Hackers Anonymous by A.H. Wetherington

Hackers Anonymous, A.H. Wethering. city not found: Paper Lake Press, 2012. e-book, 43 pps.

This short story addresses what happens within a community when someone is cajoled into working for the perceived enemy. I've seen this happen. 

There is a certain former member of the hacktivist collective Anonymous who now is hiding under the 'ninja' umbrella on one social media site. I love ninjem and I love Anonymous but I don't love him.

This certain fake ninja plea-bargained his way into becoming a turncoat. I clearly remember him on the channels trying really hard to get people to incriminate themselves. Note to Feds: Please instruct your informants in the art of being not so frigging obvious. Supposedly, the man is currently in San Francisco making a living as a sort of painter of pictures-- I think he calls himself a street artist now-- and whatever else he does to hustle for a living I don't really know. The ego-fag in him attracted a certain amount of ill-gotten 'fame.' The Feds perceived of him as a sort of leader of Anonymous. He was willing to be a self-set up spokesperson which in itself is bullshit. And so he got sucked into the machination of social justice and is now working for the enemy.

There are other Anons who refuse to become snitches. For them I have the utmost respect. Contributing to their legal defense funds is one way to let them know that we appreciate their integrity. Writing to them in prisons and publicizing their plight are two other ways of letting them know that they are certainly not forgotten. Because they are not forgotten.

The short story primarily tells a tale of a teen hacker who is quite good at what she does and her parents who don't truly understand her. Dad is a detective in the local police agency. He wants to spend time together as a family. Mom wants teen to enlarge her social circle from two best friends to being a sort of social butterfly.

By and large, that sort of wish is frustrated by the hackers and aspies among us. Technology is for playing with in order to improve both the security and the product. I still remember the olden days when one could call up a company and point out their security flaws. But nowadays, all hackers have become vilified. There is no longer a distinction made by organizations or by law enforcement between hacking as a form of social protest and pen-testing a site without having been asked to versus the loose mafioso-like shadow
companies that are in the business to rip people off.

sapphoq reviews says: A.H. Wetherington has written a short story which is suitable for teens. It was okay. I'm not sure that the message it intended to portray [according to the advertisement blurbs] is the one that teens will get from reading this story. Mom and Dad seem a bit too typical-fifties for my taste. I liked the main character but not the dialogue. Neither recommended nor un-recommended. 

You've Been Hacked by William Webb

You've Been Hacked: 15 Hackers You Hope Your Computer Never Meets, William Webb.  Anaheim, Ca.: Absolute Crime, 2013.  e-book, 74 pps.

A very short read.  Nothing new here.  The continued villification of hackers in general (except for Sami Kamkar).  History was taken mainly from Wikipedia with other citations included.  What I would have liked to read was actual conversations or interviews with the hackers included in the pages.  

sapphoq reviews says:  Skip this one.  

The Absolute Crime website does offer at this time seven free e-books in PDF and e-pub form.  Get them here at : http://www.absolutecrime.com/free-books.html

Lawful Interception by Cory Doctorow

Lawful Interception, Cory Doctorow.  New York:  Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC., 2013.  ebook, novella, 121 pps.

Cory Doctorow can be found on Twitter as @doctorow.


Cory Doctorow characterizes Lawful Interception as a Little Brother story on the book cover.  It is that and a bit more.  The setting is San Francisco and Oakland across the bay.  The main characters are Marcus Yarrow and his sidekick Ange.  This is during and after a Seneca earthquake.  Parts of the city are a mess.  FEMA is there-- a bunch of suits with paperwork and desks; as is OccupySeneca-- regular folk with determination to get done what needs to be done without all the red tape.  In Occupy, the people help each other.  The Anons are in evidence also.  A paste dump is made that reveals Oakland's not so humane plans to bulldoze what rubble remains of the project housing units and replace them with units that the rich and affluent would snap up.

The cops are in evidence and trouble is caused.  Kettling is explained to the uninitiated.  Drones fly around and QR codes are put to good use.  And there is a hackerspace, or a Makespace.  It's all glorious and chaotic but a bit scarey too.  Marcus Yarrow has a psychological awakening involving a feeling of helplessness which melds nicely within the circumstances.  A less skillful author would not have gotten away with that little extra tantalizing bit.  Under Doctorow's hands, it serves to remind us that Marcus and Ange are human, just like us. 

sapphoq reviews says: Lawful Interception is a masterful short novella for us nerds.  As in all of Cory Doctorow's fiction, evidence of developing technology being used for nefarious ends are right there.  The future that Doctorow paints is already happening.  Part fiction but also part instruction manual, Doctorow continues to serve up the radical cyber dishes which I fully enjoy.  Highly recommended.

