{"id":241,"date":"2005-03-12T01:13:51","date_gmt":"2005-03-11T17:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/http:\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog2\/archives\/2005\/03\/2005_03_12_0113.php"},"modified":"2005-03-12T01:13:51","modified_gmt":"2005-03-11T17:13:51","slug":"the-truth-may-or-may-not-set-you-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/03\/12\/the-truth-may-or-may-not-set-you-free","title":{"rendered":"The truth may or may not set you free"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I received an email of someone admitting being responsible for the things I&#8217;ve discussed in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/03\/2005_03_04_0149.php\" title=\"View past post\">past post<\/a>. I&#8217;d have to admit, the story is a little far-fetched, but as long as I can&#8217;t get to talk to the person <em>in person,<\/em> then we&#8217;ll never know now will we?<\/p>\n<p>In the spirit of <strong>DECENCY,<\/strong> I will still keep quiet about the evidence we&#8217;ve found\/gathered, hence nobody has to worry about anything (that means you to, mr\/ms. <em>hacker<\/em>) as far as exposing people. Fair enough?<\/p>\n<p>I need to discuss this however, because quite frankly, I think you take me for an idiot. You actually expect me to believe that story you gave? I&#8217;m 25 years old, not 5. I&#8217;ll believe it when I see the proof, everything you mentioned fits perfectly as far as any &#8220;contrived&#8221; story which <em>attempts<\/em> to come up with one central theme to tie up all the other &#8220;loose ends&#8221; conveniently. So I reiterate, it&#8217;s <em>convenient,<\/em> but <strong>far<\/strong> from believable. You probably had a better chance with a much, much simpler story.<\/p>\n<p>But for the record&#8230; I would like to say that regardless if I believe your story or not, I appreciate the fact that you admitted your fault &#8211; and I, at the very least, want to believe that you truly will not try disrupting people&#8217;s lives again. With respect to that, I&#8217;m officially calling it quits. Don&#8217;t bother us again&#8230; <strong>ever<\/strong> &#8211; unless you&#8217;re prepared for an all out public investigation, and all the consequences it will have on the people you know.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, I forgive you \ud83d\ude42 I also politely ask you to get on with your life and stay out of mine\/ours. You&#8217;re still free to post in the other site, as long as it&#8217;s constructive. Only a trusted few know which accounts are in question, so you can pretty much continue posting as a regular boardmember.<\/p>\n<p>You could stop reading my post now&#8230; but if you&#8217;re curious as to why I <strong>don&#8217;t<\/strong> believe the story, then read on&#8230;<\/p>\n<!--more-->\n<h2>The &#8220;Story&#8221;<\/h2>\n<p>You were hired in this tech company and your task was <strong>specifically<\/strong> to &#8220;hack&#8221; websites&#8230; and you were <em>conveniently<\/em> assigned my site, the site I manage, and some other &#8220;blogs&#8221; (which are irrelevant at this point). They even &#8220;threatened&#8221; you to do so.<\/p>\n<p>Apart from the fact that no decent legal corporation that holds office would do such a thing, for a company to actually sanction such operations, I&#8217;d reckon it would be more worthwhile to try compromising &#8220;corporate&#8221; enterprises&#8230; why not try Globe, BPI, etc. etc. They&#8217;d be better targets. This becomes more apparent because the other site is a religious site. Unless your &#8220;company&#8221; was satanic and out for the destruction of Christianity, there is no reason whatsoever to assign you to it.<\/p>\n<p>Secondly, ASP, PHP, etc. etc. everything you&#8217;ve mentioned in your letter are <strong>languages.<\/strong> They may or may not be <em><strong>scripting<\/strong> languages,<\/em> but still are languages nonetheless. It would be best to take care how you <em>define<\/em> your stuff&#8230; but I&#8217;m sure you already knew that &#8211; being the Chief Technology Officer you claim to be.<\/p>\n<p>Thirdly, I really had to think hard about considering your doing as &#8220;hacking&#8221; or not. The term hacking, connected to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Hacker\" title=\"What are hackers?\">hackers<\/a>, roughly means the activity engaged by computer experts: system manipulation&#8230; though its etymology and meaning is forever under debate. Popular opinion considers hacking the act of manipulating <em>legitimately,<\/em> as opposed to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Software_cracking\" title=\"What is cracking?\">cracking<\/a>, who manipulate data in the source itself (which could be used to breach security, e.g. software cracking). To me, you&#8217;re &#8220;hacking&#8221; exploits are nothing more than acquiring passwords of accounts from a bunch of friends, which is easy enough to do &#8211; this is made clear by the fact that other accounts&#8230; say MY OWN, or any MODERATOR, etc. haven&#8217;t been compromised.