Topic 3 – Hackers

Oct 31, 2021
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The discussion topic for next week will be a couple of articles about the mysterious and often misunderstood world of hacker culture. Read the provided main links, and use them as a starting point to answer the questions below. We will have a short class discussion on this next week.

The goal of this exercise to promote interest in science and technology, and to gain a wider exposure to interesting current topics in technology in today’s world.

MAIN LINKS:

The Hacker Manifesto – The Mentor

The Hacker Manifesto – narrated by Hak5

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto – Aaron Swartz

On Hacker Culture – sudo_rm_rf_root

QUESTIONS:

  • From “Geurilla Open Access Manifesto”, what do you think the goal of the Open Access Movement is?
  • According to the user going by the name sudo_rm_rf_root, what are some common shared values that hackers have?
  • Which of these values does Aaron Swartz seem to be fighting for in his ‘Guerilla Open Access Manifesto’?
  • Who is Linus Torvalds? Why is he important?
  • According to sudo_rm_rf_root, what are the 3 types of hackers?

EXTENSION:

Exposing a Fake Science Factory – Hackers exposing a scam science journal publishing fake research and presenting their investigation at DefCon. Companies like this are enemies of science.

Stuxnet – A computer virus developed by the American NSA and elements of the Israeli Intelligence Service to target Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities. This is an episode of Jack Rhysider’s podcast, ‘Darknet Diaries’.

Electronics Frontier Foundation – A non-government organisation that promotes privacy, free expression, and innovation on the internet and in the digital world

Defcon – the world’s largest hacking conference running since 1992. Their website has a wealth of information.

HackTheBox – a massive, online cyber security training platform with a lot of free resources and an active community.

Ippsec – Ippsec is a hacker that posts regular walkthroughs and solutions for Hack the Box machines. He’s a great teacher!!

OWASP Juice Shop – A project maintained by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). It is an intentionally vulnerable JavaScript webapp intended to be used for security training. This is a youtube video of the hacker Nick Malcolm introducing the Juice Shop and performing a first hack against it.

how-to-hack-like-a-pornstar is a book about penetration testing written by the security researcher/penetration tester/hacker/security professional sparcFLOW


Fablab Saigon – “an open creative space to empower locally the community of makers, schools, students and hardware entrepreneurs.” I think of such places as ‘hackerspaces’. Places where people with an interest in technology and hardware can come and share/exchange ideas. They occasionally host workshops/talks that I recommend you attend.