Little Brother and Homeland, both by Cory Doctorow

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow.  New York: Doherty, Tom Associates, L.L.C., 2010.  ebook, 833 pps.

Homeland, Cory Doctorow.  New York: Doherty, Tom Associates, L.L.C., 2013.  ebook, 826 pps.

In Little Brother, Marcus Yarrow is a 17 year old hacker living in San Francisco.  Homeland Security has pretty much locked down the city into permanent surveillance.  But the surrender of privacy in exchange for "security" is not enough because some nnamed terrorist bombs the city anyways.  

Marcus is hauled off to a prison where he is detained for awhile, even though he is innocent of any part of the terrorist plot.  There is a big meanie there whose love for water-boarding complements her vitriole hatred of her prisoners.  He gets out and swears revenge.

Homeland picks up the store at a Burning Man Festival in Nevada. Marcus and his cool girlfriend are there with the other techno-hippies.  No surprise that Burning Man is infected with Homeland Security agents, including the big meanie from Little Brother.

While stumbling around in a dust storm, Marcus and girlfriend stumble into the yurt of some techno-legends and he actually ends up with a job offer.

Back in San Francisco, Marcus is on the job but bad stuff keeps happening to him.  He goes to an Occupy protest, during which the cops kettle the people in.  Doctorow describes kettling perfectly for those readers who don't know what that is.  Doctorow also describes the Peoples' Mic for those not in the know.  Stuff happens and Marcus is involved with the Darknet and lives are altered.

sapphoq reviews says:  Both Little Brother and Homeland were very satisfying reads, again rendering hacker culture in superb detail and in a colorful fashion which left me both proud and breathless.  Both books had the gritty feel of a very possible future where people continue to mistake the very essence of the word "security."  Doctorow uses dystopian fiction extremely well as a device to educate those who wish it about the drive for gathering information and what that particular drive can mean as we continue to lose our freedoms in a post 9/11 world.
                                      Although some critics have a problem with the characterization of older folks as mostly accepting and embracing surveillance and younger folks remaining skeptical, my personal experience is that most people that I've encountered are either ignorant of what our government is doing to us the citizens or know and don't particularly care.  This apathy to me seems to be widespread regardless of  the age of the people involved.  The recently [officially] begun practice of The Big Five [cable companies] performing deep packet inspections is an indicator of this apathy.  There was no grand outcry among the masses and indeed this matter hardly made the news.  I've noted with alarm that some journalists on the Internet are reporting that the use of V.P.N.s. render us safe-- it does not.  The Big Five are also capable of meddling with them.  I'd bet my last dollar that they probably are.
                                     Kudos to Cory Doctorow for Little Brother and for Homeland.  Highly recommended to anyone who wants to know a bit more about what drives some hackers and why people like me no longer trust our government.

Zero Day by Robert O' Harrow Jr.

Zero Day: The Threat in Cyberspace, Robert O'Harrow, Jr.  New York: Diversion Books, 2013.  [Washington Post e-book, 69 pps.].


Robert O' Harrow is an investigative journalist for The Washington Post who has written extensively about the erosion of privacy and has won various awards and honors.  In a Washington Post e-book, it is easy to understand why.  His writing is sharp and crisp.  He knows his material.  He cites numerous references to back up his thesis.

The "Zero Day" in the title refers to zero day exploits, a term that should be familiar to hackers.  But Zero Day also takes on the recent Stuxnet and Flame worms and other examples of malicious code.  Besides the stuff of 'cyberwars,' Zero Day introduces some personalities.  Some are folks who have regular sorts of jobs involving tech by day but hack at night.  Others have to do with the targets.

There are bits of history in Zero Day written from the perspective of an investigative journalist who is explaining things to a non-techie non-nerd audience.  This history is shaped a bit differently than the stuff that I myself witnessed in the days of ARPA-net and B.B.S. because of the intended audience.  Although I miss the feel of hacker culture, the history that was related was good enough for as far as it went.

sapphoq reviews says:  Unfortunately, to the uninitiated, Zero Day may come off as somewhat blaming the hackers.  While I do not know if this is intentional, I must state that if it were not for the hackers there would be no Internet today as we know it.  And of course Big Hollywood and various government officials threaten the Internet today as we know it.  

