Hacking is the practice of changing the features of a system, in order to accomplish a goal outside of the maker’s inventive purpose. These actions may result in someone finding information that does not belong to them and using it to access personal accounts. There are three categories of hackers; black hats, white hats, and gray hats. With regard to this, it depends on the job of the hacker.
For instance, black hat hackers are well-known for the common cybercrimes. These includes DOS/DDOS attacks that overload internet servers, defacing websites by hijacking control and replacing the main page photos with rude slogans, preforming identity theft, and taking remote control of dozens of personal computers and programming them to “zombie” as spam broadcasters (Gil).
Surprisingly, there are hackers with a good moral known as “ethical hackers” or “white hats” that use their skills to help companies and businesses find their weak points. Gray hats are individuals that want to cause destruction and fail. They are not concerned about the serious consequences they might have to go through when caught. Black hats are the individuals with the knowledge, but intentions to cause impairment (Lord). In spite of the white hackers, I think all hackers should be classified as criminals because of the invasion of privacy and using the findings for profit.
On the other hand, some may argue that hackers are considered as “Cyber Heroes”. According to CTU Doctoral Chair of Computer Service, Bruce Harmon, “Breaking into computer networks is illegal even if for less self-serving purposes.” To become an ethical hacker, they, likewise, have to acquire methods on how to complete tasks, unauthorized, which would be illegal (Harmon). Not only does computer h...
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Lord, Jaime. Are HAckers Heroes? 29 March 2013. 1 November 2013 <>.
Sutherland, Ian. Is Ethical Hacking Actually Ethical or Even Legal? 2 May 2013. 8 November 2013 <>>.
The Ted Talk presented by Catherine Bracy took the word hacking to another level. A new way of looking at a hacker. A hacker meaning much more than a teen behind a computer trying to steal information. The points she brought out is that reaching out to the people can get things done and strengthen relationships between people and an organization and through that relationship both parties are more stable and content. Bracy expressed her experiences with hackers in a government and citizen view, but this can also be applied to personal and
The use of hacking to identify weaknesses in computer security has become an increasingly controversial issue in recent years. Awareness of this issue is important, because our ever increasing reliance on technology means that breaches in computer security have the potential to have wide-ranging and devastating consequences to society, worldwide. This essay will begin by clearly defining the term ‘hacking’ and will examine the type of people who hack and for what reasons. There will then follow a discussion of the moral argument on hacking before examining a few brief examples. The essay will then conclude by arguing against the use of hacking as a means of identifying weaknesses in computer security.
Hackers. You know them as gangly kids with radiation tans caused by too many late nights in front of a computer screen. Evil beings who have the power to wipe out your credit rating, cancel your cable TV, raise your insurance premiums, and raid your social security pension. Individuals who always avert their eyes and mumble under their breath about black helicopters and CIA transmissions. Paranoid, social deviants who could start World War III from the privacy of their bedrooms. Or so the mainstream media would have you believe.
The crime usually involves illegally gaining access to one or more computer systems to steal information, take them offline or both, either for malicious purposes or financial gain.”(2012) cybercriminals are groups of people uses their computer technology to commit. Hacker is the one of cyber criminals,but cybercriminals are not all hackers. cybercriminal breaking into computer systems involves hacking, so a cybercriminal can be considered hacker. Hargave noted “I should point out that even the term black hat can be a little misleading. There is an important series of conventions called Black Hat that is attended by security experts and students – many of them white hat hackers – to learn about the latest trends and tools in the computer security
There are three areas of cyber conflict that hackers choose to think are the ethical issues, but are the most problematic.
There are a few elite in our technology-driven world that possess the unnatural ability to understand and wield the power of computers. To the media they are known as hackers, threats to computer security everywhere. To the underground they are known as "console cowboys", samurais, and the last defenders of free information. To the common man they are young teenage boys that break your computer and ruin your e-mail. Hackers are not criminals or mischievous kids with no purpose. They play an important role in our culture and are the fuel behind our technological revolution.
Hacking has been around since the birth of computers. When the term hacking was first used, its meaning was not that of how we think of it today. At the origins of computing, a hacker was considered to be just a "creative programmer (Baase, 2003)." Early forms of computer games as well as the beginnings of operating systems were discovered and created by these original hackers. These hackers plunged into systems as a way of an intellectual challenge and to aspire to gain knowledge (Baase, 2003). Kevin Mitnick believes he falls into this realm of hackers. Hackers in today's era are now looked upon as criminals who invade the privacy rights of individuals and have the ability to deliver worms/viruses. The differences are that hackers today have full intentions of delivering terrible viruses and worms. Mitnick was one of the most infamous hackers during the 1980's. He molded his hacking style around the stupidity of humans and his quest for intellectual knowledge. The ways in which he wiggled his way into computer systems extenuates many of the issues surrounding computer security and privacy.
