To what degree is this common knowledge? After 20 years of being highly online I'm surprised to be so blindsided. Not that I work in security or anything.

Me to. I suspect its a combination of demographics and sub culture thing (I'm old, and out of the loop on a lot of pop culture and sub-variants). I have noticed a very high degree of nihilism and a sort of "morals are just a role you play in a game" kinda mentality with the younger crowd that looks and acts _very_ different to past generations though..

Plato allegedly said it better than you thoudands of years ago... and if you are "old", maybe he was talking about you? ;)

> What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders, they disobey their parents. They ignore the law. They riot in the streets inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?

All of this to say that generations judging each other are rarely objective and very prone to both confirmation bias and broad generalization.

But if are going to generalize, how about this, transgression is part of a healthy growth for most young people (we all test limits by crossing lines one time or an other, some more than others), and most old people (conveniently) forget that they were doing exactly the same with the tools they had at the time. Let's take a step back and appreciate that societies around the world tend to become less violent and less criminal... when these trends might reverse we can start talking again about the decadence of young people and it's consequences.

So, in the context of the US, yes, those trends are reversing, so it is apropos to examine it (see article content). I am fully aware of the tendency of grumpy old people decrying the amoral youth, my point is that the degree of nihilsim seems qualitatively different than 70's burn-out, 80's goth, or 90's grunge, or what have you. It appears more like a kind of defeatism than rebellion (the more normal youth passtime). Who knows, maybe during the great depression the younger generation was in a similar place, don't know, not THAT old ;-) But it seems less a case of "those old peoples values aren't MY values" and more of a "there are no values" differnce than previous generatonal divides.

Surprised that generation who named themselves slackers gave birth to kids that also don’t have any vision and take pride in not caring about anything?

Also the group is so varied you can’t generalize of what the age group is about. If I think of young person I think of mrbeast or the kids who sit on the road to block the traffic cause they care immensly. I always thought the youth of today just hustle and influence and try to build it themselves and totally lack the ability to chill out. Happy to know there lurks some nihilists somewhere.

I wouldn't say they take pride in not caring actually.

This quote is made up I think (e.g https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/respectfully-quoted/socrate...)

Even if it wasn't made up it, it would not be all that relevant IMO because it would not have to mean that "adults have always complained about youth but they always turn out fine", it could also mean "the quality of a society goes up and down over the centuries, in cycles, and both we and Plato/Socrates are/were on a downturn when things started going worse".

That’s an interesting step back, but stepping back further we can recognize that there is no single metrics to let us evaluate if some society is going up or down.

And also that "ceteris paribus sic stantibus" might be indispensable for growing scientific approaches, but irreconcilable gaps in world perception between generations is better taken as an anthropological constant across time than a minor insignificant detail.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceteris_paribus

I feel that stepping as far back as you do here will kill any meaningful discussion.

"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".

In most discussions certain things are implied about shared values. E.g., fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).

I heard a story yesterday from someone who's job involves dynamite. He had a vocational student tag along for a couple of weeks that would constantly stare at his phone and not pay any attention, causing some dangerous or at least inconvenient situations.

If you step enough back, who can say it is "bad" to get yourself blown up to pieces because you are too TikTok addicted to look around you? In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.

>"There is no single metric" translates pretty much into "there is no objective meaning of life that can be proven".

That seems a rather robust baseline, if "objective" means something like "absolute certainty on which we can practically leverage on to reach absolute understanding of everything we might have to deal with". That is, it’s one thing to admit there are some universal truths, it’s an other very different faith step to believe any human can ever be able to construct anything close to the latter.

>fascism is bad and democracy good (plenty of people seem to disagree with this these days, but much written discussion, e.g. on HN, assume shared values anyway).

I’m afraid that I observe the very same tendency in values evolution (I live in France for some context). Though contrary to what this threads focus on, I’m far more concerned with the extreme views that the oldest people in my acquaintances are moving to. No Tiktok on that side, but TV rolling news channel are not that much better. Probably my own HN addiction could be pointed at me just as well.

>In everyday language we assume enough shared values to say this is "bad" though.

Sure we agree here, but just because we assume something, it doesn’t make us correct and accurate.

You probably haven't heard of the com if you have a sex life.

Have you ever used the Tor browser or FreeNet?

The seedier parts of the internet (“dark web”) are surprisingly easy to access. It’s just about equivalent to knowing about torrents. (Not safe for life warning)

I suspect it's because it's a label put onto the workhorse of modern crime syndicates, not a vanity title like a gangs have. It's a web of disparate barely connected mercenary dots, so I imagine most people in "The Com" don't actually realise it's a phenomenon that has been named, and that they are a part of it.

