On the first day if class this year we were introduced to not only information security but also the threats to the security of computers. Specifically we talked about Hackers and the three main classes- White hat, black hat and grey hat. But my question is what if there is another class of grey hat hackers? I am talking about a group of people who although may create a mess for other people to deal with an clean up but still are just doing stupid things that are just an inconvenience to people if nothing else.
One specific group of these hackers call themselves g00ns. I have fallen victim to one of their attacks on a popular lacrosse forum that rerouted all requests to the forum homepage to a Bob Marley fan site. Although I was frustrated and inconvenienced by what they did I also realized the comic value of what they did and moved on without giving what had happened a second thought. They did eventually restore the url so that the site could be located, so no harm no foul in my opinion.
There are petitions that want to bring legal actions against these mischievous little punks such as http://www.petitiononline.com/ccd0722/petition.html. It seems that they don't attack large organizations and for the most part they are just around to bother people and have what they consider fun. My question for everyone is what would you consider these hackers to be and why most people find them so offensive.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
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I think anytime such miscreants disrupt the normal operation of a website without intending to improve security, their actions are of a black-hat nature. I too have encountered a site with a similar redirect. Indeed it was a nuisance, but more than that it was potentially troublesome to the business represented. I was researching travel services, and the inability to view this company's website meant I was not going to consider purchasing their services. So for some sites, yes it is solely an issue of convenience; for many others, however, such attacks put financial stability at risk.
ReplyDeleteI think that they are black-hat hackers because what they are doing is without permission and destructive in nature, though at times comical. But it is not comical to the people running some of those sites because it is alot of work and it can be very frustrating.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if the they start at just hacking into forum sites where do they stop? It could lead to them moving on into hacking into fincancial institutions where people's money could be affected. So I believe it should all be treated the same, if they are hacking without permission it should be punished the same no matter what they are hacking into.
It's difficult to draw a definite line between different types of hacking. However, I think any type of hacking besides somebody hacking into a system to test the security WITH PERMISSION should be illegal and prosecuted to the fullest extent. Although Bush recently signed the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act, increasing the penalties for hacking and other types of cybercrime, the internet is still far from being a safe place. Activities like these cost our nation millions of dollars each year. As far as "Goons" go, I think that they should face the same consequences as black at hackers. They're inconveniencing users, causing companies to lose money, and generally disrupting the web. If I tried to access a site and saw that somebody had hacked into it, even as a joke, I would not be likely to use it again. If people can hack into something just for the fun of it, I wouldn't trusts it to be safe from hackers who are trying to cause significant damage.
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