I was eight years old when we got our first television set. It was 1953. I was a horse loving, cowgirl-tomboy child, trapped in Evanston, Illinois, until, at 18, I could catch up to the sun falling into the Pacific in the far west where I belonged. I loved my cowboy heroes as a kid. The good guys wore white hats! Roy Rogers, Hop-a-long Cassidy, The Cisco Kid, Gene Autry and, later, Clint Eastwood… all white hat heroes.
In the hacker world, you also have “White Hat” heroes. According to Techopedia, “White Hat Hackers use their skills to improve security by exposing system vulnerabilities before malicious hackers, known as Black Hat Hackers, can detect and exploit them.”
White Hat Hackers practice ethical hacking. They are certified and have rules they must obey:
1. You must have permission to probe the network and attempt to identify potential security risks.
2. You must respect the individual’s or company’s privacy.
3. You must close out your work, not leaving anything open for you or someone else to exploit at a later time.
4. You must let the software developer or hardware manufacturer know of any security vulnerabilities you locate in their software or hardware, if not already known by the company.
A Little History
Early teen hackers started off “phreaking,” i.e., breaking into telecommunications systems to make free calls. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniack made “blue boxes” that generated tones that helped hack into phone systems. That was in the dial-up days of computers. Kids needed phone access to institutional computers for which they had hacked passwords.
In the beginning, organizations that were hacked hardly even knew the kids were in their systems. The kids weren’t really malicious. It was the “get,” the challenge that drove them. The hackers were curious, brilliant and ego-driven.
By the 1980s young hackers were considered serious nuisances, having broken into all kinds of networks: the Pentagon, banks, corporations and educational institutions. Hacked companies and agencies began to go after the kids with authoritarian vengeance and young hackers began getting arrested. With the criminal prosecutions, hacking lost its innocence and turned in a darker, destructive direction. Rebellious hackers became real threats.
In 1998, Weld Pond, Mudge, Space Rogue, Brian Oblivion, Kingpin, Tan and Stefan Von Neumann formed a Boston hacking collective, sharing space and resources. Together, they figured out a way where, with 30-minutes’ work, they could shut down the World Wide Web for at least a couple of days. Instead of causing havoc, the group publicly announced its discovery to the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs. BBC news reported it as surreal and pivotal, “because the hacking group, which the committee’s chairman described as rock stars of the computer world, was giving advice rather than being accused of causing trouble.” Scruffy, computer-savvy youth were informing computer-illiterate power holders. (Watch their testimony: Hackersunited.com/tag/stefan-von-neumann.)
The young hackers founded a new company called LOpht. “Hackers were no longer considered just unruly kids. They were on their way to becoming the security gurus and the guardians they are regarded as today,” reported the Economist.
New Careers
White Hat Hackers are often thought of as self-taught individuals. While this is true in some cases, ethical hackers can find training from accredited academic programs, and the right credentials can significantly expand their earning potential. (starting at $115,000 per year) With a Bachelor of Science in Cyber Defense, students can move into White Hat hacking jobs, information security or network administration.
The sophistication of today’s Black Hat Hackers is off the charts. In the old days, Black Hat crooks stood out on a road and robbed one person at a time. Today, a kid can sit in his hut in the Caucuses and rob millions of people without leaving his seat.
Today, giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft test their security by running contests with prize money for computer geeks to come up with ways to break into their systems. The NSA sponsors summer camps to instill White Hat values into youthful cyber whizkids. A new generation of “Leets” (elites—super White Hat Hackers) is being cultivated.
Meanwhile, many of the teens of the eighties have become the White Hat guardians of today. They have formed companies or work as individual consultants “penetesting” (penetrating and cracking) security systems all over the world.
It has been really fun being in on the internet during what many call the “Wild West years.” The freedom is so heady. Just like those early TV cowboy days, the good guys and the bad guys battle it out on a platform that is still quite wild.
The white Stetson may have morphed into headphones, but a hero is a hero. Hi-Yo White Hat Hackers….and away!
Vamos a ver!
Paula LaBrot is a 30-year resident of Topanga, a futurist with a special interest in the uncharted waters of cyber space.
