"LEGAL" Hacking . . . really

[MSR5]

     many have stated that this is the golden age of hacking; however, the true nature of hacking has only started to surface.  As our world continues to become hopelessly interconnected in ways we never suspected or dreams, network security continues to worsen.  The internet is increasing at a faster rate than security, meaning that like wise the number of exploitable problems in the network is increasing faster than secure networks.  I foresee that in the close future just about everything will be tied into a network.  If that level of interconnected technology is reached, then hacking likewise will start to have a bigger effect on not just one network, but all IT technology in a country.  It is already possible to shut of power grids in the US through hacking, in the future it may be possible to shut off everything worthwhile through hacking.
      When the US government has already seen this possibility and is in the process of employing hundreds of IT professionals.  China and Russia has started to wage cybernetic warfare against their enemies.  This is how hacking will be legalized eventually, working for one's home country as a government hacker will no doubt be a highly payed job in the future.  This legal hacking will no doubt be a thing to watch for.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well over here there are alerady policemen with full of hacking knowledge to delete child porn websites in the entire world. Technically, hacking is not illegal, since TI-82 and 85 ASM programming was made possible by hacking and programming such language is technically hacking, since people are not supposed to reach such functionality on these calculators. There are also websites made purposely to test your hacking knowledge and usually people use them to improve their own site security. Some hacking, such as accessing someone's credit card or other personal information, is illegal, though. Same for cracking, which is different than hacking. Technically if someone hacked Omnimaga, I wouldn't be able to do anything since I might not even notice, being computer illiterate to a certain extent. He would simply access parts of the site he's not supposed to but not cause any damage. Causing damage or changing stuff would be cracking, which is illegal.

I don't think hacking other people websites will be made legal, though, except for the police and to a lesser extent, government. Invasion of privacy/identity theft will always be illegal for regular citizens such as me, you and the other users of these forums.

Let's not discuss about ways to hack, though, nor how to fix security issues, since that would be against the forum rules (and the hosting service) and provide people with bad intentions with information they shouldn't be able to get so easily, especially since people with bad intentions might be currently browsing this site at any moment anyway.

[Eeems]

Invasion of privacy/identity theft will always be illegal for regular citizens such as me, you and the other users of these forums.

but not for non regular citizens?! 0.o

[DJ Omnimaga]

well what I meant is people in general. People that could use hacking in malicious ways such as deleting this site or getting my credit card number to use it

[nitacku]

I'm kinda thinking about getting a job in that area.
Information Security is a growing industry, and there is much to be done, and always will be as long as technology progresses.

[DJ Omnimaga]

I would love to see some hackers be hired in most website CMS/forum system/designing company to help making these softwares more secure. There are security holes in softwares that are discovered only about 3 years after the software came out (like IPB 1.3.1)

[trevmeister66]

"Hacking" and "Cracking" are similar but different. Hacking is breaking in somewhere for informational or testing purpose, like to test the security of a website or whatever. Cracking is breaking in somewhere with the intent to cause destruction. Hacking has gotten a bad rep because non-computer people call anything bad dealing with internet security break ins "hacking".

The government, and businesses in general, are already hiring Hackers, the people who know how to all that, in hopes to prevent a Cracker from breaking in...they just don't call it by it's real name. I think my college calls it "System Safety Management" or something. It's a couple of classes available in my degree that I can take.

[TheStorm]

Your All wrong the term 'to Hack' was origonally used as a synonym to the words 'to Program' so Hacker==Programmer, if you use the most literal meaning of the words. Thus hacking is already leagal. 

[DJ Omnimaga]

aah ok, because I read at many places that hacking involved breaking into a site/network/server security to access stuff you aren't supposed to be able to access by normal usage of the software, but without changing/altering anything at all. Would it mean that simply accessing someone's admin CP through a security hole without causing any damage on a site be called "cracking"? Does it means ROM Hacking isn't always "hacking" in all cases too? I know some ROMs just require a map editor/text modifier to alter ROM data for some SNES, NES and GB games (such as Lunar Magic)

[kalan_vod]

My cat hacks all the time...

But really, I think it sucks to be at the end of the stick but groups like anonymous is a nice thing IMO...Voice of the people I say.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well... anonymous actually raid random people sites sometimes too, not just sites like Scientology, so it isn't really a good thing. Should someone post a link to Omnimaga on 4chan/b/ or 711chan/i/ I wouldn,t be surprised if something happened on the site if they happened to find something funny about us