There are five common reasons for hacking. They are entertainment, political, revenge, boredom, recognition, for money, and for multiple reasons. My task was to rank each of these motivations on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 being the most reasonable, and 7 being the least reasonable.
Entertainment: 5. This is not a good reason for the simple fact that it causes harm for no reason. However, these types of hackers do expose security vulnerabilities by conducting these “for-fun” hacks, which I will give a few points for. More importantly, these types of hacks expose to the public how insecurely their data is handled by certain companies, which I believe can foster some transparency.
Political: 2. This type of hacking can be beneficial to the public in several ways, but it can also be detrimental. On one hand, this type of hacking can establish transparency by exposing corruption or wrongdoing by government or presidential officials. Hacktivists can take down websites organized by hate groups, terrorists or the government that seek to promote wrongdoing. At the same time, hacktivism can be used to spread harmful or violent propaganda. This would be a line to look for in determining whether or not hacktivism is harmful or helpful.
Revenge: 7. I think that the idea of gaining “revenge” on someone by sharing intimate photos of them is absolutely wrong. Nobody deserves to have their privacy destroyed, as images on the internet never truly go away. Once it is on there, a part of someone’s privacy is onthere for good. I rank this as completely unsensible and wrong, nobody deserves this.
Boredom: 7. Purposely causing harm to children or several other individuals is completely wrong. There are already enough cases of violence and wrongdoing in the world of cybercrime, adding to that pool out of a purse sense of boredom should not be tolerated.
Recognition: 7. To purposely interrupt someone’s user experience in order to gain hacker publicity is not a sensible reason for taking down a website. Sure, the hacker may believe that they are doing a good thing by shutting down a perceived “bad” candidate, but that also hurts democracy. Self-promotion of hacking is not likely to gain any traction either, as many users will just be annoyed at the advertisement of where the hack is coming from.
For money: 6. I do not think that any amount of money is worth hurting someone else to gain. By stealing data, credit card information, or ransoming computers, hackers can be rolling in money. But that comes at a price; the victim suffers immensely and is left feeling fearful and taken advantage of. The only reason I would give this a 6 is because if cybercriminals didn’t exist, cyber security wouldn’t exist! These types of individuals are what we are learning to work against everyday
For multiple reasons: 6. Hacking as a support to the ego is not a good reason to hack in my opinion. Psychosocial factors can influence this as well, with many hackers pursuing the role to “be cool” or possibly to threaten those around them. This may also be the result of bullying; young hackers now turn to the world of the internet and learn how to use tools to defend themselves against bullies.