 Ethical Considerations
|
|
|
|
|
| "Good Hackers" |
There are many groups that hack in the interests of the general public. For example, some hacking groups are committed to quietly cleaning up the plethora of pornography on the net. The Hackers Against Child Pornography and Condemned.org try to disable sites which provide illegal materials. Condemned.org claimed in January to have destroyed 20 porn servers through legal channels, and to have hacked another 13 and wiped out their hard drives. In this light, the hacker becomes a sort of cyber-vigilante, who, while performing tasks that in many senses are completely laudable - cleaning up the internet - still operates in legally ambiguous ways. |
| |
| Such activities do little to stop the public and the media from clumping crackers, vigilantes, vandals and the "honest" hackers together. Back in 1977, the men responsible for inventing the Apple computer, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, had previously created "blue boxes", which were devices used to hack phone company computers - a perfect example of the ambivalence of the hacking subculture. |
| |
| Hackers and crackers can also be given some credit for the explosive growth in the $7.5 billion IT security services industry. According to the Gartner Group in Stamford, Connecticut, this industry is scheduled to grow at a rate of 40% a year. (Savage, July 31) Today, "good" hackers are being hired at an explosive rate to serve as consultants for companies like Metases, an Atlanta company which offers information security services. Metases has 75 clients with an average contract of $125,000. |
| |
| Not to excuse the graffiti and defacing of websites, since it can be unpleasant and damaging; but the real problem comes when money and market value are lost through bombarding a popular site with bogus information, resulting in the denial-of-service signal that has been common of late.
|
