Thank you all for looking at my project. If further data comes in on the survey I may continue this or expand it in order to get a better sense of the public perception of hackers and how it may need to change. For Now? Adios!
-Sasha Gomery
Monday, December 3, 2012
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Anonymous
Anonymous is a unit of internet personae. In responding to the survey, one or two people stated themselves to know nothing about the group but many more, even those who polled as considering hackers as threatening and those who polled as knowing very little about hacking or it's culture polled as knowing of the group and provided statements that were by-and-large positive and supportive for the group. The irony comes from how those same people who condemned or were afraid of hackers support anonymous since anonymous is a hacktivist group, albeit one that crosses over into reality and becomes activists as well when it feels such measures are necessary.
On the internet, Anonymous' activities are largely grey hat in nature with some black hat hacktivism mixed in. The degree of black-hat versus grey-hat depends on how one views the entities that anonymous attacks. The recent crusade against child pornography websites by the group is rather unambiguously grey-hat in nature as they infiltrate the immoral sites without permission and take them down, releasing user lists to the authorities so that those responsible can be taken into custody. Many of their activities have however been more ambiguous and there is also the trouble of the nature of anonymous itself. As a group if people who are 'anonymous' it is nigh impossible to tell if something has in fact been done by them or not. Some major cyber crimes have been committed in the past that have had anonymous both confirming and denying responsibility for the action from different portions of the organization.
Put simply, Anonymous is a mystery wrapped inside of a riddle and coated in an enigma. Who they are can be narrowed down to a few out of the many at best, what they have and have not done is a matter of much debate with no real conclusion to be found. On the other hand, the survey has spoken clearly, anonymous is well known and is supported by the majority of respondents despite their ambiguity. We may never know if this faith is blind or well-placed.
On the internet, Anonymous' activities are largely grey hat in nature with some black hat hacktivism mixed in. The degree of black-hat versus grey-hat depends on how one views the entities that anonymous attacks. The recent crusade against child pornography websites by the group is rather unambiguously grey-hat in nature as they infiltrate the immoral sites without permission and take them down, releasing user lists to the authorities so that those responsible can be taken into custody. Many of their activities have however been more ambiguous and there is also the trouble of the nature of anonymous itself. As a group if people who are 'anonymous' it is nigh impossible to tell if something has in fact been done by them or not. Some major cyber crimes have been committed in the past that have had anonymous both confirming and denying responsibility for the action from different portions of the organization.
Put simply, Anonymous is a mystery wrapped inside of a riddle and coated in an enigma. Who they are can be narrowed down to a few out of the many at best, what they have and have not done is a matter of much debate with no real conclusion to be found. On the other hand, the survey has spoken clearly, anonymous is well known and is supported by the majority of respondents despite their ambiguity. We may never know if this faith is blind or well-placed.
Interlude: Hacker Hats
As I have mentioned them occasionally in my previous posts, I promised in my post about Hacktivists that I would do a quick explanation of the 'Hats' system for identifying hackers that I recently discovered in the course of my research on interpreting the data from my survey.
White Hat: A white hat hacker is an 'ethical hacker' one that attempts to break into a computer system in order to test it's security while under contract to do so. Often hired by companies or governments who need to make sure security for their data is sufficient.
Black Hat: The quintessential 'hacker' image in popular culture is that of the black hat hacker, someone who attempts to break into a computer system either to damage it or for their own personal gain, sometimes both.
Grey Hat: Grey hat hackers are the most enigmatic of hacker groups. They do their hacking without being initially contracted to do so but once in a system they offer to upgrade said system's security in exchange for a small fee. These hackers have good purpose but less ethical methodology, hence the term 'Grey Hat' being representative of their questionable morality.
Blue Hat: Blue hat hackers do not work trying to get inside of networks but rather work within a system while it is still in development trying to find and remove bugs that could allow that system to be more easily infiltrated upon completion.
With the exception of blue, the hats are largely to represent the moral spectrum of hacking, albeit in a rather loose manner of overall classification. White hats are unambiguously lawful, working for a predetermined payment while Grey hats are more mercenary, working without contract for good cause and requesting payment afterwards. Finally black hats work without contract and against good cause, attempting to create anarchy or do damage, morally incorrect activities.
