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==Phrack Inc.==
Volume 0x0b, Issue 0x3e, Phile #0x04 of 0x10
|=---------------=[ P R O P H I L E O N S C U T ]=-------------------=|
|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=------------------------=[ Phrack Staff ]=-----------------------------=|
|=---=[ Specification
Handle: scut
AKA: "The Tower"
Handle origin: Result of spelling "SCUD rocket" as a 12 year
old when making up a handle
catch him: by email scut@segfault.net
Age of your body: 23
Produced in: West Germany
Height & Weight: 198cm, 85kg
Urlz: segfault.net/~scut/
Computers: COTS, anything goes ;)
Member of: TESO
Projects: exploitation methods, low level architecture
wrangling, code analysis and transformation
|=---=[ Favorite things
Women: intelligent, humorous, self-confident and caring
Cars: BMW = fast, functional and reliable
Foods: Chinese, German cake
Alcohol: Mixed drinks (Tequila + *), white wine
Music: U2, 60-70'ies, ambient, new age
Movies: Leon, Matrix
Books & Authors: I dislike fiction, various scientific books
Urls: phrack.org/ ;-), citeseer.ist.psu.edu/directory.html
I like: digging some problem to the deepest level
I dislike: unjustified authorities, arrogance, ignorance
|=---=[ Life in 3 sentences
Born 1980, I just lived a normal peaceful life in Germany. Finished school,
high school quite well, went to the military service, started studying.
Currently I am studying abroad and thats possibly the most exciting experience
so far ;-)
|=---=[ Passions | What makes you tick
To create. In anything I do, I enjoy creating something and deepen my
understanding of it. Somehow, however, I lose interest as soon as I think I
could understand something completely, but that it would take too much effort.
|=---=[ Which research have you done or which one gave you the most fun?
Looking back on the few things I have done, I think it was always fun to
tickle people intellectually. The most fun was writing burneye, a simple
runtime binary encryption program. I learned lots while doing it and it had
some minor impact aswell. Also I wrote a paper about format string
vulnerabilities. This was fun to write and back at that time everybody was
very curious about this newly discovered class of security vulnerabilities.
The basic work was already done and it was fun just to make a few steps
further. While its always the case that you have to base your work on someone
else's, sometimes you get the feeling of doing something truly new or
creative. Then, its always fun.
|=---=[ Memorable Experiences
CCCamp 1999, when all TESO members first met eye-to-eye and where we had lots
of fun together. Meeting interesting people, such as some of the ADM folks.
All the CCC congresses and all the fun that comes with them: friends, beer,
and new contacts. Meeting the THC guys, having beer with wilkins and plasmoid.
|=---=[ Quotes
"The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers." - Richard W. Hamming
|=---=[ Open Interview - General boring questions
Q: When did you start to play with computers?
A: Due to my father working in the computing field I was lucky to first tap
some keys at the age of six, around 1985. First hooked up through games I
quickly liked the idea to control the machine myself and was fascinated to
write my first BASIC program on the C64 when I was nine. This fascination has
not decreased ever since, though the languages and computers changed a lot ;-)
Q: When did you had your first contact to the 'scene'?
A: As many of todays people in the hacking scene, the natural path leads
through the warez and cracking realms. In 1995 I was browsing some BBS's and
thats how I was drawn into that scene. Then, in the following two years, I
moved away from Windows/Warez to more Linux/Programming, and more or less by
end of 1997 I was completely into this thing.
Q: When did you for your first time connect to the internet?
A: Through the German Telekom BTX internet gateway, that must have been 1995.
Q: What other hobbies do you have?
A: Martial arts (currently Sanda Wushu, previously some Muaythai) and other
sports, having fun with friends. Learning Chinese.
Q: ...and how long did it take until you joined irc? Do you remember
the first channel you joined?
A: #warez.de in 1996 on IrcNet.
Q: What's your architecture / OS of choice?
A: IA32 with Debian/sid. Its constantly updated, the packagers know their
stuff and its a system by and for developers. I love it.
|=---=[ Open Interview - More interesting questions
Q: Who founded TESO and what's the meaning of the name?
A: TESO was founded in 1998 by typo, edi, stanly and oxigen, some austrian
hackers.
Q: What's TESO up to these days?
A: I would like to describe us as not active anymore. There are a couple of
reasons for this. One is the natural shift of interest of members, such as
when growing up and having a daytime job. But more importantly, the most
previously most active members do not release their work under the TESO label
anymore. Sometime ago, we also had internal trust problems where we did not
know who leaked our internal stuff. This lead to general distrust and some
developing stopped or slowed due to that. Sad thing.
