23 Aug
Do You Really Understand Hacking And Computer Security?
Find a group of people on the street and ask them all to tell you what they think of a hacker and the chances are that their response will be unanimous. They won’t have anything good to say about such an individual. Everybody thinks that a hacker is somebody who is out to cause the maximum amount of disruption, financial harm and associated mayhem. This is how the media describes a hacker to us, after all, referring to those publicized bad experiences involving hacking and computer security breaches.
Hacking and computer security vulnerabilities seem to go hand-in-hand, but the hacker should not be viewed as the bad guy in every case. Indeed, somebody who has a great deal of experience and ability as a hacker could find gainful employment and a large degree of trust within many of our larger corporations today. After all, these companies need to be able to look at their computer security from the point of view of a would-be assassin and preempt any moves.
Those who consider themselves a hacker, in the more positive sense of the word, often refer to those who have malicious intent as “crackers.” Within the industry, there is definite distinction, although the vast majority of the general public are not aware of this separation and paint all with the same, broad brush.
It is said that the original term “hacker” evolved in the 1960s, when college freshman were involved in the early days of discovery. Of course back then systems and technology were very different to what they are today and we did not rely so heavily on our systems for our every need. Hacking and computer security were not the top priorities for all of us from the largest corporations in the smallest user, as they are today.
You can expect to come across three different categories of hacker, or cracker depending on how you feel. These are often distinguished as “black,” “grey,” or “white hat” proponents. On the one end of the scale everything is malicious, while on the other end everything is above board. The black hat hacker looks for vulnerabilities with the simple intent of disruption, the gray hat hacker finds vulnerabilities, but will only fix the issue for a determined fee, while the white hat hacker is generally a good guy, all around.
Companies worry about hacking and computer security issues so much that they actively look for individuals, often within the underground, to tempt them to become employed. If they can offer the “cracker” a lot of money, the chances are that they would be way more actively employed internally.
Technology being what it is, the number of ways that hacking and computer security breaches could cause damage to us has blossomed almost out of control. Do we blame ourselves for wanting to access our information as easily as quickly as possible? Certainly those who are charged with the responsibility of writing the security codes are overworked. How do we know that they could not be tempted to jump over to the darker side at anytime?!
While we might not, as individuals, need to worry so much about the software programs that we buy and use on a daily basis, we definitely need to be sensible when it comes to the selection of our many and various passwords. Always choose a combination that is extremely difficult to guess, never based on a simple numeric progression or a recognizable term. Did you know that many of the simpler hacker and computer security violations involve a script that just sits and repeatedly tries to guess your password over and over again?
Olga Gierowitz is an expert author in the area of laptop computers. Olga has a lot more insight about hacking and computer security here.
