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The Conscience of a Hacker

275 points by flog 14y ago

Edit: removing Aaron's name from the title. In retrospect I don't feel it's respectful.

flog 14y ago
To me, this is one of the founding texts of our sub-culture. No, I didn't know or interact with Aaron Swartz, but his plight reminded me of this manifesto.
- lclarkmichalek 14y ago
  Really? I think the hacker news community is more focused around node.js than it is around unauthorised access to computer systems. I do agree there is a common theme of the joy of discovery, but I find it hard to cheer on people breaking into computer systems.
  - flog 14y ago
    I agree, I also won't support people breaking into computer systems.
    - hobbyhacker 14y ago
      I support them, as long as they do the right thing afterwards and make the owners aware and do not do anything destructive or that violates someone's privacy.
      - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
        I "break into" computer systems all the time. Since I do not follow the EULA/license agreement for each website, and I send a handshake requesting files over a webserver, I am in violation of federal law for unauthorized computer usage. That's fucking bullshit.
    - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
      Have you ever been to a website that prompted you for your name to make an account or have temporary access, and you put in a fake name? Perhaps some forum that wanted you to register? One of the charges against Aaron was Wire Fraud, because he did just that - entering the name "Gary Host" into a captive portal to register for wifi access. Congratulations, you're a felon too.
  - pyvek 14y ago
    Yes, that is true. I think most of the people here do not condone breaking into other people's systems and harming them. Rather the community inspires curiosity and seek of knowledge. But the manifesto is very relevant to the case of Aaron. "We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals." "Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for."
  - ynniv 14y ago
    I think the hacker news community is more focused around node.js Ugh, do you have to remind me? The community here is becoming so risk averse I can't fathom how they expect to hack by any definition. The Manifesto was from an era when the hardware you owned was practically a useless toy, and learning about computers almost required sneaking some time. The well off were able to take it more legitimately from their institutions at night, but what about everyone else? And what about systems that even the well off couldn't play with? Jobs was adamant that Apple never would have existed without him and Woz cutting their teeth blue boxing (a crime which sadly in modern times would be labeled terrorism, with extradition from anywhere in the world). How far ahead of the game do you really think you can get when you're asking permission at every step? Just don't be malicious.
    - dphase 14y ago
      How far ahead of the game do you really think you can get when you're asking permission at every step? Just don't be malicious. I wish we could drill this mentality into everyone.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      > The Manifesto was from an era when the hardware you owned was practically a useless toy, I'd argue that's what we're moving towards.
      - ynniv 14y ago
        Hur, indie programmer humor. People who think that are idiots. We live in a time when you can buy a computer the size of your hand that can do real time image analysis on a couple of AA batteries for $40. A couple decades ago that would be a classified munition with the assumption that one would build a better guided missile from it. Just because that computer in your pocket is polished doesn't mean it's a toy. A toy is a remote terminal incapable of executing machine code outside of drawing letters on the screen. Or a computer that only can remember 16,000 numbers at a time (that's not enough enough space for a crappy, unanimated GIF). Remember War Games, when he cracked open the handset of a payphone and made a free call by touching a soda can tab between the microphone and a ground wire? That was the level of technology not so long ago. Try writing your RoR craigslist knockoff using that. Kids these days.
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    You should see what kind of shit disturbing Robert T Morris (the Y Combinator partner) was up to back in the day. If Aaron Swartz was facing 30 years for his curl script in a closet, rtm's hacking would have him on death row today by comparison. His worm was pretty bad ass - way ahead of its time. Taking down a large part of the internet was not a good thing, but obviously the guy had/has a lot to offer society, and not ruining his life with prison was the right call. A lot of us are not that different, either in terms of what we came from, or where we are now.
  - godDLL 14y ago
    This is much, much bigger than HN alone.
- namank 14y ago
  Reminded me too. There is an entire generation of adults that grew up when the internet wasn't as friendly and layered as it is today, when forums and IRC reigned supreme.
  - smoyer 14y ago
    Forums and IRC actually made the Internet much friendlier ... The era in which this was written might have let you dial into a BBS and (if you were lucky) participate in usenet.
    - lloeki 14y ago
      For those interested in this timeframe and what it looked like being tracked and caught at that time, one can turn to The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling, a non-fiction work incredibly reminiscent of the events currently of interest to us. Free (as in beer) in its electronic version ([0], hosted at MIT), and available as paperback on Amazon. [0]: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
      - p4bl0 14y ago
        I second this. And if you enjoy The Hacker Crackdown you should also read The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stole, and Do It! by Jerry Rubin, which are also non-fiction. The latter one is only a little related to the hacker subculture since it happens just before it existed but there are strong links between the Yippie movement and the phreaker scene which is the predecessor of the hacker scene. I think that those three are my most favorite books of all time.
