Cracking the Cult of Hackers
May 02, 2006
By Elizabeth Millard
May 1, 2006 7:00AM
"In the early days, it was all about ego. At that time, hackers just wanted to prove they were smart," said Stuart McClure, head of McAfee's Avert Labs. "Today, hacking is absolutely predominantly financial. Everything is driven by financial gain."
Sometimes referred to as "white hats," some hackers are not fiddling around with authentication and encryption to steal anything or even deface a Web site. Rather, the white hats are legitimately concerned about the security of either a single system or the Internet itself.
"Black hats," or "crackers," on the other hand, are the bad guys of the online world, the digital miscreants who steal data, perpetrate fraud, wreck Web sites, and generally make individuals and companies fearful and angry.
Source: http://www.newsfactor.com/
May 1, 2006 7:00AM
"In the early days, it was all about ego. At that time, hackers just wanted to prove they were smart," said Stuart McClure, head of McAfee's Avert Labs. "Today, hacking is absolutely predominantly financial. Everything is driven by financial gain."
Sometimes referred to as "white hats," some hackers are not fiddling around with authentication and encryption to steal anything or even deface a Web site. Rather, the white hats are legitimately concerned about the security of either a single system or the Internet itself.
"Black hats," or "crackers," on the other hand, are the bad guys of the online world, the digital miscreants who steal data, perpetrate fraud, wreck Web sites, and generally make individuals and companies fearful and angry.
Source: http://www.newsfactor.com/