Mar

30

“Hacking” systems

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It is nice to see that Ubuntu Linux was found to be the most difficult system to crack in the pwn2own “hack contest”, when Vista gave in on the third day when 3rd party apps were game. OSX fell first, on the second day due to a Safari bug.

Not so nice to see breaking systems called “hacking”. Again, hackers build stuff, they don’t brake it. It makes me extra sad to see so many Ubuntu and Linux-loving bloggers happy about the failure of other systems. Calling your system good is good marketing. When you laugh at failures in other systems it is laughing at their users, which does not make them interested in you or your offering.

Comments

6 Responses to ““Hacking” systems”

  1. rodserling on March 30th, 2008 7:13 pm

    Well said, topyli. Nicely done!

  2. Asa on March 31st, 2008 5:49 pm

    So if you think people shouldn’t use the term Hacker, what is the “correct” term. Hacker has been the term for someone who bypasses a computer’s security mechanisms for many years. It has multiple meanings like many other words, but it is the correct usage for this competition.

  3. topyli on March 31st, 2008 9:37 pm

    @Asa: You bring up a difficult question.

    Hackers do experiment by nature, but generally don’t break things. I do know RMS broke into professors’ rooms in his university to gain internet access. I also understand that this competition itself is not malicious.

    There are two points I’m trying to make in that post.

    1) The use of “hacker” in the sense that the mass media uses it. This is very bad. “20 000 bank accounts hacked” and so on. This degrades the general public’s understanding about hackers and hacking.

    2) The poor quality of marketing based on “our product sucks less than the other guy’s”. There is no excuse for this AFAIK.

    I guess I should have written a more thorough post in the first place.

  4. Asa on April 1st, 2008 1:38 am

    @topyli

    I agree with our first point, but not your second.

    Many people have all kinds of security problems with windows. I used to work at a computer repair shop and most of what I did was reload windows because people collected so many viruses/spyware/malware that it couldn’t be removed. Anti-virus/spyware programs aren’t the issue, the issue is that security has been an afterthought for windows. My understanding is that may have changed with Vista, but I don’t really believe it.

    When my friends have problems with windows security I offer Ubuntu because there are no wild Ubuntu viruses or malware.

    I agree that laughing at Vista’s failure isn’t helpful but presenting the fact that at this year’s competition the security researchers were able to defeat Vista and Mac but not Ubuntu is very useful.

  5. topyli on April 1st, 2008 1:47 am

    @Asa: I agree wholeheartedly: it is indeed good marketing to point out solutions to problems that people are suffering from. It is also bad to laugh at failures, since it is not constructive. My original point was to criticize the latter, since I had, and have seen a lot of that.

    Further, helping people is not only good marketing, it’s also helping. :) Laughing at them being “dumb” or being “fooled by” Company-XXXX does not help at all, it makes them defensive at best, depressed regularly, and untrustful of technology in general at worst.

  6. Raseel on April 3rd, 2008 10:02 pm

    Good point topyli.
    I for one, stand corrected when I rejoiced on hearing about Vista and Mac being “cracked”

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