        dphase 14y ago
        The Cuckoo's Egg is an amazing read. You get a very play-by-play account of the story, see an 80s honeypot in action, and if I remember correctly, read about interactions with the still running Chaos Computer Club.
      - smoyer 14y ago
readly 14y ago
what?
crntaylor 14y ago
This was written by Loyd Blankenship shortly after his arrest [0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Blankenship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Blankenship
- wyclif 14y ago
  This Wikipedia entry is oddly sparse.
chrisrickard 14y ago
I remember being 13 and having this up on my wall... really good to be reminded of it again.
- flog 14y ago
  Yeah, I think we tend to forget our history (since tech evolves so fast). For me, I originally had this on the BBS I hosted as a teenager. And it was something important to me as an out-of-place teenager at the end of the world in NZ - the thought that we live in a borderless community of like-minded people. What's interesting to me is this disconnect between our world (borderless, egalitarian, where information wants to be free) and reality (legal jurisdiction, protective business models). It was a problem then, it's a problem now, and future conflict is certain.
moccajoghurt 14y ago
That was written 2 years before I was born. Hard to tell how to judge that text if you didn't experience that time. If someone wrote that today, I'd think that he'd be a hypocrite. But I am sure the situation was different in 1986.
- hobbyhacker 14y ago
  It is as relevant, if not more relevant today than when it was written.
  - moccajoghurt 14y ago
    Could you tell me why you think that it is?
    - hobbyhacker 14y ago
      Because in todays legal climate most of the things that were 'gray' back then are forbidden explicitly now. Things that as a kid in my days you'd be receiving a stern talking to for will now cause you to go to jail for very long periods in addition to likely resulting in you filing for bankruptcy.
      - loydb 14y ago
        Also, remember that back then it was way harder to get caught. We did stuff like wardial entire area codes with impunity. The general lack of awareness/focus on computer security combined with non-digital phone switches (oh crossbar, how I loved thee) made it much less risky.
        hobbyhacker 14y ago
        Just one little anecdote for old times' sake. I used a sequential dialer to scan for interesting numbers in the country capital. After hitting one particular number the phone to which the modem was connected rang. This was before the days of anr indicating that whoever backtracked that number in less than a minute had quite a bit of pull. The guy on the other side asked me what we were doing calling that particular number. The phone actually felt hot in my hand and I realized: Busted. So on the spur of the moment I said I was trying to connect to a bbs and he said 'don't call this number again' and hung up. I was still shaking an hour later.
yuvadam 14y ago
Makes you wonder what Hacker News has to do with any of these words well said.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- RobAley 14y ago
  I think it has a lot to do with these words and the sentiment behind them. The childen of that era (like the author) have grown up, and through their experiences and determination helped to shape a world where we can learn, explore, develop, interact and hack on things, like they did, but in a more tolerant and willing (and less illegal) environment. Many of the stories on HN focus the problems with education, big corps and the authorities (the stories about Aaron Swartz encapsulate all of these), particularly with regards to people like HN readers. Its a different world to that story, but the issues are still relevant.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    Hm. It makes me think of civil disobedience. And it makes me wonder: hackers today are used to tinkering with machines, whereas earlier hackers often worked with people. It feels like we lost something there. So many hackers today look at the world and The System and say, "It's too hard. Let's not try."
    - DanBC2 14y ago
      >whereas earlier hackers often worked with people. There's a book detailing the rise of hacker culture. There's a bit about hackers 'borrowing' tools from someone. The contempt they showed that man, and his tools, shows that working with people was even then not a skill that all of them had.
      - oofabz 14y ago
        It sounds like you are referring to "Hackers" by Steven Levy. It's a great book and that's a great story. I've posted it here: http://frammish.org/used_up.html http://frammish.org/used_up.html
jiggy2011 14y ago
The problem with writings like this is that they murky the waters between curiosity , creativity and doing stuff that is actually illegal. Nobody is going to arrest you for "curiosity" but they might arrest you for bank tampering because somebody might you know have their life savings in there.
- lawnchair_larry 14y ago
  I assure you, these people were not interested in your life savings. Having never met the author of this piece, I can still confidently say that he and everyone else in that culture, then and now, would have opposed anyone hacking to raid some poor bystander's bank account. It's this sort of fear mongering that got us here.
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering", just quoting the article.
  - loydb 14y ago
    Well, that's not strictly true. I know at least a couple of folks from that era who would pilfer a bank account in a heartbeat, given the opportunity (they tended to be active 'carders'). They were, however, treated with disdain by 99% of the 'exploratory' hackers I knew. The catalyst for me getting out of the black hat side (other than aging out of the 'being bad is fun' stage) was getting into a massive system from which I could have easily pilfered millions. Thoughts of everything from "set up Swiss bank account, fill up" to "offer to 'consult' with the company in question to fix the holes" went through my head. In the end, I just said "game over, I won," stopped cracking systems, and put up the Phoenix Project BBS as a center of learning. Which lasted until the Secret Service showed up at my door in 1990...
    - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
      I'm not saying none of them existed, just that isn't what this culture was about. As you said, such types were unwelcome in the community, and I'm pretty sure that isn't what your manifesto was about (but correct me if I'm wrong).
dphase 14y ago
I hate that the majority (I assume) here on HN didn't get to cut their teeth in the BBS era, you really missed out. I see comments below mentioning "breaking into computer systems" -- you have to realize this was an era pre-Google, pre-www, in a lot of people's cases, pre-Usenet even. We were often limited to 60 minutes of access daily to a BBS, fighting busy signals to even get a node. Using every minute of that time to download textfiles, download cool stuff from the demo scene (sometimes with the pleasure of compiling them with TASM). We didn't have Linux boxes piled up in the back, to learn and explore Unix, many, like myself, had to fire up a war dialer, find a system, and use those crazy textfiles we read from our local BBS to work our way around. It wasn't, in most cases, for nefarious means -- it was our only option. It was a great, great era. Hard to understand if you weren't there. Do yourself a favor and check out a few old boards that are still available through telnet. It's not the same, but you'll get an idea. (I guess this response officially puts me in the "get off my lawn" club!)
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I missed the BBS era and came in around the point where if you had a Windows machine you had to know some cmd magic to get certain things to work (dodgy shareware Doom floppies is the one I remember best), but it seems like it's a missing skill now.
- olgeni 14y ago
  And what about the happy times of FidoNet and GoldEd and the dreaded FOSSIL drivers...
- p4bl0 14y ago
  Your comment made me think of Telehack [1] and Textfiles [2]. "Telehack is a simulation of a stylized arpanet/usenet, circa 1985-1990. It is a full multi-user simulation, including 25,000 hosts and BBS's the early net, thousands of files from the era, a collection of adventure and IF games, a working BASIC interpreter with a library of programs to run, simulated historical users, and more." [3] Textfiles is an archives of, well, text files. [1] http://telehack.com/ http://telehack.com/ [2] http://textfiles.com/ http://textfiles.com/ [3] http://telehack.com/telehack.html http://telehack.com/telehack.html
cryowaffle 14y ago
I read this to my 10th grade English class back in 1999, people loved it.
loydb 14y ago
As the author, I've been amazed over the years at how well this resonates with people 25+ years after the fact. I continue to get 2-3 emails a week from people about how it affected them (unfortunately, about half of the emails also ask me to break into something for them). It is difficult for anyone who didn't live through the BBS years to understand the feeling of no longer being isolated and alone. I strongly recommend Jason Scott's documentary 'BBS' (in which I'm interviewed) for a glimpse at a bygone era.
- acuozzo 14y ago
  Thank you for writing this piece. I've read it (at least) annually for the past 10 or so years.
- kaolinite 14y ago
  Thanks for writing this Loyd. It made an impression on me when I was younger and I re-read it fairly often. I recall (with slight embarrassment) translating it into French for an assignment whilst at school (we had to translate an article/story we liked). I don't think the teacher was very impressed with my choice.
- Gonzih 14y ago
  Thank you.
- angersock 14y ago
  Thank you.
- im_dario 14y ago
  As others said, thanks. It inspired me too! I've never broke a system but all the knowledge and mindset I got on my own path is a lot more valuable than what I got from my CS degree.
- godDLL 14y ago
  The copy that I kept staid with me through two HDD meltdown events since the 2000's, when I first read it. It isn't about me, or of my direct experience. But it is about people like me, and exhibits an emotion that looks exactly like it was ripped directly from my brain, I can almost feel the static when I run my eyes on it. Thank you. If you read this I will cry.
d--b 14y ago
This looks like it was written by Alan Moore. Damn 1980s.
TomGullen 14y ago
Written on the year Aaron Swartz was born. Very poignant.
rauljara 14y ago
I can tell already this won't be a popular sentiment around here. Also, I want to preface this by saying I wasn't around in bbs era, and maybe my reaction would be different if I had been. But this kind of irks me: "...ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?" Did the author ever take a look behind the eyes of the people whose systems he was breaking into and wonder why they didn't react well to having their privacy violated? Perhaps I'm being unfair, but what I get out of it is "I'm smarter than you, so I'm entitled to do whatever I want." And I get that the author was treated poorly in school, and he has my sympathy for that (I was too). But that attitude of entitled superiority is dangerous. It can and has been used to justify really awful things. I don't think this manifesto should be lionized.
- api 14y ago
  It's a valid point. I have a confession though: I was a teenage hacker (in the cracking sense). I suspect many people around here were. I didn't break stuff or steal stuff on purpose, or have explicit malicious intent. I practiced what is sometimes called "catch and release" hacking. It was a game... to me at least. I'm sure it was an annoyance to the ones on the other end, but I was 14-15 and wasn't thinking like that. But boy did I ever learn a lot. By the time I made it to college, I knew more than a lot of the CS seniors. So much that I didn't bother majoring in CS. I wanted to learn something else. At 18 I knew: C, C++, 80x86 assembler, shell script, Perl, how to compose and validate an IP packet, the OSI networking model, basic protocol design, peer to peer protocol design concepts, and quite a bit about cryptography including how to properly construct an authenticated cryptographic envelope and the importance of choosing the right block cipher mode of operation. Password cracking led me to hash functions and SALTs, which led me down the rabbit hole, and I got fascinated with crypto. At one point I worked through the