0932: "CIA"

[TaylorP]

(D)DoS attacks aren't really attacks. I'd call them technical harassment.

If some guy were pestering you when you were talking to someone else, would you accuse him of assault?

Apparently sometimes people do: http://gizmodo.com/5826482/woman-charged-with-assault-for-tapping-muscly-movie-texter

[SmoothBlade]

Not so much as tearing down a poster as putting a poster over it, or yea, in a (D)DoS, it would be like a crowd of people standing in the way.

Fist pumping can be construed as assault, btw.
http://tinyurl.com/3v4t56n

[Uncertainty]

If we're talking about a denial-of-server attack, and I assume we are, it's not even that they tore down the poster, more like they got a whole bunch of people to stand in front of it so no one can see it. So basically we're talking about the digital equivalent of a sit-in.

Two minutes ahead of me. Curse you. (But I called it "Title-Text" instead of "alt text..." Does that count for anything? *Hopeful grin*)

Not to me. I hate both those terms. Alt-text for being inaccurate and nondescriptive, and title-text for being confusing and nondescriptive. (Anyone not versed in HTML is going to think "title text" means the actual title, at the top.) Mouseover text, rollover caption, hover text, tooltip, even popup text would work better IMO.

Well it's a "title" attribute, so maxpm does have a point. It was an alt tag back in the early 90s when I learned html, and I haven't kept up because I haven't done web stuff in the last ten years, so it's still an alt tag to me. The terms you're using don't seem to be actual attributes in html, so I don't know what you're on about.

The terms he's using isn't meant to be actual attributes. He was saying that if you place your grandmother (uhm... she doesn't know HTML, does she?) in front of the computer, hover your mouse over the comic, and then ask her to choose a name to describe the text that pops up, she wouldn't name it after the HTML tags, but rather choose something describing it's function as used by Randal.

As someone who is pretty much html illiterate out of the two alt-text sounds a lot more logical & less confusing than title-text. Plus, to be honest most people who read xkcd & go on the fora are going to be intelligent/computer-savvy enough to understand what it refers to.
If it doesn't make sense in html, it does make sense to go for something else given the market of the comic but as I said, it isn't an issue for people not fluent in html.

[unus vox]

And if somebody figures out what my facebook password is, I have been hacked! THE HACKERS ARE EVERYWHERE

Someone was using an aimbot in Call of Duty the other day! ARE THEY PART OF THE SAME HACKER GROUP?! IT MUST BE HUGE

Also, I like your sig.

^_^

[steve296]

When I see/hear the word 'hacker', the first thing that comes into mind is people like Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Ken Thomson, Dennis Ritchie, Stallman, Knuth, etc etc...
When I read this comic, my imagination produced this in my mind:

...Damn, now I have to come up with something significant AGAIN in order to remind people that I'm a renowned expert in the field, so that I have the right to claim that I get this strip!

Better get to work, instead of tearing down other people's posters...

[McClow]

If we're talking about a denial-of-server attack, and I assume we are, it's not even that they tore down the poster, more like they got a whole bunch of people to stand in front of it so no one can see it. So basically we're talking about the digital equivalent of a sit-in.

Two minutes ahead of me. Curse you. (But I called it "Title-Text" instead of "alt text..." Does that count for anything? *Hopeful grin*)

Not to me. I hate both those terms. Alt-text for being inaccurate and nondescriptive, and title-text for being confusing and nondescriptive. (Anyone not versed in HTML is going to think "title text" means the actual title, at the top.) Mouseover text, rollover caption, hover text, tooltip, even popup text would work better IMO.

Well it's a "title" attribute, so maxpm does have a point. It was an alt tag back in the early 90s when I learned html, and I haven't kept up because I haven't done web stuff in the last ten years, so it's still an alt tag to me. The terms you're using don't seem to be actual attributes in html, so I don't know what you're on about.

