Bone In The Throat

1:00 am, the leather of my chair is cold on my bare ass as I sit down at my desk.

I was just about asleep, then my technology started chiming with a regularity that forced me awake again.

Comments are being made on the blog, but they’re comments on really old posts.

I dig a little deeper. There are thousands of comments now, all of them trying to slip through the comment process so that they can post a link to what is probably a bogus web site.

The sites claims to be selling replica shoes, or handbags at very low prices.

More comments more bullshit.

Tracking the originating IP for this stuff takes me to China.

I scratch my balls. Got a friend in China… don’t want to cut him off but don’t know which IP addresses he’s likely to be using, These IPs look like they’re from Beijing.

I wish my buddy would come the hell home, I’d like to see him, I miss him.

When my buddy comes home all of China is going in the exclude list. I see how to do that elegantly and simply. 

In the mean time I’m blocking all the IP addresses that these spam comments are originating from. 

I try to maintain a blog that is enjoyable and yet isn’t draconian. I hate like hell having to block any IP but where there’s the potential to steal, there’s always someone willing to try.

I used to be pretty agnostic about it.

I thought if you were stupid enough to click on a link, or greedy enough that you wanted a Rolex for $50.00 and were willing to give someone your account numbers you pretty much got what you deserved.

I figured let the greedy scum feed on each other until only one scumbag remained, then snatch that scumbag up and toss their ass in a dark prison with their orifices clearly labeled when they went to the showers.

But then I started seeing the collateral damage. 

I saw the old, the charitable,the kind, the inexperienced being taken advantage of and my agnosticism evaporated.

Which is not to say that I support anything like CISPA or PIPPA or in fact most of the bullshit laws or government is trying to pass.

Hacking is 10,000 shades of gray.

A hacker who hacks to point out a weakness in a critical system is very different from a hacker that cleans out an old lady’s bank account.

The terms Hackers, and Hacking have lost all meaning in great part due to media misreporting. 

A hacker used to be a person that through their cleverness and innovative thinking was able to penetrate computer security and gain control of a system remotely. They were usually brilliant and more often than not BORED.

Occasionally, they’d cause damage to data, but that generally wasn’t the goal and shouldn’t have been too large a problem if the hacked computers were properly maintained and the data backed up.

The reason that hacking became such a big deal in my opinion was that the folks running the computers systems were embarrassed that they’d been caught with their pants down.

So they whined to their wealthy and powerful bosses who in turn blew the situation out of proportion to the politicians they were playing golf with and then the politicians had a wonderful scary new windmill to tilt at. and they looked busy and ever so smart to their constituents. 

Hackers, were in a way doing a public service. By pointing out the weaknesses of systems in a counting coup way they made the computing gurus of the times re-think their security approach. To some extent the computer security that we enjoy today is because of hackers. Yes, data sometimes gets lost or stolen but it’s not as bad as it could be. I credit that hackers spurred early computer pioneers to think about security.

By the time the government and media got through with the subject… We The People had something else to fear.

Many of the hackers today aren’t what I’d call hackers.

The phishing emails, the virus laden websites, the chain letters from Nigeria aren’t hacking.

They’re betrayals of trust & kindness. In that way these crimes are no different than the normal Con-Man frauds. They should be prosecuted the same.

Armies of Zombie computers are in my mind perversions of theories of distributed computing. They are nothing more than a marginally clever re-tasking of otherwise brilliantly useful software to nefarious purposes.

You want to know who’s responsible for Phishing? Look at the spelling! 

They’re young, bored, and could be anywhere along the economic privilege curve.

A real Hacker I once knew called them script kiddies. These kids are just clever and technical enough to locate, figure out, and then use Hobby Kits that compile viruses and other creations designed completely and solely to cause mischief or be used in fraud.

But they’re not really creating “New” threats, they’re just reworking existing code.

Phishing techniques aren’t only used by children and criminals. And sometimes even people like me fall for them.

I recently signed a petition on Change.org. 

I wasn’t thinking about the organization, I was thinking about the petition and the cause.

I’m going to be writing about the cause as the story develops further.

Within 24 hours I was getting SPAM of all kinds from Democratic organizations around the country.

It’s taken me DAYS to remove myself from those mailing lists.

Just because I as a thinking person sign a petition supporting a young man being unjustly punished by stupidity doesn’t automatically mean I’m interested in being your best friend AND it doesn’t mean I’m automatically a Democrat.

I pointed out on one of the Removal pages that I held Democrats responsible for the “Zero Tolerance” Policies being used to unjustly punish this young man. 

I’m hoping that someone blows coffee out their nose on Monday morning.

Ahhh and with that happy message. I’m going back to bed. 

I told you that sometimes the thoughts here would be random.

Goodnight