Hacker News Reader

Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

>But those who say he had no talent are just ignorant.

I don't think anyone says he had no talent, what rubs people the wrong way is that the thing he had talent for is the same thing that the people have who try to scam call your grandmother out of her pension money. You can be the world's greatest burglar, you're still a burglar. The whole cringy "social engineering" thing turned media persona and consulting business is to engineering what chiropractics is to medicine.

He leaned pretty heavily into monetizing his own image and for a lot of people what he did became synonymous with the word 'hacking' in a not particularly positive way and critising that isn't hate.

View on HN

That's just nonsense. First of all, social engineering was a small part of his work, and it's OK that you don't know that. But your totally blatant ignorance of what his career covered is exactly what I'm talking about.

Look, I know that people form their opinions in a bubble. All I am saying here is you should expand your bubble. You know nothing about Kev. Again, that's OK, but it also means you should try to understand what you're hating.

You'd try to make money on your image if you could, I'm betting. Especially if you had been put in prison and left there with no bail hearing, and put in solitary confinement for 'hoarding tuna' in your cell. For 9 months. While your father died. This was not a normal treatment of any person in custody.

Kev was a good person. Full stop. Just as curious as all of us in that era.

His (or other peoples) treatment in the US prison system is another matter and often cruel, but no he didn't conduct himself like a good person in regards to his 'hacking'. He committed wire fraud, he impersonated people, he exfiltrated sensitive credit card information from thousands of people.

That's not just curious, that's not something we all did when we were young, those were legitimate crimes and they still are for good reason. He had a big part in popularizing the image that a hacker, rather than someone who writes software for the public good, is someone who tricks other people and steals personal data.

And no I wouldn't be proud if I ran phishing scams and stole IP from random companies, I wouldn't monetize that, I'd say I'm sorry which from reading his books at least I don't think he ever was.

> social engineering was a small part of his work, and it's OK that you don't know that... totally blatant ignorance... Kev was a good person. Full stop.

I understand you're defending your friend, but that's a little uncalled for. Personally, my first real knowledge of him was from his 2002 book The Art Of Deception, which is specifically a book about social engineering. That is how he himself chose to present himself - as a successful social engineer - so you can't criticise others for that.

There's good and bad in all of us. I don't think the person you responded to said Kevin was all bad, and made it clear it isn't hate.

I apologize for going off. I just get triggered when people make such assumptions. He did not see Kev working on extremely technical achievements, I am sure. I did. To say he was mostly a social engineer is just incorrect, and I overreacted. The fact that he wrote a book on it is fair, but I know a lot about beer brewing and could probably write a book on it, but it's just one thing I know.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com