<\/p>\n<p>All traces of your &#8220;hacking&#8221; connect you easily to the same group of accounts, and <em>interestingly enough,<\/em> those same accounts just happen to be owned by people who know each other <em>outside<\/em> of the net. Coincidence? I think not. Either you know them, or simply targeted them for fun. If you aren&#8217;t friends with them, they&#8217;ll be <strong>mightily pissed<\/strong> at you for hijacking their accounts. Furthermore, if the second scenario was true (you just wanted to target <em>them<\/em>), then why go all the trouble of targetting my site (and the other site) <strong>through their accounts?<\/strong> Based on your &#8220;story,&#8221; you were hired to to &#8220;hack&#8221; <strong>my<\/strong> sites&#8230; which means you didn&#8217;t have to involve them at all. Why not just <em>hack<\/em> <strong>my<\/strong> account? Oh but you <strong>can&#8217;t<\/strong> can you?<\/p>\n<p>Unless you prove it to me beyond any reasonable doubt, then I&#8217;d say your story is pure horseshit. If you want to make me a believer, go to the other site, and post as me (or anybody else <strong>other<\/strong> than that group of accounts that are suspect). That should get my attention. I haven&#8217;t changed my password for the longest time, so that should make things easier for you. When you&#8217;re done doing that, I&#8217;ll be more than glad to let you help me plug up security holes.<\/p>\n<p>As I mentioned in my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/03\/2005_03_04_0149.php\" title=\"View past post\">other post<\/a>, your &#8220;antics&#8221; weren&#8217;t proving anything other than being a nuisance. And in the perspective of a hacker, you were extremely sloppy in covering your tracks (which is pretty much SOP), that&#8217;s because you <strong>didn&#8217;t!<\/strong> You probably didn&#8217;t know what the hell you were doing in the first place. Such performance is a disgrace to the hacking community.<\/p>\n<h3>Do not ever, EVER underestimate my intelligence&#8230; <strong>ESPECIALLY<\/strong> when it comes to technology!<\/h3>\n<p>It&#8217;s insulting really the way you &#8220;bothered&#8221; me. You can tell that to your &#8220;superiors&#8221; too. Tell them that <em>I can&#8217;t believe there are people that stupid in companies,<\/em> and that they should resign, so that the corporate\/IT world would have less idiots. But then again, even countries like America  are run by idiots&#8230; voted into power nonetheless &#8211; I guess it&#8217;s a fact that we have to live with.<\/p>\n<p>What I&#8217;m posting here is just the tip of the iceberg of the reasons why I cannot swallow that story of yours. But since I&#8217;m a nice person, any other evidence stays with me (and people close to me).<\/p>\n<p>But now that you&#8217;ve at least admitted your fault, then everything above doesn&#8217;t really matter at this point. The point is that you&#8217;re sorry and will never do it again, which is pretty much what I want to hear.<\/p>\n<p>So again, for the &#8220;closure&#8221; you asked, I reiterate what I said in the beginning:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I would like to say that regardless if I believe your story or not, I appreciate the fact that you admitted your fault &#8211; and I, at the very least, want to believe that you truly will not try disrupting people&#8217;s lives again. With respect to that, I&#8217;m officially calling it quits. Don&#8217;t bother us again&#8230; <strong>ever<\/strong> &#8211; unless you&#8217;re prepared for an all out public investigation, and all the consequences it will have on the people you know.<\/p>\n<p>And yes, I forgive you \ud83d\ude42 I also politely ask you to get on with your life and stay out of mine\/ours. You&#8217;re still free to post in the other site, as long as it&#8217;s constructive. Only a trusted few know which accounts are in question, so you can pretty much continue posting as a regular boardmember.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>So with that, I bid you farewell&#8230; CASE CLOSED!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I received an email of someone admitting being responsible for the things I&#8217;ve discussed in my past post. I&#8217;d have to admit, the story is a little far-fetched, but as long as I can&#8217;t get to talk to the person in person, then we&#8217;ll never know now will we? In the spirit of DECENCY, I &hellip; <p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/archives\/2005\/03\/12\/the-truth-may-or-may-not-set-you-free\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The truth may or may not set you free&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[183,196,810],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-nargalzius","tag-bp","tag-bukas-palad","tag-nargalzius"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nargalzius.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}