The terms he's using isn't meant to be actual attributes. He was saying that if you place your grandmother (uhm... she doesn't know HTML, does she?) in front of the computer, hover your mouse over the comic, and then ask her to choose a name to describe the text that pops up, she wouldn't name it after the HTML tags, but rather choose something describing it's function as used by Randal.

As someone who is pretty much html illiterate out of the two alt-text sounds a lot more logical & less confusing than title-text. Plus, to be honest most people who read xkcd & go on the fora are going to be intelligent/computer-savvy enough to understand what it refers to.
If it doesn't make sense in html, it does make sense to go for something else given the market of the comic but as I said, it isn't an issue for people not fluent in html.

I always call it alt-text. That is just what it's always been called. Even though it is generated with the title attribute bow, it will always be alt-text to me.

[UrielZyx]

When I learned HTML alt was both the alternative and the hover text.
In fact, I had no idea someone changed that until I read this thread.

Thx, xkcd, today I am a little bit smarter because of you.

[McClow]

When I learned HTML alt was both the alternative and the hover text.
In fact, I had no idea someone changed that until I read this thread.

Thx, xkcd, today I am a little bit smarter because of you.

Yeah, if I remember correctly, the alt text was never supposed to be the hover text, it was just one of the million things internet explorer did incorrectly. So everyone who programmed in those old programs learned to do it incorrectly.

[hexalm]

(D)DoS attacks aren't really attacks. I'd call them technical harassment.

If some guy were pestering you when you were talking to someone else, would you accuse him of assault?

Apparently sometimes people do: http://gizmodo.com/5826482/woman-charged-with-assault-for-tapping-muscly-movie-texter

Holy shit, the comments thread on that article is bizarre! There's some flaming (started mainly by one guy), then people call him out on it and he APOLOGIZES. WTF, I'm weirded out by that kind of reasonableness being on the internet!


And I definitely have to say, reporting rarely makes it at all clear what actually happens when "hackers" strike. I think the mere fact that most people don't understand that there is a layer of the internet of DNS and IP addresses, let alone any details about that layer. Kind of makes it inevitable.

We might be dependent on technology, but there's so much of it around us that anyone would be hard-pressed to understand it all in depth. Much like science, it's become impossible for even a well-informed, well-read, well-educated person to know lots about all fields. So personally, I don't find that scary, although ignorance certainly makes it easy to be scared.

We're also all dependent on farming, and I doubt many of us on this forum know a lot about agriculture, however computer savvy we are!

[pbnjstowell]

I'm weirded out by that kind of reasonableness being on the internet!

As am I.
Also kinda impressed. There should be more of it.


If someone unauthorized got into the site my workplace (insurance) uses for everything, they'd have a lot of access to private client information. That's the kind of site I'm scared of getting hacked.

[Maxpm]

We might be dependent on technology, but there's so much of it around us that anyone would be hard-pressed to understand it all in depth. Much like science, it's become impossible for even a well-informed, well-read, well-educated person to know lots about all fields. So personally, I don't find that scary, although ignorance certainly makes it easy to be scared.

We're also all dependent on farming, and I doubt many of us on this forum know a lot about agriculture, however computer savvy we are!

That's a good point. You're right. Although, since the Internet is a relatively new technology, I feel like it's almost as if the media is intentionally playing on the ignorance of the public. But they obviously wouldn't do that. Obviously.

I'm weirded out by that kind of reasonableness being on the internet!

As am I.
Also kinda impressed. There should be more of it.

These fora have the most mature people I've ever seen on the Internet. Once, I saw a flame war here that only lasted four posts or so. It ended with both people humbly apologizing.

[JWSmythe]

Well...to be fair, it's more like someone tore down a poster hung outside a CIA building (assuming that the CIA website is hosted on a CIA data center somewhere, not outsourced to some third party.)

I could be mistaken, but I believe I've been in buildings where they have web server. And yes, the security is pretty good.

