Essay --

Hacking â€Å"I hacked your Facebook!† seems to me to be almost a common statement among people recently, but is it really hacking? No. Although someone could use a â€Å"brute force† program to mathematically get someone’s password it is not likely, and hardly worthwhile. Hacking can be extremely intimidating to someone who doesn’t completely understand what it is, or how it’s done. There are thousands of hackers in the world that make a living off of their skill and knowledge, not by stealing credit card information from old people who bought something online, or by taking social security numbers and selling them on a black market. These things do happen, and are possible, but are not as likely as the media would have you believe. The majority of professional hackers are referred to as â€Å"white hat† hackers. The term white hat comes from old movies when the good guy would wear a white hat, and the bad guy would wear a black hat. The first real hack happened before there were big security systems, and even before cell phones. Phreaking was the term given to the first official hackers, which dealt with telecommunication, and in this case, rotary style phones. Phreaking is a crime and is considered â€Å"toll fraud.† In some situations people with the knowledge cold use it to avoid long distance call charges. When this style of home phone was still new a long distance could even be considered across the street in some areas, and long distance calls were charged by the minute. Rotary phones have a hook that completes a circuit to send a signal, by rapidly clicking the hook for a variable number of times at roughly 5 to 10 clicks per second, separated by intervals of about one second, the caller can dial numbers as if they were using the rotary... ... 50minutes of down time. This attack was impressive on both ends, it showed the hacker had great skill, but also showed the white hats working for Reddit do an amazing job.. There are several laws in most countries against hacking in this way, and the punishments are severe, but that doesn’t stop most hackers. So is â€Å"hacking† a Facebook really hacking? Not at all. Hacking a Facebook is, at best, kiddie scripting. A script kiddie is a non-expert who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others, usually with little understanding of the underlying concept. Even that is stretching it, if a friend leaves their Facebook open on your computer you did not hack it. If people took the time to read, understand, and not fanaticize about computer hacking it would be less intimidating, and easier to prevent on both large and small scales.