To those people who like me were confused by this when I first read it:-


 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_at_Random

 https://wiki.har2009.org/page/Main_Page

 http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=lulz


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3CPx7Frt80

Hacking at Random will be an outdoor hacker conference that takes place in The Netherlands on August 13–16, 2009.

It will be located on a large camp-site near the small town Vierhouten in The Netherlands called the Paasheuvel. Which is, like the former event, in the middle of nowhere.

This conference is the most recent event in a sequence that began with the Galactic Hacker Party in 1989, followed by Hacking at the End of the Universe in 1993, Hacking In Progress in 1997, Hackers At Large in 2001, and What the Hack in 2005. Like these well-known predecessors, Hacking at Random will be one of the most important hacker conventions of the year, bringing together hackers and techno-enthusiasts from all over the world. But, unlike its predecessors, HAR is not a project by the exact same people as before: there are new people involved in the organization process.

Like the previous Dutch hacker cons this event thrives by using its volunteers, and calls everyone including the visitor sponsors a volunteer. Everyone is expected to do their part in make the event a success.

With over 170 talks and 3 large lecture halls, this edition is by far the largest in the series of quadrennial Dutch events.

are these the people that crashed my laptop with a virus?

Iam no expert, but apparently windows& microsoft has more annoying bugs in it that linux so you can be sold more software patches & faceless undemocratic companies can spy on you whenever they want

Originally, hacking was a laudable pursuit. It was driven by free software - because nobody conceived of owning software - and involved sharing with common purpose. It was driven by a joy and common purpose in making things work. Sadly, Bill Gates wrote a letter in 1977. It said all software should be owned. He then set about owning software. The problem being that the Hackers did not simply say, "Bill you have a damned fine idea there - here own this for us". Quite the contrary, they continued to do their own thing.

Hackers were not driven to write viruses or spyware or adware. These are commercial products with a commercial interest. There are viruses that are written by individuals and set free on the internet. In drafting legislation about viruses, Parliament attempted, in debate, to define a virus as "software that controls your computer without your consent" which, it was pointed out, included windows. Because there are components of windows that are not removeable.

Mister McKinnon, the man with Aspergers Syndrome being put on show trial in the US for breaking into "top secret military computer systems" (which begs the question of why they were on the internet if they were top secret). He is described as a Hacker because it suits legislators and prosecutors to use the phrase. His hacking consisted of using the skills he has to wander around the internet. If you have successfully posted onto Indymedia then you are - in a small way - a hacker. For you have hacked. His biggest problem was that he used his skills just after the Twin Tower attacks - at a time when he demonstrated the US Administration werer being systematically incompetent. He did so by accident.

Using the term Hacker as a term of abuse or to induce fear is much the same as any censors first tactic: make people afraid of the free flow of information. Just as Anonymous protest that the Corporation of Scientology is systematically censoring (and commiting human rights abuses) they also point out that Freezone (Scientologists practicing outside of the Corporation of Scientology) are just as fruity and scientological. Anonymous - like the Cult of the Dead Cow before them - understand the deep changes that technology have enabled for society. Anonymous might actually describe Freezone as Scientology Hackers - and it would not be intended to be offensive. It would point to the fact that people are curious and will use "technologies" for their own purposes.

Hacking and Hackers need to be seen in perspective. If I work for some corporation and use my skills to create an accountacy package then it is not called hacking. If I do the same in my own time then it becomes suspect. Hacking and Hackers are an important element of all future culture. Simply complaining that "some hacker" crashed your laptop is nonsense. If a criminal created a virus that caused your laptop to crash then say so. Scientology has vilified Anonymous for being "hackers and criminals" on several occassions. Because the word Hacker is available and lazy people use it as shorthand for "criminal" Scientology can do this to great effect.

What if someone were to start using the word "anarchist" or "vegan" or "socialist" in the same way? There would be righteous indignation. Yet it is perfectly acceptable to do this for anybody with technical skills by using the word "hacker".

The forces of censorship are succeeding because they are separting the technical from the non-technical. The mental position of Anonymous recognises this. Technology and Politics need to be in dialogue. Simple blanket terms like "Hacker" ensure this does not happen. Unless there is a genuine recognition that the antiscientific and antitechnological stances of many "progressive" people is disempowering then there will come a point where lives are run by technology for purposes that some remote power controls and defines. Anonymous recognise this in the Church of Scientology - where people work long hours for less than minimum wage, in part because of the "technology" they will obtain. - and object. Unless there is a serious consideration of this among Indymedia readers, then censorship (as a principle) wins a structural battle that ensures it becomes standard practice.

The problem with hackers is that they want information to be free. This takes technology. Technology is mysterious - but not unfathomable.

" "software that controls your computer without your consent" which, it was pointed out, included windows. "

No - if you've paid for windows, then you've agrreed to its end user licence, which means yhou have consented.

"His hacking consisted of using the skills he has to wander around the internet. If you have successfully posted onto Indymedia then you are - in a small way - a hacker. For you have hacked."

No - McKinnon didn't get arrested for wandering round the internet. He got arrested for accessing computers which were closed off from the internet. Thus you can wander the streets [the internet] but not private houses [individual computers]. The comment about posting to Indymedia is just silly.

