By: Michael E. Martinez

Hackers are computer users that will sneak or break into a company's or a home users' computer without permission. These unauthorized users sometimes work alone or in groups. From what I've learned over the years, not all hacking is bad. There are three types of hackers known as white hat, grey hat and black hat hackers. White hat hackers are paid professionals that do research to find out where employees and customer's vulnerabilities are in a network or computer. Grey hats are hackers that will do this on their own without permission but they will alert users to their vulnerabilities. The ones that I feel we have to worry about are the black hat hackers. These are the hackers who get into websites and spread viruses just for the fun of it. It has been theorized that terrorist groups can use this method to compromise the Internet as a whole and deal a crippling blow to the world's economy. Hackers can secure their computers better than the rest of the computing community.

The government and businesses can learn from their hacking techniques, and by doing this they can protect their information with more security. I think only the black hat hackers commit serious crimes, they have been known to target government and industries, sometimes for financial gain, others for the thrill of it and bragging rights. Whether they realize it or not, government and industry have always learned from hackers. They learned where their security holes are in their computer systems. The federal government is using penetration testing, which is a search for security in holes. Penetration testing is a good way to show where systems need to be secures or where other protections have to be applied such as firewalls, updates and patches. The federal government is a huge target for hackers for either political or financial reasons.

A lot of agents in the FBI and Secret Service don't trust any type of hackers because they consider them to be criminals. Some governments and industry feel that grey hats pose no real threats to their computer securities because their not out to commit crimes. It has been said that a lot of hackers are software engineers or use software engineering tools built by experts. Some organizations have been known to invite white and grey hats to their conferences. Many government and businesses such as Microsoft pay to be sponsors at hacker conferences. Microsoft along with other companies believe that internet security professionals such as hackers are tough to find and hire. Many hackers are willing to help the government.

One of the most famous hackers is Kevin Mitnick known as Condor. Mitnick broke into dozens of computer systems, stole thousands of credit card numbers, and copied millions of dollars worth of computer software. There was no evidence; however that he used any of this data for profit. Mitnick was the first hacker to appear on an FBI most wanted poster. After two of being on the run, he was captured.

 Mitnick spent 49 months in jail waiting for a bail hearing. According to Mitnick's lawyers, it was the longest span of time without a bail hearing in U.S. history. He eventually served five years in prison. Once a black hat, he has turned white hat with his own security company. I don't know if the punishment fit the crime in this case as I don't think Mitnick did this for money but rather for glory. One of my favorite hackers is John Draper known as Cap'n Crunch. Draper used a plastic whistle that came in boxes of Captain Crunch cereal; the whistle produced a 2,600MHz tone which was the same tone used to gain access to the telephone company's long distance switching equipment. By doing this, Draper was able to make free long distance phone calls. The irony in this is while serving time for his crime, Draper created EasyWriter, the first word processor for the Apple II Computers. Even though this wasn't directly a case of computer hacking, it still cheated the telephone companies out of money.

 Now a days, these switchboard systems are all computerized eliminating the tone to access the switchboards. I guess it's true that if you do the crime, you do the time. I like to think that big business has learned something from all these hackers.