Hackers: Yesterday and Today
In today's society, where technology and the Internet seem to dominate our daily lives, a new villain has entered our consciousness. The hacker is feared by many, but respected by few. Everyone seems to know who hackers are and what they do, but there is a major misconception about hackers that nobody seems to pick up on. Hacking itself has been around for decades, but it is only recently, with outbreaks of computer viruses and media attention that the general public have really looked at hacking as a genuine threat to their way of life. The media would have you believe that hackers are a major threat, but it turns out that most hackers are pretty harmless. There is another breed of hacker, though, who is very dangerous indeed. It is important to recognize the difference. Hackers are not crackers, and crackers are not hackers. The first major computing networks were of course the telephone networks, so it makes sense that they were the first networks to be "hacked." Hacking telephone networks is called "phreaking," and it got its start around the late 1960's and early 1970's. The first phreaks were college students with access to telephone company manuals that taught them the ins and outs of the phone system a
The goal is to get into the system, not to destroy it or steal any data from it ("TechTV | The Art of Hacking," 2003). Hacking took off in a big way in the 1980's. The only way to make free long distance calls is to use a "red box", a device that mimics the tones of payphones when change is inserted. Good hackers are usually incredibly skilled with computers and read enough about computer systems and networks to find their way around. You just have to be able to think like a hacker. IBM released new PCs, networks were growing, and more and more people were being introduced to computers and networks. For starters, passwords are very important. Individuals should never tell anyone their passwords for any reason (Mitnick, 2002). Hackers come from all walks of life, from all races and financial backgrounds.
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