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Приказивање постова са ознаком Kevin Mitnick. Прикажи све постове
Приказивање постова са ознаком Kevin Mitnick. Прикажи све постове

Neobjavljena autobiografija Kevina Mitnicka

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Sledeći tekst predstavlja autobiografiju Kevina Mitnicka koja je trebalo da bude prvo poglavlje jedne od njegovih knjiga:
Kevin Speaks Some hackers destroy people's files or entire hard drives; they're called crackers or vandals. Some novice hackers don't bother learning the technology, but simply download hacker tools to break into computer systems; they're called script kiddies. More experienced hackers with programming skills develop hacker programs and post them to the Web and to bulletin board systems. And then there are individuals who have no interest in the technology, but use the computer merely as a tool to aid them in stealing money, goods, or services. Despite the media-created myth of Kevin Mitnick, I'm not a malicious hacker. What I did wasn't even against the law when I began, but became a crime after new legislation was passed. I continued anyway, and was caught.
My treatment by the federal government was based not on the crimes, but on making an example of me. I did not deserve to be treated like a terrorist or violent criminal: Having my residence searched with a blank search warrant; being thrown into solitary for months; denied the fundamental Constitutional rights guaranteed to anyone accused of a crime; being denied not only bail but a bail hearing; and being forced to spend years fighting to obtain the government's evidence so my courtappointed attorney could prepare my defense.
What about my right to a speedy trial? For years I was given a choice every six months: sign a paper waiving your Constitutional right to a speedy trial or go to trial with an attorney who is unprepared; I chose to sign. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
Starting Out My path was probably set early in life. I was a happy-go-lucky kid, but bored. After my father split when I was three, my mother worked as a waitress to support us. To see me then an only child being raised by a mother who put in long, harried days on a sometimes-erratic schedulewould have been to see a youngster on his own almost all his waking hours. I was my own babysitter.
Growing up in a San Fernando Valley community gave me the whole of Los Angeles to explore, and by the age of twelve I had discovered a way to travel free throughout the whole greater L.A. area. I realized one day while riding the bus that the security of the bus transfer I had purchased relied on the unusual pattern of the paper-punch that the drivers used to mark day, time and route on the transfer slips. A friendly driver, answering my carefully-planted question, told me where to buy that special type of punch. The transfers are meant to let you change buses and continue a journey to your destination, but I worked out how to use them to travel anywhere I wanted to go for free. Obtaining blank transfers was a walk in the park: the trash bins at the bus terminals were always filled with only-partly-used books of transfers that the drivers tossed away at the end of their shifts. With a pad of blanks and the punch, I could mark my own transfers and travel anywhere that L.A. buses went. Before long, I had all but memorized the bus schedules of the entire system. This was an early example of my surprising memory for certain types of information; still today I can remember phone numbers, passwords and other items as far back as my childhood. Another personal interest that surfaced at an early age was my fascination with performing magic. Once I learned how a new trick worked, I would practice, practice, and practice until I mastered it. To an extent, it was through magic that I discovered the enjoyment in fooling people.
From Phone Phreak to Hacker My first encounter with what I would eventually learn to call social engineering came about during my high school years, when I met another student who was caught up in a hobby called phone phreaking. Phone phreaking is a type of hacking that allows you to explore the telephone network by exploiting the phone systems and phone company employees. He showed me neat tricks he could do with a telephone, like obtaining any information the phone company had on any customer, and using a secret test number to make long-distances calls for free (actually free only to us--I found out much later that it wasn't a secret test number at all: the calls were in fact being billed to some poor company's MCI account). That was my introduction to social engineering--my kindergarten, so to speak. He and another phone phreaker I met shortly thereafter let me listen in as they each made pretext calls to the phone company. I heard the things they said that made them sound believable, I learned about different phone company offices, lingo and procedures. But that "training" didn't last long; it didn't have to. Soon I was doing it all on my own, learning as I went, doing it even better than those first teachers. The course my life would follow for the next fifteen years had been set.
One of my all-time favorite pranks was gaining unauthorized access to the telephone switch and changing the class of service of a fellow phone phreak. When he'd attempt to make a call from home, he'd get a message telling him to deposit a dime, because the telephone company switch received input that indicated he was calling from a pay phone. I became absorbed in everything about telephones--not only the electronics, switches, and computers, but also the corporate organization, the procedures, and the terminology. After a while, I probably knew more about the phone system than any single employee. And I had developed my social engineering skills to the point that, at seventeen years old, I was able to talk most Telco employees into almost anything, whether I was speaking with them in person or by telephone.
My hacking career started when I was in high school. Back then we used the term hacker to mean a person who spent a great deal of time tinkering with hardware and software, either to develop more efficient programs or to bypass unnecessary steps and get the job done more quickly. The term has now become a pejorative, carrying the meaning of "malicious criminal." In these pages I use the term the way I have always used it--in its earlier, more benign sense. In late 1979, a group of fellow hacker types who worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District dared me to try hacking into The Ark, the computer system at Digital Equipment Corporation used for developing their RSTS/E operating system software. I wanted to be accepted by the guys in this hacker group so I could pick their brains to learn more about operating systems.
These new "friends" had managed to get their hands on the dial-up number to the DEC computer system. But they knew the dial-up number wouldn't do me any good: Without an account name and password, I'd never be able to get in. They were about to find out that when you underestimate others, it can come back to bite you in the butt. It turned out that, for me, even at that young age, hacking into the DEC system was a pushover. Claiming to be Anton Chernoff, one of the project's lead developers, I placed a simple phone call to the system manager. I claimed I couldn't log into one of "my" accounts, and was convincing enough to talk the guy into giving me access and allowing me to select a password of my choice. As an extra level of protection, whenever anyone dialed into the development system, the user also had to provide a dial-up password. The system administrator told me the password. It was "buffoon," which I guess described what he must have felt like later on, when he found out what had happened. In less than five minutes, I had gained access to Digital's RSTE/E development system. And I wasn't logged on as just as an ordinary user, but as someone with all the privileges of a system developer. At first my new, so-called friends refused to believe I had gained access to The Ark.
One of them dialed up the system and shoved the keyboard in front of me with a challenging look on his face. His mouth dropped open as I matter-of-factly logged into a privileged account. I found out later that they went off to another location and, the same day, started downloading source-code components of the DEC operating system. And then it was my turn to be floored. After they had downloaded all the software they wanted, they called the corporate security department at DEC and told them someone had hacked into the company's corporate network. And they gave my name. My so-called friends first used my access to copy highly sensitive source code, and then turned me in. There was a lesson here, but not one I managed to learn easily. Through the years to come, I would repeatedly get into trouble because I trusted people who I thought were my friends.
After high school I studied computers at the Computer Learning Center in Los Angeles. Within a few months, the school's computer manager realized I had found a vulnerability in the operating system and gained full administrative privileges on their IBM minicomputer. The best computer experts on their teaching staff couldn't figure out how I had done this. In what may have been one of the earliest examples of "hire the hacker," I was given an offer I couldn't refuse: Do an honors project to enhance the school's computer security, or face suspension for hacking the system. Of course I chose to do the honors project, and ended up graduating Cum Laude with Honors.
Becoming a Social Engineer Some people get out of bed each morning dreading their daily work routine at the proverbial salt mines. I've been lucky enough to enjoy my work. In particular you can't imagine the challenge, reward, and pleasure I had in the time I spent as a private investigator. I was honing my talents in the performance art called social engineering-getting people to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do for a stranger--and being paid for it. For me it wasn't difficult becoming proficient in social engineering. My father's side of the family had been in the sales field for generations, so the art of influence and persuasion might have been an inherited trait. When you combine an inclination for deceiving people with the talents of influence and persuasion you arrive at the profile of a social engineer.
