Comment on Trump social media site brought down by Iran hackers

Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

• theherk@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Can be a component of it.

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  • damnedfurry@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Mailing someone more letters than they’re capable of replying to is not equivalent to, nor a component of, gaining access to the inside of their home.

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    • theherk@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Disabling network security and edge devices to change the properties of ingress can absolutely be a component of an attack plan.

      Just like overwhelming a postal sorting center could prevent a parcel containing updated documentation from reaching the receiver needing that information.

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      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I haven’t heard of a firewall failing open when overwhelmed yet. Usually quite the opposite, a flood disables access to more than just the targeted device, when the state table overflows.

        But maybe there is a different mechanism I’m not aware of. How would the DDoS change the properties of ingress?

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    • pachrist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I mean, I know JK Rowling sucks, and it’s been a long time since the first Harry Potter movie came out, but it was definitely a component and precursor to Hagrid beating the shit out of that door.

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      • Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        To be fair, they had moved to an unsecure location that was a much softer target by that point. Can a DDOS force someone to move their services over to the equivalent of a century old light house in the middle of England?

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• null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Define hacking.

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  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’d start with the following, and refine if necessary:

    "Gaining unauthorized access to a protected computer resource by technical means."

    • Port scanning --> Not hacking because there isn’t any access to resources gained*
    • Using default passwords that weren’t changed --> Not hacking because the resource wasn’t protected*
    • Sending spam --> Not hacking because there isn’t any access to resources gained
    • Beating the admin with a wrench until he tells you the key --> Not hacking because it’s not by technical means.
    • Accessing teacher SSN’s published on the state website in the HTML --> Not hacking because the resource wasn’t protected, and on the contrary was actively published**
    • Distributed denial of service attack --> Not hacking because there isn’t any access to resources gained

    * Those first two actually happened in 2001 here in Switzerland when the WEF visitors list was on a database server with default password, they had to let a guy (David S.) go free
    ** The governor and his idiot troupe eventually stopped their grandstanding and didn’t file charges against Josh Renaud of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, luckily

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    • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      When my parents kicked me out, the number of times o got to sleep inside because i could convince people i was the county password inspector was more than zero. It’s hacking.

      Wrench? No. But an old colleague informs me that the version done with a machete does count as hacking. I concur.

      Those are both way more useful than exploiting a lazy coder’s fuckup, renaming ‘house of many backdoors’ to ‘that package everyone uses in everything’ on github, or some fancy math shit.

      Your laws are nonsense bullshit, they’re just excuses for power and I’d appreciate you not defiling language fof the rest of us to justify them.

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      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Those are both way more useful than exploiting a lazy coder’s fuckup

        I never said social engineering, physical breaching, exerting force on people, and other ways of compromising systems weren’t useful. They just aren’t hacking to me, otherwise the term is too broad to be very useful.

        You’re free to come up with your own definition, I was asked to define it and that’s my best shot for now.

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    • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oh man.

      My comment was intended to imply that the term “hacking” defies definition because it has been grossly overused and misconstrued over many decades.

      Sure you might be able to convey what it means to you but of course it means different things to everyone else, with each definition being equally appropriate.

      Er go, any discussion is one of semantics.

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      • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        You know my first instinct wast to reply with: “No.”

        Maybe I should have stuck with that. I had a feeling this would lead nowhere.

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• Sinthesis@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  The word “hack” is pre-internet. A “hack” journalist or a “hack job” is basically something unprofessional. It is movies that turned “hackers” into someone that gained access to the “mainframe”. In the realm of computer systems, I would argue that a “hack” is doing anything the system was not intended/designed to do. A successful DoS or DDoS needs to find some component of the system that wasn’t designed to handle the amount of traffic about to be sent to it. There are protections for DDoS, you have to figure out a way around them, that’s a hack.

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  • ours@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The current tech-related usage was coined at MIT to mean working on a system. Funny that the oldest recorded source comes from MIT model railroad team.

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• sirico@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  Hacking isn’t hacking it’s usually cracking

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