Hackers

Last year, two Cloverdale teenagers pleaded guilty to federal charges. What did they do that the FBI raided their homes and seized their computers? They hacked into Pentagon computer systems. These two teenagers, Makaveli and TooShort, were also suspected of breaking into computers at universities, government agencies and military bases. This example and many others show the increase of hackers and their crimes over the years. In another story that is similar to the story about Makaveli and Too Short, from a BBC News story, Hackers target Nasa and Pentagon, an international group of computer hackers broke into Pentagon computer systems and also said they had stolen key software from Nasa. The group consisted of eight Americans, five British and two Russians. They called themselves the "Masters of Downloading." They were considering selling the information to international terrorist groups or foreign governments. The number of hacker related crimes seems to be increasing year by year. Theft on the internet is costing companies billions, and the high-tech industry is struggling to stop it. According to Michael Meyer's Crimes of the "Net", last year roughly $2 billion worth of software was stolen over the internet last year. Also that year, the leader of an international piracy ring operating out of Spain, pleaded guilty to a brand of fraud destined to become commonplace. According to U.S. investigators, they stole 140,000 telephone credit-card numbers. Hackers used the numbers to make a total of $140 million worth of long-distance phone calls. Now, the question is who is really at loss here. The answer is simple. Companies like GTE, AT &T, Bell Atlantic and MCI. Because of these hackers, those companies lost a lot of money. What actions must be taken to stop these theives? According to the hackers, they call what they are doing sharing. Hackers are criminals that steal from others to better themselves. They are leeches, feeding off other peoples' personal items. People have to become aware of the risk they face with hackers. Software and phone cards isn't the end of the stealing hackers. Everything from computer parts to flowers and teddy bears are at risk to hackers. With the increasing technology, the abuse is almost endless. According to David Leibowitz at the Recording Industry Association of America, before long "you will be able to download an entire album in seconds." How scary is that? Imagine what could happen if that was possible. Hackers would be making mass amounts of that record and bootleg it for a higher price. That is insane. Once again, they are stealing someone's hard work and making a profit for themselves. Hackers have a different mindset than many people. They only look for what is better for them, not for others. How do you stop these people from hurting anyone else? Well, in Bruce Sterling's Part 3.1: Law and Order:Law and Disorder on the Elctronic Frontier, in 1990, "Operation Sundevil" sweeped the nation with computer seizures on May 8. "Operation Sundevil" was a crackdown on the traditional hackers of the digital underground. The credit card theft and telephone code abuse. The investigation took a full two years. According to police, the hackers were often referred to as "gangs, raketeers, corrupt organizations and organized crime figures." The boards that the police confiscated contained files for scanning telephone codes, credit card numbers, cracked passwords, anarchy files, porn files and so forth. They also contained many illegal documents. "Operation Sundevil" was the largest crackdown in history. Forty-two computer systems were seized. Twenty five of them were running boards. The team at the Phoenix Secret Service office had a list of at least three hundred boards that were deserving of search and seizure warrants. More secret operations like "Operation Sundevil" must occur to further prevent the destruction of the hackers. The government must put forth more money to form more secret operations to stop the attack. Hackers are dangerous and when they attack, they have intent to punish. My family fell victim to a hacker. My dad's cell phone was bugged. That means that his cell phone number was copied and the hacker uses the cell phone number to place calls. He made calls all over the United States. When my dad got his monthly bill, he was astonished when he saw the total for the month being over seven hundred dollars. He was dumbfounded, not knowing what was going on. It was obvious that it wasn't him or anyone in our family that did it. When he called the telephone company to report it, they didn't sound surprised. They said that people's cell phone's get cloned all of the time. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Things like this happen everyday. My dad was just driving home from work one day, talking to my mom on his cell phone and bam. Without him knowing some guy cloned his phone number and decided to call every state in the country. How nice of a person is that? Phone numbers aren't even the end of the list of what the hackers steal. Electronic items have been known to