math of Diffie-Hellman and RSA. It was very hard stuff, and required that I delve into a lot of deep math that was way beyond me at 15 going on 16. But knowing it made me more of a badass hacker ninja. Cause it was crypto, and crypto was big time hacker stuff. When I comprehended the one-way trap door function behind Diffie-Hellman I felt like I'd stolen a car and gone joyriding with the archetypal cool kids. More than that, I found that my knowledge was more hands-on than the CS students I encountered. I not only thought in code, but thought in networks. To this day networking and network protocols are completely natural to me, while otherwise very good programmers tend to gnash their teeth at the thought of implementing them. Also, for some reason this network experience translated right into multithreaded coding. Working with threads, even at a low level, with all the blocking and priority inversion issues, is no sweat. Network hacking made me comfortable with non-determinism. I highly doubt I'd know this without the challenge of hacking (sense 2). But wait, you say... why don't we just create a corewar-style game? Why can't schools have Defcon-style attack/defend tournaments. I wouldn't have touched this with a ten foot pole. No rebellion, no interest. That would have been an "organized activity" put forward by adults. Blech. Honestly, a similar ethos got me interested in startups much later. Startups sort of felt rebellious in a way... like little scrappy hack-trepreneurs sticking it to the big guys. It was when startups popped their shirt collars and went all douchey and "mainstream" that I lost interest.
sp4rki 14y ago
I remember being around 7 or 8 and reading this (and other texts of the times in question) and being inspired by the inherent culture which had at it's simplest reduction an insatiable need to consume knowledge by means of discovery. It inspired me to learn C and tinker with Linux and BSD. It also had a part on a quirky math phase I had - which ended causing my math teachers pain when trying to teach a 13 year old the usual basics ended having to grade exams with the most intricate and elaborate (and long) solutions to simple questions and puzzles. It inspired me to open up my old Packard Bell branded computer and tinker with it until a soldering iron made it meet it's demise. This series of texts also inspired in me a need to know everything there is about computer security, and of course, the only way to put that knowledge to the test is in real world applications like hacking the school systems to take a peek at que quarterly final exams, compromising machines to use as botnets to do fun stuff in IRC, and of course taking advantage of the "unlimited" bandwidth available to the school. Thankfully the school took this as a rebellious kid/teen learning as much as possible about computers and systems and ending up giving me the task to secure their network and physical machines, to the dismay of the actual computer administrators in school. I bet that this type of reading material inspired an army of people just like me to tinker, hack, and learn as much as possible. Aaron Swartz was probably one of them - being only three years younger than me, and probably one of the most influential in this harsh times for both hackers and activists. Now hopefully his person and his work will become part of the inspiration for future generations, the same way this text by "The Mentor" was for my generation.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Illychnosis 14y ago
"The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side." -Goethe
duairc 14y ago
Commie bullshit.
- Jach 14y ago
  For the benefit of those who don't get the joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMX7JFSJDsY&t=490 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMX7JFSJDsY&t=490
  - nitrogen 14y ago
    The sickest joke is that Youtube is still running with that on it and MegaUpload is not.
gopher 14y ago
after all, we are all alike
zxcdw 14y ago
It's a shame that the old computing culture is dead. VX scene, demoscene, crack scene, ... Everything that used to be interesting for the curious is dead. Now we have... web development and "front end engineering" and "value creation" which rule the game. It really pisses me off that I care about none of these. I care for technical superiority with scarce resources, but today no such domains exist really. Really depressing.
- coldpie 14y ago
  Mmmh, sorta. Mobile development often lets you work bare-metal with scarce resources, especially in the world of game consoles. One of my favorite experiences in high school was developing homebrew games for the PSP and experimenting with homebrew on the GBA. Right now I'm reverse-engineering an NES game from 1992 just for the hell of it (god it's fun). Hardware hacking is still around, there's just so many other options that it can get lost in the noise.
  - gavinlynch 14y ago
    Yah, even though that scene is growing smaller by the year, the 6502/2A03 ASM geeks are still crunching away... looking for extra space inside NES Rom's to cram some new, cool feature their favorite games would benefit from. Did a little in the mid-00's, was a great time and taught me how a microprocessor works. So fret not! A good old-school time can still be had in this modern age of new-fangled-front-end-engineers!! (of which I am one) :)
- voltagex_ 14y ago
  I don't think the demoscene is dead. http://scene.org/dir.php?dir=%2Fparties%2F2012/ http://scene.org/dir.php?dir=%2Fparties%2F2012/
graham_king_3 14y ago
HN needs a "pin" feature, so this can be top all the time.
nnnnlkk 14y ago
joey
keypusher 14y ago
Classic. Anyone interested in this era should check out "The Hacker Crackdown" by Bruce Sterling.
aortega 14y ago
AKA the teenager manifesto. Sorry but the feeling of superiority that many hackers have is their biggest weakness. You are not a beautiful butterfly that nobody comprehends. Everybody else is not less intelligent than you, no wonder hackers are always in the wrong side of the police boot. You better start working fast.
xtracto 14y ago
And to think I could have whored some karma if I had created a thread instead of a simple comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051486 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051486

