Reply From: The Dodger <dodger@2600.com>
>Forwarded From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au>
>
>[All in all not a bad article at all. The reporter shows he's researched
> the subject relatively well, and has some clue about what he's talking
> about. We need more articles like this! :) - Nicholas]
McCormack probably knows more about the UK hacking scene than any other
mainstream journalist, but it says a lot that last Saturday, just days
after this article was published, something like 50 or 60 people attended
Conspiracy (a hacker party-type event) in Manchester. He may be the best,
but he's still not all _that_ good.
On the other hand, a great deal of what Mike writes is pretty close to the
truth - a lot of the hackers who were around four or five years ago
(before hacking become "cool") are now working in the IT industry and
earning good money. There are still plenty of hackers breaking into
machines, but for the majority of these, their sole aim seems to be making
it into the newspapers. As for the script-kiddies - well, they're just
vanity-hacker/code-warez-trader hybrids.
However, there is still (and always has been) a hard core of real hackers
here in the UK, for whom hacking is it's own reward. They were there
before hacking became the hip new way to be cool and they'll be there long
after all the script kiddies have disappeared. Some of them may be lured
by the money to be earnt as network engineers and security consultants,
but not all. It doesn't really matter how many vanity hackers or script
kiddies there are - it's the _real_ hackers that count and Mike would do
well to remember that it's these hackers who never make it into the news.
Why? Because they don't want to be famous and they're too good to get
caught.
Dodger
-o-
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Received on Tue Dec 8 11:01:19 1998