Ask PG: What are your thoughts on The Underground Myth?

Here is my take:

First, I observe two broad primary meanings of "hacker" in computer culture today. One is an individual whose interest is in computer security. The other is an individual whose interest is in creative programming. The person has a drive to create, invent, to make computers do things that they have not done before.

The former is what the article is about. The latter is what I understand PG means when he says "hacker".

Second, I don't buy in the least the phrack author's take on the future demise of the security industry do to drying up at the well of capability. This is bollocks. I read a lot of sour grapes coming from the author that the old style hacker as cracker culture may be dying or dead. That I don't know, I'm not nor have been part of that community. But if one looks at Common Criteria (http://www.commoncriteriaportal.org ), or DoD Instruction 8500.2 (http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/html/850002.htm) one will see that security quality is far from dead. One doesn't have to be part of an underground culture to "get security." Instead it has become very formalized and institutionalized, emerging from an "Art form" into an engineering discipline.

And for kicks check out the US Air Force Cyber Command ( http://www.afcyber.af.mil )

EDIT: I have to add: Yes I have experience working with DoD software security contractors. Some of whom are very capable even though they did not come from the underground.

I know hardly anything about this world.

Despite the author's assertion "There will be none of the nostalgia, melodrama, black hat rhetoric or white hat over-analysis" the article is just that. Don't read too much into it.

I'm genuinely interested in what pg's commentary on this might be so I'll bump.