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Master Foo and the Script Kiddie (2003)
- RGBCube 1y agoRead the whole Master Foo archive here: https://soda.privatevoid.net/foo/ https://soda.privatevoid.net/foo/
- alabhyajindal 1y agoThis is beautiful and hilarious. Thanks!
- ForOldHack 1y agoIt is l33t. Luckily when the f3ds showed up at my door,the d1sks were buried and I was not home. My roommate figured they may want pr0n. They disembarked. https://everything2.com/title/The+Lord%2527s+Prayer%253A+l337 https://everything2.com/title/The+Lord%2527s+Prayer%253A+l33...
- Tade0 1y agoI've always known these as Hacker Koans. > “These enlightened ones,” he protested, “gave us the Great Way of Unix. Surely, if we mock them we will lose merit and be reborn as beasts or MCSEs.” I love how enduring is Microsoft's reputation in some circles.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoIt was the certs specifically. Anyone could get one if they had a couple hundred bucks and could cram a bunch of facts. MCSE required more exams, but still you were basically just memorizing stuff and taking tests. Yet for a time (during the 90s-2000s IT boom) anyone could get hired if they had certs. The more acronyms after your name, the better. Sort of like the people today who take a 2-week JavaScript course and then get hired for 6 figures, but at least the people with the certs had to take some exams.
- KyleW9 1y agoThanks for sharing, I had no idea these existed until today! These are quite short, and the recruiter one is very accurate haha
- tptacek 1y agoThis would have been cringe even in 1996.
- rhaps0dy 1y agoThe whole story, or the 3x7r3m3 13375p34k 0f 7h3 5k1dd13?
- tptacek 1y agoThe whole story, the vibe of the story, the moral of the story, the use of the word "crack"; it comes off pungently as if written by a professional Unix systems administrator.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoWhat’s wrong with professional sysadmins? (It’s sysadmin appreciation day this Friday btw)
- tptacek 1y agoNothing at all.
- ForOldHack 1y agoThe patchtape giveth,and the patchtape taketh away.
- bgwalter 1y agoThe moral of the story is not about cracking or getting arrested. It is a metaphor for the danger of taking shortcuts, just like certain other shortcuts in programming that are currently popular and also come with their own version of 1337 language. And about the tools that enable ScriptKiddies or their modern equivalents to achieve some fast results, for which they have to pay later.
- tptacek 1y ago
- k2xl 1y agoSimilar to Tao of Programming https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html https://www.mit.edu/~xela/tao.html
- cgannett 1y agoDid anyone else hear mystical music in the background and smell fragrantly burning incense while they read that? I loved this, short, funny, interesting.
- ninetyninenine 1y agoThe day after the stranger from Woot departed once more, a new student approached Master Foo as he was pruning the plum trees. “I have heard of your reputation,” the student said, bowing low. “They say you teach the Way of Unix, not for power, but for understanding. May I learn at your feet?” Master Foo nodded. “What is it you seek?” “I wish to master the system,” the student said, “to understand every process, every socket, every thread of the great Net. I seek elegance, not exploits.” “You speak wisely,” said Master Foo. Then he scribbled an IP address on a small bamboo slip. “Crack this machine. Its defenses are trivial. Return and tell me what you learn.” The student departed. The next morning, he returned, his robes slightly rumpled but his eyes alight with triumph. “Master,” he said, “the machine was a decoy for an abandoned cryptocurrency exchange node. I rewrote a dormant smart contract and siphoned off forgotten tokens. The wallet had a bug, my code fixed it. I now possess wealth beyond imagining.” “You have reported this to the rightful owners?” asked Master Foo. “There are none,” said the student. “The domain expired, the company dissolved, and the blockchain is immutable. I wrote no logs, touched no traceable endpoints, and masked every call behind a thousand proxies. I am free and unseen.” “Then you are a thief,” said Master Foo. “I am not caught,” replied the student. “What I took, no one missed. What I altered, no one saw. And what I gained, no one can take from me.” Master Foo was silent for a time. At last, he said, “The first student broke the law and found caution. You have broken nothing and found profit.” He bowed low to the student. “Here,” said Master Foo, “is the end of my teaching. Today, you have taught me.” On hearing this, the student was puzzled. But Master Foo was enlightened.
- kadushka 1y agoI’m curious what was the intended lesson to crack that machine.
- ForOldHack 1y agoA cookie jar containing even one cookie is guarded by paradox and confusion.
- ForOldHack 1y ago
- BrenBarn 1y agoAnother thing in a similar vein is The Codeless Code: http://thecodelesscode.com/contents http://thecodelesscode.com/contents
- freeCandy 1y agoVim koans are my favourite https://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vim-koans/ https://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/vim-koans/
- shagie 1y agoAnd remember that the images have mouseover texts and names (especially clan names) occasionally have some backstory... before you get through the first 100 and then discover this. http://thecodelesscode.com/names/Elephant%27s+Footprint+Clan http://thecodelesscode.com/names/Elephant%27s+Footprint+Clan > Specialists in the persistence tier, where the Temple’s most precious resource is managed—by which I mean data, not alcohol, although they have a fair amount of that as well to cope with the stress of Temple life. Despite this, the clan has strict rules regarding inebriation. A monk is absolutely not allowed to code while drinking unless he really, really wants to. Any monk caught violating this rule is punished by having to buy the next round. > The clan takes its name from the immense ivory-panelled server cabinet which houses the Temple’s most venerable DBMS hosts. This cabinet is known affectionately as the Great White Elephant, no doubt for its flawless memory. However it is worth noting that elephants do sometimes forget, which is why the Temple has hot replication to a colocation site which houses the Emergency Backup Elephant.
- teddyh 1y agoThese are still online at their original location: <http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/ http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/>
- paulddraper 1y agoThese are…abstract. http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/two_paths.html http://catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/two_paths.html Can’t figure out the point
- TheDong 1y agoMy reading of that is "The unix way is that software should be simple and elegant. The unix way is also that software should work, even if that means pragmatically eschewing elegance and simplicity. You must find a balance between these two things". The last abstract-sounding bit, "When the eagle flies, does it forget that its feet have touched the ground? When the tiger lands upon its prey, does it forget its moment in the air?", I take as meaning: "The air is beautiful and pure, free of pragmatic reality and time constraints and so on. The ground is the pragmatic reality. You must keep both in mind, and write beautiful code at times, and also sometimes write awful code to deal with reality at times".
- paulddraper 1y agoSo "elegance" and "no bugs" are at odds? Interesting, that's not my intuition....
- teddyh 1y agoElegant code sometimes does not respect the restrictions imposed by reality, such as bandwidth, memory size, I/O speeds, stack sizes, file descriptor limits, user experience, etc.
- nsb1 1y agoReminds me of the Acts of Gord, but with less malice. https://www.actsofgord.com/ https://www.actsofgord.com/
- b3lvedere 1y agoI wonder what would happen if Master Foo met the BOFH ..
- declan_roberts 1y agoIt's crazy how cringey "leet speak" looks now. Even words like "woot"
- IAmBroom 1y agoThe famous merchandizing website is still alive, but purchased by Bezos, and repurposed into an Amazon dot com "sales" frontpiece.