I once could have called myself a 'Young Hacker'- but that term can't be used in polite company anymore, or at least not around the suit-and-tie-types. And its also one thing to root your friends' basement 386 on a 1200 baud line and put an 'Avast, ye scurvey dogs!' notice on his BBS, and another to 'crack' an enterprise system and do something harmful. Now, for most people, the two things are synonymous and equally nefarious.
Hell, I remember when security was so bad, line noise introduced from 'lifting up the phone' on a modem line at the right point in the system could either crash a BBS or worse, drop a dialed-in user into 'admin mode'. Yeeesh, remember when Auto Dialers were an actual attack vector?
I'm not sure it (security) has gotten much better. Sure, the penetrations have gotten more technically sophisticated (but not out of reach of an intelligent kid with lots of time), but the potential for damage has gone from 'virtually nill' to sky-high.
You couldn't pay me enough to be a Network Security lead of anything. I barely trust my own computer enough to use it.
Yeti
Geek Speak » in reply to Hackers and
I know what you mean