I think if anything it's more like the 80s, but with more cash. You have to watch your ass more now, but there's more monetary incentive on top of the thrill of scoring some ingenious root. Of course anonymous has had a big influence; they're the biggest cyber-griefing collective in history. But to me it seems like you can still do whatever you want and not worry as long as you don't hit any .govs or extort/embarrass big corporations.
Remember that historically almost all of the people who get caught get ratted out by their friends. If you work by yourself, or at least just don't tell your friends too many details and don't be an arrogant loud-mouth to strangers, there's very little the feds can do. The sheer waterfall of data they have to sift through just to find your weird custom backdoor makes it impossible to investigate every attack. As long as it doesn't effect their bottom line, who cares?
(Also, seriously, the NSA? They have nothing to do with domestic hackers. They'd maybe use you as a pawn to draw out foreign islamic hackers or something, but then throw you to the FBI to get Mitnick'd in prison)
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I think if anything it's more like the 80s, but with more cash. You have to watch your ass more now, but there's more monetary incentive on top of the thrill of scoring some ingenious root. Of course anonymous has had a big influence; they're the biggest cyber-griefing collective in history. But to me it seems like you can still do whatever you want and not worry as long as you don't hit any .govs or extort/embarrass big corporations.
Remember that historically almost all of the people who get caught get ratted out by their friends. If you work by yourself, or at least just don't tell your friends too many details and don't be an arrogant loud-mouth to strangers, there's very little the feds can do. The sheer waterfall of data they have to sift through just to find your weird custom backdoor makes it impossible to investigate every attack. As long as it doesn't effect their bottom line, who cares?
(Also, seriously, the NSA? They have nothing to do with domestic hackers. They'd maybe use you as a pawn to draw out foreign islamic hackers or something, but then throw you to the FBI to get Mitnick'd in prison)