How are we affected by the hackers and crackers?
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Hacking
or cracking affects everyone. However, the results could vary from
disastrous to perfectly harmless. These results depend on the intentions
of the attacker. The closest encounter I ever had with a hacker was
about half a year ago. I was at a friend’s place when her computer was
being hacked. It started with a simple greeting sent via ICQ.
The message was, “Hi! How are you? In the next ten seconds, your
nickname will be changed. All your confidential information will be
shown. Have a nice day!” True enough, within ten seconds, the
‘oracle’ came true. Initially my friend and I panicked. We were
waiting for the whole computer to crash. However, nothing happened. She
was really relieved because she had saved all her essays and projects in
the computer without any backups. The hacker was only playing a prank on
my friend. He or she had no
of causing serious damages.
In the recent news, an 18-year-old boy hacked into the customer credit card database of an e-commerce site and obtained Bill Gate’s credit card numbers. He did not use Bill Gate’s credit card for any illegal transactions. The boy hacked into the database just to show and prove to people that e-commerce websites are not safe. The two examples above show that there had been no disastrous effects on people because the intentions of the hackers were basically harmless. My friend’s hacker did it out of mischief (Alethea Lim, Teen hacker's family: He'll never do it again), whereas Bill Gate’s hacker did it to warn the public about security of e-commerce sites. When attacks of such nature occur, the victims would generally experience a sense of insecurity and a mild shock. |
