Rattle wrote:
] ] hmmmmmm.....michigan....
] ] Article mentions immaturity....
] ] doing some rough math here.....
] ] idiots at phreaknic that were cutting the lan wires a couple
] ] of yrs ago were from michigan...
] ] One wonders what's in the water up there !??
]
] Hmm.. My curious side wonders if there is a connection
] between the wire cutting that year and the mentality that
] picks the nym 'noweb4u'.. Anyone familiar with the scene up
] there care to shed some light on this? :)

Yeah, and then there was the "story" about Defcon shutting down their local con.

I know I'm going to piss some people off here, but:

Its Detroit. An entire city that was wiped out when industry maturity, robots, and industrial engineering radically reduced the number of people required to mass produce automobiles. A place where the greatest hope for the economy is a casino...

Every Canadian I know has a story about a buddy who was trying to cross into Windsor at the bridge downtown, got turned away because they forgot their passport/id/whatever, called from the gas station right there at the base of the bridge to explain that they would be late, and got mugged while on the phone. I've heard that same story from three different people now.

The idea that this place produces hackers who are more on the anti-social side of the spectrum is not the least bit surprising.... That something in the water is widespread poverty. It sucks. Its going to take some real leadership to fix it. I'm not sure Trump is really making the difference up there, but then I don't really follow it closely.

Rattle wrote:

] ] Timmins and Botbyl, known online as "noweb4u" and "itszer0"
] ] respectively, are also part of the Michigan 2600 scene -- an
]
] ] informal collection of technology geeks that meet, blog, eat
]
] ] pizza and attend hacker conventions together, but generally
] ] balk at penetrating systems or otherwise committing
] felonies.
]
] I was actively involved in "the 2600 scene" in the southeast
] several years ago. This would not have been condoned
] behavior. I'm sure for the bulk of the people in the mi scene
] it isn't there either. But this also doesn't really surprise
] me..

speaking as someone who was actively involved in the scene in MI, I can say that it was much more 'aggressive' than other places I've been (sans SF). Growing up, there were numerous hacking and piracy rings, and several wars and alliances between groups (including a large scale hack of AT&T telephony switches carried out with the infamous 414's in 1986, resulting in numerous juvenile records). While I can probably say with out much qualification that things have likely settled down a bit since the late 80s, that might not be saying much.

Of course, if you really read between the lines of this event, what you should be picking up on is that Lowes was woefully unprotected. When are companies going to get it through their heads that you can't just buttress the firewall? You secure your inside network like it's just as untrusted as your outside network. Sheesh.