I was recently reading an article on Wired.com, and noticed that Comcast was hacked this week.  Two young adults used social engineering and other hacker related techniques to hijack Comcast’s homepage and domains.  What do you think about this article?  I think that these two “hackers” did this to get their names out in the newspapers and get noticed.  It was really dumb of them to ruin their life like that.  They will be staying in prison now and hopefully learning from their mistakes!  Hackers should use their skills for good, not for ruining other websites.  If they put their skills to use they would be working a good job and earning good money too.

I think the word HACKERS describes what they are, and that they illegally inter website, domains, etc. If they used their “skills for good” they would be the administrators of the site.

if only they could use their skills for good.  i wish i could hack. i would work for the government

i think when people, doesn’t matter if it is a hacker or a politician one will try to use that power for enjoyment..
regarding the case i think the 2 people were doing it just for the fun of it

I support those Hackers.Comcast is evil.Torrent blocking *@$#% company

You people: HACKERS is NOT NOT NOT a bad word. It’s just been generalized for people that pry into security systems and do bad things.

Directly from the dictionary:
  1 : one that hacks   2 : a person who is inexperienced or unskilled at a particular activity <a >  3 : an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer   4 : a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system

It ORIGINALLY (and STILL DOES) mean an expert at programming and the computers. But since there’s these bad guys that get through security and start doing bad things that are indeed experts at computers this new more common negative meaning. Hacker in REAL IT Professional communities is actually a great honor.

Btw, Comcast doesn’t block it, they only throttle your bandwidth since torrents are bandwidth hogs.

Well I guess they will learn from their mistakes. Maybe when they get out comcast might hire them and learn a few things form them and get more secured. That’s kinda scary though what if someone else hacks comcast and gets their customers information.

kat - 31 May 2008 10:39 AM

I think the word HACKERS describes what they are, and that they illegally inter website, domains, etc. If they used their “skills for good” they would be the administrators of the site.

Kat, the term “hacker” originally was seen by people as a person who legally hacked into computers for the sake of improving security and learning purposes.  These days, unfortunately, a hacker is seen as someone who attempts to break into networks/computers and take advantage of vulnerabilities. 

There are actually two terms that are used for a hacker.  A black hat, and a white hat.  A black hat is someone who hacks with the intention of ruining/destroying a network, while a white hat is someone who hacks for improving a network and hacks to fix it. 

So when people talk about hackers, you shouldn’t instantly think they are talking about the bad guys.  The good guys can be hackers too! 

If anyone is interested in seeing an interesting article about hackers, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Mitnick.

I was shocked that a couple teens could hack comcast. considering that they are a big ISP, i’d think they have large amount of security in place. Right now, i’d considering switching to another ISP. After this hacking incident, i know that comcast is not as safe as i first thought it was. FiOS is not available in my current area, so i might switch to Q-west Broadband internet, even though they’re a little slower, i’d think it’d add up. (no BitTorrent Throttling)