Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

[troll]

I've been to a restaurant here in Hollywood a few days ago. Those idiots taped their username and password to their payment processing software next to the cash register. I told the woman who worked there about how insecure that is and how a hacker could very easily get into their system and skim their client's information. She told me that she doesn't know who she can speak to, but I (me) can go speak to the manager if I was that concerned and that I shouldn't worry because it's an old system. I've taken a couple of pictures on my phone and I'm debating whether or not I should release the picture along with the name of the restaurant. This really happened and I'm still in disbelieve from what she said. How could people be this naive/stupid?

Would it be legal to copy my own card information and put it on any gift card with a magnetic stripe? I'm worried about misplacing my card since it happened a few times. I know that no one is going to pick up a gift card off the floor.

Has anything like this happened to you or anyone you know?

[kallahar]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Yes talk the manager. I had a problem here at my work a few years ago, they were printing out the full credit card number on the receipts. I contacted the manager and let them know that it was a bad idea (also that it's illegal under california law). They had it fixed within a few weeks.

I would be careful about releasing uncensored info, they may decide to sue you, and right or wrong that would be a big hassle.

Kallahar

[troll]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

I just read what I've posted and it's not good. I gotta stop multitasking and start making more coherent posts. Half of it didn't even make sense.

I don't care about the people who work at that cafe. Why would I give them my advice for free? Why would I tell them anything when they didn't ask me for my help? They're begging to be hacked. The place is located on the corner of La Brea and Hollywood Blvd and I'll upload a couple of photos I took from my phone.

Hackers have to take the deliberate initiative. Offer your help in exchange for a lucrative proposition. A lot of us will soon be living in the best parts of the city driving luxury cars.

Help those who are in need of help. Those who ask for advice and those who don't know what's the best way of handling things. The others have what is coming to them and their time will come.

[snideology]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Redacted.

What the fuck d00d? I mean, what the fuck? Yeah, this is exactly what need to be associated with Def Con.

You ever use BSD or Linux? Open/Libra Office? Yeah, maybe some of us have done things on occasion of which we are not proud, but this is too much.

Anyway you are openly discussing illegal activity... and if my eyes aren't too old, you are encouraging others to do the same.

Cot, I call foul

[TheCotMan]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

2 things:

...
Extort the shit out of anything and everything,

Please don't encourage people to break laws with your posts here on a public forum.
Thanks!

It's like religion, people become believers when serious shit affects their lives.

No politics or religion. (There are few exceptions to discussing politics.) We don't need religious zealots running around the forums trying to convert people, and judging us as lost souls. This is also true in the realm of politics, where the common person is more likely a believer of political views than rationally convinced. (We don't want to attract the crazies.)

The rest of it? Cool. It is an opinion, and I have no problem with you posting the rest of your content.

Thanks, and good luck!

[troll]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Sorry guys I'm still in a bad mood and I'll edit that post right now. I didn't mean to encourage others to break the rules. There's nothing more valuable than wisdom and I thank you for that.

The religious statement was a simile on how people only take preventative measures after experiencing detrimental events.

+1 to everyone :)

[TheCotMan]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Sorry guys I'm still in a bad mood and I'll edit that post right now. I didn't mean to encourage others to break the rules. There's nothing more valuable than wisdom and I thank you for that.

+1 to everyone :)

Thanks!

Hypothetical, "what if," scenarios about breaking the laws with possible outcome? yah, no problem with that. Just stuff that could cause feds to get a search warrant or ask for info to find out what IP a person posted something from, or worse, take our disks and find out infor about where everyone posts from, would all be bad.

The Religion and Politics rule was added before my time as admin. The politics has been partly opened for discussion of laws and security or research or hacking, but there are limits. There is a thread in /dev/null, I think, that tried to address just how political is , "too political."

Good luck!
-Cot

[TheCotMan]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Cot, I call foul

Yeah, man, I started a reply before yours was present. It is all good. It has really helped us to not jump all over a person for a mistake, but ask them to consider a change. People are much more agreeable when not told, "do this or else!" :-)

A criticism for you, though, we discourage people pointing out potential failure of other people. It creates an environment where people can jump onto a flaming bandwagon and gang-harass a single person for a perceived mistake. This became so bad that Chris posted this, and I made sure we kept it in our rules. In todays forums, the language is a bit strong, but I believe it is still a really good post:

... we don't need help.

