Those Horrible Hackers Strike Again

In mid-November, something happened.  We all know what it was; even the general populace knows this time.

A Newsweek reporter, Richard Sandza, was harassed with a flurry of hacking and phreaking after he wrote a semi-revealing article.  (See November 12 Newsweek for the article and December 10 for the follow-up.)

The attack on Sandza is unique because he is a member of the press.  Because of this, a ridiculous amount of publicity erupted from the event.  USA Today ran several days worth of articles and editorials focusing on the rampant abuse of technology by our kids, as did TV networks and all other branches of the media.  Most of them mentioned break-ins at the computers of Sloan Kettering, NASA, TRW, or other well known organizations.  This is supposed to make us gasp in astonishment and lead us to believe that the only problem is these pesky, genius kids.  But we all know better.

Sandza made the one big mistake of underestimating the power of the hackers.  We were told by one of his friends of how he was so very certain that nothing could happen to him because he published a secret password.  We believe this has been an educational experience for him.  Some of the hackers among us could use a bit of this education themselves, though.  Harassing one person relentlessly really accomplishes nothing except to further tarnish the image of hackers.  By comparison, if the hackers had done all kinds of nasty things to a big corporation, say Union Carbide since they seem to have been doing some nasty things themselves recently, the general populace might have been more understanding.

Although Sandza's case and the publicity surrounding it will hopefully alert the public to potential abuse of information by others, it is something neither he nor others deserved.  And consider this: Although Sandza broke confidences by revealing passwords, he had just as much right to do it as those hackers that reveal commercial computer passwords.