Q: You have helped phrack in many occasions. What do you think about Phrack?
What suggestions do you have for phrack?
A: I think phrack is the single best starting point for anyone seriously
interested in learning how to become a real low level hacker. One could start
ten issues in the past and gradually sharpen the skills to almost the today's
cutting edge. The style, quality and focus of the articles is very diverse and
always makes for an interesting read.
In the past year, Phrack started to work closer with the authors of the
articles to produce higher quality articles for the readers. This is a great
idea! Maybe further steps into this direction could follow.
For the article topics, I personally would like to see more articles on
upcoming technologies to exploit, such as SOAP, web services, .NET, etc.
Q: What are you up to these days? How has the scene-life influenced your
lifestyle, goals and personality?
A: Nowadays, I am more of a computer science student than a scene member. The
scene did not change me so much. Its a great place to meet intelligent people
and to discuss new ideas.
Q: You have been in the scene for quite a while. If you look back, what
was the worst thing that happened to the scene? What was the best
that happened?
A: The worst was a bad long term development with an even worse backlash: the
commercialization of the network security field. When the Internet really
boomed, everybody was out to make a buck from selling security related
products and services. A lot of former hackers "sold out". While its their
personal choice to work in the security business and such business is not
necessarily evil, for the scene it wasn't all that great.
The worse result has been the gap between once united hackers. Some people
drew a more or less arbitrary line of black-/whitehatism and started dividing
the scene even further. The result you can see nowadays is that there are some
separated groups in the scene piling up non public knowledge, while the "entry
level skill" required to really be in the scene is increased and less people
get into the scene. Those knowledgeable groups still have "whitehats" among
their members, but nobody cares, because for the group it just works well and
everybody within wins. On a wider scale, everybody loses and the cooperation
and development of really creative new stuff is slowed and the scene shrinks.
Fresh talented people wanting to get into the scene have no choice but to
found their own teams.
The best thing for the scene were and still are the hacker events organized
all around the world. They are a great contact point of the hackers and to the
outside world.
Q: If you could turn the clock backwards, what would you do different
in your young life ?
A: Be more relaxed about people posting my stuff although I did not wanted it
to be public. It just caused trouble for everybody and in the end its more
a fault on my side than on theirs.
=---=[ One word comments
[give a 1-word comment to each of the words on the left]
IRC : timeconsumptive
TESO : dreamteam
ADM : pioneers
Hacker meetings : melting-pot
Whitehats : do not always wear white hats
Blackhats : do not always wear black hats
|=---=[ Please tell our audience a worst case scenario into what the scene
might turn into.
The extension to the bad development that already took place and I described
in an earlier answer would include more company driven actions and sell outs.
Possibly the worst long term thing for the scene would be a decrease in the
scene's lose "infrastructure", such as magazines and conferences. This could
be the result of stricter laws against hackers and already takes place in some
countries. Imagine if the typical hacker conferences would be outlawed or
strictly observed. Imagine when magazines such as Phrack would be shutdown.
Imagine if groups like THC and websites like Packetstorm would be shutdown.
That would be a bad development.
|=---=[ And if everything works out fine? What's the best case scenario
you can imagine?
The scene would be driven by discussions, new inventions, creative hacking
stunts and a large number social events. Hackers would stick closer together,
yet share more of their work, yet allowing newcomers to learn. People would
not crawl for fame on mailing lists but would honestly respect each other.
To archieve this ideal, things that unite all hackers have to be valued
more. All hackers share the enthusiasm for technology and creativity.
Creativity is seldomly the result of sitting alone in a locked down room, but
quite the opposite the result of many diverse ideas and discussions among
intelligent people. If the environment hackers interact with each others in
permits for exchange of ideas without getting ripped off by companies or other
hackers, this would result in a great scene.
|=---=[ Any suggestions/comments/flames to the scene and/or specific people?
I think some young talents are really doing a great job. Keep going!
|=---=[ Shoutouts & Greetings
hendy, for being a long time trustable, reliable and humorous friend.
stealth, die andere Nase, for intellectual challenges and always coming up
with really cool stuff.
Halvar, skyper, gamma for making the hacker events real fun and organizing
everything.
lorian, for being a smart guy.
acpizer, for his wisdom and stubborness.
The folks at THC and ADM for doing really cool stuff.
|=[ EOF ]=---------------------------------------------------------------=|