Science? (WAS: Hacking's American as Apple Cider)

[Barrie Dempster <barrie () reboot-robot net>]

On Tue, 2005-09-20 at 22:17 -0400, Jason Syversen wrote:
> Hacking is the art/science of analyzing hardware/software systems to
> find vulnerabilities... cracking is the practice of exploiting those
> vulnerabilities to compromise systems... cracking, or the act of
> providing "material support" is the problem, not the R&D areas of
> vulnerability analysis, proof of concept implementation, or publishing
> findings. Perhaps the two are getting confused.


FWIW I agree with your points in the email listed above, but would like
to take you up on the "art/science" view. Since this is off-topic of
the thread and a personal opinion that I've debated with
friends/colleagues I've taken it to a new thread.

Art I won't contend, it is very subjective and anything can be art,
even if it is primarily science or engineering that is behind the work.

I'm of the view that "computer _science_" does not exist, as most of it
is just applied mathematics. Hacking I'd term as research but not
scientific as any science behind it falls back to pure maths or more
specifically poorly understood maths. For example, a buffer overflow is
a mathematical failure, the coder fails to understand (or ignores!) the
mathematical implementations of their code, allowing it to be exploited.

Would you agree? Or do you have any points that paint computers/hacking
as a science. As far as I can see any endeavour in these fields falls
into another science or in the case of things like software development
they become an implementation of science which is then engineering. (I'm
not saying hacking is engineering)


-- 
With Regards..
Barrie Dempster (zeedo) - Fortiter et Strenue

"He who hingeth aboot, geteth hee-haw" Victor - Still Game

blog:  http://reboot-robot.net
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