[spectre] News about the the exhibition "Touch me" in Zagreb, Croatia

[martin pichlmair]

> well, as far i get it, the hacker's ethic is about to show weakness  
> of the system in order to improve it.

hm. afaik ... not really.

according to wikipedia:
 >>>

In modern parlance, the hacker ethic is either:

- the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good,  
and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by  
writing free software and facilitating access to information and  
computing resources wherever possible; and/or
- the belief that system hacking for fun and exploration is ethically  
acceptable as long as the hacker commits no theft, vandalism, or  
breach of confidentiality.
<<<


according to Steven Levy as found in Coleman:

 >>>
Steven Levy, who was one of the first authors to systematically  
research and write about the university hacker sub-culture, describes  
the following ethical principles that emerged from the MIT hacker  
community:

""Access to computers should be unlimited;
All information should be free;
Mistrust Authority-Promote Decentralization;
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as  
degrees, age, race, or position:
You can create art and beauty on a computer;
Computers can change your life for the better"" (1984:40-47).

Levy, S. (1984): Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. New  
York: Bantam Books.
<<<

see: Coleman, G.E.(): The Politics of Survival and Prestige: Hacker  
Identity and the Global Production of an Operating System, Masters  
Thesis, University of Chicago, 1999 (http://healthhacker.org/biella/ 
masterslongversion.html)




i think that an open wireless network per se is a good idea because  
"All information should be free" (see above)

or: if all wireless networks would be open no one would have ideas  
about printing stuff on his neighbours printer - or it would even be  
a quite nice way of communicating

