[HN Gopher] Intruders install security updates (1998)
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Intruders install security updates (1998)
Author : tjalfi
Score : 27 points
Date : 2021-03-19 02:28 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (groups.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (groups.google.com)
| IntelMiner wrote:
| I did something similar many, many years ago
|
| I had moved into a new apartment and the local telco had
| provisioned the wrong telephone line, delaying me getting
| internet by several weeks (Thanks Telstra!)
|
| As a result I ended up "borrowing" internet service from a
| neighbour a few units down. Only to discover that his setup was
| utterly ancient. A Netcomm NB5 modem connected to 1.5/256K ADSL1
| service
|
| I quietly pulled the credentials out of the HTML page source,
| logged into his account and upgraded his service. Boosting his
| speed to 20/1, gaining unlimited downloads AND saving him roughly
| $40 a month!
|
| I know there's "white hat" and "black hat" hacking. Is there such
| a thing as "chaotic good" hacking? Where you leave systems in a
| better state than you broke into them
| fao_ wrote:
| i believe that used to be called grey hat hacking
| segfaultbuserr wrote:
| I wanted to suggest the same but I didn't. "Greyhat" is not
| specific enough for what OP has asked for - it can be chaotic
| good or chaotic neutral. It's not "you leave systems in a
| better state than you broke into them" - simply "not making
| it worse" is sufficient to qualify.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| If falls squarely in grey hat territory, if not black. He
| tampered with someone else's service for personal gain. His
| neighbor could be in trouble later when the company
| improved their security practices.
| norenh wrote:
| Sounds good initially, until you realize the ancient setup was
| there for a reason (for example a person responsible for
| quality assurance for a legacy system a few still use). :-)
|
| Not saying it is likely, but from working with production
| systems that could have come from the stone-age I am too well
| aware of the possible risks of meddling with a setup that looks
| obviously wrong or too old to be used anymore, only to realize
| way too late that it was there for a very good reason.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| -Sounds good initially, until you realize the ancient setup
| was there for a reason
|
| The "whoops" moment when you realize your clever hack wasn't
| so clever. It happens way too much, just pretend you have no
| idea what happened.
| flemhans wrote:
| There was a time when routers shipped with a really low dhcp
| lease max clients settings which would cause issues in coffee
| shops. I'd change the setting up to eg 50 simultaneous clients,
| which seemed to solve it.
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| 50 available addresses... that's not a whole lot of clients
| at all! Hopefully those leases had short expiry times!
| Jon_Lowtek wrote:
| There is a german word _" Instandbesetzung"_ which translates
| to _" maintenance squatting"_ or _" restorative occupation"_.
| The first part is german _" Instand-setzung"_ and the second _"
| Be-setzung"_ so _" Instand-be-setzung"_.
|
| The basic idea is that a property deteriorates if not occupied,
| so when these squatters take over an abandoned property they
| improve it. The reality of german punk culture often did not
| follow this ideal: in the worst case it was a sham used by
| junkies to give an aura of legitimacy to their occupation, in
| the best case chaotic good punks had a different idea of what
| "maintained" means compared to more orderly people. The concept
| also exists in informal settlements unrelated to punk culture:
| to loosly quote a women living in the Venezuelan Tower of
| David, a precariat slum: "everything we did here was to live
| like decent people" and yet it still was a shanty town in an
| unfinished abandoned office tower. The people living there
| managed basic utilities for their community, which is
| impressive, but calling the tower maintained would be
| farfetched.
|
| Cyberpunk author William Gibson features this concept quite
| often in his slum ridden dystopia, but it is most prominent at
| the end of the short story "Red Star, Winter Orbit" which he
| wrote together with Bruce Sterling. The german translation uses
| the above mentioned word, but in the english original they
| describe themselves as _" Squatters, I guess you could say."_
| so i don't think there is an english word for this concept,
| neither for buildings, nor networks.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| In the physical realm, a buddy of mine went to college at USC and
| one day went to get his bike to discover it had been stolen.
| Pretty common, there.
|
| A few days later he was walking by the bike rack, noticed his
| bike had been parked exactly where he normally parked it, and
| someone had replaced/repaired a broken pedal.
| emayljames wrote:
| That makes me think someone got so enraged by the broken pedal,
| they took it home, fixed it then took it back.
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