I think I am wrong about this. I am seeing mixed opinions about how much and what kind of crime "The Com" covers, I'm probably too out of the loop to comment further to be honest.

I find it amusing that it popped up in this political context too. It feels very FUD-y.

Oh no, Musk hired someone from "The Com"!

Teenage gangs forming on the internet and thats what they call themselves now

It's resally common knowledge if you work as a Cyber crime responder or visit some of those forums (e.g. breachforums). Krebs of course has to have a few good contacts in those circles.

From Europol:

> Violent online groups are targeting and manipulating vulnerable children and young people across widely accessible online platforms. There are multiple groups, associations and evolving subgroups that make up the online network known as The Com – short for community. The Com is a virtual community of groups and individuals who conduct illicit activities that glorify serious violence, cruelty, and gore.

> Elements of The Com network are known to have extreme ideological views and victimise children, coercing them to commit violent acts. Predators groom their victims through different methods – one approach is establishing friendships based on trust or romantic relationships. Another technique involves the use of power or coercive tactics with one goal – taking control over the victims, while getting them to engage in serious violence, self-harm, or other gruesome. It’s a vicious cycle - the predators in this network influence children or young people into conducting acts that increasingly shame, incriminate, or isolate them, this in turn makes them more vulnerable to further exploitation.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/law-...

I feel like back in 2016 when a reporter asked Donald Trump if he would disavow the Proud Boys and most peoples response was “the what boys?” If you aren’t immersed in the culture you don’t know who the movers and shakers are.

Trump says a lot of things.

> “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do,” Trump said during an April 2022 (talking of The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025)

> “I have nothing to do with Project 2025,” Trump said in the opening moments of his September debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “That’s out there. I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposely. I’m not going to read it.”

It is not. You could literally spend 1 minute googling to check that the only mentions of it point to the same website.

So is "The Com" an actual distinct concept that exists outside of security blogs, or is it more or less the same as "the scene" is used in other communities—just a generic term for all the unaffiliated people who happen to participate in a particular (in this case nefarious) hobby?

The way Krebs uses this first makes it sound like The Com is the name of a specific gang, but when I dig into the details the definition gets really fuzzy and starts to read like it literally just means "English speaking cybercriminals".

If it's the latter, I'm not sure why we need a name for it.

"The Com" isn't a specific group of people despite what people say.

It's just what people who investigate call these crime communities because it easier to just have a general name for all of them then to name each and every one of them because their are literally hundreds of them and members move between them so a single member of "The Com" can be part of many communities within "Com"

They call themselves "the com"

It's distinct in that these groups aren't isolated from each other, there's member overlap and subgroups splintering from each other due to trying to avoid authorities.

It's also distinct in the type of crimes. Sextortion involving young kids/creation and sharing of CSAM merging with extreme political beliefs and encouraging those beliefs, with a specific focus to target young kids particularly those vulnerable enough to not have parents immediately notice. The criminals are often also on the younger side, like 19 year olds leading sex cults[1].

"The Com" goes by other names due to these groups being in a lot of different regions under different monikers and subgroups. 764 network, cvlt network, harm nation, etc. All the same general type of crime and target groups.

Here's some resources warning people about them:

https://rcmp.ca/en/news/2024/08/rcmp-reminds-canadians-about...

https://www.wired.com/story/764-com-child-predator-network/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/20...

[1] https://unicornriot.ninja/2024/sextortion-coms-inside-a-vile...

What point of “there is a lot of overlap” is difficult to understand? These people are often in many of the same channels because of how easy it is to stay involved through the likes of discord. Krebs didn’t have to go through much effort and neither did the links I posted.

764 also splintered from a nazi group 09V. Don’t downplay them.

Side note, you might want to reassess some of your views that have you pushing the same sort of propaganda that these groups do.

> What point of “there is a lot of overlap” is difficult to understand?

The part where it would matter.

The "race realist" i.e. racist right likes to point out that there is a lot of overlap between certain racial groups and the criminal underclass. Statistically this is sort of true. Trying to use it to reason about any individual is logically known as the fallacy of division or ecological fallacy and colloquially known as "Nazi stuff". You may want to reassess your views that have you employing the same sort of guilt by association tactics that these groups do.

I am not a DOGE fan particularly and I am certainly very interested in whether this guy was a sextortionist or carder, but I'm not very interested in whether he was in a general scene with them.

I had no idea this darkness existed. The unicorn riot piece is well researched; how awful - despicable all of it.