You might say there are two specialties within the job classification of con artist. Somebody who swindles and cheats people out of their money belongs to one sub-specialty, the grifter. Somebody who uses deception, influence, and persuasion against businesses, usually targeting their information, belongs to the other sub-specialty, the social engineer. From the time of my bus transfer trick, when I was too young to know there was anything wrong with what I was doing, I had begun to recognize a talent for finding out the secrets I wasn't supposed to have. I built on that talent by using deception, knowing the lingo, and developing a well-honed skill of manipulation. One way I used to work on developing the skills in my craft (if I may call it a craft) was to pick out some piece of information I didn't really care about and see if I could talk somebody on the other end of the phone into providing it, just to improve my talents. In the same way I used to practice my magic tricks, I practiced pretexting.
Through these rehearsals, I soon found I could acquire virtually any information I targeted. In Congressional testimony before Senators Lieberman and Thompson years later, I told them, "I have gained unauthorized access to computer systems at some of the largest corporations on the planet, and have successfully penetrated some of the most resilient computer systems ever developed. I have used both technical and non-technical means to obtain the source code to various operating systems and telecommunications devices to study their vulnerabilities and their inner workings." All of this was really to satisfy my own curiosity, see what I could do, and find out secret information about operating systems, cell phones, and anything else that stirred my curiosity. The train of events that would change my life started when I became the subject of a July 4th, 1994 front-page, above-the-fold story in the New York Times. Overnight, that one story turned my image from a little-known nuisance hacker into Public Enemy Number One of cyberspace. [According to] John Markoff, "Combining technical wizardry with the ages-old guile of a grifter, Kevin Mitnick is a computer programmer run amok." (The New York Times, 7/4/94.)
Combining the ages-old desire to attain undeserved fortune with the power to publish false and defamatory stories about his subjects on the front page of the New York Times, John Markoff was truly a technology reporter run amok. Markoff was to earn himself over $1 million by single-handedly creating what I label "The Myth of Kevin Mitnick." He became very wealthy through the very same technique I used to compromise computer systems and networks around the world: deception. In this case however, the victim of the deception wasn't a single computer user or system administrator, it was every person who trusted the news stories published in the pages of the New York Times.
Cyberspace's Most Wanted Markoff's Times article was clearly designed to land a contract for a book about my life story. I've never met Markoff, and yet he has literally become a millionaire through his libelous and defamatory "reporting" about me in the Times and in his 1991 book, Cyberpunk.
In his article, he included some dozens of allegations about me that he stated as fact without citing his sources, and that even a minimal process of fact-checking (which I thought all first-rate newspapers required their reporters to do) would have revealed as being untrue or unproven. In that single false and defamatory article, Markoff labeled me as "cyberspace's most wanted," and as "one of the nation's most wanted computer criminals," without justification, reason, or supporting evidence, using no more discretion than a writer for a supermarket tabloid. In his slanderous article, Markoff falsely claimed that I had wiretapped the FBI (I hadn't); that I had broken into the computers at NORAD (which aren't connected to any network on the outside); and that I was a computer "vandal," despite the fact that I had never intentionally damaged any computer I ever accessed.
These, among other outrageous allegations, were completely false and designed to create a sense of fear about my capabilities. In yet another breach of journalistic ethics, Markoff failed to disclose in that article and in all of his subsequent articles--a pre-existing relationship with me, a personal animosity based on my having refused to participate in the book Cyberpunk.
In addition, I had cost him a bundle of potential revenue by refusing to renew an option for a movie based on the book. Markoff's article was also clearly designed to taunt America's law enforcement agencies. "...(L)aw enforcement," Markoff wrote, "cannot seem to catch up with him...." The article was deliberately framed to cast me as cyberspace's Public Enemy Number One in order to influence the Department of Justice to elevate the priority of my case. A few months later, Markoff and his cohort Tsutomu Shimomura would both participate as de facto government agents in my arrest, in violation of both federal law and journalistic ethics. Both would be nearby when three blank warrants were used in an illegal search of my residence, and be present at my arrest. And, during their investigation of my activities, the two would also violate federal law by intercepting a personal telephone call of mine.
While making me out to be a villain, Markoff, in a subsequent article, set up Shimomura as the number one hero of cyberspace. Again he was violating journalistic ethics by not disclosing a pre-existing relationship: this hero in fact had been a personal friend of Markoff's for years.
First Contact My first encounter with Markoff had come in the late eighties when he and his wife Katie Hafner contacted me while they were in the process of writing Cyberpunk, which was to be the story of three hackers: a German kid known as Pengo, Robert Morris, and myself. What would my compensation be for participating? Nothing. I couldn't see the point of giving them my story if they would profit from it and I wouldn't, so I refused to help. Markoff gave me an ultimatum: either interview with us or anything we hear from any source will be accepted as the truth. He was clearly frustrated and annoyed that I would not cooperate, and was letting me know he had the means to make me regret it. I chose to stand my ground and would not cooperate despite his pressure tactics. When published, the book portrayed me as "The Darkside Hacker."
I concluded that the authors had intentionally included unsupported, false statements in order to get back at me for not cooperating with them. By making my character appear more sinister and casting me in a false light, they probably increased the sales of the book. A movie producer phoned with great news: Hollywood was interested in making a movie about the Darkside Hacker depicted in Cyberpunk. I pointed out that the story was full of inaccuracies and untruths about me, but he was still very excited about the project. I accepted $5,000 for a two-year option, against an additional $45,000 if they were able to get a production deal and move forward. When the option expired, the production company asked for a six-month extension. By this time I was gainfully employed, and so had little motivation for seeing a movie produced that showed me in such an unfavorable and false light. I refused to go along with the extension. That killed the movie deal for everyone, including Markoff, who had probably expected to make a great deal of money from the project. Here was one more reason for John Markoff to be vindictive towards me.
Around the time Cyberpunk was published, Markoff had ongoing e-mail correspondence with his friend Shimomura. Both of them were strangely interested in my whereabouts and what I was doing. Surprisingly, one e-mail message contained intelligence that they had learned I was attending the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and had use of the student computer lab. Could it be that Markoff and Shimomura were interested in doing another book about me? Otherwise, why would they care what I was up to?
Markoff in Pursuit Take a step back to late 1992. I was nearing the end of my supervised release for compromising Digital Equipment Corporation's corporate network. Meanwhile I became aware that the government was trying to put together another case against me, this one for conducting counter- intelligence to find out why wiretaps had been placed on the phone lines of a Los Angeles P.I. firm. In my digging, I confirmed my suspicion: the Pacific Bell security people were indeed investigating the firm. So was a computer-crime deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. (That deputy turns out to be, co-incidentally, the twin brother of my co-author on this book. Small world.) About this time, the Feds set up a criminal informant and sent him out to entrap me. They knew I always tried to keep tabs on any agency investigating me. So they had this informant befriend me and tip me off that I was being monitored. He also shared with me the details of a computer system used at Pacific Bell that would let me do counter-surveillance of their monitoring. When I discovered his plot, I quickly turned the tables on him and exposed him for credit-card fraud he was conducting while working for the government in an informant capacity. I'm sure the Feds appreciated that! My life changed on Independence Day, 1994 when my pager woke me early in the morning. The caller said I should immediately pick up a copy of the New York Times.
I couldn't believe it when I saw that Markoff had not only written an article about me, but the Times had placed it on the front page. The first thought that came to mind was for my personal safety--now the government would be substantially increasing their efforts to find me. I was relieved that in an effort to demonize me, the Times had used a very unbecoming picture. I wasn't fearful of being recognized; they had chosen a picture so out of date that it didn't look anything like me! As I began to read the article, I realized that Markoff was setting himself up to write the Kevin Mitnick book, just as he had always wanted. I simply could not believe the New York Times would risk printing the egregiously false statements that he had written about me. I felt helpless. Even if I had been in a position to respond, I certainly would not have an audience equal to the New York Times's to rebut Markoff's outrageous lies. While I can agree I had been a pain in the ass, I had never destroyed information, nor used or disclosed to others any information I had obtained. Actual losses by companies from my hacking activities amounted to the cost of phone calls I had made at phone-company expense, the money spent by companies to plug the security vulnerabilities that my attacks had revealed, and in a few instances possibly causing companies to reinstall their operating systems and applications for fear I might have modified software in a way that would allow me future access.
