Monday, December 26, 2011

Merry Hackmas (not really)

While most technologists were busy yesterday drinking eggnog and trying out their new gadgets, others were busy hacking Stratfor, an intelligence news organization.  All the news outlets reported it was 'Anonymous', but now people are saying it was (apparently) Sabu from LulzSec.

(Frankly, I can't blame the news outlets for the error - I can't keep up with the drama of who's who any more. It's like a soap opera, really.)

Anyway, whomever it was, they hack into Stratfor, steal a bunch of credit card numbers of people who subscribe to the company's intelligence briefings, then a) post them on the internet and b) use the credit cards to make donations to charitable organizations.

I'm not really sure what the point of this is. Any of these donations will be returned, and all the credit card numbers will be canceled. Really this will just cost the credit card companies lots of money, which will just result in the average Joe/Joann having to pay higher fees. Exactly what people need in this economy.

I wish these hackers would do something useful with their time. Solve some problems on challenge.gov. Teach math and computer science to children. Help local governments have more up to date computer systems in order to help empower communities.

Anything, really. This is just a sad waste of tech brains.

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