Non-Terrestrial Officers?

[jfshade]

In The Guardian, Jon Ronson interviews Gary Mackinnon, a British hacker accused by the U.S. of committing the 'biggest military computer hack of all time'. If extradited, he faces up to 70 years in jail.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1523143,00.html">www.guardian.co.uk/weeken...43,00.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br><br>...<br><br>"What was the most exciting thing you saw?" I ask.<br><br>"I found a list of officers' names," he claims, "under the heading 'Non-Terrestrial Officers'."<br><br>"Non-Terrestrial Officers?" I say.<br><br>"Yeah, I looked it up," says Gary, "and it's nowhere. It doesn't mean little green men. What I think it means is not earth-based. I found a list of 'fleet-to-fleet transfers', and a list of ship names. I looked them up. They weren't US navy ships. What I saw made me believe they have some kind of spaceship, off-planet."<br><br>"The Americans have a secret spaceship?" I ask.<br><br>"That's what this trickle of evidence has led me to believe."<br><br>"Some kind of other Mir that nobody knows about?"<br><br>"I guess so," says Gary. <p></p><i></i>

[Rigorous Intuition]

And always a joy to read Jon Ronson.<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.spy.org.uk/freegary/">www.spy.org.uk/freegary/</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>

[DireStrike]

Hmm. Story sounds a little contrived to me. Cool hacker, staying up all hours of the night smoking pot. Boy, aren't those fellows in the yank government stupid? Ha, ha, ha. He has a girlfriend too. Sounds like a ready-made hero for the internet/hacker/conspiracy crowd.<br><br>Of course, this is just an impression. I don't know anything about the story beyond the posted article. <p></p><i></i>

[hmm]

this article says more about the lack of security (or appearance thereof) in some parts of the US government than it does about hacker skills.<br>PC-anywhere is a commercial remote access tool much like your internetbrowser is a remote access tool and the skill level needed to operate it is similar.<br>this part,while true is also complete BS from a "hacker" point of view:<br><br>"He sounds to me like a virtuoso hacker, although I am someone who can barely download RealPlayer. I nod blankly as he says things like, "You get on to easy networks, like Support and Logistics, in order to exploit the trust relationship that military departments have between each other, and once you get on to an easy thing, you find out what networks they trust and then you hop and hop and hop, and eventually you think, 'That looks a bit more secretive.' " When I ask if he is brilliant, he says no. He's just an ordinary self-taught techie. And, he says, he was never alone.<br><br>"Once you're on the network, you can do a command called NetStat - Network Status - and it lists all the connections to that machine. There were hackers from Denmark, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Thailand ..."<br><br>you could teach a 5 year old this in 10 minutes and have time left to discuss the difference between what he did and what a real hack is.<br><br>so unless he is joking in this interview or the journalist didnt understand him he comes across as a REALLY stupid stoner who got caught doing the dumbest 7 year crime spree imaginable that should have been caught by a competent network admin within days if not hours. <br>Hacker rule nr. 1 must be "dont hack from a pc that connects to your real name"<br><br>a lesson here for us is maybe,if you are googling and come across a .gov or .mil or weird corperate sites that you want to explore but dont know if its wise,know that google has a "cached" link alongside the regular one that brings you to a copy of the link that is on googles own server and not that site itself<br>and aslong as you dont click on any links on the google "cached" page there is nothing to connect you to having a interest in that information. <p></p><i></i>