Hackers and WikiLeaks

Since I start to travel on the Internet, I was taught that hackers are dangerous. They will steal personal information, attack the website, and access other accounts without permission. Hackers are the criminal on the Internet. However, do you know that those criminals can only represent part of the hackers?

The world ‘Hacker’ means a skillful person who can defeat a problem or challenge by using technical skills or computer programming. Those talented experts can be divided into three groups: ‘Black Hat‘, ‘Gray Hat‘, and ‘White Hat‘. ‘Black Hat‘ means the hackers involved in the cybercriminals. They choose to destroy the security of the computer for corporate espionage, theft, spreading malice, and even fraud. ‘White Hat‘ means the hackers ethically using their skill. They are usually hired by the company as the programmer or computer security expert. Helping explore cybersecurity vulnerabilities and fixed them. ‘Gray Hat‘ is the middle of the two hats mentioned before. They are freelancers. Seeking for the glitch inside any security system, exposing it to the public, and make a profit by fix the glitch for free. (Webroot)

Hackers are not evil at all. Some of them are even working on having benefits to the society like Julian Assange with his Wikileaks.

Assange is a hacker, an international trafficker for sorts. He build up WikiLeaks.org with his collegers, sharing information that being confidential to other institutions and government. (Khatchadourian, 2010)

I would say he belong to ‘Gray Hat’. Assange did not attack any server for malice and was also not hired by any company. He is traveling among the security system with his technical skill and sharing information that he found. He is in between ‘White Hat’ and ‘Black Hat’, helping the society to know more about their government. I will say there is no right or wrong to what Assange did, but it is cool!

Reference:

• Webroot, ‘What is a hacker?’ , Webroot, view 2 November 2020, < https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/glossary/what-is-a-hacker >.
• Khatchadourian R. (2010, 31 May), ‘What Does Julian Assange Want?’, The New Yorker, view 2 November 2020, < https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/06/07/no-secrets >.