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I have some issues with this list. 1. If we know who they are, are they really the best? David Smith is, as the article says, the only person to go to jail for
by fabulist 12y ago
I have some issues with this list.
1. If we know who they are, are they really the best? David Smith is, as the article says, the only person to go to jail for writing a Macro virus, the past time of script kiddies everywhere (at one point at least; I'm not sure if you can still perform the necessary tricks with overwriting the default template, etc). I find that rather telling.
2. I would never call Hotz a "Black Hat" for hacking on hardware he owned. I wouldn't describe RTM, Lamo, or James that way either, though they accessed systems that weren't theres. Only three of the people on this list sought any kind of material gain; the rest of them have questionable ethics, but are mostly motivated by curiosity. Even McKinnon, for whom black hat is probably a fitting epitaph, was in search of information he believed was being unjustly withheld from the public.
Maybe this is just me, but I think of someone as a black hat if they are out to do harm; to destroy systems, steal money, or sap resources.
3. Maybe this is a nitpick, but packet sniffing is a passive attack by someone with access to a router, switch, WiFi encryption keys, etc. ARP spoofing is an active attack performed by ordinary hosts on the same LAN as the target that can achieve similar goals.