Thanks to the media, the word "hacker" has gotten a bad reputation. The word summons up thoughts of malicious computer users finding new ways to harass people, defraud corporations, steal information and maybe even destroy the economy or start a war by infiltrating military computer systems. While there's no denying that there are hackers out there with bad intentions, they make up only a small percentage of the hacker community.
A hacker was originally called a programmer in the mid-1960s, which is primarily someone who hacked out computer code. According to internet expert Jonathan Strickland, "hackers were visionaries who could see new ways to use computers, creating programs that no one else could conceive. They were the pioneers of the computer industry, building everything from small applications to operating systems." In this sense, people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were all hackers -- they saw the potential of what computers could do and created ways to achieve that potential.
A unifying trait among these hackers was a strong sense of curiosity, sometimes bordering on obsession. These hackers prided themselves on not only their ability to create new programs, but also to learn how other programs and systems worked. According to Strickland, "when a program had a bug, or a section of bad code that prevented the program from working properly, hackers would often create and distribute small sections of code called patches to fix the problem. Some managed to land a job that leveraged their skills, getting paid for what they'd happily do for free."
As computers evolved, computer engineers began to network individual machines together into a system. Soon, the term hacker had a new meaning -- a person using computers to explore a network to which he or she didn't belong. Usually hackers didn't have any malicious intent. They just wanted to know how computer networks worked and saw any barrier between them and that knowledge as a challenge.
The main resource hackers rely upon, apart from their own ingenuity, is computer code. While there is a large community of hackers on the Internet, only a relatively small number of hackers actually program code. Many hackers seek out and download code written by other people. There are thousands of different programs hackers use to explore computers and networks. These programs give hackers a lot of power over innocent users and organizations -- once a skilled hacker knows how a system works, he can design programs that exploit it.
I would like to expand on why malicious hackers use these programs that were discussed in the lecture:
· Log keystrokes: Some programs allow hackers to review every keystroke a computer user makes. Once installed on a victim's computer, the programs record each keystroke, giving the hacker everything he needs to infiltrate a system or even steal someone's identity.
· Hack passwords: There are many ways to hack someone's password, from educated guesses to simple algorithms that generate combinations of letters, numbers and symbols which was discussed during our lecture. The trial and error method of hacking passwords is called a brute force attack, meaning the hacker tries to generate every possible combination to gain access.
· Infect a computer or system with a virus: Computer viruses are programs designed to duplicate themselves and cause problems ranging from crashing a computer to wiping out everything on a system's hard drive. A hacker might install a virus by infiltrating a system, but it's much more common for hackers to create simple viruses and send them out to potential victims via email, instant messages, Web sites with downloadable content or peer-to-peer networks.
· Gain backdoor access: Similar to hacking passwords, some hackers create programs that search for unprotected pathways into network systems and computers. In the early days of the Internet, many computer systems had limited security, making it possible for a hacker to find a pathway into the system without a username or password.
One might not suspect that the art, or scourge, of computer hacking was created at one of the havens for technological excellence. Strickland mentions that at MIT, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), "a group of students developed the technique and borrowed their name from the 'hackers' of the late 1800s who found amusement in pranking the emerging telephone companies. Getting their laughs and skills from hacking and cracking into primitive computers and exploiting the Arpanet (predecessor to the internet), they created a novelty that would become the target of federal crackdown in years to come." To define hacking in short, we can say that an artistic criminal offense of breaking into another remote system without the owner's consent for the purpose of stealing information is what is hacking.
In 1999, security software became widely known by the public, and with the release of new Windows programs, which were littered with security weaknesses, they became successful because of necessity. This fraudulent act of computer hacking is perhaps the major problem, confronting the rapidly expanding population of Internet users today, with the systems still trying to battle online hackers.
Sources:
Strickland, Jonathan. "How Hackers Work" 29 October 2007. HowStuffWorksOnline.com. <http://computer.howstuffworksonline.com/hacker.htm> 15 November 2010
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