Issues Raised About Hackers

Issues Raised About Hackers

Issues
A number of issues arise in considering hacking from the educator perspective. First, we need to consider the fact that the public perception of hackers is mixed, and that "hacking" and "being considered a hacker" can be quite appealing to students who are going through developmental periods in which they are defining themselves, as well as challenging authority and rules. There is often a Robin Hood mentality to early actions, though it is unclear exactly who "the poor" are, and how they are "beingcompensated". Second, the anonymity of actions which hackers perform against others often enhances the severity of actions. For example, an adolescent who would never consider picking someone's pocket or physically damaging someone else's property or home, might be quite willing to steal people's credit card numbers or destroy poorly protected business or government files, since files and credit card numbers are not tangible entities, and the damage is done anonymously.

The media often presents these individuals in a glamorous light. Adolescents may fantasize about their degree of technological skills and, lacking the social skills required to be accepted well by others, move online in search of those who profess to have technological skills the students desire. A simple search using the term "hacker" with any search engine results in hundreds of links to illegal serial numbers, ways to downloadand pirate commercial software, etc. Showing this information off to others may result in the students being considered a "hacker" by their less technologically savvy friends, further reinforcing antisocial behavior. In some cases, individuals move on to programming and destruction of other individuals programs through the writing of computer viruses and Trojan horses, programs which include computer instructions to execute a hacker's attack. If individuals can successfully enter computers via a network, they may be able to impersonate an individual with high level...

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