It wouldn't be inside of a CIA building. There are too many risks associated with that. Namely putting a public facing piece of equipment in with secure equipment. It's not very hard to follow the trail. It would lead to a 15 mile radius of 38.912 -77.2716 . Oh, and there are no posters on the outside of the building.

[Gedaechtnis]

Me around 11 years old, mostly naive in the ways of Computers and All That Shiny Stuff: "Does the CIA have a website? What would it be? CIA...dot...gov. Okay. Wow, it worked! Wow, that's stupid! Isn't that a huge security risk?"
Me about a month later: "Oh. Well. Makes sense." At the time, I supposed this might allow me to become a master spy.

[pbnjstowell]

I'm weirded out by that kind of reasonableness being on the internet!

As am I.
Also kinda impressed. There should be more of it.

These fora have the most mature people I've ever seen on the Internet.

I was thinking the same thing. (You should see the crazies that lurk in my local newspaper's online comment section.)

Thanks for being reasonably mature, everyone!
Makes me less timid to share my thoughts.

[ammy55]

For your benefit, here's a website to check to see if the world's ended (from the most likely cause):
http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

So what do we do now?

I put in way to much effort on this.

[Gye]

So what do we do now?

THEY'VE HACKED THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

[cjquines]

To a regular person: Gee Willikers THE HADRON COLLIDER IS GOING TO DESTROY THE WORLD!

To me: Oh. I guess I'll hack it again then.

[McClow]

I'm weirded out by that kind of reasonableness being on the internet!

As am I.
Also kinda impressed. There should be more of it.

These fora have the most mature people I've ever seen on the Internet.

I was thinking the same thing. (You should see the crazies that lurk in my local newspaper's online comment section.)

Thanks for being reasonably mature, everyone!
Makes me less timid to share my thoughts.

Yeah, it took me a couple minutes to realise that 4chan is the dregs of society and decide to never go back to that site. These forums are for a much higher class of nerd.

[AFW]

THEY'VE HACKED THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

IS THIS THE "LULZSEC" I'M HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT? MY SON USES THE INTERNET! IS HE A HACKER?
That's it. I'm hoarding cans and water in the basement.

[cjquines]

THEY'VE HACKED THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

IS THIS THE "LULZSEC" I'M HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT? MY SON USES THE INTERNET! IS HE A HACKER?
That's it. I'm hoarding cans and water in the basement.

Not recommended. Just try hoarding bytes and bits instead? Perhaps maybe try using a barricade made with binary?

[TaylorP]

THEY'VE HACKED THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

IS THIS THE "LULZSEC" I'M HEARING SO MUCH ABOUT? MY SON USES THE INTERNET! IS HE A HACKER?
That's it. I'm hoarding cans and water in the basement.

Not recommended. Just try hoarding bytes and bits instead? Perhaps maybe try using a barricade made with binary?

Agreed. You may want to construct a firewall as well, to be safe.

[McClow]

I was thinking the same thing. (You should see the crazies that lurk in my local newspaper's online comment section.)

My favorite type of online crazy are the people that post on political blogs. Sometimes I read Bob Barr's blog just to read the crazy rants that get commented on every post.

[LtNOWIS]

They could change the contact information, and so let's say you stumble upon a plot by Luxembourg to take over the world, and you contact the CIA to report it... the guy who answers the phone claims to be a CIA representative, but is actually a Luxembourgian operative who only pretends to take down the information you provide, and then laughs at you after the call is over. The next day you wake up and the entire world is controlled by Luxembourg, which is revealed to actually be simply a puppet state of France, which itself turns out to be a puppet state of invaders from Neptune. Now the entire world is enslaved by Neptune, all because someone changed the contact information for the CIA. So, as you can see, this is a pretty big deal.

Actually hacking into cia.gov and subtly changing stuff for a significant length of time would be a big deal, even if it's just the public page. "Briefly taking it down," as in the comic, is not.

[McClow]

Yeah, no one who knows anything about hacking considers a denial of service attack anywhere near the same thing as hacking.