275 points by flog 14y ago

Edit: removing Aaron's name from the title. In retrospect I don't feel it's respectful.

flog 14y ago

To me, this is one of the founding texts of our sub-culture. No, I didn't know or interact with Aaron Swartz, but his plight reminded me of this manifesto.

lclarkmichalek 14y ago
Really? I think the hacker news community is more focused around node.js than it is around unauthorised access to computer systems. I do agree there is a common theme of the joy of discovery, but I find it hard to cheer on people breaking into computer systems.
- flog 14y ago
  I agree, I also won't support people breaking into computer systems.
  - hobbyhacker 14y ago
    I support them, as long as they do the right thing afterwards and make the owners aware and do not do anything destructive or that violates someone's privacy.
    - TheAmazingIdiot 14y ago
      I "break into" computer systems all the time. Since I do not follow the EULA/license agreement for each website, and I send a handshake requesting files over a webserver, I am in violation of federal law for unauthorized computer usage. That's fucking bullshit.
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    Have you ever been to a website that prompted you for your name to make an account or have temporary access, and you put in a fake name? Perhaps some forum that wanted you to register? One of the charges against Aaron was Wire Fraud, because he did just that - entering the name "Gary Host" into a captive portal to register for wifi access. Congratulations, you're a felon too.
- pyvek 14y ago
  Yes, that is true. I think most of the people here do not condone breaking into other people's systems and harming them. Rather the community inspires curiosity and seek of knowledge. But the manifesto is very relevant to the case of Aaron. "We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals." "Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for."
- ynniv 14y ago
  I think the hacker news community is more focused around node.js Ugh, do you have to remind me? The community here is becoming so risk averse I can't fathom how they expect to hack by any definition. The Manifesto was from an era when the hardware you owned was practically a useless toy, and learning about computers almost required sneaking some time. The well off were able to take it more legitimately from their institutions at night, but what about everyone else? And what about systems that even the well off couldn't play with? Jobs was adamant that Apple never would have existed without him and Woz cutting their teeth blue boxing (a crime which sadly in modern times would be labeled terrorism, with extradition from anywhere in the world). How far ahead of the game do you really think you can get when you're asking permission at every step? Just don't be malicious.
  - dphase 14y ago
    How far ahead of the game do you really think you can get when you're asking permission at every step? Just don't be malicious. I wish we could drill this mentality into everyone.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    > The Manifesto was from an era when the hardware you owned was practically a useless toy, I'd argue that's what we're moving towards.
    - ynniv 14y ago
      Hur, indie programmer humor. People who think that are idiots. We live in a time when you can buy a computer the size of your hand that can do real time image analysis on a couple of AA batteries for $40. A couple decades ago that would be a classified munition with the assumption that one would build a better guided missile from it. Just because that computer in your pocket is polished doesn't mean it's a toy. A toy is a remote terminal incapable of executing machine code outside of drawing letters on the screen. Or a computer that only can remember 16,000 numbers at a time (that's not enough enough space for a crappy, unanimated GIF). Remember War Games, when he cracked open the handset of a payphone and made a free call by touching a soda can tab between the microphone and a ground wire? That was the level of technology not so long ago. Try writing your RoR craigslist knockoff using that. Kids these days.
- lawnchair_larry 14y ago
  You should see what kind of shit disturbing Robert T Morris (the Y Combinator partner) was up to back in the day. If Aaron Swartz was facing 30 years for his curl script in a closet, rtm's hacking would have him on death row today by comparison. His worm was pretty bad ass - way ahead of its time. Taking down a large part of the internet was not a good thing, but obviously the guy had/has a lot to offer society, and not ruining his life with prison was the right call. A lot of us are not that different, either in terms of what we came from, or where we are now.
- godDLL 14y ago
  This is much, much bigger than HN alone.
namank 14y ago
Reminded me too. There is an entire generation of adults that grew up when the internet wasn't as friendly and layered as it is today, when forums and IRC reigned supreme.
- smoyer 14y ago
  Forums and IRC actually made the Internet much friendlier ... The era in which this was written might have let you dial into a BBS and (if you were lucky) participate in usenet.
  - lloeki 14y ago
    For those interested in this timeframe and what it looked like being tracked and caught at that time, one can turn to The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling, a non-fiction work incredibly reminiscent of the events currently of interest to us. Free (as in beer) in its electronic version ([0], hosted at MIT), and available as paperback on Amazon. [0]: http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html
    - p4bl0 14y ago
      I second this. And if you enjoy The Hacker Crackdown you should also read The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stole, and Do It! by Jerry Rubin, which are also non-fiction. The latter one is only a little related to the hacker subculture since it happens just before it existed but there are strong links between the Yippie movement and the phreaker scene which is the predecessor of the hacker scene. I think that those three are my most favorite books of all time.
      - dphase 14y ago
        The Cuckoo's Egg is an amazing read. You get a very play-by-play account of the story, see an 80s honeypot in action, and if I remember correctly, read about interactions with the still running Chaos Computer Club.
    - smoyer 14y ago

readly 14y ago

what?