White Hat: A white hat hacker is an 'ethical hacker' one that attempts to break into a computer system in order to test it's security while under contract to do so. Often hired by companies or governments who need to make sure security for their data is sufficient.
Black Hat: The quintessential 'hacker' image in popular culture is that of the black hat hacker, someone who attempts to break into a computer system either to damage it or for their own personal gain, sometimes both.
Grey Hat: Grey hat hackers are the most enigmatic of hacker groups. They do their hacking without being initially contracted to do so but once in a system they offer to upgrade said system's security in exchange for a small fee. These hackers have good purpose but less ethical methodology, hence the term 'Grey Hat' being representative of their questionable morality.
Blue Hat: Blue hat hackers do not work trying to get inside of networks but rather work within a system while it is still in development trying to find and remove bugs that could allow that system to be more easily infiltrated upon completion.
With the exception of blue, the hats are largely to represent the moral spectrum of hacking, albeit in a rather loose manner of overall classification. White hats are unambiguously lawful, working for a predetermined payment while Grey hats are more mercenary, working without contract for good cause and requesting payment afterwards. Finally black hats work without contract and against good cause, attempting to create anarchy or do damage, morally incorrect activities.
Hacktivists
In Leah Liverouw's book Alternative and Activist New Media, Hacktivisim is referred to as "a wide variety of projects that use computing technologies for political and cultural protest and resistance." Hacktivists are not in fact hackers of any particular hat and are defined by their objectives rather than there methods as a result. In the survey responses, I was surprised to find that very few people had heard of hacktivists at all, and while many respondents made fairly well educated guesses as to the meaning of the term there were very few that responded with certainty and with definitions that match. Hacktivists are a digital representation of the question for our times: 'What is the Difference between a Terrorist and a Freedom fighter?' A Cracker Hacktivist might destroy a company's website or seek to incriminate officials in some organization or another just like a terrorist might plant a bomb or assassinate a political target, whether that hacktivist is a hero or a criminal depends on whose side they're on and which side you ask. Adding to this are white-hat Hacktivists (Hacker hats will be discussed next post, I promise) who are akin to demonstrators on the streets. The entire theatre of our revolutions are playing out in cyberspace just as they do in the world and parallels could perhaps be drawn between more of the various factions in any given conflict to create a full digital picture of our battlegrounds, complete as they often are with civilians that may wind up in the line of fire, protesting mobs, twitchy police officers, the works.
Sorry, I think that metaphor/explanation may have gotten a little sidetracked. The point is, Hacktivists are either unknown or misunderstood by my survey respondents. As I said before, many have made claims to the effect that they do not know what hacktivists are but many more have made claims that correlate the word 'activist' and the positive connotations of activism that come with it to hacktivists, ignoring the fact that activists are not limited to activism for 'good causes'. In the end, Hacktivists are a mixed bag and the term needs more light shed on it so that the public can better understand who they are and what they do.
Sorry, I think that metaphor/explanation may have gotten a little sidetracked. The point is, Hacktivists are either unknown or misunderstood by my survey respondents. As I said before, many have made claims to the effect that they do not know what hacktivists are but many more have made claims that correlate the word 'activist' and the positive connotations of activism that come with it to hacktivists, ignoring the fact that activists are not limited to activism for 'good causes'. In the end, Hacktivists are a mixed bag and the term needs more light shed on it so that the public can better understand who they are and what they do.
Cyber Criminals
Cyber Criminals, (also known as Crackers) are the dark side of the hacking world and -unfortunately- the one most associated with the base term of a 'Hacker'. According to Robert Moore in his book Cybercrime: Investigating High Technology Computer Crime(2005), a Cracker is "a hacker who violates computer security with malicious intent or for personal gain." That definition makes a clear difference between an everyday hacker and a cracker already but it appears that it is a difference that is not clear to the public as almost half of the respondents considered them to be one and the same in terms of their threat level towards one's personal security. A term I cam across while searching for information on this topic was that of a 'Black Hat Hacker' that lead me to discover an array of descriptors for Hackers by colored hats based on what they do.
