Humour

How to trap a hacker

T A Balasubramanian continues his interesting lesson on identifying a hacker.

Now that Gene Hackman has joined the grand tour with his own mission to nab the Robin Hood who has made off with his notebook computers, you, Papyrus Bytewala, CIO of Baffle Corporation, find that your visit to the Techno Over-exposition of Geeks and Gizmos for Lazy Enterprises (TOGGLE) has acquired a new dimension.

Walking jauntily alongside, eager to learn from everything, is Danny DeVito, your CTO and associate, who has now pulled out from memory, entirely without any jiggling from your side, his association with Hackman—probably fed into his database at birth. The biped walking humanoid has passed the ultimate test, in your opinion, since he has been mistaken to be DeVito, the Hollywood original, by Gene himself.

Now, being DeVito’s official technology guide, you cannot help thinking that some of the flaws you had been bothered about earlier—such as Danny’s indifference to human body language or unfamiliarity with feelings like boredom—were, in a way, quite petty. When he could easily pass himself off as a close friend to a close friend of the human he was replicating, could you be so churlish as to grudge him a few failings?

“So you’re expecting to find this Robin Hood character here, Gene,” says DeVito. “Now, what I want to know is—how will you spot him? Surely, he’s not going to be sitting around in a green costume on a tree with bow and arrows?”

“Oh, certainly not,” says Hackman, chuckling. “I don’t know. Besides, Robin Hood isn’t his real name. It’s just a handle.”

“A handle?”

“His login name. On the Internet, people are usually known by their login names or handles. I have many friends whom I know only by their handle. Login names soon enough become nicknames, pronounced if possible and spelled if necessary. My wife and I met at a cyber café near Broadway, and she still calls me ‘Gee-man’ because my login name was G-hack. Gene still sounds very weird to her, even after 12 years of marriage.”

“So if you don’t even know Robin’s name, leave alone how he looks …”

“Well, I do have an idea of how he might look, going by the generic physical makeup of the typical hacker.”

“Oh, are hackers like a human sub-species?” says DeVito, perking up considerably. “Identified by their markings?”

“You could say that. The hacker belongs to a loosely networked herd of computer geeks—a herd that is aware of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared tales. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. It is a bunch of particularly creative coders who take great pride in defining themselves partly by rejection of normal values, working habits and appearance.”

“Talking of appearance, what would Robin look like?”

“Scruffy, and intense, and most likely wearing glasses. Abstracted, with a lost expression. Surprisingly for a sedentary profession, more hackers tend to be skinny, so I would look for a thin specimen. Probably wearing casual clothes, vaguely post-hippie. Maybe T-shirt, jeans and running shoes, or even barefoot. Likely to have long hair, a beard, and a moustache.”

“Gene, that virtually describes the entire population you see around here, except for the guys in suits behind the booths.”

“I know. That’s why I need help from you guys.”

“How can we help? We know even less about him than you do,” you counter.

“Ah, I have information to the effect that Robin will be trying to demonstrate his know-how in one of the booths around here. You know how creative people are. They like to show off their skills. They are like little kids with toys.”

“Gene, so what we are looking for is a scruffy-looking nerd who is going out of the way to catch our attention with something he has set up as a demo of how good he is?”

“That’s right,” says Hackman. “Especially if he’s in a booth that seems to be intent on giving away free software to you for protecting your notebook, or even your corporate network, from harm.”

“That sounds easier now,” says DeVito. “There may not be too many of those.”

“I would not be so sure,” you say. “Look around. You see geeks in every booth here, but they have no sales instinct. They don’t particularly care to show off to non-hackers, I observe. They don’t think much of being in a trade show, I presume. Most of them do not look up or smile when you saunter by. It’s like each of them is a shy, self-absorbed goldfish in a small bowl that is being gaped at by hundreds of passing tortoises.”

“I know how we can narrow the field,” says DeVito. “Let’s move to the Hacker’s Gold Mine Convention. Right over there.”

“You’re right, Danny,” says Hackman, smacking his head. “That’s where all the star hackers are bound to converge.”

“Hold on. What do we do there?”

“We stage a show,” says Hackman with a smile.

“What show?” you say, worried now about the turn this was taking.

“We’re about to begin shooting my new TV series, ‘The Hackman Show,’ which will appear on the BBC next week. Now, here’s my plan—we will be having a guest for the show—and that’s where I want you, Danny, with a laptop. During the episode, which I will set up especially as a trap to catch Robin Hood, I’m going to sign onto the public WiFi network, which, I understand, is in place here, anyway.”

“All right. I can play a guest role anytime for an old pal.”

“Right, Danny. I will then challenge you, my guest, to sit nearby and packet-sniff—try to capture text that I’m sending wirelessly out of my laptop to my wife. I’m not going to use any fancy encryption software. This, of course, is the reason everyone says one has to be careful on public WiFi networks—I want to show it in action. But then, I also want to dangle a hook for Robin Hood.”

“Why would he be interested?”

“I expect that that during the laptop session, our Robin will find it irresistible to steal from you, Danny, my guest. He steals your laptop and drives off to a remote location, then tries to pull out data. But then he will now get stopped by my very own diabolical version of Viper, called Hiss, which is a great encryption blanket, but not as nasty as Robin’s disk-wiping rouge package. I would, of course, have it planted in your machine.”

“Does Danny get his laptop back?” you say.

“Of course. Hiss will give me Robin’s location the moment he logs on anywhere. Then, all we have to do is nab him.”

“What if I resist?” says Danny. “What if I don’t let Robin steal my laptop? What if I clobber him immediately when he tries to do it? This way, we save a lot of trouble going around finding him. Not to mention saving my laptop from a lot of vandalism.”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” says Hackman, slapping his head once more.

“Maybe you should stop doing that,” says DeVito. “All that head-slapping seems to be turning you into a cabbage.”