Title of the Essay, Author, and Date

G ood Reasons for Hiring a Hacker by Owen King (February 23, 2015)

Title of the Reflection

S hould you hire a Hacker?

First Impression

A n essay about the advantages of hiring a hacker

Quote

"The business of hacking is no longer just the domain of intelligence agencies, international criminal gangs, shadowy political operatives and disgruntled ‘hacktivists’ taking aim at big targets. Rather, it is an increasingly personal enterprise.” 

Hacker is a term used by some to mean "a clever programmer" and by others, especially those in popular media, to mean "someone who tries to break into computer systems.” Hackers aren’t inherently bad — the word “hacker” doesn’t mean “criminal” or “bad guy.”  Geeks and tech writers often refer to “black hat,” “white hat,” and “gray hat” hackers. These terms define different groups of hackers based on their behavior.

Black hats fit the widely-held stereotype that hackers are criminals performing illegal activities for personal gain and attacking others. They’re the computer criminals. White-hat hackers are the opposite of the black-hat hackers. A gray-hat hacker falls somewhere between a black hat and a white hat. The obvious reasons for hiring reformed black hat hackers to provide advice on network security is that, when it comes to the network intrusion game, they have real world experience in playing offense. The typical IT pro only knows about playing defense. The most obvious advantage to hiring former hackers is that they have real world hacking experience. There are some things that you just can’t learn from a book. 

One of the famous hacker groups are the, Anonymous uses hacking (and arguably cracking) techniques to register political protest in campaigns known as “#ops.” Kevin David Mitnick is one of the most notorious hackers of the 20th century. These days, Mitnick is a highly paid and successful security consultant to some of the world’s largest companies including FedEx, Toshiba, CBS, IBM and Lockheed Martin. 

No computer system is ever completely secure, and your company can spend an astronomical amount of money pursuing total security.  Hackers have the skills to counter attack the others hacker's because they have knowledge and skills for breaking the security. And beside hackers have a lot of experience in computer security issues.

5 things I've learned

 1. Digital technology are found everywhere.

 2. Disruptive vs. constructive hacking

 3.  Hack is circumstantially motivated, not motivated by the to-be-hacked technology      itself.

 4. Technologically motivated hacking.

 5. Event Data Recorder (EDR) collects a variety of data about the operation of a car. Much of the data collected—things like speed, acceleration, steering wheel angle, braking, whether the driver was wearing a seat belt

5 Integrative Questions

 1.  Why people love technology?

 2. Why we should not overlook the potential need for constructive hacking?

  3. What was it that we can think, hack is circumstantially motivated, not motivated by the  to-be-hacked technology itself?

 4.  Where can we put a device that restricts what software you can install on it?

 5.  What if we fail to distinguish technologically motivated hacking from hacking that is circumstantially motivated?