6 ms·

Inside 'Hackerville,' Romania's Infamous Cyber Crime Hub [video]

61 points by Errorcod3 11y ago

mpu 11y ago
It's not so deep. The takeaway is that modern terrorism will go through wires. Today, the logistics needed to generate massive power failure able to damage severely the economy of all developed countries are arguably simpler than what's necessary to re-create a 9-11. I think we should fear and get ready, unit testing and agile software are not enough. We need to make sure some systems are NOT reachable in any way via internet, we need formal methods and expensive secure designs. I really hope terrorists never get smart enough to attack digital infrastructures.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  There's enough fear going around to power a couple of wars. Fear is such a bad emotion to give in to. Unit testing and agile are definitely not enough for mission critical systems like power grids and other infrastructure and airgapping certainly helps (but we've already seen that it is no guarantee for absolute security). Why secure designs would be automatically 'expensive' is something I don't understand. Terrorism is all about using fear for purposes of political pressure, simply don't give in to the fear and you've already won the battle, stay calm and clearheaded. If terrorists really wanted to destabilize society they could easily do so but it would defeat their purpose, the one thing terrorists want you to be able to do is to continue to communicate and consume media, that's their platform.
ilurk 11y ago
It was interesting but lacking any technical details. Are there any analysis on the attacks done by these individuals? Something juicy like the analysis done by Symantec and Kaspersky.
- liviu 11y ago
  Because most of them are just crackers. They use exploits found by real hackers.
  - yenda 11y ago
    this. Seems like it's all just script kiddies and social engineering. If you want to watch juicy hacking go for Geohot for instance. He does some crazy screencasts
    - jzelinskie 11y ago
      Do you have any links? A cursory search didn't yield anything of value.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
anon3_ 11y ago
Lots of color effects. It's like Silent Hill, everything is ash gray / overcast.
- cblock811 11y ago
  It's weird, I feel like Eastern Europe always gets that kind of lighting when I see something about them in the news or like this.
- leaveyou 11y ago
  This is anything but a documentary. It's a repackaged story about things happening 4-5 years ago. I never heard the term "hackerville" in romanian mass-media and I read it daily. If you google it you will see that it's a term coined by journalists to re-sell the same old story: ex-communist slums, "hackers" with russian accent, cyber-crime, dangers everywhere. It started with Wired in 2011, France24 in 2012 and now this..
krisgenre 11y ago
Deliberately dramatic and made to seem like as if cyber criminals are as dangerous as the mafia with guns.
- Rainymood 11y ago
  Heh, at least it's better than them happily typing away at keyboards while wearing ski-masks in a dimly lit room. I thought Vice was 'good' journalism, turns out they pretty much sensationalise everything :(
  - leaveyou 11y ago
    Knowing the real Romania, I had the same revelation about Vice. These guys can go anywhere and pay some poor locals from some slums to say anything they want to hear, add some historic flashbacks (communist if possible) and urban mythology to it and bam !, they have a story to sell. Ridiculous
  - anc84 11y ago
    Vice was always about hype. I can't remember anything I ever read or saw from them what I would consider good journalism.
- Udo 11y ago
  This fits in nicely with the general narrative. At one point they portray this guy who they say cost the NASA JPL half a million dollars, whereas he said he merely hacked their email server and asked for a job. My suspicion is that hacking damages are stated in "cop dollars", a wildly arbitrary unit of non-currency. Worth mentioning in this context is also the guy who complains about sitting in a max sec prison for hacking Hillary Clinton's email account, a judicial measure the reporters justify by claiming the damage was so great it plagues Clinton still in the 2016 presidential campaign. I think this is mostly a social failure. You have this group of moderately skilled young people who do this basically to make ends meet. The majority of them would probably rather take job offers from the companies they compromise. However, the film also details a lot of low-skill, traditional wire fraud like eBay scamming - which is tangentially related because it's also computer-enabled crime, but happens on an entirely different level that has nothing to do with hacking at all. The most obnoxious part of the film for me were the priest's soundbites, especially the thing with the bees. Less than nothing was accomplished by adding these weird religious statements to something that is apparently supposed to be a documentary.
andreime 11y ago
This is stupid. Those guys are breaking e-mail accounts using exploits that were probably dumped on an IRC channel. That city is renowned for cybercrime, but if you actually go beyond the media frenzy you find out that the vast majority are phishing and fake ebay accounts. They even brag about how they fool other people into buying fictional cars - I know this because I met some of these people. There are no true hackers in HackersVille, only some people - journalists - who have almost no idea about how computers and the internet works but insist on refreshing this story every year.
- SpendBig 11y ago
  Social engineering is also a hacking technique
- liviu 11y ago
  This time has nothing to do with journalism, this is just a Norton campaign[0]. I think they present these scammers as "hackers" (or cyber criminals) only to scare some people, hoping they will buy (their) antivirus. [0] http://www.mostdangeroustown.com http://www.mostdangeroustown.com
- krisgenre 11y ago
  In fact even the 'notorious' hacker Guccifer wasn't really that much skilled. As per Wikipedia he hacked email accounts by making guesses at security questions.
markyc 11y ago
this is just marketing vice is selling sensationalism, and it's a far better story to pinpoint the hackers' lair on a map than to talk about real hacking. Real hacking comes from all over the world, including from governments and companies norton is selling antivirus software, and it's in their interest to scare people instead of educate them the funny thing is antiviruses don't really work against real hacking understandint this better, it makes me wonder about news in general, how much do journalists care about the truth vs selling a story?
- notfoss 11y ago
  > how much do journalists care about the truth vs selling a story? Not much. And it's the same the world over.

