Having a capability and advertising it is already stupid in my book, and more the fool I am I slipped up there. But having such a capability, subsequently approaching machines that you have no permission for, repeatedly attempting to gain access, succeeding at that and then to actually retrieve data that you have no right to when you're already in a position of extreme suspicion with the authorities to me borders on the insane. I really can't understand even for one second why someone as gifted as this would act in this way, it is something I've been wondering about with a lot of these so called hackers. What drives them to do this, obviously the downsides of successfully showing off their skill end up in a head-on collision with forces they can't possibly hope to defeat.
It's all fun and games until the SWAT team arrives.
Have there been any studies on the psychology of people that are pathologically drawn to breaking in to other people's computer systems?
If you have a hard time believing anyone would do something like this, look at the 1990s: we got a book practically every year about one hacking group or another breaking into phone switches, credit reporting agencies, government and military networks, and financial institutions. If you can do it, and you're unlikely to get caught --- and you are very unlikely to ever get caught --- why not? Plenty of smart people did stuff like this. Plenty of them.
The most interesting stories from that era did not get written up. Kevin Mitnick didn't write the TCP sequencer. Kevin Mitnick couldn't sequence an ordered array of integers if it was #defined for him in advance.
I know, I know a couple of them. I just don't understand them. Why cross that line? Why risk jail, your career, a whole pile of hardship? The real life consequences is what I'm wondering about, it's as if there is some kind of disconnect there between action and subsequent consequences.
If it is only because it is 'unlikely that you're ever going to get caught' then that's a gamblers argument. (I don't understand gamblers either, so that might be an explanation right there.)
I think part of it is age, maybe. Or rather life-experience, if you will.
I remember back in my early 20s what always stopped me was basic paranoia about getting caught. But that's just how I'm wired personally (and I was probably slightly irrational about the odds). I love breaking, bending and toying with the rules, but too chicken to pull through if it involved anything more serious than a silly prank on friends.
Nowadays (mid-30s), the first thing that stops me is a much more solid sense of what's right and wrong. I prefer it that way, because unlike fear of getting caught, it's a much more solid foundation to depend on.
That's obviously not a normative description. I don't think it's good that the world works like that, although I probably blame different people than most of HN.
Anyways, point being: the assumption that a very smart person wouldn't dream of breaking into a government server: does not at all square with my experience. Doesn't make the assumption wrong; it's just a data point.
Who do you blame, out of curiosity?
If you want to consider a different perspective: I'm an example of someone who does not have a hard time understand how someone who has enjoyed the rush of getting over on the entire media industry from behind a computer screen might find it harmless or at least personally safe to hack into some dumb server on the Internet and read documents off it.
I've been a pentester for the last 10 years and in my experience, taking advantage of the knowledge of how to break into an application is an urge that takes some energy to suppress.