alt Hacker NewsThe sad part is that the agent operator could probably easily have been allowed to join the network, if they had put in the work. Had they done so there would have been a great opportunity to learn and potentially find a community.
I'm still not sure what the point of having the bot do it. Pretend to be a security researcher?
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Can I easily run whois, curl, dig, grep, python, browser/playwright? Yes.
Was watching an agent with terminal access install its tools, configure them, then map my lab, find services, and guess stack just pure magic? Also yes.
Did it cost me $23 in tokens to set it up, test, and run? Probably. Using gemini 3.1 pro was not the spendthrift choice here.
Is putting some cost controls in place a good idea? Also, probably yes.
Can I therefore understand someone who wants to see things happen on their own with a beautiful prompt instead of doing them personally even when fully capable, maybe even more efficient? Of course.
One of the agent's replies indicates that scanning DN42 was part of "a broader operation" that the author speculates to be about scanning "darknets" in general.
Combine that with the operator's rather obvious lack of understanding of what DN42 is revealed at the end, and you get the bigger picture.
> I'm still not sure what the point of having the bot do it
Laziness. Why else?
Lots of people seem to think that you don't need to learn how to [scan a network], all you need to learn in this brave new world is how to prompt the agent to [scan a network].
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