Originally posted by Maxine1969
Third - AV researchers are some of the most stuck up and arrogant human beings I've ever had the misfortune to encounter. Wordlwide it's a small club with a bad attitude of "MY game MY rules and YOU can't play!" if you're an outsider. Specific example I'm thinking of concerned Doren Rosenthal who (a few years back) produced virus-like code as a training tool for security staff. He was judged to be a blasphemer at the altar of the AntiVirus world, and roundly condemned as being a virus writer. Why? Because he wasn't part of the club.

To elaborate on my previous post, I'd like to share an example of the blinkered "MY game MY rules!" thinking of mainstream AV researchers:

A few years back there was a nasty which (briefly) took the AV world off-guard, by the name of KAK-Worm. The harmful code was duly analysed, and AV companies started issuing updates ...

HOWEVER - while the code my employer supplied would eradicate the harmful worm, it DIDN'T put the infected machine back into a pre-infected state. We had complaints from customers coming in thick and fast!!

Faced with the torrent of complaints, the researchers huffed and puffed with indignation. Their response to us was along the lines of "there's nothing wrong with our code, it wipes out the worm! You never told us customers expected us to restore functionality as well, that's not TECHNICALLY what AV software does".

Personally I, and many of my colleagues regarded this response as pure B/S. What good is AV software if it wipes out harmful code but you still can't use your PC? It is common sense that after running AV software a customer expects to have a working machine! Meantime while all this B/S was going on, a young lad in the office did a quick walk through of what the worm did, and rapidly coded a standalone utility which WOULD restore 99% of PCs to their pre-infected state. (ie functionality would be restored).

You should never guarantee 100% because there'll always be some glitch! But I'm convinced that it would resolve 99%

The AV researchers were absolutely furious and prevented us from releasing the code, officially because any code released on behalf of the company had to be verified, but in truth because it was this lad who created the code, and not a "real" researcher.

While the researchers deliberately dragged their heels over "verifying" the lad's code, Panda AV released a standalone utility which did the same thing, and got credit for it.

My employer dropped the ball because of nothing more than the AV researchers' egos - they missed out on getting the credit for being the first to issue a standalone KAK-killer (Panda traded on that achievement for some time afterwards), and the lad who coded the utility was deprived of his "15 minutes of fame" :-(

Not all hackers want to do malicious activity only the script kiddies, know-nothings and small-time punks/scammers.

Those hackers of the finer cloths are wanting only knowledge and periodically apply what they know to the grid for educational and exploratory purposes.

I personally never got any highs from hacking but then again all of my hacks got me gainfully paid. Applied knowledge is the key to understanding and what one does with this understanding is their business.

Conspiracy behind hacking? Ask my Chinese & Russian counterparts for they are the ones breaking through f/w's over here in the US and stealing our sensitive data.

For active decades I have worn black and white hats alike and I choose to stay in the grey.

My best definition of a hacker is someone who is curious, inventive and intelligent, and uses that to try to do what "can't be done"

The thing is this does not only apply to computers, how do you think people invent things? Often they see something they think they can improve on and they keep trying until they get the results they are looking for.

Making the impossible possible

Originally posted by Pixiefyre
My best definition of a hacker is someone who is curious, inventive and intelligent, and uses that to try to do what "can't be done"

The thing is this does not only apply to computers, how do you think people invent things? Often they see something they think they can improve on and they keep trying until they get the results they are looking for.

Making the impossible possible

EXACTLY! If you pass by N.B I'm buying you a 36 pack!

Nothing perfect in this world.

Hackers fully exploit this.

Remember, some people just like to see the world burn, and some people just like to cause chaos for the sake of creating chaos.