Those companies would have remained vulnerable to far worse damage if my activities hadn't made them aware of the weak links in their security chain. Though I had caused some losses, my actions and intent were not malicious ... and then John Markoff changed the world's perception of the danger I represented. The power of one unethical reporter from such an influential newspaper to write a false and defamatory story about anyone should haunt each and every one of us. The next target might be you.
The Ordeal After my arrest I was transported to the County Jail in Smithfield, North Carolina, where the U.S. Marshals Service ordered jailers to place me into 'the hole'--solitary confinement. Within a week, federal prosecutors and my attorney reached an agreement that I couldn't refuse. I could be moved out of solitary on the condition that I waived my fundamental rights and agreed to: a) no bail hearing; b) no preliminary hearing; and, c) no phone calls, except to my attorney and two family members. Sign, and I could get out of solitary. I signed. The federal prosecutors in the case played every dirty trick in the book up until I was released nearly five years later.
I was repeatedly forced to waive my rights in order to be treated like any other accused. But this was the Kevin Mitnick case: There were no rules. No requirement to respect the Constitutional rights of the accused. My case was not about justice, but about the government's determination to win at all costs. The prosecutors had made vastly overblown claims to the court about the damage I had caused and the threat I represented, and the media had gone to town quoting the sensationalist statements; now it was too late for the prosecutors to back down. The government could not afford to lose the Mitnick case. The world was watching. I believe that the courts bought into the fear generated by media coverage, since many of the more ethical journalists had picked up the "facts" from the esteemed New York Times and repeated them. The media-generated myth apparently even scared law enforcement officials.
A confidential document obtained by my attorney showed that the U.S. Marshals Service had issued a warning to all law enforcement agents never to reveal any personal information to me; otherwise, they might find their lives electronically destroyed. Our Constitution requires that the accused be presumed innocent before trial, thus granting all citizens the right to a bail hearing, where the accused has the opportunity to be represented by counsel, present evidence, and cross-examine witnesses. Unbelievably, the government had been able to circumvent these protections based on the false hysteria generated by irresponsible reporters like John Markoff.
Without precedent, I was held as a pre-trial detainee--a person in custody pending trial or sentencing--for over four and a half years. The judge's refusal to grant me a bail hearing was litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, my defense team advised me that I had set another precedent: I was the only federal detainee in U.S. history denied a bail hearing. This meant the government never had to meet the burden of proving that there were no conditions of release that would reasonably assure my appearance in court. At least in this case, federal prosecutors did not dare to allege that I could start a nuclear war by whistling into a payphone, as other federal prosecutors had done in an earlier case. The most serious charges against me were that I had copied proprietary source code for various cellular phone handsets and popular operating systems.
Yet the prosecutors alleged publicly and to the court that I had caused collective losses exceeding $300 million to several companies. The details of the loss amounts are still under seal with the court, supposedly to protect the companies involved; my defense team, though, believes the prosecution's request to seal the information was initiated to cover up their gross malfeasance in my case. It's also worth noting that none of the victims in my case had reported any losses to the Securities and Exchange Commission as required by law. Either several multinational companies violated Federal law--in the process deceiving the SEC, stockholders, and analysts--or the losses attributable to my hacking were, in fact, too trivial to be reported.
In his book he Fugitive Game, Jonathan Li Wan reports that within a week of the New York Times front-page story, Markoff's agent had "brokered a package deal" with the publisher Walt Disney Hyperion for a book about the campaign to track me down. The advance was to be an estimated $750,000. According to Littman, there was to be a Hollywood movie, as well, with Miramax handing over $200,000 for the option and "a total $650,000 to be paid upon commencement of filming." A confidential source has recently informed me that Markoff's deal was in fact much more than Littman had originally thought. So John Markoff got a million dollars, more or less, and I got five years.
What Others Say One book that examines the legal aspects of my case was written by a man who had himself been a prosecutor in the Los Angeles District Attorney's office, a colleague of the attorneys who prosecuted me. In his book Spectacular Computer Crimes, Buck Bloombecker wrote, "It grieves me to have to write about my former colleagues in less than flattering terms.... I'm haunted by Assistant United States Attorney James Asperger's admission that much of the argument used to keep Mitnick behind bars was based on rumors which didn't pan out." He goes on to say, "It was bad enough that the charges prosecutors made in court were spread to millions of readers by newspapers around the country. But it is much worse that these untrue allegations were a large part of the basis for keeping Mitnick behind bars without the possibility of posting bail?"
He continues at some length, writing about the ethical standards that prosecutors should live by, and then writes, "Mitnick's case suggests that the false allegations used to keep him in custody also prejudiced the court's consideration of a fair sentence."
In his 1999 Forbes article, Adam L. Penenberg eloquently described my situation this way: "Mitnick's crimes were curiously innocuous. He broke into corporate computers, but no evidence indicates that he destroyed data. Or sold anything he copied. Yes, he pilfered software but in doing so left it behind."
The article said that my crime was "To thumb his nose at the costly computer security systems employed by large corporations." And in the book The Fugitive Game, author Jonathan Littman noted, "Greed the government could understand. But a hacker who wielded power for its own sake ... was something they couldn't grasp." Elsewhere in the same book, Littman wrote: U.S. Attorney James Sanders admitted to Judge Pfaelzer that Mitnick's damage to DEC was not the $4 million that had made the headlines but $160,000. Even that amount was not damage done by Mitnick, but the rough cost of tracing the security weakness that his incursions had brought to DEC's attention.
The government acknowledged it had no evidence of the wild claims that had helped hold Mitnick without bail and in solitary confinement. No proof Mitnick had ever compromised the security of the NSA. No proof that Mitnick had ever issued a false press release for Security Pacific Bank. No proof that Mitnick ever changed the TRW credit report of a judge. But the judge, perhaps influenced by the terrifying media coverage, rejected the plea bargain and sentenced Mitnick to a longer term then even the government wanted.
Throughout the years spent as a hacker hobbyist, I've gained unwanted notoriety, been written up in numerous news reports and magazine articles, and had four books written about me. Markoff and Shimomura's libelous book was made into a feature film called Takedown. When the script found its way onto the Internet, many of my supporters picketed Miramax Films to call public attention to the inaccurate and false characterization of me. Without the help of many kind and generous people, the motion picture would surely have falsely portrayed me as the Hannibal Lector of cyberspace. Pressured by my supporters, the production company agreed to settle the case on confidential terms to avoid me filing a libel action against them.
Final Thoughts Despite John Markoff's outrageous and libelous descriptions of me, my crimes were simple crimes of computer trespass and making free telephone calls. I've acknowledged since my arrest that the actions I took were illegal, and that I committed invasions of privacy.
But to suggest, without justification, reason, or proof, as did the Markoff articles, that I had deprived others of their money or property by computer or wire fraud, is simply untrue, and unsupported by the evidence. My misdeeds were motivated by curiosity: I wanted to know as much as I could about how phone networks worked, and the ins and outs of computer security. I went from being a kid who loved to perform magic tricks to becoming the world's most notorious hacker, feared by corporations and the government.
As I reflect back on my life for the last thirty years, I admit I made some extremely poor decisions, driven by my curiosity, the desire to learn about technology, and a good intellectual challenge. I'm a changed person now. I'm turning my talents and the extensive knowledge I've gathered about information security and social engineering tactics to helping government, businesses and individuals prevent, detect, and respond to information security threats. This book is one more way that I can use my experience to help others avoid the efforts of the malicious information thieves of the world. I think you will find the stories enjoyable, eye-opening and educational.
Kevin Mitnick

