Keep the change

Operation: Keep the Change

Start: 01OCT2012

End: 30SEP2013

History: Three times in the past month I have witnessed people drop change by accident (or on purpose) in parking lots and in stores. One lady in particular dropped about a buck twenty-five on her way to the ATM. The change popped out while pulling a wallet out of her purse. She looked around on the ground for a second and shook her head. She then continued right up to the ATM and withdrew some cash.

Plan: For the fiscal year 2013 I plan on keeping an eye on the ground at all times when possible in order to spot out change. I will collect and record the money that I picked up during the day and report my spoils here. At the end of the year I will do WHATEVER I WANT WITH IT because I will have earned it by 'bothering' myself enough to collect it.

Stay tuned...

Hacking behind the curve

I was invited to participate in a CTF this weekend. Initially I was excited to have the opportunity to play around legally. However, after looking through the challenges presented I have become aware just how out of practice I really am. If I said that I were lost it would be an understatement. For each challenge I knew what needed to be done, but just couldn't figure out how to do it.

* Theoretical knowledge is nothing, practice is everything. *

Gotta work on the practice...

Hacker vs Criminal

There it is again. It seems like every time a website is compromised the media pulls out the 'H' word again. "Hackers took down suchandsuch.com for five hours today and early reports are that 400 customer credit cards have been leaked; however, the representatives from suchandsuch have refused to comment." 
Why has the term hacker become synonymous with criminal? What makes a hacker a criminal exactly? I asked some people that I know and a common response was that hackers steal 'stuff' from 'computers'...
WHAT?!?!?
You cannot be serious! I explained that a hacker is nothing more than a person that doesn't except the 'norm' as the only option. I was met with blank looks from the small crowd, so I felt the need to elaborate further. Thinking for a second I came up with a very simple definition, "A hacker is a person driven by curiosity to discover new things."
So if both hacker and criminal are personality traits it can be said that a person can be a hacker, a criminal, or a hacker and a criminal. It doesn't mean that hacker = criminal!