This week a 17 year old was found to be the culprit in planting a worm (virus) on Twitter which wreaked havoc for their staff in causing over 10,000 bogus responses and redirects to a real 'viral' site. When questioned about the act, he remarked that he thought it might lead to a job in internet security. Now I would like to say this calmly, and more fluently than I will, but "Good Lord, Has this country lost its mind?"
And please don't think that is a 'minced oath' at the beginning, it is really a prayer.
Criminal Acts on the Net
I would like to express to that brilliant little boy, what his self advertising did, because I am having to put up with constant garbage like that as are many individuals, companies, news sources and others. To the 'child' who wants a reward for ruinous behavior let me say that the rest of us, mostly adults who are working on the net, don't want you on the net at all, much less working in internet security. You think it is fun and games? Twitter, just for the current example, runs a business, a corporation, and every extra task and/or downtime costs them money. Real money. The kind it takes to feed your family, like 17 year old boys who hack. It also causes strife and contention, rage, ruin to the site's reputation, though they had nothing to do with it, hours of work lost, and when enough of it happens people and businesses give up and abandon the net for being a viable education, social or business environment.
As with Twitter, constant 'play hacking' is not funny, and eventually interferes with free speech. We were all young once, and some of us, though our age and appearance betrays us, were also fairly rebellious and innovative when we were young: the youthful Gates, Job, and Wozniak did their fair share of intrusion into phone systems, and other lofty governmental organizations, but the difference is, well, except for Gates, it was momentary, and they used it to show security holes and not to ruin their targets, although frankly, even that creates an environment where nobody's work is sacred, and no one has safe boundaries anymore. I don't want anyone testing my sites or computers seeing if I have a security leak. The internet in part was born of rebellion then, but it is nothing but a filthy rag if it becomes a sort of 'Mad Max Thunderdome" arena where anything goes. Now the kid may be valuable after about 6 months to a year in county detention, and if some reader thinks that is merciless, a real short jolt now is better than years of ruin later.
How bad it Can Get
Let me explain how bad it can get on the internet. That is, if I can get through writing this without the screen 'disappearing' without hands, or blacking out, or browser switching etc. When we first began to work on the net in 1996 (before on green screen), most of what we encountered in the way of 'trouble' were glitches and learning: like everyone else we had to become proficient before beginning our then somewhat laughable sites. (All sites were somewhat laughable back then, and styles went in waves, but in the beginning everybody loved little goofy animations and walked away feeling like Stephen Spielberg). Quickly though, many began to learn the ropes and virtually thousands of hours per coder was put into the net, either coding, designing, producing graphics, researching, learning to write for the net, devising better navigation and searches, learning networking and advertising and the eons of other endeavors which preoccupied us. The net was mesmerizing and one could do the coolest graphics ever with light behind vivid colors and opacities, and all were enchanted. I could continue to teach in areas I wanted to even if I couldn't teach those courses on campus, so for me, it was a challenge and a way to publish what academics never gave me the opportunity to do, and it also provided for me as a Christian, networking, new ministry opportunities etc, and while I know there are more perverse interests than holy ones out there, all could have their say as it became the world's backyard fence.
Shortly though, the monster's teeth began to show, and true to its nativity, it began to be a little vicious: big businesses started to go under as the little demonized hacking contingents began to waylay pages, advertisements, shopping carts, etc, and soon pages like Pets.com went under, and software companies came and went.
There were feeding frenzies too, when the great big overbloated monopolized Pirate Whales ingested all the tiny little cyber plankton in their path. That is a process that has not stopped. The World Wide Web had a world wide market and it began to be a place of world wide trade and world wide scamming. And then with the advent and growth of interpersonal chatrooms and webs, it became a horrible net in which lewd men and pedophiles could enchant and entice young victims playing on the computer while their parents were at work, and I wish the Feds and the police would stand up and make known how many victims there were and how many have died or disappeared. For awhile, pornographic sites ran helter-skelter over the net, and until good filters, even the most prudish emails got a few ads which burned through the screen. The internet became a place for easy marks and wanton crime, and because so few police or other law enforcement agencies had any experience, reporting even the loss of thousands of dollars, and businesses/sites, led to little other than despair. Blue Security, an Israeli based company, one of the foremost leaders in developing net security, discovered desperately that even the best security systems can't withstand massive bombardment of angry thieves.
Then, though for a short while, there was a sort of doldrums, when everybody garnered their troops and weaponry, and Microsoft did in Apple, and then everybody else, the Woz quit years before, and eventually Gates in the entreprenuer of Centuries retired, determined not to leave his children more than 10 million each so they would value hard work and ingenuity like their dad. Now it is, well something else, and the Woz appears on dancing with the Stars, Bill Gates wanders to and fro around the world checking on stuff, Steve Jobs is dying robbed of his place but true to the end, and the stage is set for the years to follow.