Velikani svetskog haka - Kevin Mitnick

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Mnogo je ljudi koji se bave hakom. Mnogo je i stvari koje su oni počinili, što dobrih što loših. Ali je malo ljudi koji su izazvali toliko divljenje s jedne, i neverovatne optužbe i osude sa druge strane. Jedna od legendi haka jeste Kevin Mitnick, koga svi u hakerskoj zajednici veoma dobro znaju pod nadimkom Condor.

Kevin Mitnick rođen je 1946. godine u predgrađu Los Anđelesa. Računarima je počeo da se bavi u srednjoj školi . Sa 17 godina, dok je provaljivao u telefonski sistem jedne radio stanice, upoznao je Roscoa, vođu jedne „bande“ phreakersa. Naravno, i Rosco je istovremeno provaljivao u isti sistem pa su se tako slučajno i sreli. U početku je njihova specijalnost bila pravljenje štosova povezivanjem telefonskih linija ili zbunjivanje korisnika telefona. Na primer, dešavalo se da upadnu u vezu nekom ko je želeo da telefonira izvesnom gospodinu Smithu i tada bi se iz slušalice začuo glas nekog od veselih phreakera: „Da, izvolite Madam? Dobili ste centralu. Broj gospodina Smith-a je 6-8-5-7-8-9 i po. Ne znate kako da okrenete „i po“? E pa žao nam je, madam!“

Sa 17 godina je proveo 3 meseca u prihvatnom centru za maloletnike, pošto je sa svojom „bandom“ upao u Pacific Bell kompaniju u iz koje su izneli izveštaje, šifre za pristup podacima i operativne priručnike za COSMOS sistem. 1983 godine osuđen je na 6 meseci boravka u zatvoru za maloletnike jer je koristeći računar Univerziteta Južne Kalifornije , preko ARPANET-a upao u Pentagon. Pacific Bell mu je opet bio na meti 1984. godine kada je vršljao po njihovom sistemu na kome su se nalazili brojevi kreditinih kartica. Uspeo je da pobegne dok je policija dolazila da ga uhapsi. Na meti njegovog haka bili su i: Santa Cruz Operation (1987), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (1987), Dogital Equipment Corporation, opet Pacific Bell (1992), California Department of Motor Vehicles (1994), WELL (1995), Motorola, Nokia...

Ipak,najveću medijsku pažnju Mitnick je privukao kada je optužen za upad u računar Tsutomu Shimomurae . To je bio početak borbe dva hakerska majstora. Kada je Mitnick uhapšen u februaru 1995. godine, javnost je bila podeljena. Jedni su ga poštovali i smatrali za velikog hakera, dok su ga drugi osuđivali kao najgoreg kriminalca i provalnika. Jedno je sigurno, javnost je bila preplašena. Još dok je bio na slobodi, o Mitnicku su kružile priče da je sposoban da izazove Treći svetski rat tako što bi preko mobilnog telefona lansirao vojne projektile. Kada je uhapšen, posle nekoliko dana u zatvoru prebačen je na režim oštrog nadzora, jer navodno ugrožava bezbednost. Niko od nadležnih nije umeo da objasni razloge njegove izolacije. Po zatvoru su kružile glasine da Mitnick ume da prepravi vokmen u radio prijemnik koji bi mu služio da prisluškuje stražarske sobe. Naravno, ništa od toga nije bilo tačno. Tokom suđenja, Mitnick je uspeo da pobije neke od tačaka optužnice. Čak je i veliki gigant „Motorola“, u čiji je sistem Mitnick jednom prilikom bio upao, javno izdao saopštenje u kome se kaže da tom prilikom nije načinjena nikakva materijalna šteta. Takođe, nisu pronađeni nikakvi dokazi koji bi nagovestili da je Mitnick hakovanje koristio zarad pridobijanja materijalne koristi.

