 36 year old text periodical? The net is vast and infinite.

sgt 5y ago
I think someone on HN would then know about it.
mathverse 5y ago
The community is english centric not anglo-centric.Eastern Europe is already pretty much part of the West unless you mean different kind of Eastern Europe (Belarus,Ukraine..) China,Russia,Brazil think of exploits and exploitation techniques as wares to keep or use as weapons.There is not much sharing or exchange of ideas.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  One definition of "anglo-" as a prefix is literally just a fancy (or shorter) way of saying "English-". The Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian states see exploits mainly as weapons. As does the US state.... The question is whether a hacker culture apart from state control exists, of hackers interested in ideas for their own sake/the challenge/the lulz. Without being in those scenes or even speaking those languages, I couldn't say. (But maybe you have knowledge?) As in above parts of these comments, threads where people wonder if the corresponding cultures in the USA have been entirely "neutered" by state and corporate involvement, the question is not irrelevant to the US or European or English-speaking worlds either.
  - mathverse 5y ago
    That was the basis of my comment.That the hacker culture does not really exist in those countries like it used to (it still does?) in the West. The scene is motivated by self interest and is afraid to lose exploits/techniques that they can trade for $$$ and power.
    - bserge 5y ago
      Oh yeah, what's your level of Russian or Chinese?
      - mathverse 5y ago
        Conversational mandarin.Was not really that hard to learn when you are almost native speaker of Korean.
- bserge 5y ago
  Oh no, Russia is still a veritable bastion of sharing. It's the one place where you can get clean, good Adobe CC shit conveniently packaged in a good old Master Collection format. Torrent forums without the ridiculous ads and popups. The only place I could find firmware hacks for various hardware including some brilliant mods for SFP routers and washing machines. There still seems to be a sense of solidarity although I don't really like it since it's the old "fuck them all western shits". Chinese net pops up every now and then. It's just hard to navigate, hence it's very much unknown to western users. But I know there's troves of cool stuff there.
  - mathverse 5y ago
    Cracking/warez/firmware hacking is very different from the real blackhat scene.
    - coretx 5y ago
      It all used to be the same scene, at the advent some sceners only being there for gfx art. ( the cracktro and asci/ansi art people, now evolved to demoscene ) Eventually, the scene started to grow, diverge and many groups specialized in only certain aspects. For a while, 0-day exploits where traded the same way people did mp3 or disk images.( It's also where the nomenclature "0-day" stems from ) Different competing scene sites carrying different sets of file types all following the same scene standards & pyramid. Then people started being prosecuted for bullshit more frequently, the earliest example is Mitnick being locked up for being able to whistle nuke launch codes. Actions like these and their increase in numbers and sophistication made people require larger amounts of money in order to keep themselves and other save from predators. Commerce was introduced by some groups in order to pay for security, others such as the still non commercial group CORE kicked all couriers out of the scene for the same reason and refused to race with commercial "leakers". From there everything became the clusterfuck that's left today. In other words, what you call "real blackhat scene" is nothing but a third order simulacrum of what used to be referred to as just "the scene". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_simulacra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_simulacra

sgt 5y ago

I think someone on HN would then know about it.

mathverse 5y ago

The community is english centric not anglo-centric.Eastern Europe is already pretty much part of the West unless you mean different kind of Eastern Europe (Belarus,Ukraine..) China,Russia,Brazil think of exploits and exploitation techniques as wares to keep or use as weapons.There is not much sharing or exchange of ideas.

jrochkind1 5y ago
One definition of "anglo-" as a prefix is literally just a fancy (or shorter) way of saying "English-". The Chinese, Russian, and Brazilian states see exploits mainly as weapons. As does the US state.... The question is whether a hacker culture apart from state control exists, of hackers interested in ideas for their own sake/the challenge/the lulz. Without being in those scenes or even speaking those languages, I couldn't say. (But maybe you have knowledge?) As in above parts of these comments, threads where people wonder if the corresponding cultures in the USA have been entirely "neutered" by state and corporate involvement, the question is not irrelevant to the US or European or English-speaking worlds either.
- mathverse 5y ago
  That was the basis of my comment.That the hacker culture does not really exist in those countries like it used to (it still does?) in the West. The scene is motivated by self interest and is afraid to lose exploits/techniques that they can trade for $$$ and power.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Oh yeah, what's your level of Russian or Chinese?
    - mathverse 5y ago
      Conversational mandarin.Was not really that hard to learn when you are almost native speaker of Korean.
bserge 5y ago
Oh no, Russia is still a veritable bastion of sharing. It's the one place where you can get clean, good Adobe CC shit conveniently packaged in a good old Master Collection format. Torrent forums without the ridiculous ads and popups. The only place I could find firmware hacks for various hardware including some brilliant mods for SFP routers and washing machines. There still seems to be a sense of solidarity although I don't really like it since it's the old "fuck them all western shits". Chinese net pops up every now and then. It's just hard to navigate, hence it's very much unknown to western users. But I know there's troves of cool stuff there.
- mathverse 5y ago
  Cracking/warez/firmware hacking is very different from the real blackhat scene.
  - coretx 5y ago
    It all used to be the same scene, at the advent some sceners only being there for gfx art. ( the cracktro and asci/ansi art people, now evolved to demoscene ) Eventually, the scene started to grow, diverge and many groups specialized in only certain aspects. For a while, 0-day exploits where traded the same way people did mp3 or disk images.( It's also where the nomenclature "0-day" stems from ) Different competing scene sites carrying different sets of file types all following the same scene standards & pyramid. Then people started being prosecuted for bullshit more frequently, the earliest example is Mitnick being locked up for being able to whistle nuke launch codes. Actions like these and their increase in numbers and sophistication made people require larger amounts of money in order to keep themselves and other save from predators. Commerce was introduced by some groups in order to pay for security, others such as the still non commercial group CORE kicked all couriers out of the scene for the same reason and refused to race with commercial "leakers". From there everything became the clusterfuck that's left today. In other words, what you call "real blackhat scene" is nothing but a third order simulacrum of what used to be referred to as just "the scene". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_simulacra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-order_simulacra