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Most who think that hacking the computer term for breaching security systems and programs as being a moral issue must consider a few things about what hacking is about. Hacking is merely changing computer code from doing one thing, to doing another.

First, most people who have perceived hacking as some sort of pernicious activity akin to that of stealing a car, buying drugs, or some other heinous sin, don't understand that what goes through the computer to elicit the images, the text, the computer experience is nothing more than data.

In its simplest form, the data can be separated into three categories: network protocol, the actual data being stored, and an address or in layman's terms, a place to put it.

Second, there is the perception that hacking a system is violating some sort of rule, and while that is partially true, it is also a test of system integrity, security, and means by which to improve both. But, to explain that, let's correlate it to football. If some team runs the same play over and over and over, the defense at one time or another is going to figure out a way to stop it. So it is with hacking.

Those who say, Well, if hacking is so great for increasing security, why do hackers get sent to prison for hacking a particular system, don't quite understand the mindset of the hacker. Some hackers look to improve the security and the functionality of the hardware with the software that they have just cracked. Others, seeking financial gains from their exploits, have sought to hack things like credit card information or plant viruses and worms and other malicious software within to 'compensate' for their work. The latter portion is indeed, morally wrong, but the tendency from without of the computer hacker communities is to place ALL hackers a generalization or stereotype as doing things that are morally wrong. What do you think the people who are network specialists do exactly?

But also at issue is the following premise: In order to know something to learn a new thing in one's life, do you just sit back and read about it, or is learning about experience? If life can be lived without experience, then using a product yields no intelligence.
Finally, who would there be to assist novice computer users that, for one reason or another, can't seem to get their computers running smoothly and effortlessly, if not for hackers? Hackers test for, and find out the reasons that some programs fail.

I'd like to include an anecdote of a hacker:
Many years ago, there was a student that enrolled at Harvard. This student had only a few friends, but their passion was computers. When they weren't trying to hack into the new system at Harvard called that Altair 8800, this student and his friends would try to develop, and build computers. Eventually, this hacker formed a company with one of his friends, and bought the source code for an operating system which, considering the name he and his friend chose the operating system went from IBM-DOS, to MS-DOS, named for Microsoft Disk Operating System. This student hacker, who dropped out to pursue his and friend Paul's dream of a company that made instructions to run computers, goes by the name William H. Gates III, or colloquially Bill Gates.

Is it really morally objectionable to be a hacker? If it is, then people like Bill Gates wouldn't be making money selling products to more easily connect with computers. If it is not, then the free enterprise and ingenuity to make things better still exists.

Learn more about this author, Kenneth Boser II.
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