[cphite]

They could change the contact information, and so let's say you stumble upon a plot by Luxembourg to take over the world, and you contact the CIA to report it... the guy who answers the phone claims to be a CIA representative, but is actually a Luxembourgian operative who only pretends to take down the information you provide, and then laughs at you after the call is over. The next day you wake up and the entire world is controlled by Luxembourg, which is revealed to actually be simply a puppet state of France, which itself turns out to be a puppet state of invaders from Neptune. Now the entire world is enslaved by Neptune, all because someone changed the contact information for the CIA. So, as you can see, this is a pretty big deal.

Actually hacking into cia.gov and subtly changing stuff for a significant length of time would be a big deal, even if it's just the public page. "Briefly taking it down," as in the comic, is not.

Finally, someone else who understands the danger that Luxembourg poses.

[astrosteve]

And if somebody figures out what my facebook password is, I have been hacked! THE HACKERS ARE EVERYWHERE

I had a similar incident to that happen, but it was with my gmail account. Someone (from Macedonia, according to the IP) got into the account and sent a bunch of pointless stupid spam for bootleg viagra to everyone I'd ever contacted on that particular email account. After doing a bit of damage control (which mainly consisted of sending out an email saying, "Ignore that last email. Someone got into my account.") I got a bunch of emails back saying "Oh noez! YOU WERE HACKED!" Which brings me to the point: I wish people understood the difference between an account being hacked and compromised. If you give your password to someone (either by a key logger or effectively doing so by leaving your account open on a public machine) that's a compromise, not a hack. But, with most people I know, if I try to explain the difference they tend to get really bored halfway through and immediately forget everything I just told them and go back to calling it hacking.

But, as an aside, I'm genuinely mystified as to how someone got into my gmail account. It uses a strong unique password (essentially random numbers, letters and symbols) that isn't shared with any other site and, as best I can tell, Google hasn't had any kind of database breeches that resulted in passwords being stolen. I scan my computer religiously for key loggers and similar and have never had one... so, no idea at all how this happened. *shrugs*

[Ehsanit]

The CIA should realize that posters are fundamentally insecure, and even plexiglass defenses merely add a superficial layer of defense that will be breached.
All security experts recommend upgrading to murals for protection against tear down attacks.

[C4 Redalert]

The CIA should realize that posters are fundamentally insecure, and even plexiglass defenses merely add a superficial layer of defense that will be breached.
All security experts recommend upgrading to murals for protection against tear down attacks.

As a bonus, you may also make fun of "...THE ALMIGHTY CHUCK NORIS!!" because that line ruined an otherwise amazing image.

[Vash]

XKCD is now officially a troll comic, assuming that I am the official deciding this matter, and I am.

[thelastlambda]

hehe this comic has surprising relevance for a recent news story in Australia
http://theconversation.edu.au/evil-descends-on-the-nbn-erm-not-quite-2529

So if I'm reading this story right, they're accusing this guy of an "attack" that consists of sending DNS queries to their DNS server and cleverly saving the replies.

It reminds me of stories about "attacks" whose descriptions were consistent with hundreds of pings per day.

Then the people over at any of Gawker media sites must do a lot of hacking. It's so bad that it has a name (the Gawker/lifehacker/kotaku effect) when they hack all those sites that get a lot of traffic from them after having relatively low bandwidth because they are not use to have high traffic. Those damn hackers!

Also does anyone realize a third of this thread is about the security of websites and hacking, another third is about the CIA, and the last third is dedicated to figuring out what the correct name is for the text that appears when you leave your mouse over the image?

[nmp303]

But, as an aside, I'm genuinely mystified as to how someone got into my gmail account.

It could be dumb luck. I remember back when I first started trying out web-based email clients, I made an account (on Yahoo, i think) and the username I requested was unavailable, so I added some meaningless number to the end of it to make it unique. The next time I tried to log in, I forgot to add the number to the end of the username, but I got in anyway. Seems that someone else coincidentally chose the same username and password as me.

