Juping the Man.
There’s a lot to love in this traveller’s sketch of script-kiddie culture: insight into the hows and whys, ruefully funny anecdotes, a new word (juped), and the general cultural vertigo of peering over the edge of something you knew was there but never really looked at and finding its as complex as just about everything else. —Plus, paranoiac fretting! (Not that there isn’t one hell of a lot to be paranoid about, here:
Roblimo: How wise do you think law enforcement is to any of this?
Andy: The general answer I’ve gotten is, “We don’t have the time or resources to have our agents monitor IRC.” They know, but they’ve adamantly got their fingers in their ears whistling loudly.
Roblimo: And yet, you’re telling me attacks on DoD and other critical networks are often coordinated on IRC.
Andy: Of course, Department of Homeland Security is barely off the ground. They’re starting to come around. Al Qaida, or whoever, with enough money could buy these kids, have them phonephreak 911 facilities, packet government mail and web servers, attack Department of Energy facilities and local and state government for large cities and states. Even if nothing really serious happened the effect on our economy, since the FBI and DHS’s answer has to be “Well, umm, we’ve been ignoring this entirely actually,” wouldn’t be fun to watch.
(Sleep tight, y’all.)
