--Originally published at Tech and no-tech
Ok, let’s be honest, there is a really thin line between being good and bad in any sense. For example, think of politicians or CEOs, they have a lot of power and they can choose between doing good and bad things. And, well, of course, I think we can all agree that power corrupts people, or at least makes it easier for people to corrupt.
This also happens in cyber security. You might be asking with whom in cyber security. In cyber security, there are people called hackers. People think hackers are always bad people. Let’s make something clear, hackers are not always bad. In fact, there exists different types of hackers, which I will talk about on my next blog post.
So, what makes good hackers good, and bad hackers bad? One simple word:
Gotta be honest, hackers have TONS of power. In fact, I truly believe that hackers could rule the world if they wanted to. If they could just unite and fix a goal in common, they could achieve whatever they want. The good thing for us, common people, is that hackers look after different things.
Some hackers do not have ethics, this are the bad hackers. These guys will try everything to harm people, organizations, or even the system. They will try to steal credentials (usernames, passwords) and/or important documents, to rob money in transactions or, somehow, directly from the bank. Try to make organizations crash, corrupt files, information, etc.
The good ones, do have ethics. These guys try to look out after people, systems, organizations, etc. They are the ones that create anti-virus programs, make sure the websites you navigate in are secure, make transactions safe and that your money cannot be stolen, make difficult for bad hackers to steal your credentials, and, of course,
Now, an interesting issue. There are good people that are consider bad. How come? The anonymous guys! Anonymous is a group of hackers immerse in social and ethical things. There exists a recent case, called the Steubenville High School case.
Long story short, some students, football players, raped a 16 year old girl. Deric Lostutter, a hacker from Anonymous, hacked into some systems and revealed important information that helped in proving these two guys guilty. The problem is that hacking into systems is illegal; and, though, people think Lostutter did good for society, the government charged him with 16 years of prison.
I will leave some links in the end. Hopefully you can read about the case and leave your comments below. What do you think of this case? What do you think of these vigilantes? Do we need them?
You may also like:
Ethical issues for IT security professionals
Steubenville High School case – Wikipedia