lg
martin




>
> in this case it get little unexpected ways ...
>
> more about Touch me exhibition , curated by Kontejner, Zagreb:
> http://www.kontejner.org/dodirni%20me%20e.swf
>
>
> best
> d
>
>
>
> On Sep 20, 2005, at 11:16, martin pichlmair wrote:
>
>
>>
>> when i was in edinburgh last week it amazed me to see how few  
>> wireless networks up there are open. in fact, the only way of  
>> checking email would have been to buy an account at t-mobile  
>> (think it was 5 pound/hour) and sit in a starbucks cafe to read my  
>> mails. so much for the mega-corporations.
>> in contrast, the city of tallinn (the estonian state?) seemed to  
>> have equipped half of the city with free hotspots and here in  
>> vienna there is certain tradition of running open wireless  
>> networks in cafes. of course the access points themselves are  
>> usually password-protected.
>>
>> so: what is this project about?
>>
>> is it art as an attack on free networks and freedom in general?
>>
>> don't they know that real evil crackers are not attracted without  
>> challenges?
>>
>> one more story:
>> there is a shop near vienna that has no cashiers, and neither cash- 
>> desks. goods - mostly from farmers living in the village - are  
>> there in plenty; mostly sheep and goat products e.g. milk, meat  
>> and cheese. everything is price-tagged and the customer is ordered  
>> to drop the money into a box in the shop. now if i were one of the  
>> NRD Van i would presumably walk into that shop and exchange all  
>> price tags or do any other funny stuff to teach people about their  
>> (quote from below) "... combination of user ignorance, complete  
>> absence of will to learn ...", would i?
>>
>> maybe i'm just a bit critical today and teaching people computer  
>> security is right by all means - even when enforcing behaviour  
>> through code (by encrypting and securing wireless networks without  
>> any need) ........
>> martin
>>
>> ps: my wlan at home is open. use ssl to protect my proprietary  
>> laptop (from the "technological mega-corporation" that builds on  
>> bsd). i trust people not to misuse it and so long, no one did.  
>> would be happy if someone ever contacts me when i'm online at home.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sep 20, 2005, at 12:49 AM, Darko Fritz wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> http://www.kontejner.org/priopcenje/
>>>
>>> from bbc
>>> http://nrd.picigin.net/app/backend/Spoof_9/news.bbc.co.uk/ 
>>> frames.html
>>>
>>>  Printers made people mad
>>>
>>> During the exhibition "Touch me" in Zagreb, Croatia, art group  
>>> NRD Van broke into local insecure wireless networks. The group  
>>> hijacked several users printers and fooled them into believing  
>>> they became alive by printing information about their online  
>>> habits. Two people suffered injuries as result of fearful  
>>> reactions. In an exclusive interview with the artists...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ... we tried to shed some light as to why there was so much  
>>> manipulation with and abuse of animals, and in the end also  
>>> people, in the "Touch Me" exhibition. The talk with the artists  
>>> lead us also to check up on certain information with the T-Com,  
>>> whose unprotected wireless networks were used by the NRD Van  
>>> artists as their chosen medium of manipulation. But let start  
>>> from the beginning:
>>>
>>>
>>> What happened? What is your work about?
>>>
>>> To do our work we have chosen completely uprotected wireless  
>>> networks that the T-Com is installing around with such a hype.  
>>> These networks provided us a good example for end user ignorance  
>>> meeting corporate greed for profit.
>>>
>>> There is a large number of them installed all around Zagreb and  
>>> we have decided to tinker with that setting in order to start, in  
>>> an entertaining way, a communication with users of particularly  
>>> insecure networks.
>>>
>>> Networks that particularly appealed to us were those where we  
>>> could find printers that could be accessed once you were  
>>> connected to their wireless network.
>>>
>>> It needs to be noted that those are not simply networks that you  
>>> can connect to and access Internet, but networks where the key  
>>> network component "wireless router" was left without a password,  
>>> so that we could do anything we please without owners of those  
>>> wireless nodes ever noticing.
>>>
>>> By using the router user name and T-Com's on-line telephone  
>>> directory we could soon dig out the address and the first and  
>>> last name of the account owner. The remaining data used in  
>>> printing on remote printers were recorded by monitoring and  
>>> rdirecting the network traffic our way.
>>>
>>> With a little bit of knowledge about network technologies in such  
>>> insecure networks in real time one can track in real time data  
>>> such as address and content of a web page that user is visiting  
>>> at the moment or text of an email message that user is receivig  
>>> or sending at that moment...
>>>
>>> How were you entering the "communication" with users?
>>>
>>> After intercepting their private data, we would initially first  
>>> print out on their printer: "Dear so and so, can you please check  
>>> if I have enough paper? I was silent for so long that I would now  
>>> like to print out entire novels..."..
>>> After that we would wait for couple of minutes to send another  
>>> message: "What do you mean who?! Me, your printer that has  
>>> finally come to life, isn't that exciting :)"...
>>>  ..After that we would most commonly relate the messages to the  
>>> current stream of data that we would get if the person would  
>>> start to search the web (and some of them immediately googled for  
>>> the message) or to the data we had already before printing out  
>>> the first messages.
>>>
>>> For us this seemed as a amusing and interesting way to let people  
>>> know that their communication infrastructure is fragile and that  
