Originally @ http://www.villagevoice.com/features/9846/lee.shtml

November 10 - 16, 1998
Cracking the Code of Ethics
by Edmund Lee

In the spare halls of WBAI's new offices on Wall Street, a few hackers
loiter around, talking to one another about the newest digital phones, the
bureaucratic nuances of Bell Atlantic, and what to eat for dinner (either
upscale diner or Mexican). It's Tuesday night; they're waiting for
Emmanuel Goldstein (a/k/a Eric Corley), host of the hacker radio show Off
the Hook and editor of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. One, a middle-aged man
wearing glasses and a baggy, ill-fitting suit, sits on a bench near the
front door listening to the wall-mounted speaker project a human voice.
The inner cone of the speaker appears to have a little tear, turning
consonants into a static-sounding lisp. "The SH-I-A has many oberatives in
that hountry," the voice comes over. "What we have here is a hovert strike
assault." They're tuned in to Expert Witness, a radio show about
clandestine military operations and spy technology, which airs every
Tuesday night just before Off the Hook. 

"These guys are the real hackers," says the man sitting on the bench,
about the CIA operatives and post­Cold War spies. "We just hack esoteric
things, like phones and computers." 

But these days, there's much debate about what a "real" hacker is.
Usenet's alt.2600 and alt.hackers play host to constant flame wars about
just who is and who isn't. A typical post goes something like this: "Can
someone tell me how I can get a wardialer [a program that dials random
numbers until it finds one hooked up to a computer]?" To which the typical
response is: "Get a life.  First try to learn something about computers
then come back with some real questions. We got to get rid of these
wannabe hackers." 

Within what was once a cipher of people guided by a single code or ethic,
clashing philosophies have emerged. The explosion of the Internet and the
rush to get a computer in every home, classroom, and office has made every
15-year-old kid with a modem a potential hacker, of sorts. By some
accounts, this fragmentation of the hacker community has spawned a new
breed of more dangerous hackers, leaving the traditionalists to slowly die
out. 

"There are definitely divisions and now there are all types of hackers,"
says J. P. Vranesevich, who runs AntiOnline.com, which publishes
information about security holes in programs as well as the latest hacker
attacks. He breaks it down into "traditional hackers like Emmanuel
Goldstein"; "hackers for profit" like Vladimir Levin, who stole $4 million
from Citibank and was rumored to have ties to the Russian mob; and hackers
whose playgrounds include foreign government networks, such as Israeli
Ehud Tenebaum, a/k/a Analyzer, who hacked the Department of Defense
computers and was described by Bibi Netanyahu as "damn good" but "very
dangerous." "It's all changing now," Vranesevich says.  "There are split
motivations." 

"Bullshit," responds Goldstein, when asked if he thinks the hacker
community is fragmenting.  "All we're seeing are the youths who are
breaking into systems.  We've had that before. It was just smaller then." 

Goldstein means the ever growing grade known as "script-kiddies,"  or
wannabes who troll around the Net and co-opt the old "scripts"  or
programs of other hackers, which allow them to infiltrate a computer
system, download credit-card numbers, or logjam a network. (The most
famous script to date is AOL4Free, which gave free AOL access by
generating a false credit-card number based on a simple algorithm. Later
versions of this script enabled wannabes to find real credit-card numbers
of AOL members.) 

"These kids don't really have any skills," says Deth Veggie of cDc, one of
the oldest hacker crews around. "Since they didn't learn it for themselves
they don't respect the system they're infiltrating. And so they steal
things and download files, which a real hacker would never do." 

To find out what a real hacker is, it's useful to consult the Jargon File,
a compendium of hacker slang started by Raphael Finkel of Stanford's
Artificial Intelligence Lab back in 1975.  The File has been updated
numerous times and has been handed down to various editors the same way
hackers share and constantly modify program codes.  According to Jargon
File 4.0.0, a hacker is "a person who enjoys exploring the details of
programmable systems." Also: "A malicious meddler who tries to discover
sensitive information by poking around." This last definition has a new
editor's note, reading: "deprecated." 

According to a study released earlier this year by the Computer Security
Institute and the FBI, however, malicious hacks are on the rise.
Sixty-four percent of the companies surveyed reported computer security
breaches within the past year, a 16 percent increase over the year before. 
And 47 percent of these attacks resulted in theft of data, financial
fraud, or sabotage.  Though there are no statistics on exactly how many
hackers are surfing the Net, it is clear that there are more of these
"malicious meddlers" than ever before. 

"I don't see it as an alarming trend," says Route of Phrack, an electronic
hacker publication founded in 1985, just after 2600.  "The hacker world is
a mirror of society. And we'll have these bad elements like any society.
It's just that nobody knows what we're really about." 

This public relations trouble is caused in part by the disproportionate
amount of media attention bestowed on hackers like Tenebaum and Kevin
Mitnick, who has been in jail since 1995 awaiting trial on charges of
stealing 20,000 credit-card numbers^× and who will be portrayed by Skeet
Ulrich in a forthcoming Miramax film. 

Many of the traditional cadre of hackers have complained that the media
like to focus on people like Mitnick and "clump us together with those
guys," says Hosaka, founder of r00t, another hacker crew. "R00t doesn't do
things like that. We don't 'hack' in that way. All we're about is hanging
out, exchanging information, and teaching each other new things. If you
want to break something, go out and buy it, then break it. Don't break
other people's work." 

These sentiments, shared by many of the hacking world's sizable old guard,
have increased the tension over the already contentious Mitnick issue,
which many hackers point to as evidence of fragmentation. Although just
about everyone agrees Mitnick has been held in jail for too long without a
trial, many think he should face the consequences. "He did do bad things
and break the law," says Tom Jackiewicz, a/k/a invalid, of UPT, an old
hacker BBS. "He should pay for his crimes." But Goldstein disagrees, and
has campaigned heavily for a speedy trial. "Mitnick is not someone who
belongs in prison,"  he claims. 

The recent hack of the New York Times Web site^× where the words "Free
Kevin" were graffitied by a crew calling itself Hacking For Girlies (HFG)^×
has also become a point of contention. 

"It was wrong," says Hosaka. "On the Internet you have the ability to
display what you want, so put up your own site." 

Still, some think it was "pulled off pretty well," according to Deth
Veggie. "My impression is that it was done more to send a message than
just to say, 'Look, we hacked a Web page!' which is what [these types of
hacks are] mostly about." 

The Times is considering the incident a criminal act and the FBI is
investigating. Although Web page hacks are usually within the purview of
newbie hackers, one hacker source says he knows that "this was done by a
hacker from the old guard." 

Perhaps it was not simply a statement about the Mitnick case but a call
for the old guard to reclaim media attention, showing everyone that they
still exist.