Misuse Of Computers – Hackers Essay, Research Paper

In every advance that civilization has made there have been the dishonest and the greedy who quickly learn how to take advantage of the new breakthroughs. The new world of computer technology is no exception. As many people see it, alongside the brilliant programmers came hackers. But what is a hacker? As the dictionary says, ‘hacker’ is a slang term for a technically sophisticated computer user who enjoys exploring computer systems and programs, sometimes to the point of obsession. In fact, hackers are not as bad as they are made out to be and can do some good.

Many hackers live to find faults in systems and in some cases inform the proper people on how they could go about fixing them. The moment these hackers break into the system, they could do anything they want, but instead they decide to inform the appropriate people. Some companies are known to hire professional hackers to try to find faults in their systems. In this case it is a controlled environment with a contractual agreement between the two parties.

These ethical hackers can find gaps in security which results in the updating and new for new technology in the security department. This helps the System Administrators learn how to maintain their systems securely.

Another reason why hacking is not entirely bad is that hacking is basically asking a lot of questions and refusing to stop asking. The young hackers have inquisitive minds, a sense of adventure and love a challenge. For them a network is an opportunity to seek knowledge, discover something new or be the first to be able to get a certain result from a program.

Such a case happened in New Zealand at the Auckland-based pre-paid telephone services company, Freedom Ltd. The hackers who were only in their teens tape-recorded the sound of callers keying in their access codes, and later identified the PIN numbers by playing them down the telephone to Telecom’s answerphone services. Once they had the PIN numbers they could have made free phonecalls for the rest of their lives however they informed Freedom about the PIN numbers.

There are always a few bad apples in a bunch and these are the hackers who get the attention of the media and therefore cause the stereotypical images of hackers as criminals. However, not all hackers are bad.