Mitnicku je presuda izrečena tek 1999. godine. Tokom procesa, 49 meseci sudije nisu dozvolile nikakvu raspravu o kauciji . Osuđen je na 5 godina strogog zatvora, ali je u njemu proveo samo godinu dana pošto je odbrana izdejstvovala da mu se vreme provedeno u zatvoru tokom suđenja uračuna u kaznu. Mitnick je oslobođen 21.januara 2000. i po izlasku iz zatvora tri godine nije smeo da koristi računar niti bilo kakav aparat za bežičnu komunikaciju, a uskraćeno mu je i pravo da se zaposli u bilo kojoj firmi koja se bavi kompjuterima.

Uz neosporno kompjutersko znanje, Mitnick se u svojim poduhvatima najviše služio socijalnim inženjeringom. Uspevao je da dođe do podataka ne približavajući se računarima, i to je između ostalog bio jedan od oslonaca njegove odbrane. Po izlasku iz zatvora napisao je knjigu o socijalnom inženjeringu pod nazivom „The Art of Deception“ (”Umetnost prevare”). Knjiga "The Art of Intrusion" ("Umetnost provale") takođe je njegovo delo i ona se više bavi objašnjenjima hakovanja i načinima na koje su se neki hakovi desili.

1995. godine, napravljen je i film ”Takedown” čija je radnja bazirana na njegovom životu, a predstavlja nastavak kultnog filma „Hackers“

Jedanaest godina posle hapšenja Mitnick ima firmu Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC koja se bavi konsaltingom u oblasti bezbednosti računara, predaje na konferencijama i seminarima o IT-u i ko-autor je na dve knjige koje govore o bezbednosti računara i socijalnom inženjeringu. A Condorovi hakovi se i danas prepričavaju u hakerskoj zajednici sa puno poštovanja.


Jedan od intervjua sa Mitnickom možete pogledati ovde



Više o Kevinu Mitnicku možete pronaći na sledećim adresama:

Kevin Mitnick na Google-u
Kevin Mitnick na Youtubeu
Kevin Mitnick na Wikipediji
Neobjavljena autobiografija Kevina Mitnicka
Jedan od prikaza afere Mitnick/Shimomura

Hakeri i terorizam

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Pod pojmom sajber-terorizam (cyber-terrorism) podrazumeva se korišćenje računara i informacionih tehnologija, pretežno Interneta, za izazivanje štete sa ciljem da se postigne ispunjavanje političkih ili religioznih ciljeva napadača. Širokom upotrebom Interneta idividualci i grupe ga mogu koristiti u cilju pretnje građanima, pojedinim (etničkim ili verskim) grupama, zajednicama, pa i samim državama. Međutim, postoje struje mišljenja koje tvrde da sajber-terorizam ne postoji i da je to u stvari pitanje hakovanja i rata zbog informacija.

Interesovanje javnosti za sajber-terorizam počelo je krajem 80-tih godina prošlog veka. Kako se bližila 2000. godina, rastao je strah od virusa „milenijumska buba“ kao i od potencijalnih napada sajber-terorista. Posle 11. septembra 2001. godine, terorizam, a samim tim i njegov deo koji se odnosi na svet informacionih tehnologija dospeo je u žižu javnosti. Naslovne stranice u medijima bile su prepune naslova koji upozoravaju na mogućnost jednog jakog napada koji bi onemogućio Internet da funskcioniše. Međutim, to se još uvek nije dogodilo.

Da bi se izvele ovakve akcije, neophodno je da napadači poseduju veliko znanje o računarima. Ali, kao što svaki programer nije haker, tako ni svaki haker nema programersko umeće. Zbog toga je neosnovano sajber-terorizam povezivati samo sa hakerima, iako postoje primeri da su upravo hakeri izveli neke od takvih akcija u prošlosti.

Rumunski hakeri su jednom prilikom uspeli da upadnu u sistem istraživačke stanice na Antartktiku gde je radilo 58 naučnika. Na svu sreću, njihova aktivnost je zaustavljena pre nego što se desila neka nesreća. Do kraja 2004. godine, nije zabeležen ni jedan napad hakera koji je odneo život i jedne osobe. Većina napada je izazivala materijalnu ili finansijsku štetu, kao u slučaju kada su virusi napali i ugasili nevitalne sisteme jedne nuklearne elektrane, ali nikakvih dalekosežnijih posledica nije bilo.

Najsvežiji primer koji je izazvao globalnu paniku desio se krajem septembra 2008. godine kada je grupa hakera koja se naziva 'Greek Security Team', 'upala' u računare CERN-a (Evropski centar za nuklearna istraživanja) toliko duboko da su se nalazili veoma blizu preuzimanja kontrole nad jednim od detektora LHC-a, najvećeg akceleratora čestica. Hakeri su u sistem provalili već prvog dana eksperimenta i postavili lažnu stranicu na sajt CERN-a, rugajući stručnjacima odgovornim za kompjuterski sistem nazivajući ih 'gomilom školaraca'. Predstavnici CERN-a saopštili su da nikakva materijalna šteta nije načinjena, ali je neugodno saznanje da su detektori, i cela skupocena skalamerija, podložni digitalnom ugrožavanju.


Za sada se hakeri u ulozi terorista pojavljuju samo na filmu, što možda predstavlja vizualizaciju straha sa kojim se suočava današnje društvo. Strah od terorizma u bilo kom obliku postoji i ima svoje realne osnove. Ljudi kažu da su u strahu velike oči, ali je ipak neosnovano da se cela hakerska zajednica zbog nedovoljne informisanosti i straha od nepoznatog obeleži kao subjekat takvog ponašanja. Upravo to se desilo legendi svetskog haka, Kevinu Mitnicku, za koga su kružile priče da bi mogao da aktivira vojne projektile i izazove Treći svetski rat, pa mu je tokom boravka u zatvoru bila uskraćena mogućnost da koristi čak i telefon, jer se smatralo da u njegovim rukama može da posluži za izazivanje neke globalne katastrofe.

Psihološki profil hakera - omiljeno štivo

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Nauka i naučna fantastika su važan deo u životu svakog hakera. Često čitaju dela koja su predmet interesovanja ljudi sklonih liberalnoj umetnosti, ali ne govore mnogo o tome. Većina hakera provede onoliko vremena čitajući koliko prosečan Amerikanac provede ispred televizora. Njihove police prepune su knjiga pohabanih od čitanja.

Što se usko stručne literature tiče, uz knjige o hakovanju, postoje i dva najpoznatija hakerska časopisa. To su „2600“, i „Phrack“.

