mindvox.txt

黑客培训教程

       tain  point in time having power that can have real and immediate
       effects upon all society, can do very strange things to your per-
       spective of the world.  Instead of learning to deal with the nor-
       mal barriers that most teenagers in western  culture  find  them-
       selves  faced  with, you discover that you can blow right through
       all of them without even slowing down.  In this way you miss much
       of the growth and acclimation that people go through during their
       teenage years.  Which is where a lot of old friends  parted  ways
       with  reality  and  ceased to be explorers, becoming caught up in
       the real world implications of the power that was  now  at  their
       disposal.   In  effect,  they  lost sight of the underlying theme
       that all our actions had been based upon, that of exploration and
       pushing  the  boundaries,  and  merely  focused on the short-term
       end-result of what their abilities could bring them;  in the pro-
       cess  becoming  the criminals that the Secret Service and FBI had
       said we all were.

       What had begun with the best intentions, as the  ultimate  exten-
       sion  of  human  curiosity, had devolved into a cultural movement
       that had very little to do with the ideals that had inspired  it.
       The term "hacker" had become synonymous with "criminal", and tak-
       ing a look around at the state of the underground, it  looked  as
       if  much  of  it  had  in  fact  degenerated  into  crime cartels
       comprised of angry teens who  had  little  understanding  of  the
       underlying  mechanisms  they were employing to play with reality.
       It was no longer the exhilaration of knowing that you could actu-
       ally  reach  out  and touch a satellite . . . it had come down to
       the negative power trip of fucking with something for the sake of
       pissing  people  off or just showing the world how much power you
       really have at your disposal if you ever decided to throw a  tan-
       trum.

       By 1988 what had replaced our outlook, was a  mindset  where  the
       new  generation saw two things:  one of them was the potential to
       take advantage of holes in the system for personal  gain.   There
       was  no  longer any quest for knowledge, desire to learn, or need
       to push the boundaries of what was possible for the sake  of  ex-
       ploration.   Instead  there were a lot of people who couldn't get
       past making free phone calls, stealing things, and causing  trou-
       ble  by  following  an already well-established pattern of action
       and reaction.

       The second -- and perhaps biggest -- motivating factor had become
       the   desire   for  personal  attention  in  the  form  of  self-
       aggrandizement: the ultimate hack had become  the  media  machine
       itself.  What was originally a by-product of our experiences, had
       become a goal in and of itself.  And here is where things  became
       REALLY twisted.

       The media in the latter half of the twentieth century has  become
       a very strange distortion of reality instead of the reflection it
       was intended to be.  Since this is not an essay on the  evils  of
       manipulation  through  the use of media, I will stick with a very
       simple outline of how events occur in the real world.

       A reporter, journalist, writer -- SOME PERSON who has  their  own
       desires and ambitions, wants to do an exciting story on something
       that will garner him or her  a  lot  of  attention  and  acclaim.
       Really  they  are operating from a point of view that has much in
       common with the "hacker's," which is the mindset  of  "I'm  gonna
       get  mine."  So this journalist looks around at the headlines and
       realizes that there is a mounting wave  of  hysteria  surrounding
       viruses  and  hackers  and  invasion  of  privacy  and . . . gee,
       wouldn't it be a nice career move to do a  story  that  will  mix
       their  name  into whatever the hot topic of the next five minutes
       happens to be.

       If the journalist is attached to any  even  marginally  important
       publication,  they  will  then  get  their  pick  from one of the
       current four or five "names" doing  the  rounds.   On  the  other
       hand,  if  the  journalist  is just starting out and connected to
       something much smaller, then the chances  are  they  will  simply
       show up at some user's group meeting, find the nearest thing they
       can to a "computer nerd," do an interview, and then write  it  up
       expressing  whatever  the  current  publicly-sanctioned viewpoint
       happens to be (the usual slant has become: hackers are  evil  and
       can look at your credit rating, fear them).

       I have been interviewed on many  occasions  and  I  know  roughly
       twenty  people  who  have  done  the interviews that comprise the
       basis of about 90% of all media that exists in  relation  to  the
       underground;  be it in newspaper, periodical, television segment,
       or book format.  WITH *VERY*  FEW  EXCEPTIONS,  there  have  been
       countless  solicitations  to perform illegal acts in the presence
       of journalists, these solicitations move all the way  into  coer-
       cion  in some cases.  There are reports containing sentences that
       were never spoken, quotes taken out of context, information  that
       was  invented  .  .  . there's simply no end to it.  The reporter
       profits first by stroking the hacker's ego  and  giving  him  the
       spotlight that he thinks he wants so badly, and then continues to
       profit as the hacker rides a bigger and bigger wave of  publicity
       that  in  every case leads to a very unhappy ending if the hacker
       in question doesn't have the foresight to get off the ride before
       it derails.

       In any case, whatever happens, the reporter  always  wins.   When
       the  hacker's  ride reaches its date with fate, the journalist in
       question can now write the closing chapter in the  hacker's  saga
       and  tell  the  public how this nefarious evil-doer is being pun-
       ished by the long arm of justice.  This is  followed  up  by  the
       journalist  taking  on  the "official" mantle of "hacker expert,"
       doing the lecture circuit, perhaps writing a book, and then going
       out and finding a new horse to beat to death.

