Ever tried searching for a free e-book on the internet? Ever downloaded a pirated copy of copyrighted material? Ever Google searched for a free download of commercial software that needs to be purchased? Is your Operation system a licensed version?
If you answered the above questions as true or yes, you are probably promoting violation of cyber laws. The reason I made such a strong statement is that we often tend to overlook cyber crimes.
Most of the times, the cyber laws illiterates think or assume that only hackers are the one who commits cyber crimes but they never know that they are too a part of the bad crowd. The reality is far away from the lie they are living in.
It is very much important to understand the term “Hacker”. They are often seen as a bad guy and categorized under the bad light. In my opinion, hackers are as good as a cyber expert, lawyer, writer/blogger, internet marketer, etc. and I think they are even bigger superheroes of this internet age where people rely on Google for everything and anything.
To be precise, I think we need hackers!
Let us understand the meaning of the word “Hacker”. A hacker is a person who uses computers to gain unauthorized access to data. But this is an incomplete definition. A hacker can also be a person who tries to find faults in a computer system.
There are various types of hackers. Shocked? Did you ever heard about this before? If yes, that’s good. If not, then please continue reading. The following is the classification of hackers in to various types:
1. Black hat hackers: This type of hacker has malicious intentions whenever he breaks into the system.
2. White hat hackers: Here comes the twist in the tale! The catch is… This type of hackers are the GOOD GUYS. The reason I call then as “Good” because they are the one who are responsible for making your system more secure by finding flaws in them. They are mostly categorized as “Ethical hackers”.
3. Grey hat hackers: Humans cannot always be nice; I hope you agree with this statement. Similarly, the hackers being a human sometimes tend to keep switching themselves between a black hat hacker and a white hat hacker. So, does their behavior depend upon their mood? Yes, mood do plays an important role here but it is mostly influenced by external factors like money, pressure, etc. and internal factors such as resentment, frustration, etc.
4. Elite hackers: Elite hacker is a term reserved for those with the most skill and experience and is considered a social status in the hacker community.
5. Script kiddie: I have another question for you, have you ever been a part of an online forum or community or group that provides scripts that help you break into the system? If yes, YOU are a HACKER; a script kiddie. This type of hackers uses automated tools or scripts in order to hack and do not have deep knowledge of the scripts they use.
It took me (the above) 450 words to prove that we all are cyber criminals at some point. So, now I start with the actual message I wanted to convey to you.
I want to ask you another question, why are hackers always considered as criminals or villains?
It was well said by Barnaby Jack, ”Sometimes you have to demonstrate a threat to spark a solution.”
The best example of this statement is here: On 7th November 2014, the time was roughly 7:09 PM IST on the clock when I saw a website named as “Vedic Vatica” (which is, of course, an Indian site) which was hacked. And I was the first one who informed the site owners about the same. It is suspected that hackers from Israel had hacked it. See the screenshot which I had taken when I witnessed it.
Thereafter the site owners were able to bring their site back into action after some hard work on improving the security of the site. Hence this proves the Jack’s quote to be true! Not to mention that hundreds of Facebook accounts are hacked each day.
I am sure we all are terrified and fascinated by the power that the hackers have; they scare us. But I think they might act as an immune system to the information age as well. I agree that they threaten us but they also find the faults which are present in our work and they urge us to fix it.
Just imagine how helpful hackers could be if they all help us to secure the system.
The next time you hack or crack a Wi-Fi password by watching a YouTube video or hack your score on Facebook while playing games just ask yourself one question: If I am cracking and breaking into the system, so am I a hacker too?
If hacking is illegal why there are millions of hacking footage uploaded over internet every day. Why are they all not removed? Why hacking forums continue to run without any government permissions? Does this urge the common masses to learn hacking? If yes, there will be a day when almost every internet user will be a hacker and all of them will bring down the whole inter-connected network to a halt.
Think about it, it’s worth thinking, isn’t it?
Conclusion:
I am not here to support hackers instead I am an optimist who wants to see hackers in a good light. I strongly condemn the problems created by them. But the message that I want to convey to you is that I want people to realize if you keep on seeing or expecting a person to be a bad guy, how will he ever get motivated to be a nice guy? Think over it! And the next time you think of doing any malicious stuff over internet don’t hesitate from tagging yourself as the hacker!It’s high time to hack your mind towards hacking and not hack the information system because it is not the Information that needs to be free, it’s us!
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