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Comment by iokevins | Hacker News Reader

It seems the author originally published this in 2005; reaching the bottom: "Morrisdale, PA Sept 1, 2005." On the linking page, http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/index.html, it states, "(originally written for certifiedsecuritypro.com)."

Might the submitter have meant to make a point about the predictions made by the author, ten years ago? For example, "My prediction is that the "Hacking is Cool" dumb idea will be a dead idea in the next 10 years."

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My intention was to initiate a debate about the main points given that they are still not widely followed a decade later.

Security is finally beginning to get the attention it deserves and it might be valuable to reevaluate the ideas presented in the link.

It is called cargo cult computing.

People understand the security importance, they hear the words, and instead of applying them, they disguise as monkeys and are repeating the words ad nauseum while throwing bananas at people's faces expecting security to happen.

It is also happening in OS, sysadmins, science...

You are not the only one to experience this.

Stay light hearted :) anyway, you are closer to the retirement they are, thus you will have less mess to clean.

Hacking is no longer cool. It's gone pro. It's now done by organized crime and Government intelligence agencies. These are much tougher opponents than the script kiddies of a decade ago.

Perhaps another 10 years from now, rogue AI will be the primary opponent, making the pro hackers of today look like the script kiddies.

We're already seeing some automatic exploit discovery. Fuzzing tools plus machine learning turn out to be able to find exploits. That can only get more powerful.

Yeah i recall seeing someone posting about an adaptive fuzzer here, that had produced jpeg images and whatsnot when given some rather generic starting parameters.

Makes me think of Gibson's second novel of the Mirrorshades trilogy, where the opening chapters were about teen being lent an "ICE breaker" supposedly produced by a Soviet military AI.

Thanks. We added the year to the title.

It depends on how you define 'hacking' so there is no easy answer. There's not even a single definition of it in the mainstream now.

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