full-disclosure - Re: Apple ptrace panic PoC

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Message-ID: <8d79f4b50911041650t773d0510jb5f211f4824d65dd@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 16:50:34 -0800
From: "frank^2" <frank2@...49.org>
To: Micheal Turner <wh1t3h4t3@...oo.co.uk>
Cc: full-disclosure@...ts.grok.org.uk
Subject: Re: Apple ptrace panic PoC - R.I.P str0ke

On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Micheal Turner <wh1t3h4t3@...oo.co.uk> wrote:
> Its evil. Making people believe that someone is dead, publicly, and placing obituaries online shows no regard for the thoughts & feelings of the person being trolled or the others who may read them.
>
> In a community where whispers and hear-say can even get SANS to look for an OpenSSH 0day "doing-the-rounds", spreading 'misinformation' about a well-liked individual who worked on a project for the community is unpleasant - making out they are dead is just horrible.
>
> There are people at the end of the computers. Don't ever forget it.
>

This is kind of a silly tangent to be having an argument about on this
list, so I'll try to make this my last comment on the matter.

It may be a little semantic, but I feel you're confusing wickedness
with a lack of empathy. Evil implies that the intent behind the prank
was to cause emotional harm. It's certainly detestable that the prank
was based in making people assume that str0ke was dead, but I'm
doubtful that the purpose of its spread was to cause harm. I hate to
be That Guy That Explains The Joke, but I'm pretty sure the purpose
was to mock the fact that a) str0ke has been quiet for a long while
publicly and b) milw0rm hasn't been updated for a lengthy period of
time for yet-to-be explained reasons. (I think v3n0m piped in a while
back and said they were taking care of the backlog, but that's about
all I remember.)

While the line between apathy towards others' emotions and intent to
truly cause harm to one's emotions can be blurred, I don't think it's
particularly fair to call the perpetrators of this prank evil. "Evil"
is taking joy in the suffering of others. The intent of trolling is to
get a specific reaction from a crafted falsehood or comment-- it
doesn't necessarily follow that the expected reaction here was
emotional harm. So given the circumstances, I feel it's more accurate
to say they just simply didn't care.

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