Well to start I no longer see it as a skill, its something I naturally do, my friends are always shocked I will touch a machine for a few seconds and have it giving me an admin menu. I hacked a Bitcoin ATM in Romania is like 3 minutes (I helped the dude who just bought it and invited me to his grand opening, he spent 150k on it and was having a panic attack, so I had him immediately call the company and reported the bug, was paid 15k the same day, honestly was wayyy to little but since hackers are not in a guild we can’t collectively bargin for appropriate rewards).

So I see it as a curse now. Because if people know about how much I know about computer science they act weird around me. They get scared sometimes. There are many witch hunts when they get hacked from mostly using windows on the internet anytime past 2018+. Its why I prefer witch now because I’m cursed and I’m the weird girl who is sorta isolated and so subject to witch hunts regularly.

I have to downplay my interests and intelligence otherwise people feel uncomfortable around me, I have been accused of wild stuff, and even when not accused they will treat you differently, a suspicion. There is absolutely a stigma, less so in Berlin but lived most of my life elsewhere. I have to pretend to be someone different than I am, I have to avoid talking about the new thing I figured out, or talk about one of my major interests. Because it really does affect the way people treat me.

That is why I’m cursed with a fucking curse.

The witch hunts are frustrating but also insulting. Any hacker now gets minimum 10 years and its ALWAYS solitary, so torture. And I wouldn’t turn and work for them so I’d get 10 years in solitary. And thinking I would risk that for stupid bullshit is fucking insulting, suggests I don’t have a moral compass, and makes no sense because I have never been convicted, accused or caught hacking; its just a label that people apply to me. I never called myself a hacker, I reported a massive bug in middle school and it followed me my entire life.

Then its also insulting because its like I fucking open up electronics, JTAG or UART into firmware and rewrite it. If I wanted to hack you, you think you would know? Thats kinda the whole point, is to never let anyone know, otherwise its not really successful. So it implies I’m stupid enough and have no moral compass (which if I didn’t I would be in jail already, the only way to be my age and know what I know and not be locked in a cage is to have a system of ethics).

This is also why any news article you read that says “country” hacked x; is complete bullshit. They base this often on doing a strings command on the binary and seeing what languages are inside. But even I would throw other languages in my binary to confuse someone analyzing malware I wrote (I don’t write malware this is an example, but if I did, you wouldn’t know at all if it was on your computer, not even an expert would find it; because I would examine their computer to determine their skill level and not install it on computers of people who could potentially detect it; and thats not just me thats every malware writer)

Or binary analysis of code from other things found, and its like again you can store shit in a binary and never use it to misdirect.

So yeah, of course Id throw some North Korean phrases in; hacking is like that, you misdirect in 8 layers. Assuming otherwise is really not understanding it at all. And so when they say Russian hackers did this and its from binary analysis you can’t rely on that.

But Israel and US did write stuxnet; thats for sure, we know from other evidence.

So like it suggests I’m bad at what I do, while accusing me of stupid fucking things, like someone accused me of hacking the electrical grid and turning the light on and off outside her house in Morse code. I don’t even fucking know morse code, that is stupid old useless bullshit. Never interested me. Just 1 example of so many.

I can’t go through US border for example (if you don’t know you don’t have constitutional rights at the border crossings, even as a US citizen they only exist outside and inside, but the border they vanish). So anytime I cross a border (again never convicted, never accused, etc) I get all my technology taken away (phone, laptop, anything) and its never given back. I get strip searched often, sometimes they leave me in a cell for hours I was coming back from South Korea and was being asked if I was smuggling weed; and my brain broke, like I lived in California. Who the fuck would smuggle weed in that direction, it just the stupidest fucking shit; my SO gets it too by proxy; shes a scientist so they ask her questions like “you work in a lab, do you make bombs?” but I got mad at that border guard and basically called him a fucking moron but not explicitly implicitly and so I got left in a cell for 8 hours.

Its why I live in exile now; its just not worth crossing the border to go to a full on police state that I have always fucking hated. Recently I moved close to California in Tijuana to visit family and friends (well no family, they rejected me after I came out atheist, then later trans) but my friends who I consider family, and I have crossed a few times but cant bring any technology, I expect stupid questions, and it takes way longer, I have to go by foot otherwise they will tear up the car I’m in, and typically strip searched I think mostly for the humiliation honestly.

Its just extra-judicial punishment. I have experienced a lot some I wont even talk about on the internet.

I made a more in depth post on mastodon to avoid repeating myself to much just going to link to that if thats okay: https://mastodon.social/@ekis/111587352810957269

Has some more details about how I got labeled, and some of the extra-judicial shit I went through

It’s been coopted, eIther the common “hacker” as synonymous for “cracker” or the “Hacker News” type which tends to be less about “cool tech that moves civilization forward” and more “services to sop up value while offering gossamer-thin actual advances” and “chasing the almighty IPO or acquisition”