Group 2 Task 2: Hacking

Group 2
Venkatatatnam Taragalla
Naresh Jetti
Rajesh Chandupatla
Kavitha Sunki
Madhavi Kudapa

The ethical issues surrounding hackers and hacking

Hacking is an act of obtaining unauthorized access to a computer or network and hacker is a person who performs it.

In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy traces the roots of hacking to MIT in the late 1950s, where students devoted much time and effort to building and programming MIT's early mainframes.

This act of breaking into other systems especially administrative tools can have dual motives:

1) To find out the loop holes in the present technology and develop them for better results.
2) To use those loop holes for the personal benefits.

The society perceives these hackers as real threat to privacy, security and the future of World Wide Web, because the world has seen the damage done by these hackers like Gary McKinnon who broke into almost hundred govt computers of US including military and NASA causing a damage of £375,235. There are many other hackers from all over the world who hacked credit cards, bank accounts and login details of important networks and systems. These hackers used these skills to their personal benefits.

In our opinion, hackers are clever programmers, who can find out the flaws and patches in the present network and can find out the ways which can harm one's privacy or security.

We strongly feel that these hackers are encouraged and every organization should employ their own team of hackers who should always work to find out ways to break into their own networks passing the security constraints, so that they themselves can upgrade their systems and networks and be secure from other vicious hackers.