Businesses came back for awhile with increased securities, certificates, and the best IT people money could buy, because it really is a grand market. Old hippies who swore they would never allow Richard Nixon to continue Watergate practices and the Viet Nam war are now doing business with Red China and turning over info on dissidents. Bloggers sit in jail all over the world and we all blog out our personal commentaries on the way life is. Amnesty Int'l and Voice of the Martyrs send notices of people being beaten, jailed , tortured and killed for the great crime of writing down on the net 'the way they see the world'. There are alot of people who only want us to see the world one way: theirs. Governments are not the only censors, but now special interest groups, including some legalistic Christian groups, big money christian groups, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islamics, Revisionists, and spammers. It is getting a little ugly out there.
Free Guys are Gone
The Free guys are gone: not the freedom fighters, there are a few left, but the guys who all shared the philosophy that the net must remain free and open, and the great souls who poured thousands of hours into free software and its availabiiity. Many lost heart when Kim died. RegMechanic the great little registry clinic now costs, as do versions of Adware, and even Open Office the great blue fist raised in agony against MS apps is going to fees for quality. Please don't take HTML Kit from us. Bearshare has lost thousands of mp3 offerings as other sharing programs have due to copyright violations and Youtube may offer twenty amateurs singing 'Folsom Prison blues' but may or may not carry Johnny Cash. Movie downloads are done in cyber-Istanbul to avoid 15 year olds being incarcerated and fined 50,000 for downloading a copy of "Fast and Furious". The web is getting expensive partly from greed and partly because security takes as much or more time than coding and site maintenance.
When the Web Becomes a Nightmare
I used to think I might like to run a hosting company for extra income, learn how to maintain the servers, etc, but I would venture into firing ranges in Afghanistan before wandering there. Lawsuits, IP Piracy, undercurrents of shared IPs, Fly by night companies with classy ads wandering off with everyone's sites, breakins, breakdowns: you folks can have it. They also have to put up with nightmares like myself who insist on 'servers-in-the-sunshine', so to speak. In my own defense, though, having fought as one of the few remaining embattled individuals with a growing and successful set of webs, I will let you in on the cost, and why 17 year old Twitter bugs and local teenagers, housewives, and all the rest are so infuriating: because my life and my son and daughter's lives have been ripped to shreds by what has happened with regard to being somewhat successful on the web. Only somewhat.
In the past few years, while my hosting companies winced at my copious tech messages, those messages showed both of us were experiencing web problems and both were the genuine owner and host. We have had illegal break ins, missing backup disks, browser switching, IP switching, deleted files, 80 gigs of my files dumped into some mysterious cyber bin which never reappeared, 3 fried drives, 2 ruined motherboards, sound and video card switches, registration problems, extra illegal hops on tracer routes, in addition to life interferences by those who wanted to pretend to have a part of the work. A virus ruined 14% of our files in 2003, and our firewall reports look like the Standard Editions of Sigmund Freud. I have gone through trials of every firewall, and today, after reformatting my one year old drive for the third time and rerunning XP after abandoning Vista, after constant problems with software and downloads, not just from tech problems, I can't scroll with out difficulties and an occasional beep, and can't be sure my screen hasn't been seditioned.
Last week I lost 4 days to nonstop local problems, and a couple days ago found shoaheducation.com my main site pinging at the wrong place, then at two other IPs, and may have to change hosting again. What's at stake? Someone else would like to claim authorship and ownership of all I have written on the web, which now amounts to thousands of pages, researched, written, coded, SEOed and marketed, and walk away with the whole shebang just to show me 'what the real world is like.' They have been willing even to resort to violent affronts, and my other employment has dwindled to the point of unbelievability. I can't not fight for my right to my own work and say, because my integrity and the integrity of the material depend on it, and as many of us in our 50s on the web have found, we are too specialized for alot else, and without your integrity of work and reputation, it means career and life ruin. I did the right thing, in some regards, because the influence and result was worthwhile: many are educated and standing up, and I am glad. If I had to do it all again though, I would have said to my daughter, who said "No, mom, HTML is easy, look I'll show you how to bold and underline!, I would have said, "I can't---I have to go feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the poor, or learn to garden.I'm not a quitter, little 17 year old boy who hacked Twitter and thinks its cool to destroy work and lives and worst of all spirits. If they put you on trial, though and send you to detention, please don't think it was a job interview.
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