Party Vibe

@cheeseweasel 702376 wrote:

I think whoever sold you that ethics statement of the Chaos Computer Club has done a number on you there…

unfortunately modern “hacktivist” groups can be just about anybody with any motive, claiming to be part of a better known group. There have been more widely publicised divisions within the North European hacker communities and causing an infinite amount of Angst (which would crash any network, including those of humans).

Since 1989 there was also a bogus “French chapter” which was set up by FR feds (which explains some things I noticed occuring amongst French speaking alternative communities in late 1990s) and the traffic to this website around Teknival time in the mid 2000s.

The original German lot started when I was still in junior school and had only just begun to use a computer; from what I can understand of the German ethics statement it is the original one from back then. It is because of chaps like the original CCC I did not end up arrested after hacking the Internet in 1992 (the Germans said to Metpol and the University I was studying at I had not committed any crime in their country; as the library computer server firewall at the German science Uni had deliberately been left open!)

Ethical hacking still happens today. It does not include stealing individuals identity details and/or financial resources, nor attacking systems for infrastructure in utilities and healthcare etc and some things we did in 1980s/1990s are no longer necessary when a teenager can get a smartphone and run it with their pocket money.

I still often have to use the old techniques simply to keep things working on some proprietary systems because their own support staff lack the knowledge to diagnose some issues (often through no fault of their own, English businesses and education does not train young technicians and engineers well) – and it is actually quicker to hack a router with a forgotten DSL access password than to call British Telecom to reset it..

TBh if you compare many modern “hackers” with the new Eurogeese (which according to the twitchers are not yet officially recognised in UK as a subspecies of Anser spp, nor is the Canada Goose) the birds are far more intelligent and trustworthy.

During the 1990s there were text newsgroups (like this forum but text-only, as everything often had to be sent over a telephone line and/or a serial port link) and many Professors who knew German would put this quote in their signature (it is apparently from a folk song of Bavaria)

Für die Flöh gibt es Pulver
für die Schuh gibt es Wix
für den Durst gibt es Wasser
bloß für d’Dummheit gibt’s nix.

For fleas there is powder
for shoes there is wax
for thirst there is water
but for (curing) stupidity there is nothing.

Unfortunately it is possible to send this stupidity through the Internet; and it can be contagious.