In the beginning of the age of the modern computer, programmers worked around the clock, creating code for their employers for use in proprietary computer systems. These elite programmers enjoyed challenging one another and frequently enjoyed stretching modern systems to their limits. These programmers became know as "hackers" for their talents at dissecting and working around difficult problems, often searching for the most elegant or most efficient solution possible. Unlike the vision of hackers as portrayed by the 1990's media., these hackers refrained from any illegal activities. The best hackers viewed such things as breaking into computer systems as immature and childish. The media derives their definition of a hacker from only a small subset of the hacker culture which did engage in illegal activities. Such a blatant generalization and stereotypical attitude only encourages hackers to stick together and prove to the world that legitimate working-class professionals constituted the majority of this community. The idea that all hackers break into computer systems seemed as absurd as the idea that all policemen stuffed their faces with dough nuts every day; while of course some hackers did break into systems and some policemen do in fact stuff their face with sweet treats, this of course is no the norm. The offending group about which these steriotypes derived make up a small percentage of the overall population of the community. These hackers formed a dynamic community that thrived on the exchange of programming code and freedom of distribution; however, when large corporations threatened these basic freedoms through the use of proprietary software with strict licensing agreements,, the forerunners of the...
References to Beddoes’ hacks (Bisson) evoke resentment among readers; they see that black hat hackers gain more by participating in illicit activities than honest citizens do in a year of work, causing them to feel as if it is unfair to themselves because they are stealing from honest citizens like most readers would be. Also, in emphasizing the damages done by black hat hackers and the mysterious backgrounds they often seem to come from, fuel is added to the fire of an already negative connotation. As the other two articles mention, the common perception of hackers is that they are rebellious teenagers out to destroy the world regardless of the channel used. The background described in this article supports those theories when Beddoes speaks of his past as a teenager who started out with an innocent interest in hacking and then transitions into a rebellious malicious hacker after being rejected by the companies that he was trying to assist. Beddoes’ ethos also supports the goal of the article because he is a credible, well-established hacker in recent years. After almost pulling off a multimillion dollar heist, he is a respected yet accessible authority on the topic. Statistics to quantify the amount of data Beddoes stole in his hacking career provide the base to an argument supported by logos. Referring to those numbers also evokes strong emotions in accordance with the amount of people losing money and being victimized by hackers. Readers are inclined to feel sympathy towards the victims of the hackers, evoking an even greater amount of resentment towards the hackers. The content of Bisson’s article effectively supports a negative reaction to
In this report there are many different implications of hacking which would be discussed, about the social and ethical implication that hacking has on the society, and so through discussing many ‘For’ and ‘Against’ arguments this would allow the reader to finally be able to reach a conclusion. The structuring of the report will be as follows. Firstly, it will cover the aims and points of social implication of hacking, and then the ethical implications of hacking. This would allow being able to meet the aims of the report and identify many different sides of hacking both ethically and socially.
The term “hacker” has been in use since the early 1980’s due to mass media usage to describe computer criminals. The use of this term is vastly used by the general population and most are not aware that there are different meanings to the word. People within the computing community especially within the programming subculture emphasize the use of the term “crackers” for computer security intruders (cyber criminals). Early hackers rarely used their skills for financial gain as a motivation for their criminal behavior in that time cybercrime was infantile and largely seen as a practical joke or game by those who committed it. Bob Thomas created the first credited computer worm n...
Hacking was a term established in the 1960s. This word is the concept of unauthorised intrusion of a computer or network with malicious intentions behind them. This includes any technical effort of manipulating or damaging the normal behaviour of network connections/systems or stealing information. In this generation, hacking has become evidently significant and the debate of hacking being considered ethical or unethical arises. Therefore, will hacking ever be justified? The justification (reasonableness) of hacking has become a disputation of mixed opinions and emotions amongst society. These opinions range from hacking being considered immoral due to it being illegal activity and the vast negative impact it has on people. This includes the affirmative opinions on hacking; such as hacking being considered ethical due to the “white hat” hackers.
How different is black hats from other: Black hat hackers unethical hackers and other categories are ethical in some cases. black hat hacker...
An ethical hacker is usually employed by an organization who trusts him or her to attempt to penetrate networks and/or computer systems, using the same methods as a hacker, for the purpose of finding and fixing computer security vulnerabilities. Unauthorized hacking (i.e., gaining access to computer systems without prior authorization from the owner) is a crime in most countries, but penetration testing done by request of the owner of the victim system(s) or network(s) is not.
Harvey, Brian."Computer Hacking and Ethics." Ed. Paul Goodman, P.G. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. U of California, Berkeley, n.d. Web. 25 Jan. 2014.