Question

4. What motives do people have for hacking? Why has hacking become so popular in recent years? Do you regard it as a crime? Explain your position.

Answer 1

Hacking is the unauthorized access, modification, or use of an electronic device or someelement of a computer system.Hacking represents illegal trespassing and is punishable asa federal crime under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Hacking has increased significantly in popularity for several reasons.Perhaps the mostimportant is the increasing use of personal computers and the Internet and thecorresponding rise in the number and the skill level of the users.In other words, there aremore systems to break into, and there are more people capable of breaking in.

Most hackers are motivated by monetary rewards.Hackers have found many ways toprofit handsomely from their hacking activities.Others hackers seek to destroy data, tomake unauthorized copies of the data, or to damage the system in some way.

Some hackers are motivated by the challenge of breaking and entering a system and manydo so with no intent to do harm.They may feel that hacking is a "right" enjoyed bycomputer users in a "free information" society.Many of these benign hackers also arguethat hacking rarely does any harm to a computer system and is acceptable behavior.