This has been on my mind for quiet some time now. I've been thinking of the possible benefits and disadvantages of sharing your knowledge with someone. Does that sound crazy to you? As I haven't been able to reach a conclusion for myself yet, I thought it might be interesting to hear your opinions on this topic. Some of you might say that there are no disadvantages at all, but I must disagree. I mean, we live in a time where information is power. The more you have, the more powerful you are (or maybe you just feel more powerful). The more you give away, there more powerful people around get, which may or may not be good, depending on who we're talking about. I'm pretty convinced that people in general like to feel more powerful than others. That might be one reason that they wanna keep information for themselves. However, sharing knowledge improves our status in the community we're part of (if we are), and that leads to some personal benefits. We get "rewarded". We also improve our communication skills by teaching others. That's very important, I think. It makes me feel good to be able to help other people, but I can't deny that I sometimes find it hard to share something I had worked hard on to finish. Not talking about anything specific here. Neither am I referring to myself as a knowledgeable person, just talking about stuff in general. I believe you get the idea. Now, are we always expecting something in return when sharing something of our own? In my opinion, we are, it's just that the reward is different for everyone. For some it's a satisfying feeling while for others it's some material reward. I'm aware of the fact that sharing is essential for a hacker community. All the more reason I wanna hear your thoughts on this one. How do you feel about it? Do you always expect something in return? How do the ones of you with most reputation feel about it? Do you feel like you don't get much in return, because there aren't many people around here who know more than you? I could go on with the question, but I'm pretty sure you got the point by now. I'm also aware that, as I'm a newbie, this topic might not get too much attention, but that's ok. Just wanted to give it a try.
Thanks for this discussion, because it is indeed a question I struggle with up to this day. But I believe for different reasons.
I mean, we live in a time where information is power. The more you have, the more powerful you are (or maybe you just feel more powerful). The more you give away, there more powerful people around get, which may or may not be good, depending on who we're talking about. I'm pretty convinced that people in general like to feel more powerful than others. That might be one reason that they wanna keep information for themselves.
This is nothing I ever think about, because reading information and applying that to the real world are two different steps. A lot of people fail at doing the second.
Maybe it depends on the kind of information I share, but my contributions are usually
not of the kind:
"How can I break into website XY.com" and "How to crack program XY"
But more of the kind:
"How do I Program" or "How to reverse engineer malware"
The first examples are guides no ones learns from. They are step-by-step to achieve a very specific goal, often without explanations of the background and how it works.
The second teach the very basics of a skill, often theoretical stuff, sometimes more practical but still nothing you can immediately use in the real world, because you have to exercise a lot to get to that point.
Knowledge means power? Yes, but only if you can apply it to similar problems. In order to be able to do that the person reading your "shared information" still has to work hard. Just maybe not as hard as you, because you made some things easier for the reader.
So no, I do not have any fear that everyone will suddenly get powerful and I have nothing to share anymore. That just does not happen and did not happen in any of those years. I have still more I would like to share than I have time to write it.
Do leechers repost my tutorials and tools?
Yes they do, often so by pretending they have written these by themselves.
But the type of forums they are in, are not the ones you want to get a good reputation anyways. If they have no idea what they are talking about (and these leechers don't have, otherwise they would publish their own stuff), I am sure that any decent community will see that soon. They cannot answer any questions related to their tutorials properly. They cannot fix bugs in the code that you point out (often they cannot even compile it).
So, no, this is not the problem with sharing information. It happens and I can live with it.
My problem is still that of ethics. I did create a thread about this in the past and most people here do not see that as a problem.
I wrote and published some codes that can and have been used to build malware (the codes itself weren't destructive and just PoCs, but people used it for malicious stuff).
I removed it to trash, removed it back, removed it to trash again, removed it to VIP.
I still don't know if that is right to do.
I love to share knowledge without any restrictions, without people pointing out that these things can be used for bad. Let's face it, in most countries you are not even allowed to reverse engineer anything without being criminalized. If you only mention that topic you might get ridiculous responses. These people don't see that reverse engineers are also the ones who protect them, e.g., by analysing malware. So this knowledge that can be used for both good and bad must be exchanged more freely or the bad guys will be the only ones that have and can use this knowledge. If these things are punished and restricted you will have no person that fights for everyone's protection.
On the other hand there are some kinds of information that are more likely to be used maliciously than they are beneficial for protection.
I love to exchange ways how malware works, I love to share proof-of-concept codes for spreading techniques and similar, but I feel guilt if I do it too explicitly. Because I know if I publish similar stuff that this will happen again. People will see my code and use it maliciously.
I am spending all of my worktime and most of my freetime to fight malware, I don't want to help people to create it. So I always consider if the benefits of sharing are worth it.
Similar problem:
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/39419/cyber-crime/ransomware-open-source.htmlWhat educational benefit does this open source ransomware have and does this outweigh the risk of it being modified and used maliciously?
I think it doesn't, because it shares nothing new for the protectors. It is a crappy written piece of malware with no new techniques or similar. Everyone with decent knowledge in programming could write a better malware.
But this code gives an easy way for every skid with a minimum of programming knowledge to compile their own ransomware. And skids will and will do so successfully, because a lot of ransomware victims are not informed enough to see that they can actually get their files back without paying a ransom.