Also does anyone realize a third of this thread is about the security of websites and hacking, another third is about the CIA, and the last third is dedicated to figuring out what the correct name is for the text that appears when you leave your mouse over the image?

What a shining example of what to expect from the XKCD readership.

[MathUhhhSaurus]

speaking of hacking...I received this email today in my spam folder:

Dear Hershey Consumer,

At Hershey, we are committed to open communications with our consumers and other stakeholders. As a result, we want to take a moment to inform you about a recent incident and the steps we took to correct it.

We recently discovered that an unauthorized individual accessed one of our websites and altered one of our baking recipes. As you know, Hershey’s recipes are built on our legacy of offering the highest-quality products for more than 100 years. Consumers rely on us for this information, and we take the quality of our baking and cooking recipes very seriously. We have corrected the issue and taken steps to enhance the security of this information. We have thoroughly investigated the situation and reviewed the recipes on this site to ensure their quality. All indications are that this incident involved only the site where we manage consumer baking and cooking recipes.

No financial information was stored on the same server as our recipes, and Hershey’s online stores operate on a different system. However, the server did contain consumer website registration information, including email addresses, birthdates and street addresses as well as passwords used to enter some of our sites.

We have no indication that any of this consumer information was compromised; however, given the nature of this incident, we are acting out of an abundance of caution and informing you that this server was accessed. We are also outlining some steps to help you ensure your security whenever you use the Internet and email.

If you used the same password on a Hershey website that you use for your email or other sensitive accounts, please consider changing those passwords as a precaution. For your security, we ask you to be especially aware of email scams that ask for personal or sensitive information.

Remember, The Hershey Company never asks you to supply or verify sensitive personal or financial information via email; only provide this type of information through a secure website. If you receive a request for this type of information, you can be confident that The Hershey Company is not the organization making the request.

The following guidelines are offered by our information security experts to help protect yourself online:

- Vary your passwords by site
- Use strong passwords
- Change your passwords frequently
- Use caution when opening email links or attachments from unknown senders

We appreciate your loyalty to The Hershey Company and regret any inconvenience this may have caused. We take this matter very seriously and have enhanced our security measures to ensure the quality of our recipes.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1-800-468-1714 Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

Sincerely,

Hershey Consumer Relations

I think it may have been lulzsec...seems like something they'd do...though, they haven't mentioned it on their site or twitter which they usually do

I really want to see what the recipe was changed to! Maybe instead of cocoa beans they put nyan cat or something or just wrote lol all over it.

[Aelfyre]

speaking of hacking...I received this email today in my spam folder:

Dear Hershey Consumer,

At Hershey, we are committed to open communications with our consumers and other stakeholders. As a result, we want to take a moment to inform you about a recent incident and the steps we took to correct it.

We recently discovered that an unauthorized individual accessed one of our websites and altered one of our baking recipes. As you know, Hershey’s recipes are built on our legacy of offering the highest-quality products for more than 100 years. Consumers rely on us for this information, and we take the quality of our baking and cooking recipes very seriously. We have corrected the issue and taken steps to enhance the security of this information. We have thoroughly investigated the situation and reviewed the recipes on this site to ensure their quality. All indications are that this incident involved only the site where we manage consumer baking and cooking recipes.

No financial information was stored on the same server as our recipes, and Hershey’s online stores operate on a different system. However, the server did contain consumer website registration information, including email addresses, birthdates and street addresses as well as passwords used to enter some of our sites.

We have no indication that any of this consumer information was compromised; however, given the nature of this incident, we are acting out of an abundance of caution and informing you that this server was accessed. We are also outlining some steps to help you ensure your security whenever you use the Internet and email.

If you used the same password on a Hershey website that you use for your email or other sensitive accounts, please consider changing those passwords as a precaution. For your security, we ask you to be especially aware of email scams that ask for personal or sensitive information.

