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A Peek At Script Kiddie Culture

Posted by timothy on Sat Mar 06, 2004 09:03 PM
from the culture-is-a-strong-word dept.
Brian Bruns writes "NewsForge is covering an article on the Script Kiddie Culture, in an interview with my co-admin Andrew Kirch. It provides insight into a culture that not many people fully understand, or get to see."
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  • What is there to understand? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:04PM (#8488581)
    Search, copy, paste.
    Woho! Im leet!
  • addendum to topic paragraph (Score:5, Funny)

    by cmacmanus (713176) * on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:05PM (#8488584)
    (http://forums.minidisc.org/)
    ..or want to see.
    • by poptix@work (79063) * on Saturday March 06 2004, @10:15PM (#8488879)
      (http://www.poptix.net/)
      No kidding, both Brian Bruns and Andrew (trelane on IRC) are script kiddies furiously trying to display a white hat.

      If in doubt, search google. This "SOSDG" is hosted on someones cable modem, yet claims to run DNSBL's used by "Hundreds of government sites including .mil and .gov"

      In conclusion, I have my own IRC logs:

      [28/1806] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] packeting an NYPD officer, have you no patriotism?
      [28/1809] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] you're a whore for packeting sigdie resources, and a terrorist for packeting an NYPD officer's COLOC, treason is punishable by execution still isn't it?
      [28/1812] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] terrorist.
      [28/1812] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] packetmonkey
      [28/1812] [msg(trelane)] this is great stuff, keep spewing
      [28/1812] [msg(trelane)] funny stuff
      [28/1812] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] fuck you for dos'ing my equipment last night btw
      [28/1814] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] you're a fat ugly spunkmonkey for packeting an RBL
      [28/1814] [trelane(trelane@adsl-68-78-10-171.dsl.ipltin.amer itech.net)] you realize the feds are giving us madhelp after the shit from this fall?

      (Despite their rantings, they can only hop on IRC and point fingers when their cable modem gets attacked)
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:addendum to topic paragraph by monkubus (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @11:59AM
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  • ...or care about.
    • by MMaestro (585010) on Saturday March 06 2004, @10:41PM (#8489001)
      The sad part is people SHOULD care. Everyone from Joe Average to Bob Businessman should take notice of this.

      If Joe Average's cable modem bandwidth is getting sucked up by some kiddie script, he should care. Especially when his ISP sends him a warning letter saying hes using up too much bandwidth when the most graphic intense site he's visited that month is CNN.com.

      Bob Businessman definately should care as well. That dedicated T3 line he uses at work is being used to get information to his consumers. If the site starts to get slow due to a worm causing him to download hundreds of gigs of pr0n, not only will his consumers get angry but his employees may suffer in effeciency...

      [ Parent ]
      • but his employees may suffer in effeciency...

        because they are wanking off to said 'pr0n'
        [ Parent ]
      • by SurgeonGeneral (212572) on Saturday March 06 2004, @11:06PM (#8489101)
        (Last Journal: Tuesday February 11 2003, @06:42PM)
        The sad part is people SHOULD care. Everyone from Joe Average to Bob Businessman should take notice of this.

        Are you kidding me?
        I mean, I know we're all techies here, but lets break out of our shells for a second. This matters to people who make over 40k a year. Joe Average works in a factory and lets his kids use the internet for schooling. Do you think Joe Average, who was raised on libraries and encyclopedias, cares even for a second about whether his ISP goes down for 6 hours? Joe Average has to deal with bills, healthcare, school, drugs, gangs, crime, etc. etc. Joe Average needs tax dollars spent ensuring the welfare of our society, not the welfare of Bob Businessman's T3 lines so profit margins remain high.

        Putting feds on the case of script kiddies is taking away from money and manpower that our society desperately needs. We need more concern over corporate accountability and less for corporate profits.
        [ Parent ]
        • Joe Average needs tax dollars spent ensuring the welfare of our society, not the welfare of Bob Businessman's T3 lines so profit margins remain high.

          Generally I agree, except...

