,
8 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ The entire "scene" was influential in shaping today's industry. It was a relatively small scene back then that grew into a huge industry today. It's unfair to highlight any part of it while discounting other parts of it.
2/ Among those who deserve the most credit are the engineers who worked in companies solving real problems. Nobody is writing books about the engineers who created SSL, for example.
3/ Let's look at Last Stage of Delirium, for example. If writing a book, you'd cite all their creative work creating exploits up until Blaster. But their biggest contributions were after Blaster, when they were hired by Microsoft to actually fix things instead of break them.
4/ Looking at history around 1999, there's a tone of great innovative thinking you'll see in presentations at DEF CON and CCC. You can't point to some part being somehow more relevant because it matches your narrative, while ignoring the rest of the great stuff by individuals.
5/ I'd point to something like the firewall-wizards mailing list, as it had serious practitioners and developers working on real problems instead of people making splashes at conferences.
6/ For example, back then I remember discussions with Dominique Brezinski, who'd go on to make major contributions in organizations like Amazon and Apple, rather than talking at conferences.
7/ Groups like cDc did great stuff, too, and I mean in now way to disparage any of their achievements. it's just that it's the entire community back then that shaped our modern industry, not some small part you wish to highlight.
8/ Like Mark Dowd points out, that includes the difference between the American side of thing vs. what was happening in the rest of the world. It was everyone combined.