Remember, The Hershey Company never asks you to supply or verify sensitive personal or financial information via email; only provide this type of information through a secure website. If you receive a request for this type of information, you can be confident that The Hershey Company is not the organization making the request.

The following guidelines are offered by our information security experts to help protect yourself online:

- Vary your passwords by site
- Use strong passwords
- Change your passwords frequently
- Use caution when opening email links or attachments from unknown senders

We appreciate your loyalty to The Hershey Company and regret any inconvenience this may have caused. We take this matter very seriously and have enhanced our security measures to ensure the quality of our recipes.

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call us at 1-800-468-1714 Monday through Friday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern Time.

Sincerely,

Hershey Consumer Relations

I think it may have been lulzsec...seems like something they'd do...though, they haven't mentioned it on their site or twitter which they usually do

I really want to see what the recipe was changed to! Maybe instead of cocoa beans they put nyan cat or something or just wrote lol all over it.

I am sure it was a cake recipe
1 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.
1 can prepared coconut pecan frosting.
3/4 cup vegetable oil.
4 large eggs.
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.
3/4 cups butter or margarine.
1&2/3 cups granulated sugar.
2 cups all purpose flour.
Don't forget garnishes such as:
Fish shaped crackers.
Fish shaped candies.
Fish shaped solid waste,
Fish shaped dirt.
Fish shaped ethyl benzene.
Pull and peel licorice..
Fish shaped volatile organic compounds
and sediment shaped sediment.
Candy coated peanut butter pieces, Shaped like fish.
1 cup lemon juice.
Alpha resins.
Unsaturated polyester resin.
Fiberglass surface resins.
And volatile malted milk impoundments.
9 large egg yolks.
12 medium geosynthetic membranes.
1 cup granulated sugar.
An entry called 'how to kill someone with your bare hands'.
2 cups rhubarb, sliced.
2/3 cups granulated rhubarb.
1 tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb.
1 teaspoon grated orange rhubarb.
3 tablespoons rhubarb, on fire.
1 large rhubarb.
1 cross borehole electro-magnetic imaging rhubarb.
2 tablespoons rhubarb juice.
Adjustable aluminum head positioner.
Slaughter electric needle injector.
Cordless electric needle injector.
Injector needle driver.
Injector needle gun.
Cranial caps.
And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor
control chemicals. That will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.

[TaylorP]

As funny as bore-hole rhubarb would be, this one "takes the cake" for me:

Fish shaped volatile organic compounds

Look Ma, goldfish crackers! They come in Cheddar, Parmesan and Formaldehyde flavors!

[jbo5112]

Well...to be fair, it's more like someone tore down a poster hung outside a CIA building (assuming that the CIA website is hosted on a CIA data center somewhere, not outsourced to some third party.)

Also, I imagine the CIA's public website being outsourced to some tech company so they don't have to pay to security-screen all the people involved.

Code: Select all

Whois query for 198.81.129.125...

Results returned from whois.arin.net:

#
# The following results may also be obtained via:
# http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=198.81.129.125?showDetails=true&showARIN=true
#

ANS Communications, Inc BLK198-15-ANS (NET-198-80-0-0-1) 198.80.0.0 - 198.81.255.255
Central Intelligence Agency OIT-BLK1 (NET-198-81-128-0-1) 198.81.128.0 - 198.81.191.255
Various Registries (Maintained by ARIN) NET198 (NET-198-0-0-0-0) 198.0.0.0 - 198.255.255.255

NetRange:       198.81.128.0 - 198.81.191.255
CIDR:           198.81.128.0/18
OriginAS:       
NetName:        OIT-BLK1
NetHandle:      NET-198-81-128-0-1
Parent:         NET-198-80-0-0-1
NetType:        Reassigned
RegDate:        1997-02-11
Updated:        1998-03-30
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-198-81-128-0-1