          Bob Businessman is Joe Average's boss's boss's boss. When his T-3 line for the site that sells whatever widgets Joe Average is putting together gets sucked dry, it costs the company money. Six months later, when they have a shareholder meeting coming up, that expensive worm might cost Joe Average his job in a layoff.

          It's important to recognize that the resources needed by some people aren't the resources needed by everyone. But by the same token, it's also useful to recognize when the resources sucked up by one abuse end up costing others important resources down the line.
          [ Parent ]
          • Let us bandy words, shall we? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Squarepusher (730147) on Saturday March 06 2004, @11:57PM (#8489288)
            I won't pretend to be a real techie guy, you can go ahead and stick me in the "Joe Average" category. Although as a Mr. Average I do hang around /. a bit and so am aware of these kind of topics and concerns, which is more than (can I say most?) could say.

            Anywho...with that said here's my $.02:

            I think that everyone posting above me has their own valid points which I shall paraphrase here.

            1. We don't want money being thrown away to fight a battle that may or may not be won, if winning is even a real possibility.

            2. We can agree that the actions of these "script kiddies" is to some degree detrimental to business. Seeing as how s#it rolls down hill, it can also have an impact on us blue collar folks. I think it's accurate to say that the negative impact will grow and become more noticeable as time passes.

            So, what kind of happy medium can be found amidst the viewpoints which say either "It's a waste of resources to fight." or "Something must be done."?

            Should officials not try to trim the fat from current programs and then allocate the new resources to fight this growing problem? I'm responding here off the cuff so I sheepishly admit I don't have a prepared list of potential candidates for severence. But, therein lies my question; Where is the government and general law enforcement concentrating that is perhaps irrelevant.

            I know plenty of people here can come up with a long list of things our government wastes money on. Furthermore I'll bet'cha we can get over half those involved in the discussion to agree to the slashing of this or that. What say ye pantheon of knowledge?

            ---

            [ Parent ]
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        • Joe Average vs. Joe-SixPack by BrianMarshall (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @12:04AM
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      • Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see by Magic5Ball (Score:3) Sunday March 07 2004, @12:10AM
      • Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see by Eudial (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @08:06AM
        • And Joe Poweruser? He should peek at the iptables-log, laugh, drink a cup of coffe and get back to his code.

          The point of DDoS is that it hits everyone. Sure we get huge numbers of DDoS attacks at work, sure none has ever taken us down. But the check that we have to write to ensure that is huge, millions a month.

          Here [blogspot.com] is a take on this issue from Phill Hallam-Baker: [blogspot.com]

          OK so a second bite at the same article, lets take a look at those DDoS schemes.

          According to the article the ISPs are unresponsive to take down requests, the FBI do not take notice. I know that people keep making this complaint but there are high tech crimes units in the major cities and they are looking to takedown these guys. And at the moment the demand is such that DDoS is being treated as if it was a littering offense.

          I think we need a better primer on how to prepare a case for law enforcement. I guess it is possible if you read the article carefully that the desk guy thought this particular person had been getting evidence by hacking.

          We can't expect to do this with law enforcement in the loop every time. Lets change the model, law enforcement only get involved if the ISPs fail to act, and instead of just going after the hacker there is a liability for the ISP.

          This is consistent with fire department model of government security regulations. You can do pretty much anything to your house decoration wise. Government only gets involved when safety is the issue. In particular the fire dept won't let you build a house that is a fire-trap, in part because it might set fire to buildings arround it.

          Here we have ISPs that are forwarding bogons. It seems to me that this should not be that difficulty to prevent. A $500 box performing passive listening at the cable head end could sound an alert when there is a bogon attack. You don't have to look at every packet, all you need to do is to look at a sample. If you see an ethernet MAC spewing bogons you shut it down.

          Another approach would be to push the bogon prevention right to the cable modem. Why on earth would these let bogon injection take place in the first place? Sure there will be some hacked modems, but DDoS is comming from hijacked machines.

          Cable modems, NAT boxes and the like should have limiters built in to prevent the creation of ridiculous numbers of SYN packets or outgoing UDP packets to reserved system ports like DNS. It is pretty easy to think of numbers that should be no inconvenience to any legitimate use, and there could be an option to turn them off in any case. But why give every home user the equivalent of a loaded machine gun when they don't need or want one?

