What did you really expect?

What did you really expect?

In having dealt with multiple 'reformed' hackers, I have to reluctantly agree with Spafford on this. When I was a teenager in the early 1980's, I started into 'cracking' encryption codes on software.. not because I wanted to use the software (versus the game Choplifter and Adventures) but mainly because I wanted to see how people were trying to hide stuff and make a programmable floppy drive 'play' with bits and bites. Or trying to figure out how a telephone system works, lock tumblers, or password systems. But at some point, it became sort of an obsession, and I was more going for the amount of cracked software I had in my house compared to others. Our standards were the number of years we would spend in prison on consecutive prison terms, and how much we owed in fines. The first person who broke 200 years in prison was the coolest etc. Looking back on it.. it was plain STUPID. I think I began to be aware of its 'stupidity' when I started using GPL software, and realized that the only thing that made the GPL strong was the COPYING license. It made no logical sense to disregard other people's licenses and then say that the GPL license was better because of this that or the other... And looking at myself further, I realized that most of the arguments I had used to justify my actions were selfish lies in the same vein as why an addict says stealling money from the family is ok. What I was addicted to was the rush of doing something illicite that few other people could do... and at some point I had a "Come to Jesus" moment, and realized that doing it wasnt helping anyone and eventually hurting others. So I basically went to being a GPL-freak for a while, didn't use any closed source licenses I had not paid for, and started working on protecting other people's rights versus violating them.

And like some other people that conversions happen to.. I went through a period where I believed everyone could do it, and that when someone said they were 'clean'... they meant it. I have helped hire some former crackers, and very often found that what they said and what they did were two different things. It might be I am on the wrong side of the statistics, but looking back on 10 years in the business.. 8 out of the 9 went back to cracking at some point, and we had to let them go. There is some sort of 'rush' when you get that password off the wire, when you find that supposed closed system is wide open from some office telephone/modem, and it is addictive. And then comes the feeling of superiority that you are mightier than anyone else... and with that feeling comes the usual drive to take advantage of it because of some percieved slight. Heck it sounds like all the classic feelings and symptoms people on crack mention (but probably at a different level).

Anyway, I have come to believe that like many bad things, it takes an act of conversion to get out of Cracking. And then probably in many cases, a 10 step program to make it stick. I guess Luke 11:24-11:26 is probably a good summary to show this has gone on for a long time with people.

Septermber 11, 2007

Six years ago today, my life like so many others changed. I had just turned on the TV for my morning TV fix and found that all the channels were glued on a story about an airplane flying into one of the World Trade Center. And then the second plane hit, and then what seemed so long, but was really short time as the fires took off and they kept sending firemen in to try and stop it. I remember praying that the steel wouldnt fatigue under the high heat... and then watching the inevitable collapses and knowing that so many people had just died. And then there was the sitting there with the baby in his sleep 'sack' and me watching it happen over and over again.. and the feeling of complete help-less-ness.


Then there was the panicing of trying to get up to New York City or Washington D.C. to try and maybe just maybe save someone from that horrible wreck. Thankfully, my wife made me realize I wasn't trained and the best thing I could do was go to the local Red Cross chapter and get their teams ready to roll out.

And finally there was the gut-wrenching wonder if that was just the first step.. would there be car bombs in cities? suicide bombers at malls? snipers on highway overpasses? I remember that as all of us in our North Carolina neighborhood went from house to house asking what we could do... that we all stood in the street mostly to get away from the TV's that were playing those last few seconds of the planes crashing and towers falling. I remember the lady across the street voicing the realization that I think was on all our subconscious's, we hadn't seen or heard a plane overhead in hours.

And if by magic, a National Guard helicopter flew overhead fully loaded with personell. It was frightening in one sense that we all realized the comfortable world we lived in was changed... and yet it was oddly reassuring... and we began waving at the helicopter and someone pulled off the flag from their front porch, and for a minute we were waving it around and they were waving back to us... and somehow all our panic went away.

So to all the firefighters, policemen, national guardsmen, military personell, AND to all their families... THANK-YOU. Your sacrifices are what allows me the Freedom to write this, and I know I can never pay that back.