Hackers Gonna Hack

Submission 21,208

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About

Hackers Gonna Hack is an expression derived from the popular catchphrase “Haters Gonna Hate” that was first uttered by the former German Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière^[1] in response to interview questions about the security of the newly released electronic German identity card in September 2010.

Origin

In August 2010, Germany began testing new identification cards offering radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology to enhance security against phishing site and identity theft.^[10] However, local television news reported that the cards could be easily hacked^[11], a claim which was reinforced by a September 21st blog post^[3] on the Chaos Computer Club.^[2] The same day, German Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière responded to these claims in a news interview with DW-TV:

Irgendwelche Hacker mögen immer irgendwas hacken können, aber, ähm, die Zuverlässigkeit und Sicherheit des neuen Personalausweises steht nicht in Frage.

Some hackers will always be able to hack something, but, uh, the reliability and security of the new identity card are beyond dispute.

Spread

The video was first posted on the German security expert watch site Fefes Blog^[4] before being reposted on activist Peter Piksa’s Blog^[5] as well as Zivilschein.^[6] Days after its original hosting, German blogger KreativKiez^[7] remixed the interview (shown below).

Since 2010, the phrase has been used as commentary on the nature of hackers on internet humor sites and web forums including 9gag^[12], Paranoid Prose^[13], Cheezburger^[14], wrestling forum The Smackdown Hotel^[15] and gaming forum Savage Realms.^[16] GetDigital has also produced a t-shirt^[8] with a stencil art representation of de Maizière’s head and the phrase "Hackers gonna hack" underneath it, similar to the Stasi 2.0 design. The phrase has also been defined on the German wiki site 28C3 as a title for an upcoming feature film about hacktivism^[9], though it is unknown if the film was ever completed.