Exactly. This complaint cuts both ways. I often expressed a very similar sentiment but in defense of the "perpetrators". Remember all that kids who get expelled/prosecuted for playing around their school/university network and pissing off their lazy/clueless sysadmin? All that science stuff you could do then but you can't do now because terrorism (or because helicopter parenting)?
Where's the place for creative pranks? Practical jokes? In today's society, exploring, poking around, doing things for laugh seems... forbidden.
So wading in to someone else's construction and destroying it counts as "fun"? Kicking over someone else's sandcastle counts as "fun"? Kicking someone else's car to put a dent in the door is "fun"? Torching someone's house is "fun"?
Slippery slope, drawing the line, yadda yadda yadda, I'm interested to see what people think is "fun" and where they would draw the line. Given that it had no protection, how does destroying it gain or prove anything?
Finding weaknesses in a system that's intended to be secure is different, destroying something simply because you can is something I genuinely don't understand. No challenge, no victory, no benefit. I someone can help me understand the mindset of the griefers I'd be grateful.
Sorry, did not learn much from books. The only one of note is the Tom Mitchell Machine Learning Book, which already requires a basic advanced mathematics fluency. I also believe it is a little out of date.
I can recommend a few professors who really opened my mind to how to use math, all at UCSC (CS grad school for me):
- Dave Helmbold (Machine Learning)
- Kevin Ross (Operations Research)
- Martin Abadi (Security)
Disabling or limiting your use of JavaScript and Java in the browser will go a long way towards protecting against delivery of this as it is likely delivered by an exploit kit. If you do hit an exploit kit, Microsoft EMET (free) will probably mitigate the exploit/s.
