From Hacking to Cyber Terrorism Essay -- Computers Software Hackers Es

From Hacking to Cyber Terrorism Introduction Information technology (IT) is evolving everyday and our day-to-day life is becoming more and more dependent on it. In this twenty first century, we cannot imagine ourselves without emails, online banking systems and health care systems and without World Wide Web. In other words, evolution of IT has given a modern, technologically advanced and convenient life to the society. But, over the time we are also observing explosive growth in the darker side of the IT - regarding hacking and cyber crimes. Activities like unauthorized computer intrusion, denial of service (DOS), stealing computer passwords and secure data; causing damage to computer systems and databases and causing damage to individuals/society are not very rare these days. As we go further on this paper, we will see different aspects of hacking, from harmless (simply looking around thru web) to dangerously harmful (cyber-terrorism). Irrespective of harmless or harmful, we need to understand is it ethical and how does it impact the global world. This paper is intended to discuss the ethical issues and moral values involved with this darker side of information technology. This paper also includes discussion on the good side of hacking and how hacking can lead to serious cyber crimes and causes harm to world community. What is a computer hacker? The definition of the computer hacker can be described as follows, 1. In programming, a computing enthusiast. The term is normally applied to people who take a delight in experimenting with system hardware (the electronics), software (computer programs) and communication systems (telephone lines, computer networks etc). 1 2. In data (information... ...Security† - Dorothy Denning and Frank Drake, From Chapter 2, Computers, Ethics and Social values by Johnson and Nissenbaum. 5. â€Å"Computer Security and computer crimes† From Chapter 7, Case Studies in Information and computer ethics by Richard Spinello 6. Hacker Crackdown - By Bruce Sterling http://www.lysator.liu.se/etexts/hacker/ 7. Computer Hacking and Ethics by Brian Harvey http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hackers.html 8. Hacking: Ethical Issues of the Internet Revolution http://blacksun.box.sk/tutorials.php/id/155 9. Cyber-terrorism http://www-cs.etsu-tn.edu/gotterbarn/stdntppr/ 10. â€Å"Frameworks of ethical analysis â€Å" From Chapter 2, Case Studies in information and computer ethics by Richard Spinello 11. Soren Kierkegaard http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard 12. Are hackers terrorists? http://zdnet.com.com/2102-11-528326.html