"If I work for some corporation and use my skills to create an accountacy package then it is not called hacking. If I do the same in my own time then it becomes suspect."

Wrong again. Any individual can write any software he likes and either sell it or give it away without any legal, ethical or moral difficulty.

"The problem with hackers is that they want information to be free."

But why should it be free? Food isn't free, and food is a good deal more essential to life than information. If I spend two years of my life working on a piece of software, why must I give it away? You don't ask carpenters to give chairs away free; why should you ask software writers to give their work away free?

"No - McKinnon didn't get arrested for wandering round the internet. He got arrested for accessing computers which were closed off from the internet. Thus you can wander the streets [the internet] but not private houses [individual computers]. The comment about posting to Indymedia is just silly."

You cannot 'remotely' access any computer that is closed off from the internet. It MUST be connected in some way for this to happen. The only way you can access a closed system is by physically sitting at the terminal itself. Mr McKinnon would have had to have been inside the building where the computer is situated for this to happen.

McKinnon is being deported because he successfully gained access to computers that had been left open irresponsibly in the US. This at a time when the country was at war. For the most part he simply guessed correctly that the users of those computers were operating in sloppy fashion and leaving their terminals undefended. He didn't 'hack' into them, he simply exploited human behaviour and took advantage of lapses in the users behaviour to gain access. Something that the entire US industrial complex does on a routine basis, especially during wartime.

An analogy to this 'user behaviour' is satellite TV. Most people input security codes to watch certain films or channels that should not be available to children, its usually a four digit number. You could walk into most households these days off the street while the householder is away, switch on the TV and watch any channel you wanted just by entering '1234' on the handset. People are very lazy with security prompts of all kinds and that laziness is just as likely in the US State Department as it is at home watching TV.

The 'hacker' is somebody that is usually doing something easily guessed at. There is nothing special in this. What IS special, is that corporations, government and local authorities do, and will, exaggerate the expertise of individual computer users that gain access to its sytems, give them a name (hacker) and then walk them through the judiciary to qualify the threat to the public. They then jump up and down in front of the TV cameras after a successful prosecution like 'brave hero's' so they can convince the public they are acting in the public interest, which in turn (they hope) leads to higher salary employment in their particular field.

What is happening to Mr McKinnon is disgusting. He is a British man being deported to a foreign country by British authorities for no better reason than he made that foreign country look foolish (not difficult to do, admittedly!)

He is not a threat, he has done nothing malicious and he does NOT deserve the treatment is receiving.

Frankly, if the United States cannot keep its sytems secure during a time of war then it deserves everything it gets.

Thats the cost of allowing your security provisions to lapse during wartime.

The computers were designed to be accessed from the net only if you had the correct passwords. McKinnon guessed the passwords, and gained access. Apparently then it was not his fault but the fault of the network.

So, if you ever come up in court on the charge of burglary, you can say it was the householder's fault because he didn't make the house inaccessible from the road, and because the locks were too easy to pick. Now, see how far you get with that defence ...

"The hacker territory is a limited space. The internet is not...
We need your technical skills.
You need our creativity."

Ha. Nothing Anonymous has done has been creative. The hacker territory is not a limited territory. You do need other peoples technical skills - your own technical skills - because no one is impressed with your creativity. You can't even identify the correct groups to approach and to suggest in adavance that you are more creative than them suggests you don't know how to approach them.

Hacking is more public in those countries but not stronger or more capable, so approaching them will lead you only to self-deluded attention seekers. A decade ago I was 2nd line tech support for +the+ global financial institution headquartered in both Belgium and the Netherlands, and I remember those conferences as we were constantly under attack for a week at a time from one side or the other. At the time, I never had time to analyse how clever the attacks were, we just watched how they progressed and constantly patched software as we followed them. None succeeded.

One year (97 or 98) Belgian hackers hacked the Netherlands to a standstill, so the next year Dutch hackers did the same to Belgium. Some hackers took part in both, defending one and attacking the other or attacking both. It's a game, like a football match, or like New Year in Amsterdam when one side of a street fires fireworks directly at the houses on the other side of the street.

These attacks weren't aimed at individuals, they were aimed at companies. Too easy to hack an individual. They took out a lot of middling companies, you know the ones with one Sys Admin and one gopher, they are always hackable. They never took out any of their most important targets because - and this is important for newbies to understand - the best teams of hackers work for the opposition.

Like I said I was just second line tech support, but when I identified a fault that the hackers were going after and phoned Microsoft for a fix, I didn't get put through to some dunce in Dublin, I had the full attention of a MS Vice President. A billionaire and his entire staff would be at my beck and call, and when I identified a successful hack I had a solution within 40 minutes. The sad fact is even a concentrated hack attack is seriously outgunned by the main players. The seriously capitalist companies simply use these events as free inhouse training.

When I was doing that job, my fiance said 'One of my friends just moved a British satellite by hacking into it'. She wasn't techie so I patiently explained 'No, you've misunderstood. Your friend may have hacked into a communications satellites bandwidth, but they wouldn't have been able to move the satellite'. Three weeks later an unpublished security service report ends up on our intraweb, stating that a £10,000 ransom was paid to a hacker who had dropped a British spy satellite out of it's orbit. Love and learn.