Computer Solution

We’ve all been led to believe that hackers are bad people who operate with malicious intent to destroy all that we create online. But people aren’t that easily categorised. We don’t fit neatly into boxes of ‘either’ and ‘or’. So have we been wrong about hackers?

One of the organisers of a recent hacker ‘conference’ in Pennsylvania, Pork-Chop, did his best to shed some light on the subject. He claims that hacking is not a destructive occupation, but is rather about understanding systems, which needn’t be limited to computers, and then using that understanding to identify system weaknesses. The new-found knowledge is to be used for the benefit of the system.

By identifying weakness and blind spots, hackers are able to advise companies on how to improve their security or software products. Apparently Microsoft systems are hacked regularly in well-intentioned efforts to help them refine their software packages and hone their security.

Hackers who intentionally and maliciously set out to spread viruses and destroy data are referred to as ‘crackers’. Pork-Chop is adamant that the word used for those kinds of activities is ‘criminal’, and that that sort of behaviour is frowned upon by the hacking community in general.

It’s possible that hackers’ definition of ‘criminal’ may vary somewhat from that which is accepted by the general public, or in courts of law. One hacker at the conference seemed quite proud of his ability to make free phone calls from public telephones. He had come up with a device that replicated the sound of coins being inserted, which tricked public boxes into thinking that he had done so and allowed him to make calls. When asked by Stephen Evans, a journalist for the BBC who was covering the event, if that couldn’t perhaps be called theft; he reluctantly agreed that it could.

Evans raises the issue of trust and questions whether we can in fact trust these self-proclaimed public-defenders and their wayward sense of ethics.

According to Bernadette Schell, hackers or crackers who do the most damage tend to be under the age of thirty. Schell is the Dean of Business and IT at the University of Ontario’s Institute of Technology. She’s studied hundred of hackers to try and find out what drives them and what, if any, social codes they live by.

She’s found what many of us suspected: that the hacker community consists largely of young men with an inherent mistrust of all people, and apparently all systems. Computers are their refuge and are their favoured means of communication. They’re generally very bright and creative, and on the look-out for what they consider to be intellectual challenges.

Around the time that most hackers turn thirty, as they mature emotionally and become more self-aware, they come to realise the significance of hacking. They realise how inconsiderate and wrong it is and the enormous harm it does to others. Hackers turn into heroes as they decide to use their powers for good. Many of them end up working for the companies that they previously spent most of their time hacking. No security consultant is quite as good as the one who used to spend every waking moment trying to break security systems.

It’s like hiring ex-thieves to design the security system for your multi-billion Pound jewellery store. You need to have a lot of faith in the inherent good of human nature, and possibly a back-up that the thief knows nothing about. When we’re talking about our livelihoods we can never be too careful.