„2600“ je najstariji hakerski časopis osnovan 1984. godine od strane Emanuella Goldstinea. Ime je dobio po 2600 megaherca, koliko je proizvodila čuvena pištaljka Captain Crunch-a kada je uspeo da prevari telefonsku centralu. „2600 “ je i danas jedan od posećenijih sajtova iz oblasti hakovanja. U njegovim online izdanjima mogu se pronaći najnovije informacije o tome kako je Američka Bezbednosna Služba unapredila svoj računarski sistem, šta se novo desilo u oblasti zaštite računara itd... Ovaj časopis zaslužan je za stvaranje konfeterncije H.O.P.E. (Hackers on Planet Earth) koja svakog prvog petka u mesecu u 17 časova okuplja hakere iz celog sveta. Zemlje održavanja konferencije su Argentina, Australija, Austrija, Brazil, Kanada, Danska, Engleska, Finska, Francuska, Grčka, Irska, Italija, Japan, Meksiko, Novi Zeland, Norveška, Poljska, Porto Riko, Rusija, Škotska, Južna Afrika, Švedska, Švajcarska i SAD.


„Phrack“ je prvi put ugledao svetlost dana 17. novembra 1985. godine. Ime je dobio spajanjem reči „phreak“ i „crack“. U prvom broju nalazilo se 8 tekstova od kojih su neki: „Kako napraviti acetilensku bombu“ autora The Clashmaster-a, „Kako provaliti u školski računar preko modema“ koji je napisao Phantom Phreaker, „Upotreba MCI međunarodnih kartica“ čuvenog Knighta Lightninga i tako dalje. Teme kojima se bavio ovaj časopis su se najviše odnosile na bezbednost kompjutera, hakovanje, kriptografiju i svetske vesti. Originalno uredništvo predvodili su Taran King i Knight Lighting. Izdanja su se prvo pojavljivala na BBS-ovima na kojima je Taran King bio sistem operater, a kasnije su se distribuirali po ostalim BBS-ovima. Ovaj magazin smatran je ujedno i priručnikom i manifestom hakera.

U 2005. godini objavljeno je da „Phrack“ prestaje da postoji i da je njegovo 63. izdanje, ujedno i poslednje. Ipak, 27. maja 2007. godine, „Phrack“ broj 64. je ugledao svetlost dana uređen od strane novih mladih ljudi koji sebe nazivaju "The Circle of Lost Hackers" (TCLH). Ista grupa objavila je 65. izdanje novina 11. aprila 2008. godine.

„Phrack“ izlazi neredovno, i kao svaka akademska publikacija, podeljen je na tomove. Svaki tom se sastoji od određenog broja pojedinačnih tekstova raznih autora. Svi tekstovi prolaze kroz ruke uredništva, tzv Phrack Stuff čiji članovi pišu uvodnike. Iako obiluje tekstovima iz raznih oblasti u vezi sa kompjuterima, hakovanjem i tehnologijom uopšte, postoji nekoliko redovnih kolumna koje se pojavljuju u najvećem broju izdanja:

Prophile - prikaz neke veoma uticajne osobe iz hakerskog podzemlja
Loopback - odgovori na najoriginalnije ili najgluplje mailove koji su pristigli u uredništvo
Phrack World News - izveštaji sa najvažnijih događaja koji nemaju veze sa hakerima
International Scene - skup svedočenja hakera iz celog sveta o nacionalnim i internacionalnim aktivnostima


Uz pomenute "hakerske" magazine, postoji i časopis „Wired“- kolor mesečnik koji se prvi put pojavio u martu 1993. godine. Iako se ne bavi tematikom samog hakovanja, veoma je popularan među pripadnicima sajber kulture jer se bavi razvojem novih tehnologija, Internetom, slobodnim softverm itd... Takodje, Wired je jedan od prvih časopisa koji su objavili email adrese svojih novinara i saradnika.

Kao dodatak časopisu, postoji enciklopedija "Geekipedia" koje sadrži spisak pojmova vezanih za tehnologiju i njihovih objašnjenja.

Što se knjiga tiče, poslednjih godina pojavilo ih se mnogo, od onih pisanih od strane novinara i IT stručnjaka koje opisuju hakersku zajednicu, preko onih napisanih od strane samih hakera i predstavljaju svojevrsna svedočenja o njihovim podvizima, do onih knjiga koje su predstavljene kao priručnici "HOW TO..." za razne segmente informacionih tehnologija.

Ipak, obavezna lektira za sve hakere jesu sledeće knjige:


Kevin Mitnick: "The Art of Deception" (Umeće provale) - Knjiga koja govori o hakerima, exploitima i kompjuterskim "uljezima". Za svaki "hack" spomenut u knjizi Kevin Mitnick daje obješnjenje kako je izveden.




Kevin Mitnick: "The Art of Intrusion" (Umeće obmane) - Knjiga koja govori o socijalnom inženjeringu, dokazujući da je ovek najslabija karika u lancu bezbednosti računara.




Tsutomu Shimomura i John Markoff: "Takedown" - Knjiga koja govori o praćenju i hapšenju najpoznatijeg hakera današnjice - Kevina Mitnicka. Knjigu su napisali agent FBI-ja Tsutomu Shimomura koji je uhvatio Mitnicka i novinar John Markoff koji je izveštavao o ovom slučaju i procesu koji je kasnije vođen.



Steven Levy: "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" (Hakeri: Heroji kompjuterske revolucije) - Knjiga o hakerima, u kojoj se prvi put spominje hakerska etika



Anonimyous: "Maximum Security: A Hacker's guide to protecting your computer" (Maksimalna bezbednost: hakerski vodič za zaštitu vašeg kompjutera) - Izuzetna knjiga koju možete upotrebiti kako da zaštitite svoj kompjuter, tako i da "provalite" u tuđ :)



Uz pomenutu "obaveznu" literaturu svakog hakera, u opticaju su sve knjige koje za temu imaju zaštitu i bezbednosti računara, programske jezike i programiranje, mreže, Interne, protokole, povezivanje, kriptovanje i dekriptovanje, Linux, Windows, Unix i ostale OS, servere i sve ono što može da posluži za unapređenje znanja o kompjuterima.

Psihološki profil hakera - pojava, crte ličnosti, komunikacija

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Ljudi gaje određene stereotipe kada su hakeri u pitanju. Priča o smešnom, malom, mršavom belcu koji nema socijalni život je skup ekstremnih osobina koje mogu imati hakeri i nikako ne predstavlja stereotip prosečnog pripadnika hakerske zajednice.

Jargon File sadrži jedan deo posvećen psihologiji i načinu života hakera, njihovim navikama i preferencijama.

