One forum. Five fora.

Meanwhile, on Fark you can refine your trolling to Tatsuma or Bevets level proportions.

Wait, you mean the Information Age isn't just about selling pet food online? Quick, someone call Ric Romero!

The headline is redundant.

I wish I was articulate enough to outline the major differences between hackers and crackers/script kiddies, but I'm not that skilled nor do I have that much free time right now. If there are forums offering the basics of honest to God hacking, then awesome. Otherwise, nuke the f*ckers.

/maybe a little harsh
//DRTFA
///have a C assignment that I need to finish/debug by tomorrow

Script kiddies.

styckx: Hacking in the past: Sitting in front of a terminal, writing your own C programs, gaining root.

Hacking Getting hacked in the present: Click pre-written program, click button, e-penis gets bigger

FIFY

I've always found the notion of 'Script Kiddies Vs. Hackers' to be a silly one. And the ridiculous expectations people have when it comes to IT Security types.

Some 16-17 year old kid with no formal education is interested in something. He spends his free time learning what he can about that topic. And he's not an expert. BECAUSE HE'S A FRIGGIN HIGH SCHOOL KID WITH NO FORMAL EDUCATION. He's still light years ahead of his peers. Nobody looks at a star high school basketball player and say, 'Well, he's not an NBA level player! He's just a B-BALL KIDDIE!'

But if it involves computers.....well, he's just an amateur, script-kiddie, wannabe! Why, he hasn't mastered everything imaginable about something before the age of 20? What a *LOSER* he is.

Hell, many University curriculum don't even touch on computer security. I completed my undergraduate work without a single class even touching on the concept, except perhaps, a professor mentioning the idea of what a 'buffer overflow' was in the first required C class. In my graduate work at a different university, I was required to take one class that presented some hypothetical-level security concerns you'd face when designing an operating system.

There are 18 year olds who have managed to learn more about a subject that is very useful, can lead to a great paying career, than many IT professionals have; but the general opinion is that we should mock them and make fun of them. Because they are sooo 'amateur'. What else would you expect from an amateur? In any other field, that would be a compliment.

If some 17 year old was downloading white papers and other published works put together by Phd type chemists and then repeating their work, step-by-step, in his lab in the basement; people would be impressed. Sure, it's nerdy as hell, but that's a smart kid. That's a kid who has a future as a chemist, even if he doesn't understand all of it. Even if he's using formulas at 'face value' without a deep understanding of why or how they were discovered.

But in computers? N0ob! What a script kiddie! hahahahaha! He did something pretty impressive but made a mistake than a top security expert wouldn't. LOoooooo-Suer!

FTFA: "For the most part, the content found largely matches what you'd expect from a site that caters to beginners."

delete system32?

Fark_Guy_Rob: I've always found the notion of 'Script Kiddies Vs. Hackers' to be a silly one. And the ridiculous expectations people have when it comes to IT Security types.

Some 16-17 year old kid with no formal education is interested in something. He spends his free time learning what he can about that topic. And he's not an expert. BECAUSE HE'S A FRIGGIN HIGH SCHOOL KID WITH NO FORMAL EDUCATION. He's still light years ahead of his peers. Nobody looks at a star high school basketball player and say, 'Well, he's not an NBA level player! He's just a B-BALL KIDDIE!'

But if it involves computers.....well, he's just an amateur, script-kiddie, wannabe! Why, he hasn't mastered everything imaginable about something before the age of 20? What a *LOSER* he is.

Hell, many University curriculum don't even touch on computer security. I completed my undergraduate work without a single class even touching on the concept, except perhaps, a professor mentioning the idea of what a 'buffer overflow' was in the first required C class. In my graduate work at a different university, I was required to take one class that presented some hypothetical-level security concerns you'd face when designing an operating system.

There are 18 year olds who have managed to learn more about a subject that is very useful, can lead to a great paying career, than many IT professionals have; but the general opinion is that we should mock them and make fun of them. Because they are sooo 'amateur'. What else would you expect from an amateur? In any other field, that would be a compliment.