          Reduce the value of your machine to a hacker, reduce the probability of attack?

          [ Parent ]
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        • Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see by MMaestro (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @04:38PM
      • Re:not many people fully understand, or get to see by ThisIsFred (Score:3) Sunday March 07 2004, @01:44PM
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  • How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gothmolly (148874) on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:07PM (#8488596)
    Are people looking for some Gibson-esque secret cabal of script kiddies, who are building operating systems at age 8, can speak in hex, and have secret h4X0r access to everywhere?
    I think people watch too many movies. Or is defining 'script kiddies' as a culture an attempt to rationalize the level of ignorance we experience when trying to comprehend all of computing technology? Since nobody can be good at everything, is it a mental safety valve to create uber-computer users, who 'get it', who can do 'cool things', who are 'in the know'? Isn't this the same thing as creating Gods to explain otherwise unknown natural phenomena?
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Funny)

      by H1r0Pr0tag0n1st (449433) on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:15PM (#8488637)
      It's a culture in the same way that it is a culture if I scrape crud off the toilet and throw it in a petri dish with some growth media....

      [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2004, @10:21PM (#8488909)
        I'd mod parent funny but not insightful. As a kid in the 80s I was part of a bbs culture. Whether people liked it or not it still had its own social norms and modes of expression and behavior. Just because these kids are assholes doesn't mean there's no culture there .. it just means it's a culture of assholism. that said, i think parent post is legitimately humorous.
        [ Parent ]
        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by golgotha007 (62687) on Sunday March 07 2004, @04:30AM (#8489885)
          i ran a bbs in the early 80's and was part of the 'scene'. yes, i had a message subboard called 'ELITE' where we would all post our MCI and Sprint codes and intesteresting phone numbers.

          most of us then were total geeks that either couldn't hold his own at a jock party or was too nervous around girls. the one thing that we did have was power when it comes to telecommunications. and that power, because it wasn't to be enjoyed outside the computer, made us all arrogant little assholes.

          i see nothing has changed.

          of course, then we didn't call them script kiddies (which i find appropriate), we called them 'kidhacks'.
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by chrispycreeme (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @09:24AM
      • On a similar note... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Cyno01 (573917) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Sunday March 07 2004, @01:41AM (#8489548)
        (http://hoodlumzproductions.com/)
        Mt dew is a great agar for growing script kiddies...
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by scifiber_phil (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @11:38AM
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    • I thought the script kiddies were the ones that didn't do any more cracking than search/download/copy-and-paste?

      The people who actually know what they're doing are much more dangerous, generally on the grey to white side of the law and don't bother with DDOS on somebody's little website, since if they really wanted to, they'd just take entire nations' Internet access down.

      I mean, I could think of a 1/2 dozen ways to wipe out a whole country's internet access completely for a day or two (no, I'm not going into details here, but if use BGP in your work life, you can probably think of a few also), but most people who've spent the time to learn at that level also are mature enough to realize that there isn't much of a point to wanton destruction.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LostCluster (625375) * on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:38PM (#8488731)
        I thought the script kiddies were the ones that didn't do any more cracking than search/download/copy-and-paste?

        The script kiddies we're talking about are those who are copy-and-pasting 0day hacks. A hack that the White Hats don't know about yet, and even most black hats don't know about yet. The big mysterious question: Just how did these kids get into the web-of-trust it takes to have this tool before the "good guys" do?

        Afterall, the first "good guy" who gets this tool will hand it over to the white hat experts who will start the work on the patch that makes the hack worthless. So, the web of trust on these things has to be tight... so again, how do the new script kiddies get in the club?
        [ Parent ]
        • Nice question! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by 955301 (209856) on Saturday March 06 2004, @10:17PM (#8488890)
          (Last Journal: Thursday December 08 2005, @11:00PM)
          I'm betting that the kiddies play a role, in much the same way the messenger does for the author of the letter.

          And like the messenger, they are more likely to get shot by the good guys when the let a hack loose into the wild.

