But the average person has been given the impression, however inadvertently, that the average "hacker" is engaging in clandestine, nefarious activities on the Internet. When I was in University I lost count of the number of people who freaked out because they saw me using a terminal and vim from my laptop during class.
This article refers to attackers, not hackers. The work "hack" does not occur once in the article. Calling these people attackers is accurate, and doesn't do anything to contribute to the people you describe thinking of you as a criminal, unless you think rerouting traffic in this way is in some way legitimate.
That isn't the complaint about this particular article. The complaint about this article is the botched reporting on what happened, and what MITM attacks are. This criticism was defended by pointing out that misinformation from the media has the potential to have a negative effect. An example given of this was the careless use of the word "hacker" by the media "in general".
jlgreco is correct regarding my meaning and intentions. I have a problem with the lack of accuracy in technical reporting because it's usually sensational (and I'm sure this is true in other disciplines as well).
> Thanks to people like the author, the average person thinks you and I are criminals.
This hardly seems like a reasonable characterization. The author got a technical detail wrong. How does that connect him to people who vilify "hackers"? He didn't even use that term.
Because getting a "technical detail" wrong in this day and age is not a minor thing. An average person would see the title of the website we're on and conclude that illegal activity happens here, thanks in part to the media and their misuse of "technical details".
If you're in the media, don't talk about things you don't understand!
This makes no sense. First, getting technical details wrong has nothing to do with vilifying hackers. Some journalists get technical details wrong. Some journalists vilify hackers. These are independent facts and linking them is terribly unsound logic.
Second, if you're a journalist, you are pretty much guaranteed not to be an expert in the fields you report on, because you're a journalist, and not a networking engineer, or a software developer, or a doctor, or a lawyer, or a professional in whatever other field you might be reporting on. Journalists have an obligation to report factually and correctly to the best of their ability, but they are not infallible.
Also, the technically incorrect piece of this article seems pretty minor. I don't understand why some people are getting so worked up about it.
Also, the technically incorrect piece of this article seems pretty minor. I don't understand why some people are getting so worked up about it.
Because the effort it would have taken to not make the mistake is so minimal (Google: BGP, first result is wikipedia, read for a few minutes), that it carries rather unfortunate implications for the author and their attention to detail, and by extension their qualifications as a journalist.
Journalists have an obligation to report factually and correctly to the best of their ability, but they are not infallible.
With the above in mind, I'll bet you $large_amount_of_cash this is never corrected.
[Disconnection the discussion from something that we are personally connected to...]
Is it preferable for a newspaper to report on a new medical study and publish Yet Another(tm) "Researchers at [University] find cure to cancer" story, or, is it better for the newspaper to refrain from talking about the medical paper entirely?
Personally, I have to go with the later. Given the choice between botched reporting and no reporting, I'll go with no reporting. It is better to be uninformed than misinformed. It is easier to correct 'uninformed' and the state of 'uninformed' is easier for self-aware people to recognize in themselves.
Consider the fallout caused by the media botching the reporting of the FTL neutrino anomaly. People lost their jobs because reporters could not be arsed to do theirs.
The OP was being shoddy by starting off with the one thing in the article wasn't inaccurate - the attack really involved a man-the-middle strategy, just one that also involved BGP hijacking. If the OP hadn't started that way, it would have easier to "hear" the point about the next few rather egregious lines:
"And for years it[either man-in-the-middle or BGP attacks] has been understood to be possible in theory, but never seen in practice[!?!]. That changed earlier this year when someone — it’s unclear who — diverted Internet traffic from some 150 cities around the world through networks in Belarus and Iceland."
It is worth noting how wrong that is but being accurate when you point to someone else's wrong stuff is one of the first principles.
Remember, you're on Hacker News. Thanks to people like the author, the average person thinks you and I are criminals. Because, hackers.
You may be right about omitting that tone in general, but considering the feelings of media hacks is not a big motivator.