Computer Hackers Essay

The sub culture group of hackers has been around since the 1960s. The underground sub culture of hacking has evolved into a mainstream open community. Some famous hackers like Eric Corlery, Gordon Lyon, Gary McKinnon, and Kevin Mitnick have done their fair share of infiltrating network bases all over the United States. These people have a unique mindset that allows them to crack these codes set up by government officials. Eric Raymond tries to classify this group of people as crackers because they crack codes of computers but the community wanted to keep the name hackers. Regardless of the name the community of people is smart and can break down your computer at anytime. A hacker is a person who finds a weakness in a system and exploits it. Some motivation for hackers can be money, challenge, or pure adrenaline rush. There is a difference between a cracker and a hacker. Crackers are normally considered when people are involved with computers. There are several types of hackers all over the world. White hat hackers breach security for no reason at all. The term white hat means ethical hacker. A black hat hacker breaks into secure networks to destroy data or to make the networks not useable for those who are allowed to use it. Black hat hackers have a process called pre hacking to help them determine which network to hack. The hacker first looks for an open port to gain access to. After that is done the hacker will find ways to get vital information about the network to get into the system. Hackers will even go above and beyond to engage activities like dumpster diving. Dumpster diving is when people actually dive into a dumpster to get information like documents that can help them breakdown the network. A grey hat hacker is a combination of white hat hacker and black hat hacker. A grey hat hacker will surf the internet just to crack the network and charge the administrator to set up a firewall. Basically the hacker sets up the administrator without letting them know that they broke into their system. A social status among hackers is the elite hacker. These hackers are the most skilled in their field. Script kiddie hacker is the hacker that attempts to hack with pre packaged software. A neophyte is a non experienced hacker who really does not know what they are doing. They are new to the whole sub culture of hacking. A blue hat hacker is one who is outside of the security consulting firm who looks for places that have been exploited to patch up the weakness. Some attacks a hacker use are network enumeration, vulnerability analysis, and exploitation. There are techniques like vulnerability scanners, password cracking, and packet sniffer, spoofing attack, and rooting attack. A vulnerability scanner is a tool used to quickly check computers on a network for known weaknesses. Hackers also commonly use port scanners. These check to see which ports on a specified computer are open or available to access the computer, and sometimes will detect what program or service is listening on that port, and its version number. Password cracking is in essence guessing what the password could be to the administrator server. A packet sniffer uses data packets to catch the store data in the computer. Also hackers used techniques like intimidation, helpfulness, and name dropping to get people within a company to give out information regarding the servers so they may be able to attain the network information. At times these hackers come out successful. With so many worms and viruses like the Trojan horse a hacker can infiltrate your server and get all your information. There have been programs like Norton and MacAfee to help cut down on hacking. This sub culture like the thrill of breaking down walls and seeing what they are not suppose to see. Between people not being smart about certain things they do online and the hacker for setting them up, this issue of hacking can be a big problem. Not everything that is hacked is bad because government plans have risen to show what bad things they have created to ruin America. At the end of the day make sure you log out your account and get antivirus software to keep your account, your  account.