When I think of hacking, 18 year old Kiwi boy Owen 'Akill' Walker comes to mind. Walker, or 'Akill' as he was known by his band of 'black hat' hackers, was accused by the FBI of leading a group of international programmers infecting one million computers with viruses resulting in an estimated $NZ26 million. Lauren Hagans blog tells how her little sister's bebo account was hacked. This made me laugh as the amount of times ive walked in on my own sister having a winge because some bully had hacked her account. Made me think about all the little up-and-coming hackers who are shaping their skills on beebs before perhaps moving on to become Owen Walker themselves.
One thing that sticks very well in my mind from the information thrown at us from the readings and lectures etc is the concept of white vs black hat hackers. I had always been under the assumption that hacking was completely bad and little good could come from it but after contemplating it, it does make sense that in order to prevent malicious hacking by 'white hat' hacking you would have to know and I assume be capable of 'black hat' hacking. Also I had a little chuckle when I found out the metaphor for the black and white hat hackers derived from old western movies. When I was younger my old man constantly made me watch old western movies he watched when he was my age and the villian cowboy would always be wearing a black hat while the sheriff would be wearing a perfectly white cowboy hat. Anyway I found it funny...maybe you had to be there...
Lastly, the quote from the lecture notes that describes hackers as 'pyromaniacs in a paper city' was really effective in putting the whole idea into perspective for me. It showed me how hacking is a relatively new thing and if the right measures (white hat hackers) aren't put in place the results can be as disaterous as a 'pyromaniac in a paper city'.
That's all folks...
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