I've often thought that the 'first mistake' of companies was to not appreciate the hackers.  It used to be that a hacker could contact a company about the exploit that was found during exploration.  The hacker would be thanked and the hole would be patched.  [N.B.: The phone company did not extend the same appreciation to phreaks.  Phreaks who were found out were arrested.  Ma Bell was known to offer college scholarships to the best of the phreaks in return for a commitment to work for x amount of years for the monopoly.  I don't know that any of the phreaks ever said "yes"].  I remember those days with a certain fondness.  Nowadays there is panic at the thought that someone would "intrude" upon the insecure network of any given company.  The hacker, who must hack in much the same way that a writer must write, is carted off to prison or made to pay in other ways.  

There is barely a greater thrill than finding something that needs fixing.  When I recently found such a hole in my own system and was able to correct it, I was elated.  The thing is, hackers who are adept at pen testing do it for the same high that I experienced at the moment of my discovery and again at the moment that I patched it.  There are some paid pen testers out there who I am quite sure are happy at their profession and experience a love of the machine--  because I've met them.  And I am also sure that there are others who make a big deal out of what color hats they wear.  They don't want to be brave and be mistaken for one of us.

Zero Day is worth a read for the proper audience-- intelligent people who are not hackers by nature.  Those who willingly and joyfully endure a lack of privacy in the name of security would do well to stick with other sources for their information.  And any hackers probably won't need to read the material.   


some Robert O'Harrow articles dealing with privacy can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/business/specials/privacy/robertoharrow/

.comvict by Gregory Alphonse Nimensky

.comvict: Ivy League Genius, Hacker, Multi-Millionaire and Convict, Gregory Alponse Nimensky.  self-published, 2012.  e-book, 105 pps.

Gregory Nimensky hails from Boca Raton Florida and has two degrees related to Engineering/Finance from a pretigious university.  He is knowledgeable and opinionated.  As a younger man, Nimensky alleges that he and some cohorts set up a bunch of fake companies and spammed folks for money.  He is the founder of  Club Epkin (2010), a business located in Boca Raton.  bbb.org characterizes Club Epkin as being involved with "Handbags - Manufacturers Equipment & Supplies".  Nimensky also claims to be a convict.  This I can neither confirm nor deny.  I did not find any independent verification of an arrest record on the Internet.  I don't use paid sites, so perhaps an arrest record does exist.  Neither could I find an arrest record for his associate Mammad.  [Same caveat].  .comvict does mention realitykings.com which actually does exist.  It is a porn site offering free porn movies and uh, some other things to legal adults. 

sapphoq reviews says: I enjoyed most of .comvict.  It told a good story that captured my attention and held it.  The makings of a hacker were there in Nimensky's early childhood.  The problem with .comvict is two-fold.  The last five pages are written choppily.  Nimensky was supposedly in a fedpen serving a five year bid when he wrote .comvict.  Beyond that, the book is supposed to direct the reader to a site [redacted] where the story is finished in video by an an actress standing in for Nimensky's wife.  Another video on the site [redacted] according to the book has an afterword which includes the notion of, paraphrased here, the stuff Nimensky did is uncool so don't do it.  The last five pages may be honest, I don't know.  But to me, they just didn't ring true.  .comvict is worth a read for the first 100 pages which are cancelled out by the last 5.  Give this one a miss unless you are truly enamoured by hacker culture.

We Are Anonymous (a remix) by Miso Susanowa

In skating through blogs on my reading list, I found Miso Susanowa's remix called "We Are Anonymous."


I listened to it here at     http://inworld.sl/mp3/We_Are_Anonymous.mp3

My So-called Virtual Life blog at    http://gomiso.blogspot.com/2012/02/we-are-anonymous-new-music.html   lists several other places where you can listen to it.

This is excellent tunage replete with a pounding drive reminiscent of Axel the Crazy Frog music but much deeper.  I love the Anonymous voice overs in it, which I was first introduced to via YouTube®, things like "We Are Anonymous. We Are The Internet," and "You should have expected us."

I have to tell you that the RIAA and some other folks have gone drunken silly over things like a little girl singing along with a female vocalist in a vid which was subjected to a takedown; a fervor over both the Happy Birthday song written by Mildred J. Hill and her sister Patty S. Hill in Kentucky back in the 1800s and an old scout standby New Friends and Old Friends © Joseph Parry; the recent attempt by the good ol' U.S.A. to imprison a young man from England for LINKING to a file sharing site-- an act which in and of itself is NOT illegal in Great Britain.  Give a bureaucrat an important sounding title and that bureaucrat will scream piracy until the sun burns out of the sky.  Stealing is claiming someone else's work as one's own.  Sharing is keeping the creator's name and credits intact.  Singing is singing.  I'm pretty sure that the little kid who was singing along with a female vocalist in a vid was not in any way wanting to steal the song.  People, can we stop going nuts now please?