61 points by Errorcod3 11y ago

mpu 11y ago

It's not so deep. The takeaway is that modern terrorism will go through wires. Today, the logistics needed to generate massive power failure able to damage severely the economy of all developed countries are arguably simpler than what's necessary to re-create a 9-11. I think we should fear and get ready, unit testing and agile software are not enough. We need to make sure some systems are NOT reachable in any way via internet, we need formal methods and expensive secure designs. I really hope terrorists never get smart enough to attack digital infrastructures.

jacquesm 11y ago
There's enough fear going around to power a couple of wars. Fear is such a bad emotion to give in to. Unit testing and agile are definitely not enough for mission critical systems like power grids and other infrastructure and airgapping certainly helps (but we've already seen that it is no guarantee for absolute security). Why secure designs would be automatically 'expensive' is something I don't understand. Terrorism is all about using fear for purposes of political pressure, simply don't give in to the fear and you've already won the battle, stay calm and clearheaded. If terrorists really wanted to destabilize society they could easily do so but it would defeat their purpose, the one thing terrorists want you to be able to do is to continue to communicate and consume media, that's their platform.

ilurk 11y ago

It was interesting but lacking any technical details. Are there any analysis on the attacks done by these individuals? Something juicy like the analysis done by Symantec and Kaspersky.

liviu 11y ago
Because most of them are just crackers. They use exploits found by real hackers.
- yenda 11y ago
  this. Seems like it's all just script kiddies and social engineering. If you want to watch juicy hacking go for Geohot for instance. He does some crazy screencasts
  - jzelinskie 11y ago
    Do you have any links? A cursory search didn't yield anything of value.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

anon3_ 11y ago

Lots of color effects. It's like Silent Hill, everything is ash gray / overcast.

cblock811 11y ago
It's weird, I feel like Eastern Europe always gets that kind of lighting when I see something about them in the news or like this.
leaveyou 11y ago
This is anything but a documentary. It's a repackaged story about things happening 4-5 years ago. I never heard the term "hackerville" in romanian mass-media and I read it daily. If you google it you will see that it's a term coined by journalists to re-sell the same old story: ex-communist slums, "hackers" with russian accent, cyber-crime, dangers everywhere. It started with Wired in 2011, France24 in 2012 and now this..

krisgenre 11y ago

Deliberately dramatic and made to seem like as if cyber criminals are as dangerous as the mafia with guns.

Rainymood 11y ago
Heh, at least it's better than them happily typing away at keyboards while wearing ski-masks in a dimly lit room. I thought Vice was 'good' journalism, turns out they pretty much sensationalise everything :(
- leaveyou 11y ago
  Knowing the real Romania, I had the same revelation about Vice. These guys can go anywhere and pay some poor locals from some slums to say anything they want to hear, add some historic flashbacks (communist if possible) and urban mythology to it and bam !, they have a story to sell. Ridiculous
- anc84 11y ago
  Vice was always about hype. I can't remember anything I ever read or saw from them what I would consider good journalism.
Udo 11y ago
This fits in nicely with the general narrative. At one point they portray this guy who they say cost the NASA JPL half a million dollars, whereas he said he merely hacked their email server and asked for a job. My suspicion is that hacking damages are stated in "cop dollars", a wildly arbitrary unit of non-currency. Worth mentioning in this context is also the guy who complains about sitting in a max sec prison for hacking Hillary Clinton's email account, a judicial measure the reporters justify by claiming the damage was so great it plagues Clinton still in the 2016 presidential campaign. I think this is mostly a social failure. You have this group of moderately skilled young people who do this basically to make ends meet. The majority of them would probably rather take job offers from the companies they compromise. However, the film also details a lot of low-skill, traditional wire fraud like eBay scamming - which is tangentially related because it's also computer-enabled crime, but happens on an entirely different level that has nothing to do with hacking at all. The most obnoxious part of the film for me were the priest's soundbites, especially the thing with the bees. Less than nothing was accomplished by adding these weird religious statements to something that is apparently supposed to be a documentary.

andreime 11y ago

This is stupid. Those guys are breaking e-mail accounts using exploits that were probably dumped on an IRC channel. That city is renowned for cybercrime, but if you actually go beyond the media frenzy you find out that the vast majority are phishing and fake ebay accounts. They even brag about how they fool other people into buying fictional cars - I know this because I met some of these people. There are no true hackers in HackersVille, only some people - journalists - who have almost no idea about how computers and the internet works but insist on refreshing this story every year.

SpendBig 11y ago
Social engineering is also a hacking technique
liviu 11y ago
This time has nothing to do with journalism, this is just a Norton campaign[0]. I think they present these scammers as "hackers" (or cyber criminals) only to scare some people, hoping they will buy (their) antivirus. [0] http://www.mostdangeroustown.com http://www.mostdangeroustown.com
krisgenre 11y ago
In fact even the 'notorious' hacker Guccifer wasn't really that much skilled. As per Wikipedia he hacked email accounts by making guesses at security questions.

markyc 11y ago

this is just marketing vice is selling sensationalism, and it's a far better story to pinpoint the hackers' lair on a map than to talk about real hacking. Real hacking comes from all over the world, including from governments and companies norton is selling antivirus software, and it's in their interest to scare people instead of educate them the funny thing is antiviruses don't really work against real hacking understandint this better, it makes me wonder about news in general, how much do journalists care about the truth vs selling a story?

notfoss 11y ago
> how much do journalists care about the truth vs selling a story? Not much. And it's the same the world over.