       Obviously nothing can ever be this black and white, there must be
       a need for both parties to play their roles.  The reporter is not
       THE EVIL BAD MAN who has corrupted the INNOCENT  ANGELIC  HACKER,
       nor  does this scenario apply to all journalists equally, off the
       top of my head; Bruce Sterling, John Markoff, and Julian  Dibbell
       come to mind as extremely ethical exceptions to the norm.

       Usually the reporter who isn't quite so ethical is just  somebody
       who  is presented with a situation that can easily be twisted and
       misused if the desire for fame and fortune takes precedence  over
       everything  else.   The  reporter  by  the very nature of his job
       tends to be quite "slick" and worldly-wise, whereas the hacker in
       question  is  usually highly knowledgeable about computer systems
       while managing to retain an oblivious naivety about the  workings
       of  human  beings  in that elusive place called "the real world."
       This sets the stage for what transpires.

       And you see a lot of people who used  to  be  your  friends,  get
       ground  up  in  this  endless cycle as it repeats itself over and
       over again until one day you wake up and  come  to  realize  that
       you're  seventeen  or  eighteen going on 90.  You understand that
       everything in the whole world is comprised of bits and pieces  of
       lies  and  half-truths, everyone is inherently corrupt, including
       you; a lot of kids who used to be your friends are now all  grown
       up  with  no  place  to  go and getting busted for such things as
       fraud and grand larceny; and you have  utterly  lost  touch  with
       anything  even remotely "real."  And yet, you're still a teenager
       and have another 70 or 80 years  left  to  hang  around  on  this
       planet.

       This is right around the time that you're back in the media, only
       this  trip  around you're at the receiving end of law enforcement
       who have been prodded into a state of near-hysteria by the  dawn-
       ing  realization  that  a  bunch of kids really can dismantle the
       building  blocks  of  the  infrastructure  that  makes  most   of
       present-day  society  possible.  Naturally enough they're scared,
       and they're in the process of doing what  people  have  done  for
       ages when they are afraid: going on a witch-hunt.  Guess who gets
       to play witch...

       So one day you find yourself wondering why you should bother buy-
       ing  another  computer  system  and trying to figure out what the
       point of it all was anyway; to glimpse  the  limitless  potential
       and  then  fall  back  and  only  see your own flaws amplified to
       cartoon-like proportions.

       The 1980's were a time that saw the birth and death of the  first
       dynasties  of  Cyberspace.   Travelling  through  the  electronic
       landscape of this period in time, was like traversing  this  sur-
       real  range  of mountains, where amongst the sheer outcropping of
       rock, lush valleys, and snow-capped peaks, a collection of rather
       obsessive  dreamers  had built some of the most beautiful castles
       that were ever created and opened their doors to  a  populace  of
       pioneers.   It was absolutely transporting and timeless . . . and
       unfortunately -- in the short term -- doomed.

       This has been an abbreviated summary of the atmosphere and events
       that  started  a  kind  of mass exodus out of the modem world for
       about twenty of us.  We had spent our  entire  childhoods  jacked
       into  this alternate electronic universe, locked into playing our
       overly-developed personas, and almost no time figuring out who we
       were  and  what  we  wanted  out of life beyond "further, better,
       more."  This is nothing new or unique in and of  itself,  it  was
       however  something  that gained a very tangible and immediate im-
       portance to many of us when we found  that  the  thoughtspace  in
       which we had lived a large portion of our lives had disintegrated
       and the people we had  known  and  called  friends,  had  largely
       disappeared and been replaced by every negative quality they pos-
       sessed.

       A lot of us dumped the remnants of this reality into a  stack  of
       boxes  and  took off for parts unknown.  Whether college, work, a
       new circle of friends that didn't know who  you  were  in  Cyber-
       space, or even know what Cyberspace was; just about anywhere were
       we could start over and try to regain what had somehow been lost.


       Transformation
       --------------

                     "Ya live your life like it's a coma,
                      so won't you tell me why we'd wanna?
                         With all the reasons you give,
                          it's kinda hard to believe;
                      But who am I to tell you I've seen,
                        any reason why you should stay;
                Maybe we'd be better off without you anyway..."
                                             --Guns N Roses(*2)

       After coming to the realization that visiting The Tunnel for  the
       fourteenth  time  in  three weeks was not going to change my life
       for the better, and having no idea what I wanted to do  with  my-
       self,  I  dropped it all and got on a plane for the middle of no-
       where New Mexico.  Where I proceeded  to  cycle  through  all  my
       negative  tendencies  at  an  accelerated  pace,   first becoming
       utterly obsessed with bodybuilding, to the point of five  hour  a
       day  workouts,  insane  diets,  steroids,  and a silly-putty like
       transformation of myself to 6'2" 215 pounds and 6% bodyfat.

       This was good for about ten months, before I found myself in  the
       same mindset I had thought I could escape.  Looking in the mirror
       and seeing a parody of who I used to be, wondering  where  to  go
       from  there.  The answer was obviously to buy a Porsche and begin
       re-stocking my wardrobe with everything by  Armani  and  Versace,
       yes  I  had it now, this WAS the right answer, I only had to look
       around at all the people I knew doing just this to see that . . .
       well,  actually  they  were  all  pretty miserable, but again, it
       lasted for about nine or ten months.

       Around this time I realized that aside from the fact that I was a
       pretty  fucked  up person who probably needed a lot of therapy --
       which had never quite worked out the right  way  when  I  had  it