crntaylor 14y ago

This was written by Loyd Blankenship shortly after his arrest [0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Blankenship http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyd_Blankenship

wyclif 14y ago
This Wikipedia entry is oddly sparse.

chrisrickard 14y ago

I remember being 13 and having this up on my wall... really good to be reminded of it again.

flog 14y ago
Yeah, I think we tend to forget our history (since tech evolves so fast). For me, I originally had this on the BBS I hosted as a teenager. And it was something important to me as an out-of-place teenager at the end of the world in NZ - the thought that we live in a borderless community of like-minded people. What's interesting to me is this disconnect between our world (borderless, egalitarian, where information wants to be free) and reality (legal jurisdiction, protective business models). It was a problem then, it's a problem now, and future conflict is certain.

moccajoghurt 14y ago

That was written 2 years before I was born. Hard to tell how to judge that text if you didn't experience that time. If someone wrote that today, I'd think that he'd be a hypocrite. But I am sure the situation was different in 1986.

hobbyhacker 14y ago
It is as relevant, if not more relevant today than when it was written.
- moccajoghurt 14y ago
  Could you tell me why you think that it is?
  - hobbyhacker 14y ago
    Because in todays legal climate most of the things that were 'gray' back then are forbidden explicitly now. Things that as a kid in my days you'd be receiving a stern talking to for will now cause you to go to jail for very long periods in addition to likely resulting in you filing for bankruptcy.
    - loydb 14y ago
      Also, remember that back then it was way harder to get caught. We did stuff like wardial entire area codes with impunity. The general lack of awareness/focus on computer security combined with non-digital phone switches (oh crossbar, how I loved thee) made it much less risky.
      - hobbyhacker 14y ago
        Just one little anecdote for old times' sake. I used a sequential dialer to scan for interesting numbers in the country capital. After hitting one particular number the phone to which the modem was connected rang. This was before the days of anr indicating that whoever backtracked that number in less than a minute had quite a bit of pull. The guy on the other side asked me what we were doing calling that particular number. The phone actually felt hot in my hand and I realized: Busted. So on the spur of the moment I said I was trying to connect to a bbs and he said 'don't call this number again' and hung up. I was still shaking an hour later.

yuvadam 14y ago

Makes you wonder what Hacker News has to do with any of these words well said.

deleted 14y ago
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RobAley 14y ago
I think it has a lot to do with these words and the sentiment behind them. The childen of that era (like the author) have grown up, and through their experiences and determination helped to shape a world where we can learn, explore, develop, interact and hack on things, like they did, but in a more tolerant and willing (and less illegal) environment. Many of the stories on HN focus the problems with education, big corps and the authorities (the stories about Aaron Swartz encapsulate all of these), particularly with regards to people like HN readers. Its a different world to that story, but the issues are still relevant.
- saraid216 14y ago
  Hm. It makes me think of civil disobedience. And it makes me wonder: hackers today are used to tinkering with machines, whereas earlier hackers often worked with people. It feels like we lost something there. So many hackers today look at the world and The System and say, "It's too hard. Let's not try."
  - DanBC2 14y ago
    >whereas earlier hackers often worked with people. There's a book detailing the rise of hacker culture. There's a bit about hackers 'borrowing' tools from someone. The contempt they showed that man, and his tools, shows that working with people was even then not a skill that all of them had.
    - oofabz 14y ago
      It sounds like you are referring to "Hackers" by Steven Levy. It's a great book and that's a great story. I've posted it here: http://frammish.org/used_up.html http://frammish.org/used_up.html

jiggy2011 14y ago

The problem with writings like this is that they murky the waters between curiosity , creativity and doing stuff that is actually illegal. Nobody is going to arrest you for "curiosity" but they might arrest you for bank tampering because somebody might you know have their life savings in there.

lawnchair_larry 14y ago
I assure you, these people were not interested in your life savings. Having never met the author of this piece, I can still confidently say that he and everyone else in that culture, then and now, would have opposed anyone hacking to raid some poor bystander's bank account. It's this sort of fear mongering that got us here.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering", just quoting the article.
- loydb 14y ago
  Well, that's not strictly true. I know at least a couple of folks from that era who would pilfer a bank account in a heartbeat, given the opportunity (they tended to be active 'carders'). They were, however, treated with disdain by 99% of the 'exploratory' hackers I knew. The catalyst for me getting out of the black hat side (other than aging out of the 'being bad is fun' stage) was getting into a massive system from which I could have easily pilfered millions. Thoughts of everything from "set up Swiss bank account, fill up" to "offer to 'consult' with the company in question to fix the holes" went through my head. In the end, I just said "game over, I won," stopped cracking systems, and put up the Phoenix Project BBS as a center of learning. Which lasted until the Secret Service showed up at my door in 1990...
  - lawnchair_larry 14y ago
    I'm not saying none of them existed, just that isn't what this culture was about. As you said, such types were unwelcome in the community, and I'm pretty sure that isn't what your manifesto was about (but correct me if I'm wrong).

