I’ll start by apologizing for the horrible graphic above. I’m on vacation with my wife and only brought my tablet with me. Note to self, load Photoshop on my wife’s laptop!
Anywho… As more and more stories of hackers attacking game sites come to life, I have begun to wonder whether hacker have really evolved as Anonymous would like you to believe. Click the READ MOAR for my full thoughts.
I’m 30 years old, but I will tell you that I’m not usually the deepest thinker all of the time (my wife can attest to that). There are occasions when I do start to think hard about life issues and a deeper meaning, but I find that it tends to disrupt the fun that I try to continually have on a daily basis. Now while I’m all about having fun with everything that I do in life, I try to do it w/o fucking up things for other people. What follows is my thoughts on this latest string of hacks that have appeared, but they are only thoughts. Please don’t try to hack my accounts or this site, as I’m not trying to put out a call to arms or anything.
While hacking first started because only select people had the ability to do it and it was a fun way to pass the time for them, the great thing was that pretty much only corporations were online and they weren’t messing with people’s fun too much. While it wasn’t exactly the most insightful or mature machinations to appear in civilized society, there was mainly a minimal impact to our everyday living and wasn’t really that bad for the most part (at least in my eyes). As the years have gone by though, hacking has evolved… or has it? Organized hacking groups would like you to believe that hackers have converted themselves to insightful activists that are fighting for the betterment of of society as a whole, but more recent events are starting to prove that things are far more superficial than they would like you to believe. While yes, Anonymous does have some major insight in to the workings of modern politics and financial systems, they seem to be a minority in what has been and continues to be an ever growing hacker populace.
Sure, every hacker has to start somewhere in their journey to “hacker superstardom”, but it would probably be best to not destroy things that keep people sane (especially for the portion of society that normally gives support to your work). The recent hacks in to almost EVERYTHING having to do with gaming is a little ridiculous. Sure Sony did kind of deserve to have something done to them because of their decision to sue the hacker GeoHot, but the data that they tried to take would say otherwise to me. If you’re looking to make a statement to a corporation, taking user account data does not really do much to the company that has been hacked. The result of their hack did nothing but cause network security personnel at Sony to work a lot of overtime and piss off every online PS3 gamer for well over a month (although we did end up getting some nice freebies out of it). If you really want to hurt a company you should be attacking their internal network system and pulling down sensitive company information, that they don’t want the general public to see, and broadcasting it to everyone in the world. The latest trend is to hack MMO sites and try to steal credit card information of the general populace. While I have not really been impacted with this, since I don’t play MMORPG’s, I do feel for the people that are just trying to escape their normal lives and are inconvenienced by these happenings. Seriously though, messing with someones free time is a little dick and does nothing but piss of the general populace. If hackers really want to people on their side, they should probably act a little more like heroes and a little less like a boy hovering over a line of ants with a magnifying glass on a sunny spring day.
All kidding aside, I do believe that there needs to be a major reform in the way that many hackers go about their business and the work that they do. With all of the troubles that people are having throughout the world, there has to be a better way to practice your craft than hacking people’s free time and stealing their personal information. Times have changed, the tech community has changed and a majority of hackers just need to grow up. Sure there will always be assholes out there, but I think that some hackers need to think about what it is that they’re really trying to accomplish with the things that they are doing. These are just my thoughts and inner ramblings on some current affairs of the internet. While I am probably not the best person to be preaching about how to be mature, I’m sure that I’m not the worst and that has to count for something. What do you thing about all of these latest attacks? Do you think that hackers should reform, stay as they are or disappear entirely? Let us know in the comments below, we would love to hear from you.