The HACKER

TECHNOLOGY: Hacker (computer security) someone who accesses a computer system by circumventing its security system. Hacker (hobbyist) who makes innovative customizations or combinations of retail electronic and computer equipment. Hacker (programmer subculture) who combines excellence, playfulness, cleverness and exploration in performed activities.

ENTERTAINEMENT: Hacker (video game) 1985 computer game by Activision Hacker (card game) 1992 Steve Jackson Games release Hackers (anthology)a 1996 anthology of short stories edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois Hackers (film) 1995 MGM film starring Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller

NameHandleNationalityConvictionsDatePenalty Chad Davis Mindphasr United States Intentionally hacking a protected computer and willfully causing damage. March 1, 2000 Six months in prison, US$8,054 in restitution and three years probation James Jeffery Pablo Escobar United Kingdom Hacked into the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, stole patient information and defaced the webpage. April 13, months imprisonm ent

Hacking has been around for more than a century. In the 1870s, several teenagers were flung off the country's brand new phone system by enraged authorities. Here's a peek at how busy hackers have been in the past 35 years.  Early 1960sUniversity facilities with huge mainframe computers, like MIT's artificial intelligence lab, become staging grounds for hackers. At first, "hacker" was a positive term for a person with a mastery of computers who could push programs beyond what they were designed to do.

 Early 1970s John Draper makes a long-distance call for free by blowing a precise tone into a telephone that tells the phone system to open a line. Draper discovered the whistle as a give-away in a box of children's cereal. Draper, who later earns the handle "Captain Crunch," is arrested repeatedly for phone tampering throughout the 1970s.Yippie social movement starts YIPL/TAP (Youth International Party Line/Technical Assistance Program) magazine to help phone hackers (called "phreaks") make free long-distance calls. Two members of California's Homebrew Computer Club begin making "blue boxes," devices used to hack into the phone system. The members, who adopt handles "Berkeley Blue" (Steve Jobs) and "Oak Toebark" (Steve Wozniak), later go on to found Apple Computer.Apple Computer

 Early 1980s Author William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace“ in a science fiction novel called Neuromancer. In one of the first arrests of hackers, the FBI busts the Milwaukee-based 414s (named after the local area code) after members are accused of 60 computer break-ins ranging from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to Los Alamos National Laboratory. Comprehensive Crime Control Act gives Secret Service jurisdiction over credit card and computer fraud. Two hacker groups form, the Legion of Doomin the United States and the Chaos Computer Club in Germany.2600: The Hacker Quarterly is founded to share tips on phone and computer hacking.

There are really many reasons why a hacker might attempt to gain access to a small business website, however, most times there is something to be gained by hacking them in the form of cold, hard, cash. While there are some hackers that do it just to say “Look at how l33t I am”, most are doing it as a way to make money. If you’re thinking, “I just have a small website with some information about my business – why would a hacker have any interest in my site?” The answer is actually pretty simple: Hackers have interest in any site that can be accessed online. Even low-traffic, or micro-niche sites are a target. While dynamic sites and popular content management systems are at a higher risk than static sites, there are many variables server-side that could put you at risk.

1. Script-kiddies: - These guys(or girls) are the young padawans of the hacker world. They attempt to hack sites for fun, to deface the site or most likely just to tell their hacker-buddies “look what I did”. These types of attacks are “usually” something you can relatively easily recover from, providing you have a fresh backup of your site available. 2. Affiliate scammers: – These are mid-level hackers. Generally these people have bots that scan for exploitable areas on websites and will attempt to edit your current site’s pages in order to place spammy links on your site to bad-neighborhoods on the web. The links are sometimes hidden and may be hard to spot, but digging through logs can help to find which files were accessed at the time of the breach and allow you to restore them with a backup.

3. Website Hijackers : – These hackers are the worst and probably what all hackers dream about becoming one day. Website hijackers are in it to win it. Most times they have the most sophisticated bots at their disposal to scan for ways to breach your website or server; once they gain access to your site, they can do all kinds of things to change your website into a spam/porn/gambling/bad-neighborhood type of site. Sometimes even, they use a technology called cloaking, where it will load the site normally when you look at it, but will generate a completely different view for search engines etc. This type of an attack can be something irreversible. Even if you are able to restore the database and pages back to their original, unedited state, the repercussions associated with being black listed by search engines can make it pointless to try. 4. Information thieves: – This type of hack is generally used to gain information about the web server and if possible the usernames and passwords associated with the website. Once a hacker has this information at their disposal, they can really do anything they want, including all of the above. There are also instances where they have been able to use this data to gain access to billing, merchant accounts and third party systems. The severity of this type of an attack can no only harm your business, but if you are housing any sensitive information in your database, it could also mean a sizable lawsuit for damages to others.