dphase 14y ago

I hate that the majority (I assume) here on HN didn't get to cut their teeth in the BBS era, you really missed out. I see comments below mentioning "breaking into computer systems" -- you have to realize this was an era pre-Google, pre-www, in a lot of people's cases, pre-Usenet even. We were often limited to 60 minutes of access daily to a BBS, fighting busy signals to even get a node. Using every minute of that time to download textfiles, download cool stuff from the demo scene (sometimes with the pleasure of compiling them with TASM). We didn't have Linux boxes piled up in the back, to learn and explore Unix, many, like myself, had to fire up a war dialer, find a system, and use those crazy textfiles we read from our local BBS to work our way around. It wasn't, in most cases, for nefarious means -- it was our only option. It was a great, great era. Hard to understand if you weren't there. Do yourself a favor and check out a few old boards that are still available through telnet. It's not the same, but you'll get an idea. (I guess this response officially puts me in the "get off my lawn" club!)

nicholassmith 14y ago
I missed the BBS era and came in around the point where if you had a Windows machine you had to know some cmd magic to get certain things to work (dodgy shareware Doom floppies is the one I remember best), but it seems like it's a missing skill now.
olgeni 14y ago
And what about the happy times of FidoNet and GoldEd and the dreaded FOSSIL drivers...
p4bl0 14y ago
Your comment made me think of Telehack [1] and Textfiles [2]. "Telehack is a simulation of a stylized arpanet/usenet, circa 1985-1990. It is a full multi-user simulation, including 25,000 hosts and BBS's the early net, thousands of files from the era, a collection of adventure and IF games, a working BASIC interpreter with a library of programs to run, simulated historical users, and more." [3] Textfiles is an archives of, well, text files. [1] http://telehack.com/ http://telehack.com/ [2] http://textfiles.com/ http://textfiles.com/ [3] http://telehack.com/telehack.html http://telehack.com/telehack.html

cryowaffle 14y ago

I read this to my 10th grade English class back in 1999, people loved it.

loydb 14y ago

As the author, I've been amazed over the years at how well this resonates with people 25+ years after the fact. I continue to get 2-3 emails a week from people about how it affected them (unfortunately, about half of the emails also ask me to break into something for them). It is difficult for anyone who didn't live through the BBS years to understand the feeling of no longer being isolated and alone. I strongly recommend Jason Scott's documentary 'BBS' (in which I'm interviewed) for a glimpse at a bygone era.

acuozzo 14y ago
Thank you for writing this piece. I've read it (at least) annually for the past 10 or so years.
kaolinite 14y ago
Thanks for writing this Loyd. It made an impression on me when I was younger and I re-read it fairly often. I recall (with slight embarrassment) translating it into French for an assignment whilst at school (we had to translate an article/story we liked). I don't think the teacher was very impressed with my choice.
Gonzih 14y ago
Thank you.
angersock 14y ago
Thank you.
im_dario 14y ago
As others said, thanks. It inspired me too! I've never broke a system but all the knowledge and mindset I got on my own path is a lot more valuable than what I got from my CS degree.
godDLL 14y ago
The copy that I kept staid with me through two HDD meltdown events since the 2000's, when I first read it. It isn't about me, or of my direct experience. But it is about people like me, and exhibits an emotion that looks exactly like it was ripped directly from my brain, I can almost feel the static when I run my eyes on it. Thank you. If you read this I will cry.

d--b 14y ago

This looks like it was written by Alan Moore. Damn 1980s.

TomGullen 14y ago

Written on the year Aaron Swartz was born. Very poignant.

rauljara 14y ago

I can tell already this won't be a popular sentiment around here. Also, I want to preface this by saying I wasn't around in bbs era, and maybe my reaction would be different if I had been. But this kind of irks me: "...ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?" Did the author ever take a look behind the eyes of the people whose systems he was breaking into and wonder why they didn't react well to having their privacy violated? Perhaps I'm being unfair, but what I get out of it is "I'm smarter than you, so I'm entitled to do whatever I want." And I get that the author was treated poorly in school, and he has my sympathy for that (I was too). But that attitude of entitled superiority is dangerous. It can and has been used to justify really awful things. I don't think this manifesto should be lionized.

