Hackers

Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers

has been accompanied by a corresponding social problem involving the activities of so-called "computer hackers." "Hackers" are computer aficionados who "break in" to corporate and government computer systems using their home computer and a telephone modem. The prevalence of the problem has been dramatized by the media and enforcement agents, and evidenced by the rise of specialized private security firms to confront the "hackers." But despite this flurry of attention, little research has examined the social world of the "computer hacker." Our current knowledge in this regard derives from hackers who have been caught, from enforcement agents, and from computer security specialists. The everyday world and activities of the "computer hacker" remain largely unknown. This study examines the way actors in the "computer underground" (CU) organize to perform their acts. The computer underground, as it is called by those who participate in it, is composed of actors adhering to one of ...

Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades. Already a member? Login

of communication used by the computer underground. The focus here is on the day to day experience of persons whose activities have been 9 criminalized over the past several years. Hackers, and the "danger" that they present in our computer dependent society, have often received attention from the legal community and the media. Since 1980, every state and the federal government has criminalized "theft by browsing" of computerized information (Hollinger and Lanza-Kaduce, 1988, pp.101- 102). In the media, hackers have been portrayed as maladjusted losers, forming "high-tech street gangs" (Chicago Tribune, 1989) that are dangerous to society. My research will show that the computer underground ...

Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.

CITE THIS PAGE: