Hackers left, right and centre, we should be careful of all the hackers the news keeps on reporting. Let's not beat around the bush about this one, all the hackers the BBC are incorrectly reporting. This is plain old fashioned scare mongering. Hacker, it sounds a lot more intimating than thief or website defacer.
Today a story came to my attention thanks to my American friend, hackers uploaded several pornographic videos. Let me break this story down to what it is. Someone gained access to Sesame Street's YouTube channel and uploaded pornographic videos. First this is a real dick move to do that to a children's channel, secondly this is not hacking.
Whoever done this GAINED ACCESS, they guessed/knew the password and logged into their account. Please tell me where the hacking is in that, otherwise I am "Hacking" whenever I log into a customer's account.
This sums up what hacking is very nicely thanks to Wikipedia.
A hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks.
Note the keywords breaks and into computers and computer networks, the point I am making is getting access to a single user is not hacking. Getting access to all users in a database or mass changes to a service would be a better time to use the word hacker but even then that is not completely true.
The term hacker has changed over the years. A hacker at its very core is someone who changes a system or computer for a challenge. I regard people who create jail breaking software or mods for your favourite games "Hackers".
When I was younger I was sucked into this subculture of "Hackers", however the true hackers the ones who honestly understand the flow of data and how to manipulate information are rarely found there. The people you are most likely to meet are infatuated with SQL Injection, which is just data theft in the end of the day. You simply exploit a security hole. So what is it called when you get access past security systems? That is Cracking. That is because you literally crack open the security, this could be getting into someone's PC to getting information from a salted password.
The point I am making is hacking is a term that is becoming too generalised. The problem with this scare mongering is what is the level difference between two hackers? One could have guessed a YouTube password whereas the other redirected the banks EDI system to change the account numbers and sort codes during the transfer of data and logged out security systems. The media would call both of them Hackers, yet one is clearly hacking whereas the other is just some lucky bored teenagers.
This is normally something that does not really annoy me but the fact guessing someone's password makes you a hacker simply discredits the whole term. How would you like it if everyone with an online blog is now a "reporter"? It makes sense to use that term but if you know anything about the world of media then you would find the thought repulsive.
Maybe the media should stop scare mongering every single person that they can when it comes to technology and focus on helping people understand what is happening. For example with this YouTube issue why not explain that it was just their account that was compromised, and then get an expert to explain why good passwords are so very important.
People need to start thinking about the after effects and stop trying to spin a story.
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