If you find a problem with a post, you can use the, "report a post," which announces in public by creating a post in /dev/null to complain about the post, AND sends an email message to all mods about the the problem. This allows any mod to respond and dicuss the issue in public for everyone to see, not behind closed doors.

Thanks for thinking about the forums, as your intentions were good.

[snideology]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Yeah, man, I started a reply before yours was present. It is all good. It has really helped us to not jump all over a person for a mistake, but ask them to consider a change. People are much more agreeable when not told, "do this or else!" :-)

A criticism for you, though, we discourage people pointing out potential failure of other people. It creates an environment where people can jump onto a flaming bandwagon and gang-harass a single person for a perceived mistake. This became so bad that Chris posted this, and I made sure we kept it in our rules. In todays forums, the language is a bit strong, but I believe it is still a really good post:

... we don't need help.

If you find a problem with a post, you can use the, "report a post," which announces in public by creating a post in /dev/null to complain about the post, AND sends an email message to all mods about the the problem. This allows any mod to respond and dicuss the issue in public for everyone to see, not behind closed doors.

Thanks for thinking about the forums, as your intentions were good.

LOL yeah, actually what I was basically guilty of was sloppy copy & pasting, thus:

My WTF comments were mostly in response to some of Troll's comments regarding issues which he has edited, and which I was glad to see done. They seemed to be an attack on open source software & discouraging the hacker community to contribute to them. This is (mostly) why I blew up. Might have been nice for me to quote that also, huh? Sorry man. I did kinda feel odd & previewed it before posting, because it did seem a little harsh, but justified or not, I will leave it in place. I think it was also somewhat in reaction to the totality of the negative post, and the name Troll in context seemed the cherry on the cake.

The 'I call foul" was only meant to be associated with that which you pointed out two minutes later. I did not really think about 'report post', since I never have reported one in a forum, ever. Or maybe I did & just forgot :P Again less than ideal quoting seems to have mixed things up a tad. The purpose was to get your notice, in case that bit or post or whatever needed deletion.

Troll, if you take my WTF comments in regards to what I perceived as virtually a refutation of open-source, I would be beholden. At that, they were likely too strong, but again, they were said, and I will not alter them. They are a flame, but it seemed quite justified at the time. You redacted them, and not sullenly. For my part, I am entirely placated, but don't get to excited...I'm only a twobie, so I'm hardly a person of note. Yes, it's true, I do know the owner personally (his name is Bob, right?), but seeing how every time he sees me, he keeps asking for $20 to 'keep Def Con running,' I am beginning to wonder about him...

[TheCotMan]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

The 'I call foul" was only meant to be associated with that which you pointed out two minutes later. I did not really think about 'report post', since I never have reported one in a forum, ever. Or maybe I did & just forgot :P Again less than ideal quoting seems to have mixed things up a tad. The purpose was to get your notice, in case that bit or post or whatever needed deletion.

Great! Sorry if I misunderstood. At the very least other people that may be lurking will understand explicitly, what has happened and what would happen if they chose to ask for enforcement of rules.

You all feel free to get back to discussing these topics. Sorry for the interruptions.

[troll]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

I don't understand what and where I said things against open source. PC Charge Pro is closed source and it's available for you to buy. The place is called Cafe Audrey and it's on the corner of Hollywood and Las Palmas.

Can someone give me tips on how I can post images on this forum?

Will [ IMG ] + LINK work here?

[TheCotMan]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

I don't understand what and where I said things against open source. PC Charge Pro is closed source and it's available for you to buy. The place is called Cafe Audrey and it's on the corner of Hollywood and Las Palmas.

Can someone give me tips on how I can post images on this forum?

Will [ IMG ] + LINK work here?

Each forum can be diferent. Some forums like /dev/null do not support image tags, but most forums here, do support image and URL/link tags.

here is a description of tags on these forums and their use. You can combine image and url together, too.