"The Com" is just zoomer-talk for "The Scene"

They call themselves "the com"

no it isn't. What a blind take. As someone who has ventured down these forums when I was younger. Its a mix of gamers/programmers/online hustlers. Some of it is grey area, some if it is renting out RDP's/VPNS for malicious users acting as middlemen for the criminals.

The mob mentality of rule following software engineers on here who are throwing out the accusation that these are all hardened criminals that want to burn down society here are a testament to the fact that hackernews is a cesspool of careerists. If you haven't ventured down these, I would even argue that you've no idea how the internet actually functions outside of your usual entertainment holes.

Even Urban Dictionary, hardly a site dominated by rule-following career software engineers, defines a Com as revolving around crime:

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Com

Maybe Urban Dictionary is also populated by people who misunderstand the community, or maybe you weren't as deep as you thought.

Anyone can submit entries to Urban Dictionary.

That's literally my point—someone submitted that definition, 150+ people agreed with it, and no one submitted an alternate of any sort.

I would tend to expect that if OP is right that there's more nuance to Coms and it's not primarily about crime, there would be at least one alternate definition, because, as you note, anyone can make a definition there, and it's emphatically not a site dominated by the HN bubble.

That there is no alternate says that the crime-centric understanding of Coms is the primary one on at least one other site that doesn't match OP's stereotype.

If the word is just a made up newthing, why would there be an alternate definition? You can find 150 people to agree with anything on the internet. It's the most trivial thing in the world to achieve.

Probably managing to have this post to be upvoted at least 150 times will be a more compelling argument.

What kind of a take is this? UD has the cess but it is also archival and useful. I use it several times a year to do topical writeups for friends about words.

It’s not an authoritative source. I’m glad you reference it though! Go back to your forest.

You mean outside of the sites where the vast majority of the online traffic and economic activity happen?

Do you really think that anything would meaningfully change in the world if these little niche communities disappeared tomorrow? They’re a rounding error on the internet.

You say this as if it’s a good thing, that the internet has been cornered into a few very small but wildly popular corners. You arent wrong. I’m not sure what this has to do with my original point. I did some extremely interesting stuff in these groups.

I’m not praising the status quo, I’m taking issue with your “how the internet actually functions outside the big sites” thing. Of course hardly anyone knows how these tiny weird communities operate: they don’t matter.

Please clarify. Do you suggest that because a community is small it doesn't matter?

accounted for economic activity

If you think these are "forums" then you have no idea what you're talking about.

Forum schmorum, you know what I’m talking about. Telegram, WhatsApp. Forum : “place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.”

Maybe we should investigate government employees for ties to child predator networks whether or not we're just a "cesspool of careerists," bro.

https://www.wired.com/story/764-com-child-predator-network/ https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/09/the-dark-nexus-between-h...

"some of it is grey area"

and some of it is some real depraved shit: https://www.maargentino.com/the-pillars-of-the-com-network/

You say that like "hustling" isn't a crime, like gamergate didn't happen, like "programmers" don't write code to do all sorts of things, legal and illegal.

Some of us are old enough to know that none of this is new.

No one is saying these are "hardened" criminals, but none of them care about the consequences of what they are participating in and that is just as disqualifying for public service.

but the question is why operate on such insecure, backdoored, government friendly platforms? if they're smart enough to commit cybercrimes, why make such a basic opsec blunder? or are the skiddie tiers of these networks all that's visible/accessible to reporters?

> if they're smart enough to commit cybercrimes, why make such a basic opsec blunder?

Why do you assume that they have to be smart to commit cyber crimes? As a general rule, most criminals are as dumb if not dumber than most regular people. Cyber crime is no different. Consider that cyber crime is not (just) hacking, it includes things like calling someone's grandma to convince her she needs to wire you $40k now or someone might go to prison for a car accident. Or at least texting this over WhatsApp.

Maybe by binding the idea of smartness with the ability to think beyond the given and possibly not blindly obey exogenous rules. Of course smartness is a relatively independent parameter from ethics. If the law requires contributing to some genocides, blindly obey is not the same ethical dilemma as if it forbids to practice torture and murder.

no government backdoor necessary when you join very large crime group chats and try to buy illegal services

“A man known as 4chan”

"The Com" is like "Anonymous" or "the scene", like talking about the "new york heavy metal scene".

it's not one coherent group but a mix of them, sometimes overlapping but often not. they hangout in the same spaces, sometimes, but also not.

That's how it was (is) on IRC 25+ years ago. The Com sounds like the equivalent of idling on #2600 general.