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Re: [LUG] shellshock to the rescue

 


Sent from my iPhone

> On 5 Oct 2014, at 01:17, bad apple <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> On 27/09/14 18:51, Brad Rogers wrote:
>> On Sat, 27 Sep 2014 18:09:51 +0100
>> Paul Sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>> Hello Paul,
>> 
>>> Sure it may ruin their carers, but they also have responsibilities as
>>> parents, if they have failed and pay the price maybe the blame should
>>> lie with then,  and not with everyone else which these people
>>> sometimes try and put it on.
>> 
>> I totally agree.  It may well have not been clear from my post though.
>> However, the main thrust of my post was that bad apple has to make a
>> tough decision.  One that he's going to have to live with.  It's only
>> he that can decide whether his conscience will let him place what he's
>> found out about this ne'er-do-well in the hands of the authorities.  I
>> know I'd find it hard to make such a decision.
>> 
>> It's a sad fact that what is Right, what is Moral, what is Legal and
>> what is Fair are rarely all the same thing.  There can be large areas of
>> overlap with those things, I know.
> 
> This is done. Somewhat restoring my faith in humanity, debased as it is,
> the charlie in question has good, caring parents. I was a silent partner
> on the phone call from hell, and they hit the ******* roof. Both pulled
> emergency leave, he's out of school and after a lot of soul searching
> and discussion, we're cutting this loose after two weeks of intensive
> activity. It's not like we can watch him forever.
> 
> And we're getting old now. Vigilante action isn't what it used to be,
> and I sincerely regret getting involved in this in the first place. We
> all do. The parents are so on this I feel it's safe (?) to walk away now
> but so many nagging doubts remain.
> 
> Did I do the right thing?
> Is it ok to break rules for the greater good?
> Who's watching us to make sure we only use our powers for 'good'?
> What's stopping me waking up tomorrow and going full 'evil'? It would
> definitely pay more. I was chatting on a certain Russian forum last
> night and was offered Â5k in bitcoins to backdoor a specific blog site,
> which I know I can get into in 30 seconds (wordpress is a the gift that
> keeps giving). The recent bash and Xen vulns are just making things
> ridiculously easy at the moment.
> 
> I absolutely don't need the money but a long unscratched itch has been
> making me think - during all the **** of the last couple of weeks the
> missus has pointed out that every now and then I've referred to myself
> as a hacker, rather than a sysadmin. That's rather optimistic, but now I
> was considerably younger I genuinely deserved that appellation. Now I'm
> old and lazy, I presumed all the kids would have naturally left me in
> the dust but as it happens I've realised that they're no more talented
> than we are, they just have a lot more free time. But they're many, many
> years too early to know all the tricks that we have picked up at the
> coalface after a work lifetime of firefighting.
> 
> I terrified a junior DevOps guy we've got for a week earlier by
> demonstrating how to break into standard issue Windows (chntpw), Mac
> (single user mode escalate to root trick) and Linux (rescue mode and/or
> "init=/bin/bash") machines in just a minute or two. There's nothing
> about these attacks that is new or surprising but to the uninitiated
> it's like pure voodoo. That's kind of when I realised that I'm happiest
> breaking into other people's ****, instead of fixing people's ****.
> There will be some serious discussion ahead with She Who Must Be Obeyed
> but I'm seriously thinking about jacking in my relatively new sysadmin
> job, and going back to the uncertain world of contracting. Mainly
> because it turns out that reverse TCP stagers are a lot more interesting
> than fixing configured-by-morons CentOS machines.
> 
> Basically I think I'm probably having my midlife crisis and just want my
> business card to say "L33T c00l ub3r HaXX0r" instead of "Systems
> Administrator". Perhaps I should just buy a sports car instead.
> 
> Anyway, for the moment I remain a boring sysadmin and I'm putting the
> last couple of weeks unpleasantness behind me. I look forward to
> (hopefully) answering some normal, sane questions on list shortly. It
> feels like a while since Neil has broken something and I've told him how
> to fix it. Someone was asking about a hacked webserver - contact me off
> list.
> 
> Even though I've obviously now got full control of my crappy live.com
> email address back, Microsoft are still hassling me with daily 2-factor
> auth reminders, Technet articles and general asking-for-money spam crap
> to the extent that I wonder if it was even worth it.
> 
> Yours philosophically, resigned and undecided,
> 

everyone knows the answer to their question. Its the truth in their heart. 

being a warrior, rather than a medic is a good observation. maybe you should set 
aside preconceptions and join the right army. 

you won't have to look far - they are activley recruiting leftfield talent.


> bad apple
> 
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