>>> they should do something about it...
>>>
>>>  Yet two people got hurt... One smashed his printer against the  
>>> floor and injured his foot in the process, while the other jumped  
>>> through the window freaked out by the printer that "came to life"?
>>>
>>> When we speak of jumping through the window, we're not sure it  
>>> can be said that it was our intent to make people do such things.
>>>
>>> The genious radio experiment "War of the Worlds" that Orson  
>>> Welles did in 1938 has proven that art can and, in a way, must  
>>> question the limits of mediation through media.
>>>
>>> In our talks with the injured and their families it was Orson  
>>> Welles's example that people could grasp and accept as a key  
>>> reference and acknowledgement that our work can indeed be called  
>>> art.
>>>
>>> Besides shocking them, you also made them learn something new,  
>>> didn't you?
>>>
>>> Learning through shock, manipulation and complex mediation are  
>>> exactly the artistic forms and procedures that we find  
>>> interesting and that we use in our work. Here we'd like to take a  
>>> quote from Walter Benjamin who says: that a revolutionary author  
>>> should overcome the constrains of dealing with product in order  
>>> to bring about a transformation of "tools of production"., and  
>>> that culture and art must contain a dialectical component too.
>>>
>>> Such a statement in these post- times probably seems too  
>>> doctrinary, but we think that the society lingers behind the  
>>> modern condition established by communication technologies, and  
>>> therefore to start catching up we need to resort to the old  
>>> school ideas of K.Marx or W.Benjamin. ;)
>>>
>>> What do you think what will the people whom you have scared,  
>>> manipulated and, in the manipulated, injured think of such  
>>> interpretations?
>>>
>>> Those who got scared live in a state of permanent fear anyhow,  
>>> while for those whom we have manipulated and we continue to  
>>> manipulate we wish that the process of learning will start as  
>>> soon as possible. To those who got hurt we apologized and  
>>> promised to buy them a new printer, DVD release of "War of the  
>>> Worlds" and a GNU/Linux LiveCD. We also configured their router,  
>>> so they are secure now. And they typed in their own passwords ;)
>>>
>>> ... yet it was their accident that helped you get into the  
>>> coverstories of CNN, BBC, ...
>>>
>>> The whole media coverage in our case is a complete scam, that is  
>>> pure unadulterated lie.
>>>
>>>  You quoted the corporate greed as a reason that there is so many  
>>> insecure networks in Zagreb?
>>>
>>> We have quoted a combination of user ignorance, complete absence  
>>> of will to learn anything related to computers _and_ corporate  
>>> greed for profit as instrumental in generating such situations.
>>>
>>> Ignorance and absence of will to learn new things became so  
>>> deeply rooted through decades of tradition and culture of using  
>>> computer and new technologies. Those who have contributed most to  
>>> this situation are the two technological mega-corporation  
>>> Microsoft and Apple. Their users are proud dummies.
>>>
>>> In this particular case of our insecure wireless networks the T- 
>>> Com knows all to well that leaving wireless nodes installed in  
>>> users' appartments completely unprotected, even without a  
>>> password for loging into and taking control over the node, leaves  
>>> users at the mercy of anyone who commands basic knowledge of how  
>>> networks function. The only reason for leaving nodes as they are  
>>> is to reduce costs of maintenance and user support, and thus to  
>>> increase profits. In this way the T-Com allows its users an easy  
>>> log on onto the node, but users are not aware that this means  
>>> also an easy log on for anyone in their vicinity.
>>>
>>> You claim that leaving nodes without password is solely the  
>>> responsibility of T-Com?
>>>  Solely. The Telecommuncations Act, Article 105 clearly states:  
>>> (1) Provider of public telecommunication services must undertake  
>>> necessary technical and organizational steps in order to make  
>>> secure own telecommuncation services, and together with the  
>>> operator undertake the necessary steps to protect the security of  
>>> telecommuncational network. Steps undertaken must ensure the  
>>> level of security adequate to the level of danger for network  
>>> security, provided that technical and technological solutions  
>>> exists and costs of such steps are reasonable.
>>>  (2) In case of a particular danger for telecommuncation network  
>>> security, the provider of public telecommuncation services must  
>>> notify users of its serevices of the existence of such danger. If  
>>> the danger is beyond the reasonable steps the services provider  
>>> must undertake, the services provider must notify users of its  
>>> services of possible counter-measures to remove the danger and/or  
>>> its consequences, including the notification of potential cost of  
>>> such steps.
>>>  (3) Provider of public telecommuncation services is required to  
>>> delegate a person resposible for impelementation of steps from  
>>> this article.
>>>
>>>
>>> In the case of wireless networks, the T-Com is not implementing  
>>> any level of security it is required to, and we still recall the  
>>> dialer bills that it tried to push its users to pay. A low level  
>>> of security means low maintenance costs, low costs of user care  
>>> and often, as in the dialer case, just another chance to rip off  
>>> the ignorant. When viewed against the background of a culture of  
>>> ignorance promoted by leading actors of software industry, the  
>>> existing condition can hardly be changed.
>>>
>>> What could in your opinion change this existing condition?
>>>
>>> GNU/Linux
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>
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