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Old Hacker Tricks

I was driving on Cape Cod this weekend when I chanced across an honest-to-goodness hippy -- Jimi Hendrix shirt, worn-out pants, long tangled hair and ratty beard. But it wasn't, in fact, an honest-to-goodness hippy, as this dude was around 20 dressed just like me back in 1974. Ah, but what's old is new again, in fashion, music and even hacker techniques.

Case in point: A bunch of low-life hacker losers attacked sites in South Korea and the U.S. last month with moderate success. These guys (or gals) aren't the brightest hackers the world has ever seen; they simply stole old techniques and code and flung it at unpatched computers to see what would stick. Unfortunately, some of it did.

The lesson? Patch, patch and patch some more.

Posted by Doug Barney on August 24, 2009


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