Replies

Understand that there are several different breeds of hackers.

There are the ones who hack for pure mischief and mayhem just because the can; there are those who hack to make political statements; there are those who hack purely for personal monetary gain and there are those working for a foreign (or even our own) government to gain access to military or proprietary business secrets - these are what most people think of as “hackers” – i.e. Anonymous and the Russians who steal your CC, bank account and SS numbers and the Chi Coms, the NSA, the Israelis…..

Then there are those hackers who see every supposedly “secure” and “impenetrable” system as a challenge to their skills and they seek to find these systems’ vulnerabilities, not to exploit them directly for themselves per se or to sell what they know of those vulnerabilities to the highest bidder, but to alert the very owners of these systems and the public to the problems. Computer companies, banks and other companies that do business via the web, etc., and our own government especially the NSA are very interested in hiring people like Barnaby Jack much like the banking and financial industry and the FBI hire and pay big money to Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can), a former confidence trickster, check forgery, impostor, and escape artist to help them identify and prevent bank fraud, forgeries and identity theft crimes.

Sometimes it takes a thief to catch or prevent a thief and sometimes it takes a hacker to catch or prevent other hackers. It is also known as “reverse engineering”. FWIW, for several years I dated a guy, a naval officer who was attached to the NSA and later worked for them as a contractor after his military retirement. He of course never told me much if anything about his work, nor did I ever dare ask any questions or want to know, but he did tell me one time that in his unit and area of expertise, sometimes he (they) wore the “white hat” – found ways of keeping the bad guys out of our systems and sometimes he (they) wore the “black hat” – found ways of penetrating the bad guy’s systems and sometimes they wore a “false black hat” to find vulnerabilities in our very own systems – I don’t know for sure but I think his work had something to do with satellites and weapons systems and not the “data mining” of private phone calls and emails by US citizens, at least that’s what I’d like to think : )

Barnaby Jack had a flare for the dramatic and for self promotion but he worked for several computer security companies such as McAfee and later up until his sudden death, ran his own highly successful consulting firm. In other words he was a “white hat” guy who sometimes donned the “black hat” to see what a real bad guy hacker could do and helping tighten those security flaws. He was from everything I know, not a bad guy.

But while I’m not given to subscribing to conspiracy theories (Occam’s razor), it does seem to be a bit strange that a seemingly healthy 35 year old would suddenly drop dead. Of course there could be very explainable reasons for it; an undiagnosed heart problem, brain aneurysm, drug overdose, some sort of sexual misadventure (autoerotic affixation for instance), a simple fall…..still….it just seems that odd that a more than a few folks lately who were whistle blowers or just about to break a big story have met unexpected, sudden and untimely demises….