If some 17 year old was downloading white papers and other published works put together by Phd type chemists and then repeating their work, step-by-step, in his lab in the basement; people would be impressed. Sure, it's nerdy as hell, but that's a smart kid. That's a kid who has a future as a chemist, even if he doesn't understand all of it. Even if he's using formulas at 'face value' without a deep understanding of why or how they were discovered.

But in computers? N0ob! What a script kiddie! hahahahaha! He did something pretty impressive but made a mistake than a top security expert wouldn't. LOoooooo-Suer!

Ummm...I'm not sure where you get your definition of script kiddie.

As I've understood it, it's not anything to do with age, but with actual expertise.

I.E. A script kiddie is someone who doesn't "hack", but just downloads a script and uses it without knowing how it works.

tcaptain: Fark_Guy_Rob: I've always found the notion of 'Script Kiddies Vs. Hackers' to be a silly one. And the ridiculous expectations people have when it comes to IT Security types.

Some 16-17 year old kid with no formal education is interested in something. He spends his free time learning what he can about that topic. And he's not an expert. BECAUSE HE'S A FRIGGIN HIGH SCHOOL KID WITH NO FORMAL EDUCATION. He's still light years ahead of his peers. Nobody looks at a star high school basketball player and say, 'Well, he's not an NBA level player! He's just a B-BALL KIDDIE!'

But if it involves computers.....well, he's just an amateur, script-kiddie, wannabe! Why, he hasn't mastered everything imaginable about something before the age of 20? What a *LOSER* he is.

Hell, many University curriculum don't even touch on computer security. I completed my undergraduate work without a single class even touching on the concept, except perhaps, a professor mentioning the idea of what a 'buffer overflow' was in the first required C class. In my graduate work at a different university, I was required to take one class that presented some hypothetical-level security concerns you'd face when designing an operating system.

There are 18 year olds who have managed to learn more about a subject that is very useful, can lead to a great paying career, than many IT professionals have; but the general opinion is that we should mock them and make fun of them. Because they are sooo 'amateur'. What else would you expect from an amateur? In any other field, that would be a compliment.

If some 17 year old was downloading white papers and other published works put together by Phd type chemists and then repeating their work, step-by-step, in his lab in the basement; people would be impressed. Sure, it's nerdy as hell, but that's a smart kid. That's a kid who has a future as a chemist, even if he doesn't understand all of it. Even if he's using formulas at 'face value' without a deep understanding of why or how they were discovered.

But in computers? N0ob! What a script kiddie! hahahahaha! He did something pretty impressive but made a mistake than a top security expert wouldn't. LOoooooo-Suer!

Ummm...I'm not sure where you get your definition of script kiddie.

As I've understood it, it's not anything to do with age, but with actual expertise.

I.E. A script kiddie is someone who doesn't "hack", but just downloads a script and uses it without knowing how it works.

In my experience there is a very strong relationship between age and the term. Script kiddies are almost always teenagers or college kids.....because these same script kiddies go on to get awesome jobs and become the hackers people talk about.

Again, outside of the very narrow field of computer security; there isn't nearly the same level of stigma associated with not knowing everything. When a programmer starts learning his first high level language like C# or Java, he too uses a bunch of pre-packaged, well known tools and libraries to do simple things.....but he's encouraged instead of shunned.

In 30 seconds I can start a new C# project and have a fully operational window that I can maximize, minimize, resize, move and close. But I don't know anything about the WIN32API calls that make it happen, or the lower level GDI+ (or whatever graphics library the new windows is using) or understand how my C# code is compiled into MSIL code or how the JIT compiler manages to turn that into code that can execute on my machine. Nor do I understand how the OS manages the mouse input I'm using. I'm just some novice using things other people have written, in the hopes of learning something myself. But it's *cool*. I'm learning. I'm a beginner.

But with IT security, there is a very different culture around it. I'm a n0ob. I should RTFM and STFU. I'm a script kiddie.

As a young teenager I was very interested in computer security. But the culture was a huge road block for me. I ended up going into software development and I still only have a vague understanding of real security topics.

Maybe it's just my own experience that I'm unfairly applying to the everyone; but it has always seemed like a huge double standard to me.