          Could it be that a few black (and possibly white) hatters find that they serve a purpose?
          [ Parent ]
          • Yes (Score:5, Interesting)

            It's easier to sell companys, government agentcys and cable modem users on using reasonable security precautions with half a million children running around with viruses and such looking to screw with anyone who gives them half a chance than it is to sell them on the notion that the 6 big bad nasty terrorist black hatters will crush them like a grape if they make the sligtest mistake.

            People will assume they are safe from the big time terrorist dude becouse "I'm not a sereous target".
            DDoS attacks against major targets use hacked cable modem users desktops.
            Spammers use Worms to establish a spamming network.
            ID theft resulting from the simplist of mistakes.

            That stuff happening today.

            When telling people how important security is:
            With out script kiddies
            "Why would anyone attack me?"
            "Your system can be used as a launching point for all sorts of attacks"
            "Yeah right."
            It's hard for a person to picture how "they alone" could be be a target and they'd be right becouse they aren't alone. But the details sound like SiFi to most people and they tune you out.

            With script kiddies.
            "Why would anyone want to attack me?"
            "Becouse your an easy target. Script kiddies need no other reason"
            [ Parent ]
            • Re:Yes by Spoing (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @10:42AM
              • Re:Yes by Eunuchswear (Score:3) Sunday March 07 2004, @12:15PM
          • Re:Nice question! by KlausBreuer (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @01:06PM
        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by Unregistered (Score:2) Saturday March 06 2004, @10:25PM
        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Funny)

          by iminplaya (723125) on Saturday March 06 2004, @10:30PM (#8488954)
          (Last Journal: Friday November 30, @04:45PM)
          ...how do the new script kiddies get in the club?

          I think they're appointed by the president, and after a confirmation hearing, they're in.
          [ Parent ]
        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by zagmar (20261) on Sunday March 07 2004, @03:10AM (#8489780)
          I think one of the points being made in the article was that these kids are fed the exploits in order to remove any potential legal reprisal from the original discoverer, hence the mention of Al-Qaeda. Think about it this way: I'm a 30 year old sysadmin with a chip on my shoulder and I discover a nasty security hole in a piece of software that my employer, as well as hundreds or thousands of other companies, use. Am I going to use this myself, opening me up to all kinds of charges (which are much easier to back up because of my position, and which have much nastier names, such as "corporate sabotage,") or am I going to tell the gang of 1337 h4x0rz that I see every night on IRC, hoping that they will hit my company as well as all the others that use the software?
          [ Parent ]
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        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by cubic6 (Score:3) Sunday March 07 2004, @03:32PM
        • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by pacman on prozac (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @07:35AM
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      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by digitalsushi (137809) * <slashdot@digitalsushi.com> on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:43PM (#8488749)
        (Last Journal: Friday August 19 2005, @05:44PM)
        but if use BGP in your work life, you can probably think of a few also)

        I dont know how BGP works, but I heard that way back in the day, some dude at some ISP announced that he had a /0, or some such thing, and the entire net got routed to him, and subsequently, broken. And then they put in filters into BGP so that core routers could say "you're full of crap that's not your ASN". Is the BGP system still sketchy enough that the existing safeguards against taking down stuff as big as a country still exist? (granted a lot of countries probably have one internet connection going in, sadly)
        [ Parent ]
        • BGP is a little less fragile than that, but not by much.

          A well setup core router will protect your network from most bad announcements from your downstream clients, but if one of your upstream providers gives you the right bad info because their router has been screwed with, you're out of luck until a real person figures it out and takes the link down.

          Then of course, all the outgoing traffic for that link cascades over to your others.... and now that many people are blocking snmp due to Cisco vulnerabilities it gets a little harder to figure problems out.

          And of course, much of the incoming traffic probably still sees the downed link as a valid ASN path, and since that's beyond your control... yeah, you can get screwed pretty easily by one router on an upstream provider's network that misbehaves in just the right ways.

