7 ms·
Is This The Girl That Hacked HBGary?
- SageRaven 16y agoIs the phrase "Windows Opcodes" (from the article) a subtle troll on the part of "k" or a journalistic goof? I'm no programmer by any stretch, but that phrase jumped out at me as phony. I know there are system calls for operating systems, and opcodes are processor instructions, so this use of the term raised my b.s. meter a notch.
- joshu 16y agoCame here to say this. Well caught.
- georgemcbay 16y agoIt could be something an editor slipped in there to "punch up" the tech jargon, for all we know.
- SageRaven 16y agoI guess the phrase seemed particularly egregious precisely because the rest of the article was pretty accurate with the tech terminology.
- antihero 16y agoPerhaps they meant the kernel interrupt codes?
- dguido 16y agoHate to break it to you but that actually means something. The technical details are surprisingly on target for being written by a tech journalist. Ex. http://www.metasploit.com/users/opcode/syscalls.html http://www.metasploit.com/users/opcode/syscalls.html
- nikcub 16y agocorrect. opcodes are unique to a processor architecture, not an operating system.
- aphyr 16y agoEach night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox. She has no physical hard drive and boots her computer from a microSD card. “I could hide this card anywhere or chew into a million pieces in a few seconds,” she says by e-mail. She keeps her operating system on a USB stick and uses a virtual machine (VM) to carry out her online shenanigans. And people call me paranoid. :)
- wildmXranat 16y ago>Each night she wipes every one of her web accounts and deletes every email in her inbox ... If that is true, online account operators, email providers could link this type of behavior to one of their members quite quickly.
- storborg 16y agoNot to mention that she gave a lot of personal history surrounding her parents and family history. That might not uniquely identify her, but it does narrow the search considerably. My guess: if he/she is even a single real person, much of this is fabricated.
- antihero 16y agoI think it reeks of fabrication. It's probably some geek living out their alter ego or something.
- jackolas 16y agoThough getting it into Forbes is quite brilliant especially if it all revolves around a real person.
- JanezStupar 16y agoSomeone is having quite a blast at the moment, unless Forbes made the whole thing up.
- nkassis 16y agoIf you're going to pick a fake identity would you pick one that would get you attention like this? Seems like a fake identity but not sure it's the best one.
- tomjen3 16y agoThe best fake identity is a real one that everybody believes is fake.
- famousactress 16y ago.. and one that everyone wants to be real.
- pyre 16y agoLightning rod... Red herring... take your pick of phrase.
- andyv 16y agoSince the girl is a person and not a thing, it should be "... girl who hacked hbgary". r11t copied the mistake from Forbes-- How do national magazines make grammatical errors like this? Don't these people have editors who at least earned a passing grade in middle school English?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- tedunangst 16y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_relative_clauses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_relative_clauses 1) usage is disputed at a level beyond middle school English. 2) "that" is often preferred for restrictive clauses.
- syllogism 16y agoMostly because that's not really a grammatical error: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=girl+that,girl+who,man+that,man+who&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=girl+that,girl+wh... Middle school English teachers love to invent simple rules of the language that don't reflect actual usage very well. The choice between "that" and "who" as relativisers is subtle, and the animacy constraint doesn't explain the facts of how people speak.
- jemfinch 16y agoShakespeare wrote in the Merchant of Venice of "the man that hath no music in himself". Mark Twain wrote a short story titled "The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg". Ira Gershwin wrote a popular song titled "The Man that Got Away". These are just the examples easily available on Wikipedia. Your complaint does not represent majority usage in English, let alone modern usage.
- burgerbrain 16y ago"andyv, the man that knows little about modern grammar." Oh the horror.
- ErrantX 16y agoThis could very likely be a carefully (and cleverly constructed) identity. This girl might not exist; but because we all really really want a 16 year old girl to be the hacker the discrepancies are glossed over (the art of a good lie is not giving too much detail and letting other people's imagination fill the gaps). On the other hand the personality strikes me strongly as female, so if it is an facade it is a very well constructed one, which the imposter empathises with. But, on the whole, the setup "feels" wrong (and I tend to trust my instincts in such matters).
- nkassis 16y agoHiding in plain sight is also a good trick. She might be what we think she is or not, doubt gives her/him some protection.
- weego 16y agoIndeed, and there are 2 references in the various tales of a good understanding and practice of social engineering, and anyone with that understanding would not go around telling the press genuine background stories that could start to be pieced together. But then of course the smartest ones are the people no one will ever hear about, so who knows.
- noonespecial 16y agoOh.. I know this one. It turns out to be Kevin Spacey in the end.
- bballbackus 16y agoI fail to pickup on how the personality in the interview seemed strongly female. Could you give an example?
- ErrantX 16y agoNot just from this piece, I did a little more digging and my impression was that this person comes across as female (based on the sort of language used, areas of interest etc.).
- arkitaip 16y agoWait, Forbes actually linked to http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Lulz http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Lulz ? HAH.