[snideology]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

I don't understand what and where I said things against open source.

Troll, you may not have, exactly. I can't point to the wording you used, since: a. you edited your post (quite justifiably); b. I edited my quoting of your post (for the same reasons); c. I was lazy with my quoting of your post to begin with.

The wording you used, which I shall not paraphrase here since it has been correctly changed, just seemed to me to be full-on against hackers sharing their knowledge freely with the world, as anyone else was 'stupid.' I picked open source as one obvious aspect of that sharing.

This was not exactly what you said, but the extreme negativity of the entirety of the post, and then combined with the illegal content, made me think that was patently what was meant. I wish we could look at the original wording, to see if I really was justified in that feeling or not (give myself a smug sense of self-satisfaction, anyway - or not LOL)

I won't apologize for my post, but I will for the excessively extreme attacking nature of it, since Cot rightly pointed out that attacking is hardly cricket when dealing with newer members on this forum. I left my original wording up there partly as a warning to myself to remember that words written may well not reflect actual intended meaning, and thus to TRY to withhold attack (if possible) until meaning becomes clearer.

[troll]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

Troll, you may not have, exactly. I can't point to the wording you used, since: a. you edited your post (quite justifiably); b. I edited my quoting of your post (for the same reasons); c. I was lazy with my quoting of your post to begin with.

The wording you used, which I shall not paraphrase here since it has been correctly changed, just seemed to me to be full-on against hackers sharing their knowledge freely with the world, as anyone else was 'stupid.' I picked open source as one obvious aspect of that sharing.

This was not exactly what you said, but the extreme negativity of the entirety of the post, and then combined with the illegal content, made me think that was patently what was meant. I wish we could look at the original wording, to see if I really was justified in that feeling or not (give myself a smug sense of self-satisfaction, anyway - or not LOL)

I won't apologize for my post, but I will for the excessively extreme attacking nature of it, since Cot rightly pointed out that attacking is hardly cricket when dealing with newer members on this forum. I left my original wording up there partly as a warning to myself to remember that words written may well not reflect actual intended meaning, and thus to TRY to withhold attack (if possible) until meaning becomes clearer.

I was trying to say help those who are asking for help. I love open source projects and collaboration is the key to great success. I was simply trying to say that if you point out someone's flaws they're going to say thank you and then fuck you behind your back. You'll come off sounding like an arrogant asshole. That's what happened in this case and many other cases where I offered my help for nothing.

It's like someone telling you about your personal flaws. You don't want to hear it and it makes you ask yourself who the fuck does that person think he is. Just the fact of the matter and this is the last time I mention anything to anyone about anything if I wasn't asked. I'll keep it to myself from now on.

The help for money was about taking advantage of the opportunity to make a profit in an area you're passionate about. I might have used a bit too strong of a word (extort) :P

I hope this clarifies some things.

[snideology]

Re: Stupid people. What's wrong with them?

I was simply trying to say that if you point out someone's flaws they're going to say thank you and then fuck you behind your back. You'll come off sounding like an arrogant asshole... It's like someone telling you about your personal flaws. You don't want to hear it and it makes you ask yourself who the fuck does that person think he is.

That much is certainly true; how many times have I offered unsolicited technical help, only to have such help rebuffed in a manner that caused a sense of embarrassment, like I was butting in. This always surprised me, actually, since I am far from an expert in any technical field (my formal education is more along the legal and/or social lines), so I felt the information I offered was pretty basic.

But I do diverge from your conclusion, in that IMHO glaring security issues that you are made aware of are still ethically your responsibility to report. 'Ethically;' a tricky word, and I'm not even saying I necessarily would in a given situation, but the ethical requirement still remains, regardless of the actor's actions. Bear in mind that fiscally all consumers pay for lapse security, in the long run.

Anyway, I am glad you clarified things, and I look forward to going back to discussing topics of a more alcoholic nature, which apparently is my wont :P

Entirely off subject, I will say that open bars at large Def Con parties have proven themselves to be rather pointless: if you want to seriously drink, you better get right back in line once you have obtained the object of your wait. So much easier to bring in your own...