[ISN] Hackers: Under the hood

[InfoSec News]

http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/security/0,39023764,39116620-1,00.htm

By Patrick Gray and Fran Foo
ZDNet Australia 
19 April 2004 

special report: Adrenalin pumping through their veins as lines of code 
are crunched to perfection. Well, that's what we're led to believe, 
anyway. Welcome to the world of hackers. 

ZDNet Australia  went on the hunt to track down some of the world's 
most prominent (and notorious) hackers. In this five-part series, we 
delve into the lives of five prominent hackers who reveal issues close 
to their heart. 

Raven Alder, the first woman to deliver a technical presentation at 
the famed DefCon hacker conference, talks about "gender wars" in the 
hacking realm. 

"One popular magazine's 'do you think girl hackers should date boy 
hackers?' left a bad taste in my mouth, too. Nobody asks the guys this 
stuff, and finding myself a 'boy hacker' is not really tops on my list 
of things to do this weekend," Alder says. 

Kevin Mitnick shares his experience behind bars and recalls the days 
when he was treated like "Osama bin-Mitnick". 

For Adrian Lamo, the so-called "homeless hacker", there was no turning 
back after discovering how to make both sides of a 5.25in floppy disk 
writable at the tender age of eight. 

Attrition.org co-founder Brian Martin aka Jericho, who dropped out of 
college during the second year at architecture school, shares his 
silliest hacks. 

Peiter Mudge Zatko, better known simply as Mudge, talks about the 
origins of L0pht Crack -- a password cracker for Windows based systems 
which he wrote to "prove a point and not for commercial purposes." 

Hackers are often perceived as shady characters but securing your 
perimeter is about anticipating and understanding all forms of threat 
-- the good, the bad and the ugly -- to your network. Whatever their 
motives, we hope you will gain some insights into the psyche of a 
hacker.