The Pros And Cons Of Black Hat Hacking

Even though a great deal of individuals believe that hacking into their personal computers or into business systems is unethical, it is done continuously. Some individuals do it for kicks, others to cause havoc in corporation’s data system, others do it to steal individual’s private information and even their identity, while others hack to assist the owners in recognizing their vulnerabilities and finding solutions to protect their information.

Some corporations actually hire individuals to hack their systems so that they can find their faults so that they can proactively come up with solutions to protect their information. Individuals that hack systems and provide the information back to the individuals in which they have hacked are known as ethical hacker or white hat hackers. The individuals that hack into another’s system to sabotage, steal or destroy another’s system has earned the name of a black hat hacker.

Tsutomu Shimomura a thirty year old Japanese physicist and a renowned expert in computer crimes. At the age of 14 Shimomura left high school and was found to hanging out at the University of Princeton in the department of astrophysics where he assisted in writing software to track satellites (Goodell, 1995). He was called upon to assist in locating the black hat hacker, Kevin Mitnick. Shimomura had his own computer hacked and was informed as he was heading out on a ski trip. From what Shimomura had heard about other hackings that day and what he saw in the intruders

trail, he was not at first believed it to be Mitnick as the intrusion was complex and he did not think that Mitnick was smart enough. He began his investigation into the hacking by reconstructing the attack on his computer to identify the intrud...

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...n 1999 (Stout, 2000). When James hacked into NASA’s system he downloaded source code that in which he could have learned how the International Space Station worked. The youth pled guilty

of juvenile delinquency. The value of the information taken was $1.7 million and NASA had to shut down for three weeks while the system breach was investigated (Perrelli, 2007). Jonathan Joseph James born December 12, 1983 passed away May 18, 2008 (Jonathan Joseph James, 2008).

Of the two hacker written in this assignment both were highly intelligent. James fit the profile of a hacker in nearly all areas. Shimomura hacking was more out of preservation than that of hacking and was called upon to do the task but is extremely intelligent, male, an avid computer enthusiast as well as upper middle class. He would not be classified as introverted or insecure (Knetzger, 2008).