Ilya Vasilyev might be the closest thing to a martial arts master the computer world has.
For the last 10 years, the long-haired, soft-spoken Russian has been running a school, or perhaps more accurately a dojo, for hacking in Moscow. He trains his students in computer skills that run the gamut from assembly language and networking right on through to cracking programs and virus writing. They're trained in "hacker ethics" -- don't harm people, don't misuse the skills -- and can gain the equivalents of white and black belts, though in this case bracelets are substituted.
He recognizes that people can misuse these skills. But he sees it as pure knowledge, which he and other late Soviet hackers gained piecemeal, and without much help through the 80s and 90s. He believes that hacking skills are like martial arts, which themselves are essentially designed to kill. Gaining these skills brings responsibility to use them correctly, he says.
"I recognize that hacking can also harm other people," he says, speaking at the Chaos Communication Camp outside Berlin. "Hacking practice is connected with taking responsibility for this."
Vasilyev's experience offers a telling look into a computer culture that has developed almost wholly differently than that in the United States.
Computer knowledge in the Soviet 1980s was difficult to come by, even for those who could get materials and build machines from scratch. The ideology of private property was limited at best, so it was widely viewed as more noble to crack protection on a software program than to make money from it, he says.
When he first started his School for Hacking Art in the early 90s, urged to do so by martial arts students who learned of his computer skills, he had early brushes with the Soviet and Russian security services. Some tried to hire him, he says; he said no, and was threatened, told that anyone in his position needed to be aligned with one of the agencies. He still declined, and managed to live through the resulting pressure without being shut down, or worse.
Today's Russia has swung to a different extreme, permeated with a get-rich-quick sensibility, and awash in information. Software piracy is rampant, with cracked versions of programs available everywhere in street kiosks. Security experts point to Russian criminal organizations as increasingly responsible for online crime such as identity theft and botnet control.
Vassily remains largely outside this lucrative grey- or black-market trade in computer skills. He doesn't even officially charge for his instruction, although the school survives on donations from students who have considerably more money than he does.
The small group is getting international renown as a place to share and learn skills. He tells of a Chinese student who came to learn how to crack programs. Plenty of Chinese programmers know how to do this, but they don't share the information, using it only to make money, the student said.
In ten years, only a few students have made it all the way to a red bracelet, the highest level short of black, or master. He doesn't mind. Teaching others to appreciate the art is a reward in itself.
"Hacking is not only martial arts, an art of destruction," Vasilyev says. "It is also the art of building beautiful programs."