api 14y ago
It's a valid point. I have a confession though: I was a teenage hacker (in the cracking sense). I suspect many people around here were. I didn't break stuff or steal stuff on purpose, or have explicit malicious intent. I practiced what is sometimes called "catch and release" hacking. It was a game... to me at least. I'm sure it was an annoyance to the ones on the other end, but I was 14-15 and wasn't thinking like that. But boy did I ever learn a lot. By the time I made it to college, I knew more than a lot of the CS seniors. So much that I didn't bother majoring in CS. I wanted to learn something else. At 18 I knew: C, C++, 80x86 assembler, shell script, Perl, how to compose and validate an IP packet, the OSI networking model, basic protocol design, peer to peer protocol design concepts, and quite a bit about cryptography including how to properly construct an authenticated cryptographic envelope and the importance of choosing the right block cipher mode of operation. Password cracking led me to hash functions and SALTs, which led me down the rabbit hole, and I got fascinated with crypto. At one point I worked through the math of Diffie-Hellman and RSA. It was very hard stuff, and required that I delve into a lot of deep math that was way beyond me at 15 going on 16. But knowing it made me more of a badass hacker ninja. Cause it was crypto, and crypto was big time hacker stuff. When I comprehended the one-way trap door function behind Diffie-Hellman I felt like I'd stolen a car and gone joyriding with the archetypal cool kids. More than that, I found that my knowledge was more hands-on than the CS students I encountered. I not only thought in code, but thought in networks. To this day networking and network protocols are completely natural to me, while otherwise very good programmers tend to gnash their teeth at the thought of implementing them. Also, for some reason this network experience translated right into multithreaded coding. Working with threads, even at a low level, with all the blocking and priority inversion issues, is no sweat. Network hacking made me comfortable with non-determinism. I highly doubt I'd know this without the challenge of hacking (sense 2). But wait, you say... why don't we just create a corewar-style game? Why can't schools have Defcon-style attack/defend tournaments. I wouldn't have touched this with a ten foot pole. No rebellion, no interest. That would have been an "organized activity" put forward by adults. Blech. Honestly, a similar ethos got me interested in startups much later. Startups sort of felt rebellious in a way... like little scrappy hack-trepreneurs sticking it to the big guys. It was when startups popped their shirt collars and went all douchey and "mainstream" that I lost interest.

sp4rki 14y ago

I remember being around 7 or 8 and reading this (and other texts of the times in question) and being inspired by the inherent culture which had at it's simplest reduction an insatiable need to consume knowledge by means of discovery. It inspired me to learn C and tinker with Linux and BSD. It also had a part on a quirky math phase I had - which ended causing my math teachers pain when trying to teach a 13 year old the usual basics ended having to grade exams with the most intricate and elaborate (and long) solutions to simple questions and puzzles. It inspired me to open up my old Packard Bell branded computer and tinker with it until a soldering iron made it meet it's demise. This series of texts also inspired in me a need to know everything there is about computer security, and of course, the only way to put that knowledge to the test is in real world applications like hacking the school systems to take a peek at que quarterly final exams, compromising machines to use as botnets to do fun stuff in IRC, and of course taking advantage of the "unlimited" bandwidth available to the school. Thankfully the school took this as a rebellious kid/teen learning as much as possible about computers and systems and ending up giving me the task to secure their network and physical machines, to the dismay of the actual computer administrators in school. I bet that this type of reading material inspired an army of people just like me to tinker, hack, and learn as much as possible. Aaron Swartz was probably one of them - being only three years younger than me, and probably one of the most influential in this harsh times for both hackers and activists. Now hopefully his person and his work will become part of the inspiration for future generations, the same way this text by "The Mentor" was for my generation.

deleted 14y ago

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Illychnosis 14y ago

"The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side." -Goethe

duairc 14y ago

Commie bullshit.

Jach 14y ago
For the benefit of those who don't get the joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMX7JFSJDsY&t=490 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMX7JFSJDsY&t=490
- nitrogen 14y ago
  The sickest joke is that Youtube is still running with that on it and MegaUpload is not.

gopher 14y ago

after all, we are all alike

zxcdw 14y ago

It's a shame that the old computing culture is dead. VX scene, demoscene, crack scene, ... Everything that used to be interesting for the curious is dead. Now we have... web development and "front end engineering" and "value creation" which rule the game. It really pisses me off that I care about none of these. I care for technical superiority with scarce resources, but today no such domains exist really. Really depressing.

coldpie 14y ago
Mmmh, sorta. Mobile development often lets you work bare-metal with scarce resources, especially in the world of game consoles. One of my favorite experiences in high school was developing homebrew games for the PSP and experimenting with homebrew on the GBA. Right now I'm reverse-engineering an NES game from 1992 just for the hell of it (god it's fun). Hardware hacking is still around, there's just so many other options that it can get lost in the noise.
- gavinlynch 14y ago
  Yah, even though that scene is growing smaller by the year, the 6502/2A03 ASM geeks are still crunching away... looking for extra space inside NES Rom's to cram some new, cool feature their favorite games would benefit from. Did a little in the mid-00's, was a great time and taught me how a microprocessor works. So fret not! A good old-school time can still be had in this modern age of new-fangled-front-end-engineers!! (of which I am one) :)
voltagex_ 14y ago
I don't think the demoscene is dead. http://scene.org/dir.php?dir=%2Fparties%2F2012/ http://scene.org/dir.php?dir=%2Fparties%2F2012/

graham_king_3 14y ago

HN needs a "pin" feature, so this can be top all the time.

nnnnlkk 14y ago

joey

keypusher 14y ago

Classic. Anyone interested in this era should check out "The Hacker Crackdown" by Bruce Sterling.

aortega 14y ago

AKA the teenager manifesto. Sorry but the feeling of superiority that many hackers have is their biggest weakness. You are not a beautiful butterfly that nobody comprehends. Everybody else is not less intelligent than you, no wonder hackers are always in the wrong side of the police boot. You better start working fast.

xtracto 14y ago

And to think I could have whored some karma if I had created a thread instead of a simple comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051486 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051486