Forgive him, for he knows what he does

Publication : The Hindustan Times
Page N0. : 1
Date : 17.08.2000

Circulation : On August 24 Bangalore is going to witness a public break-in. A specialist trespasser is going to sit in front of a computer, log into an Indian portal, fool the security system that it has and press enter. The name of the portal is still a secret. The name of the hacker is well known: Tom Cervanka, 31, part of a Canada-based group of do-gooder geeks who call themselves the "white hat" hackers. A group of like-minded hackers are scheduled to meet at a workshop in the city next week.

The good news for the portal is that all they might lose as a result of the break-in, is faith in its existing security system. Cervanka is an "ethical" hacker (as opposed to a "black hat" or "grey hat" variants who have varying shades of malevolence in them).

He says that the purpose of "white hat" hacking is to keep websites on alert all the time and to point out security holes.

"We hack before anyone else with a mollified intention does so."

Cervanka has thrown down the gauntlet to Indian portals. "Let anyone come forward and say their websites are secure. I will hack for them," he says. No one's risen to his challenge as yet, so Cervenka will have to choose his victim on August 24.

Cervanka shot into fame a year ago when he hacked into the widely used Hotmail website just one in a long list of conquests. "I hacked into Hotmail and informed Microsoft about it. They initially ignored it: I then put up a web page and demonstrated what I had done. The media picked it up and in a couple of days the page registered 300,000 hits," he said.

"We want to alert portals and Internet Companies of the dangers to their websites, and that is the sole intention of the hack meet her next week," says Sunil Dutt Jha, President of the Internet Component Management Group (iCMG) which is organizing the workshop.