Zavirimo malo!
POJAVA : Hakeri su veoma inteligentne osobe, istrošenog izgleda, apstraktni su. Iako se bave profesijom koja zahteva dosta sedenja, pretežno su mršavi. Ukoliko pate od prevelike težine, onda je to u ekstremu, baš kao i mršavost. Retko su preplanulog tena

CRTE LIČNOSTI : Ono što je zajedničko svim hakerima jeste visok koeficijent inteligencije, velika radoznalost i lakoća intelektualne apstrakcije. Stimulišu ih nova saznanja. Većina su individualci i antikonformisti. Imaju povišenu sposobnost apsorpcije znanja i obraćaju pažnju na mnoštvo „običnim ljudima“ nebitnih detalja, prepuštajući kasnijem iskustvu da im da kontekst i značenje. Osoba sa prosečnom analitičkom inteligencijom koja ima ovu sposobnost može biti izvrstan haker, dok kreativni genije kome nedostaje ova karakterna crta nikada neće dostići taj nivo. Većina hakera smatra da je „hakovanje upotreba znanja zarad sticanja novih saznanja.“

Suprotno već pomenutim stereotipima, hakeri nisu jednostrani. Trude se da budu uključeni u bilo koju temu koja izaziva intelektualni napor, i mogu podjednako dobro da diskutuju o mnoštvu različitih tema - pod uslovom da ih dovoljno zainteresujete kako se ne bi povukli i vratili hakovanju. Interesantno je da hakeri, što su bolji u hakovanju, to su svestraniji i otvoreniji i za druge teme. Hakeri se plaše kontrole i ne žele da imaju veze ni sa čim što je obavezujuće i autoritativno. Sa druge strane, kao što dete voli da upravlja električnim vozićem, tako i haker uživa da radi komplikovane radnje navodeći računar da to obavlja za njega Ali to mora biti njegova, i samo njegova aktivnost. Ne vole monotoniju, neodređenost i većinu dosadnih stvari koje prate život. Imaju tendenciju da budu savršeno sređeni na intelektualnom planu, a da im ostali aspekti života budu u haosu. Kod za program biće savršeno napisan, iako su radni sto i kućište računara zatrpani đubretom.

Većina hakera ne nalazi motivaciju u opštem društvenom prihvatanju ili novcu. Njih privlače izazovi, uzbuđuju ih nove igračke. Interesovanje za posao imaju samo ako ga posmatraju kao izazov ili kao igračku sa kojom će se igrati. Njihov tip ličnosti je intovertan, intuitivan i misleći, za razliku od tipa koji dominira u glavnoj kulturi.

NAČIN KOMUNIKACIJE : 1337 je razvijeniji u pisanom nego u govornom obliku. To je zbog toga što su i hakeri mnogo bolji u pisanom izražavanju nego u živoj interpersonalnoj komunikaciji. I dok je leet uvek otvoren za nove kovanice, hakeri su, po pravilu, veoma osetljivi na značenje reči kada govore sa „nekim oči u oči“ i veoma su precizni u njihovoj upotrebi.

NEGATIVNE CRTE LIČNOSTI : Hakeri nemaju sposobnost emotivne identifikacije sa ostalim ljudima. To može biti delom zbog toga što hakeri nisu kao „ostali ljudi“. Često teže aroganciji, iskazivanju nestrpljenja prema ljudima i stvarima za koje smatraju da im traće vreme. Ponekad su cinični, a tendencija da druge ljude posmatraju na isti način kao i sebe (racionalne, slikovite i „cool“) dovodi do slabljenja komunikacionih sposobnosti. To se najbolje vidi u situacijama sukoba i pregovora.

Ipak, postoji jedna stvar u kojoj su neki od njih izuzetno dobri, a to je socijalni inženjering , ili, prostije rečeno, manipulacija drugim ljudima. Ovo se prvenstveno odnosi na phreakere koji su neretko dolazili do poverljivih šifara upravo ubeđivanjem i manipulacijom. Pozvali bi nekog i za čas izvukli iz njega lozinku za pristup računaru, broj kreditne kartice ili broj naloga za pristup internetu. Nekrunisani kralj "socijalnog inženjeringa" je poznati haker Kevin Mitnick, koji je svoja iskustva pretočio u knjigu "Art of Deception" u kojoj govori o kontrolisanju ljudskog faktora u bezbednosti računara.

Hakeri imaju bolesnu naviku da stvarima pristupaju iz tehničkog ugla, zato što bi to bio zanimljiviji način da se određeni problem reši. Zbog svoje strasti za činjenjem Prave Stvari (one za koju oni smatraju da je Prava) izuzetno su netolerantni po pitanjima tehnike i ne dozvoljavaju da se neka pojava sagleda iz drugog ugla sa tehničke strane. Na primer, hakeri stare škole sa nipodaštavanjem gledaju na Unix i Linux hakere, Unix hakeri preziru Windows, a korisnici Useneta smatraju da je IRC obično gubljenje vremena. Zbog svega ovoga, hakeri imaju problem u izgrađivanju dugotrajnog odnosa sa okolinom i ostvarivanju trajnijih veza. Kao proizvod nastaju klasični „kompjuterski gikovi“: nesposobni za odnos sa drugima, seksualno frustrirani i očajni kada nisu prihvaćeni u željenom društvu. Na svu sreću, takvi slučajevi su malobrojni, iako se većina hakera može prepoznati neke od navedenih osobina u svojoj ličnosti. Često su totalno dezorganizovani i smotani kada je u pitanji komunikacija sa fizičkim svetom.

Tokom 1994 i 1995 godine kod ljudi koji se bave hakovanjem otkriven je ADD sindrom (Attention Deficit Disorder) koji je okarakterisan nemogućnošću održavanja pažnje kombinovano sa hiperfokusiranjem na stvari koje ih zanimaju. 1999. godine otkriva se AS (Asperger’s syndrom). Ovaj poremećaj se zove i ”visokofunkcionalni autizam”. Ispoljava se u nemogućnosti da se razume govor lica i tela drugih osoba, kao i nemogućnost saosećanja sa njima. Na drugoj strani, postoji visok koeficijent inteligencije, velike analitičke sposobnosti kao i izuzetna sposobnost rešavanja problema na tehničkom polju. Oba sindroma pripisana su anomalijama neurotransmitera. Hakeri su tada primetili da većinska kultura pokazuje tendenciju da patologizira normalne varijacije u ličnosti i nisu želeli da budu ispitivani kako bi se naučno potvrdilo da ti sindromi zaista postoje. Smatrali su da društveni sistem koji se zasniva na autoritetu nema sluha za „drugačije“ ljude i da će pokušati da ih protera ili izleči kako bi se pravilno uklopili u „dobro socijalizovano“ društvo. Zbog toga hakeri smatraju da imaju razloga da budu skeptični prema kliničkim objašnjenjima svoje ličnosti. Ipak, ostaje podatak da se ADD javlja u većem procentu kod ljudi koji se bave hakom nego kod „običnih ljudi“ od kojih 3-5 % ima sindrom. AS je ređi i javlja se kod 0.4-0.5% ljudi koji se ne bave hakovanjem.

Grassroots Hacktivism - tekst Kevina Poulsena

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(U ovom tekstu se prvi put pojavljuje termin "haktivizam"(hacktivism) koji označava korišćenje hakerskog umeća radi promovisanja političkih ideologija. Autor je bivši Black Hat haker Kevin Poulsen, a sada novinar i urednik magazina Wired News)

Grassroots Hacktivism
written by Kevin Poulsen on Wednesday, September 16, 1998


As a grassroots insurgency, the Free Kevin Mitnick movement has taken off. The movement now includes the paradoxical marriage of idealism and pragmatism, the infighting over power and position, and, as we were reminded last Sunday, a lawless, radical faction that might raise the cause to new levels of visibility-- or destroy it altogether.