Crackers make people afraid because they can cause so many awful things to happen to someone. Identity theft is something that everyone hears about and the results of it happening to someon have been somewhat demonized in the media as they have run various stories from people who have been it's targets and had a highly unpleasant mess made of their lives. Considering how much more digital the world is becoming and how rapidly the changes are occurring fear of those with greater power in those new areas of cyberspace is a bit reminiscent of the fear many possessed of terrorists and terrorism after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the only difference being that instead of a terrorist blowing up a building or bombing a public area these new criminals can destroy computers' software, steal information, even take down whole networks from across the world while remaining almost undetectable.
Further placing Crackers as a stereotype for most hackers is current pop culture that portrays them as vicious and uncaring of the suffering or harm they may cause in the course of the activities. No matter how correct such portrayals may be, Crackers seem to be the most understood grouping of hackers based on the survey results and most people know that they should be worried about their computers being hacked by these people if anyone.
Crackers make people afraid because they can cause so many awful things to happen to someone. Identity theft is something that everyone hears about and the results of it happening to someon have been somewhat demonized in the media as they have run various stories from people who have been it's targets and had a highly unpleasant mess made of their lives. Considering how much more digital the world is becoming and how rapidly the changes are occurring fear of those with greater power in those new areas of cyberspace is a bit reminiscent of the fear many possessed of terrorists and terrorism after the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the only difference being that instead of a terrorist blowing up a building or bombing a public area these new criminals can destroy computers' software, steal information, even take down whole networks from across the world while remaining almost undetectable.
Further placing Crackers as a stereotype for most hackers is current pop culture that portrays them as vicious and uncaring of the suffering or harm they may cause in the course of the activities. No matter how correct such portrayals may be, Crackers seem to be the most understood grouping of hackers based on the survey results and most people know that they should be worried about their computers being hacked by these people if anyone.
Results Table
As of the present results the gender ratio is 13 female respondents to 8 Males with areas of education spread out over a number of fields in relatively equal proportions. It is likely due to the nature of the population being surveyed that over 80% of the respondents were between 18 and 22 years of age collectively display a high average level of internet usage barring one anomaly in the third respondent. The data as to threat perception of hackers as well as specific comments on that data will be covered in the next three posts, one for Crackers (Cyber Criminals), one for Hacktivists, one discussing the group 'Anonymous' and a final wrap-up video that will discuss the general term of Hackers.
Introduction
Welcome to my Analytical Research Project for Digital Democracy 2012 at Acadia University! (Hereafter referred to as 'my project' for simplicity's sake.) This blog is to chronicle the results of a survey I conducted of the students and teachers of my university in order to determine the perception of Hackers in the popular eye.
The blog will be focusing on dividing the general brand of 'Hacker' into more descriptive subgroups since a hacker can effectively be anyone who accesses protected digital information that they did not originally have a key to, be it files on a password protected computer or tampering with code that is not meant to be tampered with. The posts that follow this one will each outline one of the subcultures I perceive in the hacker community from my survey and then I will conclude the blog with a video summarizing the results of my survey and then explaining how I believe the public perception should or should not change with regards to Hackers.
Oh and there will be a bit about anonymous as they are presently the hacker group with the greatest spot in the public eye right now.
Have fun! My survey can be found here.
-Sasha Gomery
The blog will be focusing on dividing the general brand of 'Hacker' into more descriptive subgroups since a hacker can effectively be anyone who accesses protected digital information that they did not originally have a key to, be it files on a password protected computer or tampering with code that is not meant to be tampered with. The posts that follow this one will each outline one of the subcultures I perceive in the hacker community from my survey and then I will conclude the blog with a video summarizing the results of my survey and then explaining how I believe the public perception should or should not change with regards to Hackers.
Oh and there will be a bit about anonymous as they are presently the hacker group with the greatest spot in the public eye right now.
Have fun! My survey can be found here.
-Sasha Gomery
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)