Examine the Origin of Hacker Culture and Analyze Its Impact on the Cyber World
Hacker culture refers to the ideas, customs, and social behavior of individuals who enjoy intellectual challenge of creatively breaking the limitations of computer systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes. Individuals in the hacker culture possess two important traits which include the uncompromising desire to understand technology and having fun while at it. Early hackers describing why people loved this culture indicated that it was interesting, challenging, and it was a great way to learn about technology that many people did not have access to. In the rest of this document we explore the rise of the hacker culture and how it has impacted the cyber world over the years.
Before the 1960s there was no hacker culture. What existed then were practical jokers who had learnt how disconnect and misdirect telephone calls as well as whisper and whistle in the telephone calls. However with the building of the first mainframe computer in the ‘40s and the subsequent increased use of the mainframe computers in the ‘60s resulted in a growing desire to learn technology. The challenge then was that people and especially students could only access the mainframe computers for a very limited amount of time.
The very first computer hacks took place among students at MIT. The intention was neither malicious nor criminal, as it is currently understood. Instead, students at MIT only intended to have faster programming in order to accomplish tasks faster and thereby go around the time limitations for using the mainframe computers. These attempts by the students demonstrated to the world that they could create computer programs and that there was the capacity to create increasingly stronger and faster while at it.
As hacking started finding roots in the 1960s a second revolution was happening; this was the rise of the personal computer. The creation of the very first personal computers in the 1970s resulted in the rise of the number of available devices. A million personal computers were available in the United States in 1981, in 1983 the number rose to more than 10 million and by 1986 there were more than 30 million personal computers in the United States. Growth in the accessibility of computers coupled with a lot of excitement among teenagers who were the main beneficiaries of the rise in personal computers would then become the main genesis of the hacker subculture.
The hacker subculture first included teenagers who had access to personal computers. Many of the hackers who would be prosecuted in early 1990s were all minors who had accessed computers for the first time at the ages between 9 years and 14 years. These teenagers spent time learning programming languages, creating increasingly powerful software, and learning how the world of computing worked by simply tinkering with the computers systems. The teenagers formed associations and groups through the 1980s and in these groups discussions would be about how one learnt something new on the computer, how they managed to eavesdrop on conversations by hacking into communication networks, and other such discussions. Such discussions became the cool thing and then characterized and defined the hacker culture.
Towards the end of the 1980s hacker groups such as Legion of Doom (LOD) and Masters of Deceit (MOD) would arise. These groups included elite hackers who would share and train each other on hacking tricks, thereby leading to further developments in the hacking culture. Additionally, these groups even engaged in training forums and at the same time the members were involved in radio talk shows. The access to mass media is what popularized the hacker culture, after the rise of the personal computers.
The early ‘90s period saw a spike in the number of prosecutions of miners in hacking cases, even though the word “hacking” was rarely included in court filings. The government of the United States considered hacking as a threat to national security. In one of the cases the prosecution actually indicated that hacking had the potential of causing a nuclear war in the sense that the hackers could whisper into the communication lines. Again, the mass media mainly the radio was used in popularizing the ills of the hacker culture. The courts and judges took the cue and gave punitive sentences to the minors. The reception of the judgments and sentences included a lot of applause from the governments and conservatives while for the hacker culture sympathizers the judgments and rulings resulted in a lot of protests and resentment of the governments and corporations. This had a great impact on the future developments in hacking.
The idea of hacking for whistleblower purposes as well as for purposes of breaking secrecy of corporations and governments arose from the handling of hackers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Arguably, this can even be seen from the lenses of a form of resistance and retaliation by the hacker community. It also led to the rise of information security experts who again, would mainly include the transformed hackers.
The hacker culture today comprises of three categories of hackers who include white hat hackers, grey hat hackers, and the black hat hackers. A white hat is an ethical hacker who penetrates systems to reveal their weaknesses and prompt action from the entity owing the systems; there are information security experts and consultants. The grey hat hackers sometimes break the rules and standards to penetrate systems but not for malicious purposes such as ransom collection or stealing information. The malicious attackers are the black hats who are today the most commonly mentioned hackers in the world. Notably, all the categories of the hackers have the skills and expertise to complete the mission.
In concluding, the early developments of the hacking culture are the basis of the current hacker activity and behavior in the cyber world. It all began as fun play before it was turned serious through arrests and prosecutions. Whistleblowing and malicious hacking are products of how the hacker community was treated in the 1990s. Since the hackers of the 1980s and 1990s were young then, many of them are today’s information security consultants. They understand that with increasing computing power and complexity of the computing world the threats of hacking can only rise. The use of supercomputers in protection of the cyber world is therefore a trend that is informed by the discoveries of the early hacker community and the early hacker culture. Moving into the future, the same principles that established the hacker culture will be the same principles that will continue keeping information security experts on their toes.
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