Hacking, Piracy and Virus Creation

In the early days of computing, a hacker was primarily referred to as a computer guru, someone who is extremely technical with a high expertise in computer also known as “Expert Programmers”. Nevertheless, as technology is advancing at a face pace, hacking has adopted a completely different definition. The modern definition is someone who access a computer system primarily to steal or destroy information. Hacking has caused major harm in the realm of technology. Over the years, hackers have become much more lethal in their craft. They manage to break into complex information systems from entities such as banks, government agencies, and private businesses. Furthermore, they often manipulate their victims through social engineering in order to obtain financial benefits. Hackers hold different label such as: black hat hacker and white hat hacker in which all have their own motives.

Unlicensed software use continued to be a major problem in 2013. Indeed, 43 percent of the software installed on PCs around the world was not properly licensed, an uptick from 42 percent in 2011. The commercial value of the unlicensed installations was $62.7 billion. (The Compliance Gap, 2014). As we can see piracy of software and other digital media is a global problem that adversely affects many businesses and the welfare of employees and consumers.

Describe the role viruses, other malicious code, and phishing attacks play in aiding this criminal activity.

Since the inception of the personal computer, piracy and software has been a problem faced by many software publishers. In the early days of the modern computer, virtually all computers had a floppy drive, and program's executable and library files were seamlessly transferred from the hard drive or the software diskette to a blank floppy disk. Friends and colleagues would then get access to the costly software free-of-charge, or worse, multiple copies would be made of that program to later be sold for a fraction of the retail price, with the publisher seeing none of the money. It was already becoming a problem in the early 1990s, that the Software Publishers Alliance had produced a promotional video, Don't Copy That Floppy, to spread awareness of the implications pertaining to pirating software. A similar promotional video, Don't Copy That 2, was released in 2008 as a reminder, mainly targeting the younger generation and college students.

With the dramatic development in the technology of computers and communications, the entire world has certainly benefited a great deal, but the purchase price of computers might also be very expensive. Computer crimes are now becoming very serious problems that are costing as much as billions of dollars. Also, computer crimes are threatening the continuing future of communication, confidentiality, and even the integrity of businesses and organizations.

The fourth spoke on the wheel of terrorism is “computer crime”. The use of computers can be used in a good way or can also be abused. Cyberattacks are a huge threat to our national security and technological infrastructure.

There are many forms of digital content. All of them can be stolen and this is illegal as is any other form of stealing. Digital piracy is the sharing and downloading digital content illegally. The problem with digital piracy has been around for over 20 years, however due to many factors such as the recession and the increasing development of technology the problem is becoming increasing difficult to manage (QUIGLEY, 2008). However the ability to buy the content online has boosted the profit for many creators of digital content.

In a nut-shell, although there are anti-piracy laws in place, piracy activities are still prevalent. the Looking at the statistics the piracy activities in Australia is predicted to decrease. However, piracy activities worldwide are increasing. Therefore, piracy preventive measures such as improved anti-piracy legislation and strategy, subscription-based business models and anti-piracy law awareness

However, there is a significant portion of culprits aiming for secretive intellectual properties, much more than their Eastern European counterparts, whose goal is profit from toxic malwares (Kshetri 2013). Interestingly, Chinese intrinsic hackers hack for some noble causes such as patriotism, political and communal obligations (Kshetri 2013). Typical Chinese perpetrators are overwhelmingly males working individually. They are young amateurs, mostly 17 to 45 years old, with some still in junior high-school. They use toolkits, botnets predisposed online for petty crimes. Contrast to common belief, most don’t receive good education, usually high-school students, unemployed individuals, low-rank employees or manual workers. Group based cyber crimes, on the other hand, are more complicated. These groups are highly specialized, diversely scattered and horizontally organized. They are tailored to specific task-for-hire such as creating botnets or releasing Trojan malwares. Their members are located across China and work as equal with little to none hierarchical order. The interconnectedness and space-time boundlessness of cyber-world help them expand greatly, even passing through sovereign borders with one incident when Chinese hackers attacked the US conglomerate DuPont somewhere between 2009 and 2010. Due to the wild success of online frauds, many traditional criminal organizations have switched to Internet based operations. Some online groups go further and get backed up by legitimate corporates seeking extra profit under the table (Chan & Wang

The internet and computer have converted into main tools found in the people's lives. Computer hacking can be an identical acknowledged identified known way of crashing your computer system. The hackers are explorers utilizing their talents to damage a culture, world, contemporary society, population. Computer hackers are illegal users who crash into computer systems to steal money, change files or destroy important information, and by connecting dangerous malware. Hacking the electronic devices of innocent people is a federal crime. Hacking has become the world’s most dangerous crime and the biggest problem in the today’s society. Hackers can hack the computer in various ways, and by the different techniques. Besides, hacking most affects

The small businesses in Australia underestimate the dangers associated with the affordable used of Internet in facilitating their sell of goods and services delivery to their customers. The internet has played the ongoing fraudulent cyber criminal behavior through business and their clients’ data. The cyber attack on stored computer’s information resources is characterized by denial of services attack, unauthorized access, and false website; identify theft and malicious software files. In fact, the above listed components are the solemnly attributes of cyber crime[2].

Due to the attractiveness of piracy, there has been an overall trend of a drastically increasing amount of pirate attacks and attempts. In the year 2000, worldwide piracy attacks that were reported to the International Maritime Bureau totaled 469 separate incidents, which was an increase of 56% when compared to the previous year’s figures (Rosenberg). This graph by David Rosenberg visually depicts this trend of an exponential increase in piracy reporting from 1978-2000:

The digital revolution has been one of the most important causes in control of piracy. As the arrival of the digital revolution, it has become not difficult to copy digital information without losing in its features. One more significant cause has been the introduction of the Internet, a commercial Internet protocol that has basically opened the front gate to low cost worldwide sharing. A third facilitator has been the fast growth of high speed internet. Developments in broadband technology have permitted people to upload and download enormous files fast. The existence of these three causes has become a ‘perfect storm’ for illegal downloading. As a result this could considerably destroy market progression and sustainability of companies. (Sudler, 2013).

Just like a biological virus, a computer virus is able to infect and ruin lives. This malicious software constitutes more than just simple viruses but also includes other types of software including worms, Trojan horses, and ransomware. Malware has been around since the late 1980’s. Originally, people became hackers to gain notoriety online, but today, it has become more of a business. Cyber attacks originate from all around the world, and it is not just individual people that benefit from it. In two decades, numerous cyber crime syndicates have been created, and states all over the world sponsor hacker groups. Over the past twenty-five years, malware has become less about checking the integrity of computer security and gaining notoriety in the underground cyber society, and it has become more of a chaos creating, money making business that many people and institutions take part in.

In this report, I have discussed arguments “for” and “against” Software Piracy and Copyrighted Material. The purpose of this report was to inform the audience of the influences of Software Piracy and Copyrighted Material, whilst discussing examples in which this has happened in society today. The main points that are mentioned in this report “for” Software Piracy and Copyrighted Material are Economic Impacts, Demand for Software, The Future of Software whilst the “against” arguments include “Risks for consumers and Ethical and Psychological Impacts” I was able to conclude that Pirating software is something that is still regarded as a crime, regardless of whether it may have positive impacts to it or not, however it also