So iv just read the Douglas Thomas reading...very interesting. got me thinking about all sorts of computer felonies. I read that the law has much difficulty dealing with hackers, and that hackers continually have new ways to break the law or work around it. I think that as long as technology continues to advance, that hackers will also continue to advance, as it seems they seem to generally have a pretty good knowledge of what is new in the computer world. It then got me thinking about worms and viruses, which from what i know infect peoples computers, look at the personal information and can use peoples phone lines without people knowing (i have another story to tell soon about hackers...haha i dont seem to have to much ,luck with them!!).So these people that create worms and viruses are technically hackers...correct? its just that they do it on a much larger scale than what happened to laurens sister, when a person from her school hacked into their bebo account. i found it all very interesting. Anywho, on our old computer (which we were very irresponsible with as we didnt have up to date virus protetion!!) we had viruses and mum discovered on our phone bill that there were calls made to the middle east. so they had been using our phoneline to contact people they knew. Mum complained to telecom which said that would erase the calls made to the middle east, and they put a toll bar on our phone, so no more calls to the middle east!!!!i just find it amazing how one virus can create so much damage. as it turned out, the same thing had happened to my dads work colleague, calls made to the middle east on his phone bill etc. I think this reinforces how impartant internet security is as i recall an incident last year where a bank emailed people asking them for their username and password for their internet banking....turns out that wasnt such a good idea to fill out as the form wasnt actually sent out by the bank...it was sent out by a hacker!
Sorry to blabber on, as i was going to bring this up in the tutorial tommorow but what do the poeple that run limewire come under...fraud..?
anywho, just thought id spin a few ideas. feel free to comment!!
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I'm going to dive in again (beats editing!)
Firstly, what you described re: calls to the Middle East sounds like cracking -- hacking for personal gain.
Also, you might remember in that little clip I screened this morning, the hacker "Crash Override" called up the security guard and basically bluffed his way through into getting the poor guy to tell him the code to the main computer? That's a technique called 'social engineering,' and its a big part of hacking and cracking. Why spend ages struggling with the code when you can just pick up the phone and someone will tell you what you want to know? Or, in the case of the bank example, via email. It's a big problem in that people - who normally wouldn't tell someone standing before them their pin number - will happily put it in an email without any sort of checking.
Or, as a friend of mine had on his email sig for many years: Stupid People: Helping the Hacker Since 1986.
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