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I just want to add this preface because people have been bugging me. I am not, nor do I claim to be the best at what I do, the oldest person to do it, the most dedicated, or the most intelligent. I make these observations as is, and you can take from them what you will. I can't claim to be a part of the true underground. I can't even say I would know where to look for the true underground. However, I think any person who belongs to such a secret lair of this culture could agree that most of the people who claim to be a part of it are a disgrace to its name and values. So, here we go.

• Defacement is still as lame as it's always been. It's not cool, it's not difficult, it won't get you noticed by the news stations, it won't make you a hero, it won't do anything except make you look like more of a punk.
• No one really wants to learn anything, the spirit is dead, and the new generation only cares about the easiest way to destroy something they have no understanding of.
• Most defacers have no idea how to find the vulnerabilities they use, let alone patch them. Hell, most of the people who submit bugs to places like Milw0rm and Bugtraq have no idea how languages like PHP work, they just submit anything they can come up with without testing or understanding how or why it works, and it usually gets posted anyways. They tell programmers that they are lame, that they don't know what they're doing, that they need to learn to secure their scripts, when in reality they themselves have no knowledge whatsoever on the subject.
• Defacing a website because the owner failed to keep up on patches can almost be likened to me punching someone in the face because they failed to move their head out of the way. The reality is that the people doing these defacements know nothing more about secure coding than the people they are defacing. Probably less in some cases.
• Coding is much more fulfilling than any blackhat / grayhat activities such as defacing, DDoSing etc. and it always will be. As much as I hate the word "hacker", all the good hackers know how to code and know how to code well. I don't mean they know how to make a hello world application in Visual Basic, I mean they really understand how coding works. They are at one with the computer, they marvel in its intricacies. If you don't want to learn to code, you don't have the patience it takes to become a good (I really do hate this word) "hacker". Coding isn't all about making new cool trojans to show off to your friends, it's a mindset, it's a tool for learning to think logically.
• No one outside of the "scene" will ever hear about anything that goes on here, such as a big defacement, etc. Those who do this for notoriety are in the wrong business. CNN doesn't care that you defaced NASA for the 500th time. The fact is that you'll get a small corner article in a local newspaper that never even mentions your name or your handle.
• There are in existence (probably) no more than about one to two dozen real hacking groups, and they are all dying every day. It's impossible to continue to run a legitimate group or crew when there are 5 to 10 script kiddy groups for every real group out there.

Why do I hate the word hacker? Why this rant? Because I see it and live in this world every day. I see the spirit dying, the thirst for information fading, and the destructive urges of script kiddies growing. I hate the word hacker because of what it represents today. No one who should rightfully be considered a hacker would ever dream of calling themselves one. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe everyone knows more about this than me, maybe I'm a lone ranger, but these are the observations that I've had the entire time that I have been involved in this scene. Even those who want to learn the ways of a blackhat do it all wrong. They learn Visual Basic and code shitty trojans and "viruses" for their little friends to ooh and ahh at. They use published exploits to destroy websites which have nothing to do with the scene. Nothing is as it should be, and it's time everyone wakes up and realizes it.

It's difficult for me to make these observations. I run a blackhat website, I am part of what I guess could be considered a blackhat group, and I enjoy it. However, I can't help but voice these opinions, because if no one makes these sorts of thoughts public, then the blackhat scene will eventually run into the ground, and no one will know what happened.