          Truthfully, most major ISPs' NOCs are pretty fast to respond to BGP screwups, but problems caused by a mistake vs. problems caused on purpose with a little forethought and topology knowledge are two different beasties...
          [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by SavingPrivateNawak (563767) on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:48PM (#8488767)
        But the script kiddies described in the article seems quite technical (not just "I winnuke you lolol") since they seem to discover vulnerabilities way before everyone else (Cf Article).

        I don't want to start another hacker/cracker flamewar but I think we should reserve the term script kiddies to people who effectively do nothing more than running other people's malicious scripts.
        We need to find another term for describing these immature, yet skilled, adolescents that discover vulnerabilities by themselves in order to higher their social rank. (Cf article where they talk about '0day servers' with newly found vulnerabilities ready for kiddies' next war)

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by myowntrueself (Score:3) Saturday March 06 2004, @10:44PM
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 07 2004, @03:58AM (#8489850)
        They don't necessarily know what they're doing. Admittedly, when I was in highschool I tried to launch my own botnet. I was DoSed twice on unrelated conditions and got fed up. Plus I wanted to mess with my own friends' connections. After a little digging I found a binary for a botnet which I was able to hex edit and customize to create my botnet. At this time I was just learning C++ and later I found an open source trojan that had much more abilities already coded plus I could add my own. I knew nothing about the inner workings of the net, spoofing (which was hard on win9x machines), or very much C++ at all. One week summed up a nice botnet. At a very young age I discovered that people will run anything if you just plant enough binaries. I disguised it as things I myself would've been interested in: console emulators, porn (yes executable porn, youve seen this), and secuirty related software. I found out that some of my closest online friends has independetly and secretly built their own botnets. It seems like the best thing since well..the internet. To have so much power at a young age and EVERYONE was doing it. Soon I was confronted by a very intelligent person who talked me out of this shit, very nicely even though I was trying to infect him. I uninstalled the bots and shut down the channel. Now I know if I had kept going I would have had a lot of power that I shouldnt. I wasn't using exploits that affect hundreds of thousands of windows machines or any other fancy distribution methods. I just put my file on the net and let them come to me. Botnets are too easy to create and since bandwidth is cheap they will cause more problems. Something must be done to stop these kids without ruining their lives. I wanted to learn and destroy, but not without good reason to. Of course if someone will DDoS company sites and cause damage they should be punished but they should be stopped before this happens. They dont know what they are doing.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Build6 (164888) on Sunday March 07 2004, @04:53AM (#8489917)
        mean, I could think of a 1/2 dozen ways to wipe out a whole country's internet access completely for a day or two (no, I'm not going into details here, but if use BGP in your work life, you can probably think of a few also

        There's a difference between doing something, and doing something and not getting caught. Are your ideas the kind that will end up you being in a federal prison (i.e. quite pointless) or the kind where you cannot get traced (i.e. you are then in fact quite dangerous)?

        there's a difference between going to the bank with a shotgun and getting a lot of money, right before being either shot dead or hauled off to prison, and figuring out some way to siphon off bank funds into your account in a way where nobody ever detects it (or only does long after you're gone).

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by scifiber_phil (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @11:32AM
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:23PM (#8488669)
      Given that there are always a considerable number of individuals at this 'level of ignorance', and that they associate with one another on a regular basis, I would call it a culture. Just because this 'script kiddie level' is merely a stepping stone to greater understanding of technology does not mean it, as just a snapshot of one point in this progression, is not worthy of being a culture in and of itself. After all, like other cultures of this kind (gaming, geek, fratboy, whatever) there are new script kiddies joining and old script kiddies retiring from it each day.

      Also, if you've ever associated with them, script kiddies have their own rules (mostly unspoken), trends, and even something of their own language. It may all be borne of ignorance and immaturity, but the same could be said about a number of other cultures/subcultures.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LostCluster (625375) * on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:33PM (#8488711)
      It's a culture that we should try to understand, because if we can find a way to take away their motivations, we'll have less hassles to do with on our networks.

      What a 0day really boils down to is a mistake that a programmer made that never got corrected and therefore got distributed, but this mistake has yet to be documented in any way. White hats announce what they've discovered in the form of a patch, or at worst a security alert to the public. Black hats announce what they've discovered in the form of a malware attack.