The Internet is what it is today in a large part because of some folks who were willing to experiment, folks who were in on ARPANET and the first BBS boards, folks who wanted to push their little Commodores to the limit.  Those folks are my heroes.  The drive to make criminals out of ordinary people who are just a bit more curious than the average sell out is based on fear.  Fear of profit losses.  Fear of the phreaks, the hacktivists, the file sharers.  Fear of people who think differently than the rest of us.  

We need Anonymous.  We need the phreaks, the hackers, the coders, the mavericks.  We need folks who are willing to think.  And so with these thoughts threatening to turn into a full scale rant, I leave you dear reader.

Do take a listen to the song if you wish.  Learn some coding.  Learn something about how your computer works.  Don't be a push button ninny willing to believe the Corporate Lie.

sapphoq reviews says:  The remix "We Are Anonymous" is full of win.

2600 Meeting

Almost all 2600 meetings happen on the first Friday of the month at 5p.m. unless otherwise noted in the 2600 meeting list.

I got to the meeting shortly after 5 p.m. and I was pleasantly surprised by a sign on the table which said "2600."  I had been wondering if I would have to wave an issue of the magazine around the coffee shop in order to identify the group and gain admission to the table.  That was not necessary.

Occasionally an F.B.I. agent "undercover" is sent to?/assigned to?/takes it upon himself or herself to? infiltrate or otherwise spy upon such a meeting, it is alleged.  I immediately was drawn to a man sitting nearby with a laptop who looked like Chris on The Sopranos but in spite of dorky jeans I took to be a suit.  At any rate, nothing illegal was talked about at the meeting and in a general way such talk is discouraged at 2600 meetings.

There was a small group of us gathered around a table, a few with laptops out, with coffee mugs and animately discussing techy things.  Someone threw out a package obtained at a grab bag and invited anyone to take a look and take it for their own if interested.  Someone else showed off a homemade router, and a third a holder for a laptop (also homemade).  The conversation traveled through Gentu vs. BSD, learning C or Java, Hackerspace, conventions and contests, taking things apart, classes, LISP machines and Solaris.  Although the folks there obviously had much more knowledge than I possess about techie stuff, I felt almost instantly at home.  At last, a whole group of people locally who thought about and did some of the things that I think about and do.  We had a good laugh over the ThinkPad (IBM, no copyright infringement intended blah blah blah) that I blew up once.  Someone located a vid showing a floppy disc driver spitting out spinning floppies across a floor and up a wall.

Midway through, a Luddite showed up under the guise of wanting to work with us regarding getting an article of his published in 2600.  I pointed out that he didn't "need" us to submit it and another fellow told him that we were just a bunch of folks who read the magazine.  The Luddite talked about some Mars simulation purportedly happening in either the Arctic Circle or Antarctica (I forget which he said) and seemed to be proposing that we all enter his group's contest (for which funding was supposedly turned down) in order to possibly win creating a challenge for this simulation thingy.  We rather crudely informed him that we were pretty much mavericks in our style of working on projects and that we just weren't interested in his proposition.  He was also told that 2600 and Make and Ted were all available at the bookstore.  Someone suggested that he or his group publish his idea on Word Press.  He started talking about disabled people using what he called solo-switches but he had never heard of R.J. Cooper nor of the computer services available at M.I.T.  He ignored my reference to M.I.T. but wrote down Cooper's name to look up on the web "later."  When he realized that money was not forthcoming from any of us for his cause and that we were in fact techies, he feigned having to go back to his wife who he had left alone to watch the grandkiddies and split.

After he left, I said, "Dude wanted to fly off to Mars or something or what?"  It was then that it was revealed that the dude was indeed a Luddite and a member of a known Luddite-type organization as his website which he had mentioned (and that I will not, sorry Luddites) was indeed ludditious (or perhaps even ludicrous) in outlook.  The particular organization in question proposes that the members rocket off to Mars upon burning up the Earth and then live happily ever after in non-technological bliss.  I figured that dude was at the bookstore asking for copies of Make and 2600 and Ted and Word Press.

After three hours of enjoyable stimulating conversation, I left with plans to make 2600 meetings part of my regular haunts.

sapphoq reviews books and more