OrgName:        Central Intelligence Agency
OrgId:          CIA-1
Address:        GCS, ND1
City:           Washington
StateProv:      DC
PostalCode:     20505
Country:        US
RegDate:        1992-07-22
Updated:        2008-10-20
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/CIA-1

NetRange:       198.80.0.0 - 198.81.255.255
CIDR:           198.80.0.0/15
OriginAS:       
NetName:        BLK198-15-ANS
NetHandle:      NET-198-80-0-0-1
Parent:         NET-198-0-0-0-0
NetType:        Direct Allocation
RegDate:        1993-03-26
Updated:        2002-10-10
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-198-80-0-0-1

OrgName:        ANS Communications, Inc
OrgId:          ANS
Address:        22001 Loudoun County Parkway
City:           Ashburn
StateProv:      VA
PostalCode:     20147
Country:        US
RegDate:        1991-07-12
Updated:        2009-12-07
Ref:            http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/ANS

I'm fairly sure their public facing stuff is hosted by ANS Communications. And ANS stands for...

Spoiler:

AOL Network Services

I thought AOL sold ANS Communications to WorldCom in 1998. Then WoldCom was renamed to MCI and sold to Verizon in 2006 (because merging with Sprint in 2000 would have created too big of company). If you go to the listed whois website http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=198.8 ... wARIN=true and click on ANS Communications, it will give you an address for Verizon.

Speaking of hacking, isn't that when you mangle together some code into a program (i.e. a hackjob), and cracking when you break computer security?

[jpk]

Speaking of hacking, isn't that when you mangle together some code into a program (i.e. a hackjob), and cracking when you break computer security?

Traditionally, hacking was basically an unexpected solution that worked, or a solution that worked unexpectedly, or a solution to an unexpected problem.

"A nice hack" might be a cool trick that comes out of nowhere and gets the job done. A "total hack" might be some sort of RubeGoldbergian nightmare of a solution that's help together by figurative duc[kt] tape and baling wire, but it runs, and it it gets you around some problem that might be unsolvable by more graceful means. Copying files to temp directories and doing surgery on them instead of modifying them in place is often a sign of this sort of hack. A minor hack embedded in the Java language is the use of parseInt() and parseDouble() to determine whether a String is numeric. It's ugly, it requires creating some unnecessary Exceptions just to throw them away, it requires some extra lines of unneeded exception handling, and it encourages exiting a method from the middle of a catch() clause as a standard operation - but it works, and if the alternative is writing your own number parser, you're likely to just do the ugly way, because it works and you probably don't care about the overhead that much. That's a hack of the second sort.
The last sort is embodied in the ever-so-numerous tales of schools besting each other in surprising ways, some of which are cataloged in the Jargon File. Other examples exist, but it is a characteristic of hackers, in the old-school sense, to go out and find fun problems just to solve them, and to take pride in catching other people off guard with this.

This last sense is not unrelated to the development of the modern sense of "hacking", meaning "breaking into systems to do damage to them", although there are some twists along that road. Just to pick one fun reference, Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown is a pretty good read on this, and gives you one facet out of the many faces this story presents.

Sorry about the lecture.

[nathanmacinnes]

I'm willing to bet the CIA website got a whole lot more traffic after this incedent. The whole thing was a scam to boost their google adwords account, no doubt.

Or maybe it's a kind of passive DDoS!?

[pbnjstowell]

I was thinking the same thing. (You should see the crazies that lurk in my local newspaper's online comment section.)

My favorite type of online crazy are the people that post on political blogs. Sometimes I read Bob Barr's blog just to read the crazy rants that get commented on every post.

I've mostly given up on reading the newspaper comments. They always seem to boil down to:
"You can't force your [religion/politics/bad taste in music/first world problem] on me!"
"First amendment!"
"Separation of something and state!"
"Right to bear arms!"
"Nyah nyah nyah!"

[Eternal Density]

I am sure it was a cake recipe

Lies!