Hacker And How We Can Defend Ourselves Against Them

The purpose of this paper is to touch on the issue of Hacking. It will go into detail about the history, evolution, future and prevention of Hacking. In addition, this paper will discuss different types of hackers and their motivation behind hacking. This paper examines the major impact caused by malicious hackers and give modern examples of such attacks. To conclude, it will predict how hacking will be in the near future and give the precautionary measures Information Security professionals can take to mitigate the risk of being victimized.

The word hacking, usually associated with information technology, is a term used for the development of creative solutions for a problem by someone in a non-professional environment. With the introduction of personal computers and the internet, anyone could create solutions to problems in computer science. This led to the emergence of “hacker culture”, leading to the decentralization of computer industry (Hicks, 2014).

Linton (2011, p.44) stated that hacking of network of common users and attacking their personal computers is one of the most threatening problems at present. It is happening in every second that results in a loss in several ways like loss of credentials, personal information etcetera. Although the use of personal computers and the internet has been increased rapidly, numbers of users who are the expert and have good knowledge to tackle the matters are very rare. In addition, time, as well as required equipment to protect hacking, is also very.

Hacking is gaining of access to systems without any permission to access. This includes the act computer geeks looking for some fame, as well as criminals wanting to steal personal information and sell it on black markets

When one hears the word hacker, what do they imagine? Most people will likely begin with a mental image of a man sitting behind a computer, typing away into a command line, trying to gain access to some government agency. In reality the term hacker is an umbrella term. There are the main three types of hacker the black hat, white hat, and grey hat hacker. Black hat hackers are the ones everyone imagines when they hear the term hacker; white hat hacker is the security specialist that tries to make the bad guys job harder; the gray hat hacker is somewhere in between.

Computer hacking: Is the practice of modifying computer hardware and software to accomplish a goal outside of the creator’s original purpose. People who engage in computer hacking activities are often called hackers. Since the word “hack” has long been used to describe someone who is incompetent at his/her profession, some hackers claim this term is offensive and fails to give appropriate recognition to their skills. The majority of hackers are technology buffs. They are self-motivated and learning about computers is their true passion. ("What Is Computer Hacking?" WiseGEEK. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 July 2013).

A hacker by common definition is a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data. Although some computer hackers are committing crimes, there are also computer hackers that counterattack these criminals and their actions are what keep us safe from the criminals on the world wide web. Although they are hackers they are what protect us from the criminals on the internet. Without them and their actions we would live in complete chaos.

Originally the term ‘hack’ was used to describe what club members did to electric tracks and switches to make them run quicker or better (Lilley 2002, 16). In 1978 Randy Suess and Ward Christiansen created the first online bulletin board system where hackers could exchange tips, information, and stolen passwords and credit card numbers. There are currently over 40,000 bulletins worldwide (Lilley 2002, 16). The United States Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986. The Act recognized “the unauthorized access of federal interest computer with the intention to commit fraudulent theft” and the altering of information to inflict “malicious damage” as felony offences (Lilley 2002, 16). During the Gulf War two teenaged Dutch hackers copied information from the Defense Department systems. Although the US General Accounting Office said that the information was unclassified, it was still sensitive and the teenagers tried to sell the information to the Iraqis.

Hackers can benefit from a wide range of weaknesses in security, break into systems, find the information they need, and eventually change them to fulfill their desire. This, over the years, has resulted in great deals of information loss in big companies throughout the world, causing them to not functioning properly or eventually break apart. This is precisely

Computer hacking has been becoming more and more of a threat in recent years and is being brought to the public eye more often. Large and small corporations alike, as well as individuals are at risk of losing personal information to hackers, opening up doors to cyber-attacks and theft. Statistics show that half of American adults have been hacked this year alone (Pagliery). Security experts and law enforcement say that hackers are actively scanning merchants’ networks for ways to gain remote access to their systems. The Department of homeland Security and Secret service recently, estimated that more than 1,000 businesses in the United States had been infected with malware programmed to siphon payment card details from cash registers. It is believed that many of these companies had no idea they were breached and sharing the information of thousands of customer’s credit card information. A main reason for concern with cybercrime is the scale of the problem. If it were a series of on-off events people might be less concerned with it however, it is an ongoing problem.

A majority consensus views hackers as evil people who do nothing by play around in computers all day to improve their intrusion techniques in order to steal money, information, and cripple computer systems for various reasons. Based on the second paragraph of this paper, the consensus is somewhat flawed. The confusion stems from the definition of hacker and how they have been perceived. Hacking was originally defined as the production of furniture with the use of an axe, but MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology—the origination of the replacement term hacker) define it as students who pulled pranks with the use of a computer. In 1963, a group of MIT students tied up phone lines from both the MIT and Harvard Campuses, turning lines inactive and using available lines to make long distance phone calls that carried hefty phone charges. This was the first instance of the term being applied to the young, and rising profession of hacking. It has since then been in permanent use due to the evolutional path of hacking—the aspect that was widely publicized.

Computing is getting more advanced as the years go by & so are hackers. Hackers are those who hack with or without consent and their acts are usually considered illegal. Majority of the times hackers have utilitarianism motivation to use their skills in a personal or political way. Not every hacker is amateurish; there are some that use their skills for the common good. Those who use their skills under political reasoning fall under hacktivism.

Outsider attackers often called hackers because they gain access to system without authorization or permission from the owners or legitimate user. With information technology, comes increase risk of fraud and information theft. Hackers can steel sensitive information from one organization and sell it to a

Computer hacking is the practice of modifying computer hardware and software to accomplish a goal outside of the creator’s original purpose. People who engage in computer hacking activities are often called hackers. Since the word “hack” has long been used to describe someone who is incompetent at his/her profession, some hackers claim this term is offensive and fails to give appropriate recognition to their skills.

Hackers are people, who try to get unauthorized access to the system. We can protect our systems by using firewall and anti-virus software. But some users access internet for some very confidential work, using firewall and antivirus are also not sufficient to keep communication secure.