The hacker group HFG (Hacking for Girliez) broke into The New York Times website Sunday and posted a message protesting Mitnick's imprisonment.

Unlike some prior Free Kevin intrusions, the targeting in the HFG case was not completely arbitrary. The protesters' message began by focusing on Times reporter John Markoff, whose up-close-and-personal coverage of the Mitnick case led to a lucrative book and movie deal, both of which are entitled Takedown. Markoff's critics contend that the journalist deliberately hyped the story in the Times to raise its market value, and actually aided in Mitnick's capture-- charges that Markoff has denied.

If Hacking for Girliez had limited their message to a summary of the Mitnick case, or a critique of Markoff, it might have served as a pure-- if illegal-- act of protest.

But they didn't. Like most website hackers, they devoted much of their fifteen minutes of fame to a lengthy discourse on how great they are, how much other hacker groups suck, and how inept computer system administrators are. Moreover, the message was rife with gratuitous raunch, racism, lowbrow insults, and was written in the stylistic lingua franca of the computer underground, which is nearly incomprehensible to the average reader: "TH3R3 AR3 S0 MANY L0S3RS H3R3, 1TZ HARD T0 P1CK WH1CH T0 1NSULT THE M0ST."

As the first known case of a Web hack against a traditional media outlet, the HFG action received considerable news coverage around the world-- putting the much-neglected Mitnick case back in the news. But, given the intrusion's infantile content, it might do more harm than good to a cause that's on the verge of public acceptance.

Kevin Mitnick is midway through his fourth year in jail, and he still doesn't have access to a computer with which to review the evidence against him. When he's released, he will live under the most constrictive anti-technology parole guidelines in history. And, last month, no less an authority than the US Supreme Court denied him a right to a bail hearing-- presuming him guilty until his January, 1999 trial date.

Mitnick is charged with illegally accessing Internet systems and copying proprietary software. He is not accused of profiting from his crimes.

Mitnick's supporters, who range from fellow cyberpunks to respected civil libertarians, believe the hacker has been unfairly singled out to bear the full brunt of the federal government's prosecutorial power. Together, they've formed a burgeoning grassroots movement built on such staples as bumper stickers, picketing, and fund-raising.

As with any growing movement, there are internal conflicts. Behind the scenes, a dispute is raging between two supporters over supervision of one of the Mitnick websites, and the email list of Mitnick partisans is as subject to flame wars as any other online forum.

Now, the Free Kevin mainstream must face the oldest question of grassroots organizing: How will they position themselves in relation to their most radical allies?

Hidden within the HTML code of The New York Times message was a second message. In this one, Hacking for Girliez reveals that their juvenile prose masks some truly intelligent, mature, and literate guys-- guys who can quote Milton and Voltaire and back up their incomprehensible statements with solid facts. "Just because we type in all caps and use 'elite' speak doesn't mean we are kids.... For everyone who calls us immature kids, it shows one more person has underestimated us."

One could theorize that HFG deliberately chose an extreme and ludicrous childish voice, with the sophisticated goal of drawing the most extreme and ludicrous authoritarian reactions from their targets.

Consider a Times spokesperson's public statement: "This is a very serious crime, and once the hackers are identified or tracked down, we will prosecute to the full extent of the law." The absurdity of the Times claiming the authority to personally prosecute a criminal case may not have arisen if the intruders had been less offensive.

But their motives don't really matter. Kevin Mitnick never showed the kind of malice that the Times intruders did, and he came no closer to freedom last Sunday.

Hacking for Girliez should re-examine one of the quotations, attributed to Christopher Dawson, from their hidden, adult message. "As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy."

Hacktivists

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Reč je nastala spajanjem reči „hacker“ i „activist“ 1998. godine u članku Grassroots Haktivism čiji je autor Kevin Poulsen, bivši Black hat haker. Haktivisti su ljudi koji koriste svoje hakersko umeće radi promovisanja političkih ideologija. Njihovo znanje o računarima može biti na različitim nivoima, od početnika do eksperata. Haktivisti dele zajedničku etiku sa hakerima s tim što je različito tumače i prenose na polje politike. Ako hakerska etika tumači da je loše hakovati zarad ličnih ciljeva, prema haktivistima hakovanje zarad političkih ciljeva nije u suprotnosti sa etikom, jer je politika opšti cilj. Ovo malo liči na pronalaženje rupa u zakonu. U svetu hakera sve je relativno i sve može biti višestruko protumačeno.

Pomenuti članak Kevina Poulsena je napisan kao reakcija na napad na web stranicu časopisa New York Times. Naime, novinar NYT John Markoff objavio je priču o Kevinu Mitnicku, jednom od najvećih hakera. Priča je, iako sa nedovoljno svežim informacijama i sa ličnom notom autora, ipak, dospela na naslovnu stranicu novina.

Grupi Hacking For Girliez (HFG) nije se previše dopalo ovakvo predstavljanje njihovog idola, pa su autoru ostavili poruku na web stranici NYT. Uz poruku, hacktivisti su ostavili i komentare u samom kodu stranice koje su mogli da pročitaju samo oni koji su znali kako se to radi. Komentari su isključivali svakog ko nije vladao kompjuterskim veštinama. Njihovom daljom analizom utvrđeno je da ti komentari imaju krajnje političku konotaciju.

Još jedna politička poruka osvanula je 1997. godine na sajtu Indonežanskog ministarstva inostranih poslova . Portugalska hakerska grupa Toxyn izmenila je prvu stranicu sajta i ostavila poruku indonežanskoj vladi da prestane da ugnjetava Istočni Timor. To je bio samo početak napada na sajtove Republike Indonezije koji su se nastavili tokom 1998. i 1999. godine. Većina napada potpisana je imenima hakerskih grupa iz Portugalije, a sve one su tražile prestanak ugnjetavanja naroda Istočnog Timora.

Najsvežiji i nama najbliži primer haktivizma jeste navodni sajber rat između srpskih i albanskih hakera koji je počeo u avgustu 2008. godine. Kao rezultat tog rata, na sajtovima srpskih državnih institucija osvanule su poruke koje su promovisale nezavisnost Kosova, dok su albanski sajtovi bivali ukrašeni porukama "Kosovo je Srbija".

Takođe, tokom 2004. godine, srpski i hrvatski hakeri vodili su žestoku bitku obarajući sajtove televizijskih stanica, sportskih klubova i fakulteta.

Nekada je korišćenje kompjutera u svrhe ostvarivanja političkih ciljeva bilo izuzetak i nije mu se pridavala velika pažnja. Međutim, razvoj tehnologije omogućio je neograničen upliv kompjutera u svet politike i upravljanja, pa se u poslednje vreme sve češće pominje termin sajber rat.