19 May 2008

Social Network For Hackers Launched

John Sterlicchi, US Bureau Chief,

A computer security consultancy has set up a social network for hackers, called House of Hackers.

The House of Hackers social network, which was set up to support the hacker culture, mindset, way of life, ideologies and political views, was created by researchers from GNUCitizen. Membership is open to anyone.

“House of Hackers is a social network for hackers,” wrote Petko Petkov, founder of GNUCitizen, in a blog post. “From our perspective, a hacker is a person (that) people express admiration for, for his/her work, skills, creative edge, cleverness, uniqueness, intelligence, etc. We do not promote criminal activities. The network is designed to enable its members to exchange ideas with each other, communicate, form groups, elite circles and tiger/red teams, conglomerate around projects and participate in a hacker recruitment market.”

Petkov wrote the ability to create groups on the network could be useful for setting up ad hoc penetration testing teams. He also said the House of Hackers does not promote criminal activities and will be self-policed by security professionals.

According to the blog post, House of Hackers will accept fees for each job posting and the money will help future funding and research initiatives by the social network community.

The social network is built on Ning.com and can be extended using the Google-backed Open Social API. The House of Hackers currently has about 850 members.

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