The Three Sides of the Hacker Pyramid

The biggest stereotype, the face of hacking most people see, is represented by the first illustration, the "Hacker Pyramid." A big gray area starts with white at the bottom and stretches to pitch black, pure evil, at the apex; cyber-terrorists! There is no gray area when it comes to cyber-terrorists like Vitek Boden, Richard Reed, and the mass spammers behind the Sobig.F virus. They are our enemy! The same applies to crackers, hackers who turn to crime. I include piratez who distribute warez (Chapter 11) in the same category as crackers. You'll learn more about all of these terms as you read on.

Figure 8.1: The pyramids

The big gray area at the bottom of the Hacker Pyramid is where and how hacker newbies incubate. They become hollow bunnies, script kiddies, and ankle biters before graduating to something else. The irony is that the people who are the hardest on hollow bunnies, script kiddies, and ankle biters, are hackers who've grown-up. I think they sometimes forget they were once newbies themselves .

A pyramid has three sides, but most people see only one of those sides. They're populated by hackers as well. Hackers who've matured. The hackers on the Security Pyramid are employed to counteract the cyber-terrorists, crackers, piratez, and virus writers who victimize us. The hackers on the "IT Pyramid" are paid to develop, maintain, and deliver the technology we consume .

But here's a real conundrum . These company hackers on the IT Pyramid develop the most invasive technology of all! Where do you think pop-up ads, spam, and spyware come from? Big Business! I put corporations that track us, harvest our personal information, and sell it for a profit in the same category as crackers! So as you can see, there are no patent answers when it comes to the subject of hackers.

Nolite edere flavam nivem means "don't eat yellow snow" in Latin. It also sums up the philosophy of hacking. I wish I could take credit, but I picked up the phrase from Dwain, a hacker who ends all of his e-mail with this witty signature. Hackers are among the wittiest people I know! I have not had the pleasure of meeting Dwain in person. Rather, I stumbled upon his e-mail monitoring a hacker user group a few years back.

 Author: Dwain (---xxxx.link.net)      Date: 03-08-01 23:57      Hackers seem to be having a field day on Yahoo! chat. While most are      script kiddies, there are some serious attacks going on there. Have      seen monitor hacks, windows do some strange things, like minimized      windows disappearing completely, CD-ROM attacks, etc. All manner of      mischief going on, and Yahoo! seems unable to defend itself, much less      the poor people logged on. Perhaps Yahoo! deserves this attention, but      there are good folks getting their butts kicked with little protec-      tion. A few with decent hacking skills are attacking the attackers,      but that is a one-on-one approach, and not effective for people in      other rooms. Any help?      Dwain      nolite edere flavam nivem (don't eat yellow snow) 

A few weeks later, Dwain hit pay dirt.

 Author: Dwain  (---xxxx.link.net)      Date: 03-25-01 06:16      I finally got a partial script these kiddies are using, as one sent      one that was unfinished. Any idea how to go about blocking these?      Script follows.      Dwain      nolite edere flavam nivem (don't eat yellow snow) 

I'll spare you the boring details, but a computer script that started like this followed:

 clear echo echo " Windows Crasher Shell Script By TARZAN from ILLeGaL CreW Turkey" echo " echo " crashes or disconnects vulnerable win 98/nt/2000 boxes" echo " usage : ./wincrash sourceip dstip" 

It took Dwain, an anonymous hacker most likely in his teens, 17 days, but he tracked down the malicious code that exploited Yahoo! Chat's vulnerability and posted it so his fellow hackers could concoct a script to combat it. Dwain's words and actions epitomize white hat hacking. In my book Dwain is a hero. That's why I dedicated this book to him and countless others like him!

Some of you may be asking, but what about "TARZAN from ILLeGaL CreW Turkey," the cracker who created the Windows Crasher Shell Script, or the script kiddies who distributed it? Hacking is a game, and you can't have a game without two sides. In the hacking game, the good guys are called white hats and the bad guys are called black hats. Not very original, but it makes the point.

The real villain of the Dwain saga isn't TARZAN or the so-called script kiddies. It's Yahoo! Feel free to substitute MSN, AOL, or eBay, all of which have been cracked due to lax security. I'll address that later, but here's the moral of this story: If all it takes is a few dozen lines of code to crack the biggest portal on the Internet, we all better watch our behinds!

At the very least, be aware that nameless, faceless hackers are watching your behind in cyberspace ! You'll never know how many times an anonymous hacker may have saved your butt!