The Hacker Crackdown, law and disorder on the electronic frontier by Bruce Sterling

The Hacker Crackdown, law and disorder on the electronic frontier by Bruce Sterling

Author:Bruce Sterling
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Computer programming -- United States -- Corrupt practices, Telephone -- United States -- Corrupt practices, Computer crimes -- United States
Published: 1994-01-01T05:00:00+00:00


Computer people talk. Hackers BRAG. Phone-phreaks talk PATHOLOGICALLY—why else are they stealing phone-codes, if not to natter for ten hours straight to their friends on an opposite seaboard? Computer-literate people do in fact possess an arsenal of nifty gadgets and techniques that would allow them to conceal all kinds of exotic skullduggery, and if they could only SHUT UP about it, they could probably get away with all manner of amazing information-crimes. But that's just not how it works—or at least, that's not how it's worked SO FAR.

Most every phone-phreak ever busted has swiftly implicated his mentors, his disciples, and his friends. Most every white-collar computer-criminal, smugly convinced that his clever scheme is bulletproof, swiftly learns otherwise when, for the first time in his life, an actual no-kidding policeman leans over, grabs the front of his shirt, looks him right in the eye and says: "All right, ASSHOLE—you and me are going downtown!" All the hardware in the world will not insulate your nerves from these actual real-life sensations of terror and guilt.

Cops know ways to get from point A to point Z without thumbing through every letter in some smart-ass bad-guy's alphabet. Cops know how to cut to the chase. Cops know a lot of things other people don't know.

Hackers know a lot of things other people don't know, too. Hackers know, for instance, how to sneak into your computer through the phone-lines. But cops can show up RIGHT ON YOUR DOORSTEP and carry off YOU and your computer in separate steel boxes. A cop interested in hackers can grab them and grill them. A hacker interested in cops has to depend on hearsay, underground legends, and what cops are willing to publicly reveal. And the Secret Service didn't get named "the SECRET Service" because they blab a lot.

Some people, our lecturer informed us, were under the mistaken impression that it was "impossible" to tap a fiber-optic line. Well, he announced, he and his son had just whipped up a fiber-optic tap in his workshop at home. He passed it around the audience, along with a circuit-covered LAN plug-in card so we'd all recognize one if we saw it on a case. We all had a look.

The tap was a classic "Goofy Prototype"—a thumb-length rounded metal cylinder with a pair of plastic brackets on it. From one end dangled three thin black cables, each of which ended in a tiny black plastic cap. When you plucked the safety-cap off the end of a cable, you could see the glass fiber—no thicker than a pinhole.

Our lecturer informed us that the metal cylinder was a "wavelength division multiplexer." Apparently, what one did was to cut the fiber-optic cable, insert two of the legs into the cut to complete the network again, and then read any passing data on the line by hooking up the third leg to some kind of monitor. Sounded simple enough. I wondered why nobody had thought of it before. I also wondered whether this guy's son back at the workshop had any teenage friends.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.
Popular ebooks
Deep Learning with Python by François Chollet(12643)
Sass and Compass in Action by Wynn Netherland Nathan Weizenbaum Chris Eppstein Brandon Mathis(7810)
Grails in Action by Glen Smith Peter Ledbrook(7719)
Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja by John Resig Bear Bibeault(6443)
Kotlin in Action by Dmitry Jemerov(5092)
WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook by Yannick Lefebvre(3964)
Mastering Azure Security by Mustafa Toroman and Tom Janetscheck(3356)
Learning React: Functional Web Development with React and Redux by Banks Alex & Porcello Eve(3101)
Mastering Bitcoin: Programming the Open Blockchain by Andreas M. Antonopoulos(2890)
The Art Of Deception by Kevin Mitnick(2622)
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson(2479)
Drugs Unlimited by Mike Power(2478)
A Blueprint for Production-Ready Web Applications: Leverage industry best practices to create complete web apps with Python, TypeScript, and AWS by Dr. Philip Jones(2463)
Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook: End-to-end penetration testing solutions by Sharma Himanshu(2323)
Writing for the Web: Creating Compelling Web Content Using Words, Pictures and Sound (Eva Spring's Library) by Lynda Felder(2276)
SEO 2018: Learn search engine optimization with smart internet marketing strategies by Adam Clarke(2203)
JavaScript by Example by S Dani Akash(2153)
Hands-On Cybersecurity with Blockchain by Rajneesh Gupta(2118)
DarkMarket by Misha Glenny(2096)
Wireless Hacking 101 by Karina Astudillo(2093)