Gunz, Lulz, and InfraGard

Being an 80s vintage hacker, I have often claimed that I don't own a hat... black, white, gray, or otherwise, although it might be proper to refer to me as a "tinfoil hat hacker" at times.

I'm just not that into hats. Or people who wear hats, metaphorical or physical.

But lately, in the people-who-wear-hats security universe, a battle is going on between the white hats and the black hats, and the black hats are winning.

As usual.

Of course, I'm referring to LulzSec vs. Everyone Else. One of their most recent targets has been InfraGard, an association of Security Tards Professionals I have had very little contact with in the last ten years.

In fact, my exposure to them has been very brief. I went to one of the first public meetings of the local chapter just to see what it was about. This was somewhere in the 2001-2003 time frame. The Guest of Honor was an alleged "FBI Agent" who never showed a badge and left a HotMail address.

Yeah, riiiight. Some credentials you got there, Mulder.

The only other thing I remember about that meeting was leaving, unimpressed. I never planned to join. It was just curiosity.

But somehow, I got on their mailing list. In almost every meeting announcement, there was usually something about going out to a shooting range afterwards to kill imaginary hackers. And sometimes the emails were only about getting together at a shooting range, to the point that InfraGard was more about guns than anything else.

Don't believe that? Try this Google search. I'm not making it up.

Then, at various Travelling Security Dog & Pony Shows in the area, I ran across the InfraGard "principals" as either participants or sponsors. The chit-chat from these clowns before or after the show was always "my new gun this" or "my new gun that" ad nauseum.

By this time—around 2005—I was firmly convinced InfraGard was just another Gun Club that had nothing to do with security (except for killing people, which I will admit is a valid security strategy, but not the only one and not among those I was personally or professionally interested in).

So I have to admit to no small amount of schadenfreud over LulzSec's recent pwnage of the Atlanta InfraGard chapter.

There's more to security than guns, fellas.

But you know that... now.