- rikthevik 16y agoI'd really like to see the look on the face of the average Forbes reader after clicking on an ED link.
- mishmash 16y agoAnd "ED" likely means something entirely different to what I imagine the typical Forbes reader to be.
- tbrownaw 16y ago..they also linked directly to /b/ . I thought they were supposed to be businessey and respectable and such?
- nostrademons 16y agoI wonder what this does to their PageRank...
- socillion 16y agowhat happened to mentioning that websites are NSFW? I pity anyone who followed the /b/ link while at work.
- gnufied 16y agoNSFW.
- pinguar 16y agoThis story reminds me Hit-Girl and Big Daddy from Kick-Ass movie.
- Cococabasa 16y agoI heard there is excessive camp in this movie, but I'll check it out.
- shareme 16y agoWays they track you: 1. Using same computer that connects via phone, wireless, etc and than using any email service. 2. Machine characteristics since they cannot get the machine ID they go for the next best digital finger print ..ie operator grammar/typos..cpu speed, ram size, etc. 3. Websites have visitor logs..the track back to you eventually gets fleshed out. I think the Forbes article writer got played..
- Vivtek 16y agoDad allegedly showed her how to find bugs in C source code and exploit them. It was all harmless and Kayla had only been using the Internet to talk to friends on MSN. But she began looking into hacking, and learned scripting languages like Perl... I've always known C was just a gateway to the dangerous stuff.
- ewan 16y agoEverywhere I've lived public service announcements say that "E" is the gateway to dangerous stuff
- dr_ 16y agoIf the government is going after these people it should be for one reason only - to hire them. Maybe with this kind of talent working together we could find out where rogues like OBL are hiding.
- dexen 16y agoWork offer for a hacker is sometimes feared to be just a bait of a trap. The trap is said to spring once the hacker admits taking part in the hack. Compare http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245786 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245786
- desigooner 16y agoIRL, it's thought by many that AQ stopped using electronic communication to relay important messages and only rely on inperson communication / messengers.
- nrkn 16y agoUsing the quotes from the article, however too few words to analyze properly, so inconclusive, but still... From http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php Genre: Informal Female = 171 Male = 182 Difference = 11; 51.55% Verdict: Weak MALE Weak emphasis could indicate European. From http://bookblog.net/gender/analysis.php http://bookblog.net/gender/analysis.php Female Score: 94 Male Score: 133 The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
- citricsquid 16y agoEverything I write comes out as female and I'm... not. I wouldn't trust that (or maybe I should question my gender...)
- sane_delirium 16y agoIt was pretty accurate for me, and I've used several examples.
- jamesgeck0 16y agoPerhaps you should use... fewer ellipses? There are several grammatical patterns females use more than males (and vice versa). I assume that's how the test works, anyway.
- danielharan 16y agoS/He's been hanging out with mostly male geeks, and would probably pick up their "accent". Also, raised by a single dad who's a programmer. (Using a gender guesser is genius though)
- bluehat 16y agoI'm female last time I checked, and a paste from my blog makes gender guesser thinks I'm weak male and gender genie says I'm male. Doesn't mean anything, but worth noting. Grepped this, which ars technica claims is a real chat log. She says just under 200 words on this log, and it comes up as weak male again on Gender Guesser and male on Gender Genie. Her username of `k is removed for the analysis. http://pastebin.com/x69Akp5L http://pastebin.com/x69Akp5L Here's the article where Ars Technica links to that pastebin http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/how-one-security-firm-tracked-anonymousand-paid-a-heavy-price.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/how-one-secu...
- astrange 16y ago> In December 2008, she wrought havoc on one of the most famous forums of all, 4chan’s notorious /b/ channel, finding and exploited an SQL injection bug on its content management system, hacking in and causing mayhem on the forum for a few hours. I don't remember any such exploit. You could produce that image by posting a lot.
- darksaga 16y agoMy bs meter was high for a number of reasons. This paragraph was the most notable: "Meanwhile she refuses to be chained to her computer, limiting herself to a few hours a night online. She rarely visits online forums "they’re boring"and a few days a week takes a course in college to further her goal of being a teacher. She lives in an English-speaking country not the U.K.but won’t say more about it" So the previous paragraph stated she was "memorizing Windows Opcodes and scouring source code for exploitable bugs", but then suddenly she only spends a few hours online? Not likely. Most hardcore hackers I know don't just drop off the radar. The hunt to break into systems is like a drug. I have yet to read about, or know any hacker who simply spends a few hours online a day. At the speed internet security moves, this person's knowledge would be useless inside of 6 months. Also, how does this person maintain her expert hacker knowledge with a few cursory hours a day on the internet? Literally impossible. Add in the admission she deletes all her emails and wipes all her drives clean? Really? Does this person memorize every line of code she uses then? My conclusion? A carefully crafted profile of an Anon personality. Although I have no doubt this person probably exists, it certainly is not a 16 year old girl, and a majority of the information in the article is total BS. When you apply some very basic logic, the story just falls apart.