      Really... we'd like to know what motivates black hats, because we'd like to find a way to get them to play on the white team.
      [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DoraLives (622001) on Saturday March 06 2004, @11:02PM (#8489082)
        if we can find a way to take away their motivations, we'll have less hassles to do with on our networks.

        Bored children break stuff for the sheer hell of it. To seek deeper meaning here is to completely fail to understand bored children. Distract (and that's all you can do, merely distract) child A from breaking a thing, and child B will come along and break it while you're still busy with child A. There's nothing to see here. Move along.

        we'd like to know what motivates black hats

        You're presuming to use logic (or something similar) to understand a non-logical phenomenon. Don't work. Human emotion is a manifestly NONlinear function and additionally changes from one state to another with about the same level of predictabliity as the position and momentum of a particular subatomic particle. Fuggabouddit.

        we'd like to find a way to get them to play on the white team

        That way has already been found: Let them grow up. They'll get over it. Or at least most of them will. But you can never predict with certainty exactly which ones. And every year a new crop is growing.

        [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mingot (665080) on Saturday March 06 2004, @11:43PM (#8489242)
        Really... we'd like to know what motivates black hats, because we'd like to find a way to get them to play on the white team.

        Desire to compete coupled with a strong fear of rejection. All you have to do to 'win' is be hated.
        [ Parent ]
      • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Prof. Pi (199260) on Sunday March 07 2004, @02:17AM (#8489656)
        if we can find a way to take away their motivations, we'll have less hassles to do with on our networks.

        After R'ing TFA, I'd guess that the most efficient way to take away their motivation would be for the major ISPs to chip into a fund to get hookers for them.

        [ Parent ]
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    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by Lumpy (Score:2) Saturday March 06 2004, @10:40PM
    • A poison culture is still a culture. by Felinoid (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @12:57AM
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by CAIMLAS (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @01:05AM
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lxs (131946) on Sunday March 07 2004, @04:07AM (#8489861)
      I guess in the same way that glue-sniffers that scrawl their names on bus-shelters are part of an 'artistic movement'

      Give a kid a felt-tip pen and he thinks he's Bastiat, give the same kid a computer and he thinks he's Kevin Mitnick.
      [ Parent ]
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by Decameron81 (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @10:59AM
    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by seann (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @11:40AM
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    • Re:How is this a 'culture'? by identity0 (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @02:07PM
  • Two implications (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:07PM (#8488599)
    The most amusing implications are:

    a) Its a culture.
    b) Someone would actually want to see it.

    10 years ago I did the script kid thing for a bit (before having a life). Its a bunch of kids who's parents are not really involved in their lives, and have nothing better to do than look for a digital mate by typing "A/S/L?!?!??! and talking about their privates.

    I could seriously care less.
  • No Social Life? by firstadopter.com (Score:2) Saturday March 06 2004, @09:08PM
    • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.

  • _xXx_h4x0r3rZer0_xXx [#31337] d00d sl4shd0t p0st1d 0ur sh1zzl3 m4h n1zz73
    XxX-|-Ne()-|-XxX [#31337] /exec ./winuke slashdot.org:80
    XxX-|-Ne()-|-XxX [#31337] l4m3rz!@_!@
    • Re:h4h4h4h4h4 by DaLiNKz (Score:1) Saturday March 06 2004, @10:17PM
      • 1 reply beneath your current threshold.
    • Re:h4h4h4h4h4 by Lost Dragon (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @12:34AM
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:11PM (#8488618)
    Look no further.
  • Publicity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Un0r1g1nal (711750) on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:14PM (#8488630)
    From what I understand of script kiddies they mostly do stuff from sheer boredom (what ever happened to the good ole outdoors?) and for the extra pseudo attention they get from it.
    Surely by attempting to interview and do articles on this 'culture' they are just pandering to the desires of these script kiddies. And rather than helping them to realise that they need to grow up etc, the extra attention is only going to make them have a greater desire to wreak havock with their 'leet skills'
    • Re:Publicity by a8o (Score:2) Saturday March 06 2004, @09:18PM
    • Re:Publicity by Anonymous Coward (Score:2) Saturday March 06 2004, @09:35PM
    • Re:Publicity by chevelleSS (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @05:09AM
    • Re:Publicity by SmackCrackandPot (Score:3) Sunday March 07 2004, @07:57AM
    • Re:Publicity by danila (Score:2) Sunday March 07 2004, @11:07AM
    • Re:Publicity by skifreak87 (Score:1) Sunday March 07 2004, @02:02PM
    • 2 replies beneath your current threshold.
  • Back in my day, we didn't have computers. We would see how long we could balance on a flagpole or we would see how many goldfish we could fit in a telephone booth. Hell, once I danced the Charleston on a flagpole for 12 hours. Won me a brand new LaSalle. Now, pranks and mischief are all electronic, done with them newfangled computers by them so called script-kiddies.

