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The Warez scene was an absolute blast. I made some of the best friends of my early teenage years there, both online and online/offline. Unfortunately it came

• shevy-java 13d ago
  The question is whether you find it ok that the FBI comes sniffing after you. Personally I don't find it ok at all. I don't see any of that as a crime either. The legislation is clearly written by corporations and lobbyists acting as lawyers. That's another reason why I think open source is preferrable - that way they are replaced indirectly by not depending on them in the first place, meaning, as a trade-off towards how the society is currently structured. Hopefully it will become more sane again in the future. Back then, though, say in the 1990s or early 2000s, the "vibe" of warez also was "look how great ILLEGAL can be".
  • enneff 12d ago
    You don’t think it should be illegal to hack a telecom network and take control of it?
    • ExoticPearTree 12d ago
      Nope. It means the people running it did not do a good job configuring and securing it.
      • rapidaneurism 12d ago
        And most people do not have guards and dogs walking around the perimeter, but we still blame the burglars for breaking in their houses.
      • shitloadofbooks 12d ago
        So if you steal something it means the owner didn’t do a good job securing it and if you murder someone they didn’t do a good job protecting themselves? What an absurd world view.
        • CrimsonRain 12d ago
          The diff is that owner is responsible for their own shit where a telco has everyone's things in there and is exposed to the whole world instead of just one street. It is like a bank that has sloppy security and exposes you to the whole world, including adversaries from Russia china NK etc. Things like Telco cloud banks should absolutely be thrashed for having bad security. Responsible disclosure should also be a thing but we all know these companies sue people for that too.
        • ExoticPearTree 12d ago
          I have this view when it comes to computers and software, not physical property or people.
          • Mistletoe 12d ago
            If your bank has shoddy software and a thief steals your money is that ok?
            • ExoticPearTree 12d ago
              I don’t care in that scenario, it is the bank’s fault, not mine. It is on them to make it right.
              • Craighead 12d ago
                It is this disconnected from reality attitude that gives technical people a bad reputation. Please reconsider your bad takes.
          • zbentley 12d ago
            Does that extend to medical systems? If someone hacks my pacemaker and destabilizes my heart, or my pharmacy/hospital and prevents me from receiving medical care, is that something that should be legally permitted on the basis that "medical device makers/pharmacies/hospitals should try harder, and should somehow compensate their patients if a hack occurs"? How do you compensate someone who's dead? This isn't hypothetical: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/28/cyberattacks-u-s-hospitals-00075638 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/28/cyberattacks-u-s-ho...
      • darkwater 12d ago
        This is the epitome of the "blame the victim" culture.
        • ExoticPearTree 12d ago
          When it comes to computers and software, yes. They need to do a better job not letting others screw them over.
          • foco_tubi 12d ago
            It’s an interesting view. In this case you are claiming the victims are bound to the creator/vendor of the software/service, not the hacker?
            • ExoticPearTree 12d ago
              In a nutshell, yes. My issue is that software security is not taken seriously most of the time because features are more important than spending a little more time on code quality. The hacker is not the one writing buggy software.
      • enneff 12d ago
        Maybe you should think through the consequences of living in a society where anything a person can do is allowed lmao
      • lukan 12d ago
        So you would be fine with someone clearing out your house, while you were away? There is no door, that cannot be opened with enough effort. Part of what stops people trying, is the fear of consequences.
        • ExoticPearTree 12d ago
          I have this view when it comes to computers and software, not physical property or people.
      • dxdm 12d ago
        Since you mentioned it below several responses to this comment: Why do you think this is okay for software, but not okay in the "physical world"? Is it about a perceived lack of consequences of the one vs the other? What if the hack caused real damage and suffering? For example, people's medical histories get stolen and exposed? Ransomware encrypts hospital systems, disrupting medical care? Or, the inverse: while you're away, somebody breaks into your home non-destructively, takes some photos, sleeps on your couch, and leaves. Should that be forbidden? Your fault for allowing it? It is easier to pull something like this in the digital world, is that why it seems different to you?
        • miki123211 12d ago
          I don't agree with GP at all, but making hacking illegal indeed gives companies a false sense of security. Making burglaries illegal is a real way of preventing many burglaries from happening, because it puts people committing them in prison and deters some from doing it in the first place. This only works because the burglar is in the same place as the burglary, and so they can be arrested. People with little to no computer experience apply the same standard to cybersecurity and treat foreign hackers the same way as burglars. Then they get surprised when the Russians hack them and the FBI does nothing.
          • dxdm 12d ago
            You're presenting a false dilemma, there are more options than "all hacking is completely illegal" and "all hacking is a free-for-all". We're in a thread that starts from the notion that it should not be illegal to "hack a telecom network and take control of it", because "the people running it did not do a good job configuring and securing it." That's essentially the free-for-all position, and defending it by claiming that the opposite extreme is the only other option is a false choice. Nuance and compromise exist, and our world is made of them. Also, your argument about burglars can be applied to "hackers", too. Police can find and arrest people domestically and beyond. Consequences deter people from all sorts of illegal activity. On the other hand, nation states are not necessarily deterred by laws from kidnapping and killing people inside the territory of other countries. You've probably seen the news. What's different is the ease of access to digitical, internet-connected systems, and the scale of abuse that affords. That's a reason to think differently about _how_ to shape the rules and laws around "hacking", but not a reason to have no rules or laws at all.
      • talon8635 12d ago
        This is trolling or edgelord teen
• arcade79 12d ago
  Oh... If those RCMP folks came knocking on your door around January 22nd 1999. Hi there. Long time. It was fun chasing you, but I didn't enjoy the rm -rf.
  • lm411 12d ago
    This would have been a few years earlier... And I don't recall doing anything destructive. It was definitely a game but I wasn't trying to cause any damage. No doubt I caused more than a few headaches though, which I do truly regret, having been on the other side of the same many times over the past 30 years.
    • arcade79 12d ago
      Ah. A few years after you, then, there was a 16 year old Canadian out of #montreal (on IRC) who broke into my main server - on December '24 1998. He ended up rm -rf'ing it, and bragging about it on IRC. I spent the next month tracking him down. He was fond of DoSing a Canadian ISP. He also, for some reason, fond of DoSing a computer lab at NASA. I tracked him through servers he had broken in at 13 different american universities, a couple of machines at NASA, one machine at fbi.gov, and a variety of others. Coordinated with a guy at NASA, everyone but FBI was eagerly sending me logs from their servers, and the FBI+NASA looped in RCMP who got thousands of pages of logs from me. Both from servers he had broken into, and from the various IRC channels I monitored his activity from. The Canadian ISP he was fond of DoSing was also quite eager. Around January 22nd 1999 (might have been a day before or after) the RCMP came knocking on his door. A few hours later (after being released after being interrogated) he got online and told me he would knock my servers offline permanently. At this point I had a phone number directly to the RCMP - and they paid him another visit.
• everettp 11d ago
  yes -- at the height in the late 90s, i made a friend named chucky while playing quake online. he was just a terrific guy, older than me but treated me with respect, we would hang out IRL and he would hook me up with games after he had finished them. later he went offline and i found out he had been the leader of RISCISO and had disappeared during a criminal prosecution. hope things are well with you sean