- kijinbear 16y ago"A few hours" could be anything between 2 and 8-10 hours. When I was a teenager I'd get in front of the computer as soon as I got back from school and keep the computer on until I went to bed. That added up to ~6 hours a day on average. Anything more would be unrealistic for someone who needs to go to school every day. Some of the other discrepancies, though, look more suspicious. The very notion that a security-conscious person who has just committed a federal crime would spill so much about his/her life in a random newspaper article reeks of BS.
- brown9-2 16y ago8-10 isn't something you "limit" yourself to. From the context of the sentence "a few hours" suggests 2-3.
- davej 16y ago
- dkasper 16y agoForbes is being trolled.
- personalcompute 16y agoI don't think they care. Forbes is full of yellow journalism and fake stories drive hits just as much as real stories.
- calvinfroedge 16y agoIf this is true lol, it makes me feel small haha. Kudos to omg@ Kayla (if she exists lol) = D lol hehe rofl omg
- bl4k 16y agoso she goes to extraordinary lengths to coverup her online activity, but grants an interview to a national news outlet where she divulges a large part of her personal history? obvious troll is obvious
- david_shaw 16y agoI'm not particularly close to this issue, but the sexism I'm seeing here is pretty astounding. If this were a 16 year old guy, no one would bat an eyelid. Seriously. Look at Mafiaboy back in 2000 -- he took down Yahoo!, Amazon.com, Dell, Inc., E*TRADE, eBay, and CNN. I'm not even sure that he was 16 yet (I don't have his age offhand). Is this a crazy and possibly fake story? Of course. Does that mean that it can't be true? Not by a long shot. I work in information security, and at 16 knew a hell of a lot about SQL injection, buffer overflows, cross site scripting and oodles of other vulnerability classes. This girl didn't work alone, but part of a hacker group -- to me, it seems totally feasible. I'm not saying that we should take every word an anonymous "16 year old girl" says on the Internet as absolute fact, but discounting this attack because it seems like a girl couldn't pull it off seems sexist and wrong. Again, if this were some pimply-faced male high schooler, no one would bat an eye.
- digitalvisions 16y agoYou bring up a great point - which is actually contradictory in the story. She said was hassled for being so young. I know a lot of hackers and most got started very young like you point out, and all were welcomed into the hacker community without any issues - female or not.
- brazzy 16y agoNobody's saying that it can't be real because girls don't grok tech and 16-year-olds are stupid. They're saying it's unlikely to be realy because statistically, the number of 16-year-old girl hackers is very small (relative to 25-year-old male hackers), there's a huge history of fake personas in hacking (and especially around Anonymous), and a 16-year-old girl is a very useful persona to get attention.
- aprrrr 16y agoI'm not sure what sexism you mean specifically, but my skepticism has nothing to do with the specifics of the persona. Of course there are 16-year-old girl hackers. My wife once was one. I doubt that the character is really a 16-year-old girl because she's telling Forbes she's a 16-year-old girl. If 'k said he were a 16-year-old boy, I'd doubt he were a 16-year-old boy. If 'k said she were a 33-year-old quant on Wall St., I'd doubt she were a 33-year-old quant. Etc. I just seriously doubt that this character is giving any real identifiable information to Forbes.
- samfax 16y agoI think the reason people keep saying she is fake is because they don't want to believe someone so young is capable of doing what she did. I've spoken to her via email and she said she doesn't care what people think about her, shes going to do what she does regardless and she has my full support. Maybe instead of asking questions about her here, you ask her like i did? kayla@anonleaks.ch If she really is who she said she is that's one smart kid!
- Udo 16y agoThis is Anonymous we're talking about. Isn't "16 year old girl" a well-known colloquialism on 4chan, normally used to convey the stereotype of a middle-aged, balding geek still living in his parent's basement who likes to use fake online personas? Forbes got trolled in a monumental fashion.
- socillion 16y agoIt's a synonym for attention whore.
- makmanalp 16y agoWhoever it is, they are a genius of deception. Check this out: http://pastebin.com/tSiQevxe http://pastebin.com/tSiQevxe Kayla first asks for root password using two passwords that she already has but might not necessarily be the root one. She also already knows that remote root isn't allowed. This way: 1) She'd get the root password e-mailed to her if it wasn't one of those two. "No, it's not those, it's '<password>'." 2) She sets up her point of entry. Great stuff.
- pippy 16y ago>By the time Kayla was 14 she could fully program C and x86 assembly. FML, I have a CS degree and still can't program ASM.
- defroost 16y agoSoon you are not going to know if anyone that you interact with online is who they say they are. The Pentagon has awarded a contract to a Silicon Valley company to develop software that creates fake personas that can then influence the "conversation" by spreading US propaganda. Each operator will be able to create up to 10 "personas". A friend just sent me a link about the Pentagon's decidedly Orwellian "sock puppet" software: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-oper...