    Takes the fun out of being a kid if you ask me. Hmmmpphh
  • WTF (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Facekhan (445017) on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:16PM (#8488640)
    Is this guy just making stuff up as he goes along. I swear he comes off like Gibson at GRC for christ sake. Secret groups of anti-social 11 year olds taking down whole isp's because their male "competition" for the heart of an equally dysfunctional haxo4 chica is a subscriber.
  • Just how do you stop a DDoS? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster (625375) * on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:22PM (#8488663)
    From an admin's perspective, a DDoS is the scariest attack of all. There's nothing you can do to prevent it, and nothing you can do to stop it.

    An admin whose network is being DDoSed really doesn't have much hope of doing anything. Their inbound communication line to the outside world is being flooded with so much garbage information, the signals that they want to get over that line are simply drowned out. Incoming connections can't get a turn going down the pipe, so they time out. He's powerless, everything in his shop is nice and secure, but can't function without geting any useful requests. That poor admin can call his ISP... but there's really not much the ISP can do from their side of the line.

    The real problem in a DDoS attack is not that the final victim's security has gone wrong, but the security of other computers elsewhere on the Internet have been compromised, and they've been turned into zombies contributing to the DDoS flood. The DDoS will not subside until nearly all those machines are all patched, but that's not something the victim's people can do. They have to wait for the Anti-Virus providers and software providers to knock down the flamethrowers that are all being shot in the same direction.

    Any time you're relying on third parties who don't work for you to save your business, you're really up a creek and are throwing yourself on the mercy of the tech world. Hopefully they'll save you in time, because there's really not much you can do from your own datacenter.
  • Baseball BATS ! (Score:5, Funny)

    by MajorDick (735308) on Saturday March 06 2004, @09:22PM (#8488665)
    We had a script kiddie (didnt know it at first) trying desperatley to hack several of our servers, I reckognized the IP block he was on and called up my buddy who was the sysadmin for the ISP he was connected from, Soooo he gave mne his name and address. Me and my dad Im 6'2 230 lbs and my dad looks like george carlin on steroids, well we knocked on the door of a very nice house at about 4:00 pm , to the door comes a pimpled faced rugrat about 14, I told him we were here about the hacking attempt on our server, the kid turned purple, andd I honest to gfod thought he was gonna piss himself , we had a nice little discussion and told him the next call was to the FBI for attempted bank robbery as we hosted several credit unions, never had anymore problems from this fellow. We did take a baseball bat along just in case he was bigger than we were , This was going back some time 96 or so.
    • Re:Baseball BATS ! by Cynikal (Score:1) Saturday March 06 2004, @09:57PM
    • Translation (Score:5, Funny)

      by $0 31337 (225572) on Saturday March 06 2004, @10:19PM (#8488899)
      (http://www.indignant.org)
      didnt = didn't
      reckognized = recognized
      mne = me
      Im = I'm
      andd = and
      gfod = god

      Damn... I sure as hell hope you're not a programmer at your job. If so, I'd love to see some of your code

      #!/usr/been/purl

      opin(INFILE,"/etc/paswd") || die("Fil naught fownd");

      Sorry about making fun of you, please don't bring your dad to my house.
      [ Parent ]