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Comment by ErikAugust | Hacker News Reader

“According to their twitter, they’re doing it just to do it. Just because they can. No statement, no idea, no demands.”

A special place in Hell…

That's a strange thing to read on Hacker news. Isn't that description the definition of hack value? As in http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/H/hack-value.html

Now, it depends what the "it" is referring to here, but so far all I've heard is about an alert() message saying the usernames will be sent to a breach alerting site. If they're doing it just for the heck of it, it's still costing a lot of people a lot of time that they could have spent doing better things, but I'd reserve special places in hell for the people who do plan this out carefully and make malicious demands

There is a big difference between doing something for pure curiosity, love, or exploration and doing something directly harmful to other people for the same reasons. One is art; the other is sadism.

I'm not sure that placing free long distance calls isn't harmful to the org whose infrastructure you're using for your own benefit, but 2600 (Hz) is a respected hacker magazine and phreaking and Cap'n crunch whistles are seen as cool

Hacking the Internet Archive and only placing an alert with a provocative message, I could see my teenage self do that. My judgment of the character is going to depend on what it turns out they've actually done

Of course, my grown up self (or late teen also, as I've done responsible disclosures back then as well) would rather have seen them do a coordinated vulnerability disclosure, but alas, I just meant to remark upon the "special place in hell" for not having a plan or motive bit

*Edit:* wait, I just saw in the article (I opened the thread before the link was changed) that this quote refers to a DDoS, not the alert() message that the thread was initially about

> the site was experiencing a DDoS attack, posting on Mastodon that “According to their twitter, they’re doing it just to do it.

That's indeed just destructive and not related to (hacker) curiosity...

There's a spectrum and case by case judgement. I'd agree your examples are harmless even if technically they harm the phone company. Taking down the internet archive just for the hell of it has a distinctly less "cool" or "fun" flavor, to my eye.

And I mean… one was a profit-making monopoly, and the other is a hacker-flavored charity doing a public service on a shoestring budget of donations.

Doing the internet equivalent of burning the largest library in the world is not exactly a good person's behavior.

This isn't the equivalent of burning it, a closer equivalent would be barricading it for a while.

Still awful, but nowhere near as awful as the former.

> I'm not sure that placing free long distance calls isn't harmful to the org whose infrastructure you're using for your own benefit,

If there's a call you wouldn't make unless it was free, the infrastructure isn't at capacity, and you're not acting otherwise in a detrimental fashion to other users of the infrastructure-- there's no harm to that organization.

Certainly a fair point, but it also costs a lot of person-hours to patch up that infrastructure's security and trace who's placing the calls when one could just choose not to do this fraud in the first place. I am not old enough to know whether carriers also charged each other back then, but at least nowadays it could also incur charges for the originating party; costs which the caller isn't covering

Toying with the system, learning how it works and finding what you can make it do, there's a certain art to it and I'd encourage anyone to at least tinker with the systems they own (and everything else within reason and ethics), but there's two sides to nearly everything

We have lost the ability to meaningfully compare the magnitude of things.

It's a special feeling when someone seems to lose faith in humanity based on something I wrote in good faith

I get your point and your edit. I think most people reaction is less because of the destruction itself and more because The Internet Archive is being targeted. It is a place that most would say are representing the hacker values, and few such places exist on current internet landscape.

There are so many other possible targets that would get even positive reactions from people. The only kind of people that might be happy about TIA being down is maybe some big corporations that want to control and sell the information being freely preserved there.

Their tag in ASCII Art via console.log() would earn equivalent cred, and not annoy fellow users of a useful service, IMHO

Is it better to deface a website for ransom or to support a scam than it is to deface a website because you're bored?

The action is reprehensible either way, but if this is truly just an old-fashioned Anonymous attack with no ulterior motive beyond just being bad that's honestly kind of refreshing.

https://www.ccc.de/en/hackerethik

> Make public data available, protect private data.

For all I know, they've given the private data to an organisation dedicated to alerting people about breaches. If they fear that the data may also have been accessed by others, that's not a reprehensible thing to do by itself. Besides the DDoS apparently being from the same author (which seems odd because those ethics are incongruous), I don't know what else they've done so I don't know that it's in violation of what you linked

It isn't "breaking into things" hackers.

It's "whipping something together" hackers.

Breaking into the Internet Archive's servers is like breaking into your public library. There's no honor to be had.

Imagine physically breaking into your local library for the lulz

This isn't Cracker News.

True hackers probably have a special place in hell, but, in a good sense.

If god is the good guy and satan is the bad guy - why do bad people sent to hell? They would just chill with the devil laughing about all the DDoS they did for the lulz.

Satan is canonical for one thing in particular out of most things - he does not like humanity. Getting sent there isn't a fun field trip where you get to hang out with your buddies/partners in crime after the game is over, presumably.

Think of it more along the lines of you having a blinding hatred of mosquitos, and then they keep getting sent to you, and at the same time you're a very powerful, capable individual who can deal with hordes of mosquitos in fantastically wicked ways.

Did you miss the part about the DDOS attack?

I did actually, since the quote didn't specify and the submission's link changed after I opened the comments. Thanks for pointing it out in case I hadn't seen it in the meantime!

Accessing the data is one (hackery) thing, haphazardly publishing it and not responsibly disclosing it is another (criminal) thing.

Its being done by pro Palestine Islamic hacktivists.

They stated on twitter because IA is controlled by "the US" and is "pro Israel".

could also just be RU larping under another flag. They have done this in the past with groups like Anonymous Sudan.

100% the result of boredom. Visit website, notice its design is old and crusty and you start to dig deeper. That's all it takes. Funny how we just expect hackers to have a manifesto now.

nah. its politically motivated hacktivists that are pro Palestinian.

See their Twitter https://x.com/Sn_darkmeta

could also just be RU larping under another flag.

> nah. its politically motivated hacktivists that are pro Palestinian.

This is... the most obvious false flag I've ever seen

We've seen it happen with RU flying under other flags with their Anonymous Sudan campaign. This could be a new campaign like this by them.

It's like the wild west in which a group of outlaws could just start a mess in a bar denying everyone from having fun there.

This is why we can't have nice things.

>No statement, no idea, no demands. A special place in Hell…

I mean... would it be better if the hackers had asked for money or did it to protest global warming or something?

"Say what you will about the tenets of National Socialism, but at last it's an ethos."

I can't imagine having to experience the world exclusively through WW2 propaganda.

Yes? For society in general, for professionals in criminal justice system and also to some extent even victim as well, it is lot harder when there is no motive.

Perpetrators without motive can not be negotiated with, punishment may not a strong deterrent, rehabilitation is lot harder. Economic crimes or crimes of passion or ones as a result of addiction can have a path to rehabilitation and recidivism can be solved by tackling the underlying issue like poverty, addition etc. Even solving crimes without motive can be harder as there is less assumptions we can make about the perpetrator.

“For the lulz”

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