sniffer/promisc detector

Mon Jan 19 20:15:32 UTC 2004

let's be careful out there:

> Criminal hackers _are_ stupid (like most criminals) for purely economical
> reasons: those who are smart can make more money in various legal ways,
> like by holding a good job or running their own business.  Hacking into
> other people's computers does not pay well (if at all).

that depends on how you look at "hacking in".  if bypassing spam filters and
writing files (mail messages) on someone else's computer (inbox) is a form
of "hacking in", then unfortunately it pays pretty well.  if writing and
propagating worms that create open proxies inside other people's computers
so that you or others can use them to bypass spam filters is a form of
"hacking in" then this too seems to pay pretty well these days.

> Those who aren't in that for money are either psychopaths or adolescents,
> pure and simple.  Neither of those are smart.

i wish you were right.  i wish you were even close to right.  but we've been
attacked many times over the years by some extremely smart adolescent
psychopaths -- where adolescence is a state of mind in this case, rather
than of years -- and i wish very much that they would either stop being
so smart, or stop being so psychotic, or stop being so adolescent.

> The real smart ones - professionals - won't attack unless there's a chance
> of a serious payback.  This excludes most businesses, and makes anything
> but a well-known script-based attack a very remote possibility.

that's just not so.  ask me about it in person and i might tell you stories.

> For most other people a trivial packet-filtering firewall, lack of
> Windoze, and a switch instead of a hub will do just fine.

this part, i agree with.
-- 
Paul Vixie