ICT (Information Communication Technology)

 

ICT (Information Communication Technology)

 

Introduction

Information became one of the most important resources as a result of the advent of computers, connections, the Web, and our current digital age. Information contributes to different kinds of identity and understanding, which allows for focused advertising These valuable assets present new criminal possibilities and motivations and they must be safeguarded. Ethics is a collection of ethical rules that regulate an person's or an organization's behavior. The applicability of moral ideas to the usage of electronics and the Web is known as computer ethics. The paper describes activities on ethical questions in using ICT with a specific connection to our social and professional lives.

Some of the significant challenges with implementing ICT are confidentiality, ownership, accountability, professionalism, societal consequences, and principles. No doubt emerging developments, such as industry growth, moon learning, e-learning, and advanced diagnoses in different areas, are advantageous. One of the critical issues that is mentioned in a report in BBC is ethical hacking which is the primary focus of this article. (BBC) Hacking refers to gaining unauthorized access to data in a system or computer through some unfair means. Hacking or privacy breaching is an illegal phenomenon with many adverse impacts on society. Hacking has a huge impact on system and network design. This is particularly true in the situation of organizational processes and connections that deal with delicate or personal data on a daily level Organizations should devise strategies and implement policies to safeguard their ICT resources. Companies could utilize ethical hacking in this endeavor. Ethical hacking is a type of hacking that businesses can use for security objectives. Ethical hacking has the potential to improve an institution's ability to defend its IT and data resources

Main points

Technological advancement, like so many other technologies, has both positive and negative consequences. In the area of cybertechnology, hacking is regarded as a harmful conduct. Hacking refers to unauthorized access to data in a computer or system. In this world of technology and digitalization, where every system is getting computer-based, hacking threats increase at an alarming speed. Hacking includes breaching someone's privacy by stealing username and password, stealing money or making purchases from debit and credit cards from others' bank accounts, and several other crimes like that. One of the primary and apparent arguments supporting the claim is the rapid increase in breaching someone's privacy of their social media accounts and stealing personal information. If school students are taught hacking, they may quickly get addicted to this evil. (BBC)

“Ethical hacking” is among the ethical difficulties that arise when it comes to cybercrime. “Ethical hackers,” sometimes known as “white hat hackers,” attempt to penetrate electronic processes in order to alert the material holder so that they can correct the issue Because some security specialists make a life doing this, there is no ethical concern because the target organization is informed of and pays for the operation.

Dark web

The dark web, that is a counterpart to the internet/worldwide online platform as people understand it, is among the most troublesome elements of hacking community. The dark web, which employs a large number of hidden sites and hidden entry methods is stacked on top of and sits beside the regular web (Thomas, 2002). The dark web is a worldwide network of laptops customers, specialists, material creators and entire enterprises. While the dark web uses the very same techniques as the regular web it has its own system of rules and depends mainly on peer-to-peer administration since top-down management mechanisms would leave it open to monitoring and invasion. (Thomas, 2002). The dark web is an illegal connection to its detractors; to many hackers and activists, it is a self-organized network that serves as a contrast to a web controlled by corporate companies and governments that are either neoliberalism, autocratic, or both.

·         Freelance hackers

Certain safety aficionados, on the other hand, work as freelance white hat hacker. These individuals infiltrate programs and sites, publishing the issues as well as, on occasion, the remedies to the problems. These white hat hackers occasionally deliver this knowledge to the inventor discreetly, and other times they make the hack public. Despite of what their objectives are, software businesses and web designers are frequently irritated when users break into their systems. The intentions of hackers can sometimes influence how hacking is considered ethically. When hackers attack anything for monetary or other benefit at the expense of the victim device, they are frequently regarded as criminals.

A dissident value

Open-source hacking seldom, if ever, causes legal problems and is not a social concern in the sense that people characterized it in the chapter's opening. Since open-source hacking is primarily focused with code sharing and collaboration, there is nothing that seems to be socially harmful at first glance. Some hackers make use of technologies and methods designed for clandestine hacking, or they might utilize clandestine tools as component of a bigger operation that isn't meant to break the rules This could become a hazy subject since deciding whether hacking equipment and tactics are open or hidden is a point of contention.

·         Hacktivism

Hacktivism is precisely what it seems such as: hacking combined with activism, involving the use of computer technology to continue a political or cultural purpose. Hacktivism is also getting common these days as reported by BBC news. (Tidy) A loss of service assault is among the most popular methods of hacktivism. This attack entails providing a high volume of traffic to a specific website until it hits its maximum capacity and crashes. DoS assaults have gradually become more dispersed, with traffic coming from hundreds and thousands of sites all over the globe. This renders tracing the source of assaults much more difficult. DoS assaults are against the law in the United States, although they are difficult to prosecute.

 

Furthermore, there are many other cybercrimes primarily reported in the newspapers. These crimes include spam emails, electronic money laundering, denial of software attacks, ATM frauds, etc. All these mentioned crimes are on the increase day by day, and many cases are being reported. When hacking gets common in society, it makes everyone curious about the phenomenon and try to experience it. It no denies that children's minds are so sensitive and can easily be molded as we desire. Teaching activities like hacking may distract their minds making them liable to get involved in it. At the initial stages, they may not use it to commit some severe or organized crimes. They may only do it for some recreational purpose stealing their friends' data or information, getting them surprised, but it may pave the way for them to commit more severe crimes in the coming days when they will be thoroughly expert in doing so. This knowledge may prove highly disastrous for the young mind as they are more inclined to evil rather than doing good. The inculcation of moral and ethical values in them is the real need of the hour, and every school must focus on instead of teaching them the ways of hacking, which may spoil their character. School life is highly significant in shaping students' characters, making them valuable individuals for their society. He must be taught the lives of the greats in every field of life so that they may get inspiration from the greats in history and make them their role models to follow in life (Dunbar-Hester, 2020). 

Support

In terms of the benefits of hacking, others sound plausible and demonstrate some of the benefits of studying in this fast-evolving and competitive environment. The hackers argue that their perspective is shown by concrete arguments. They believe that for some purposes, hacking is beneficial. Hacking experience allows someone to retrieve details or data lost if they lose their password or username. It is helpful if a device user needs to do penetration tests for data and network stability. In addition, the supporters claim that hacking lets us take safeguards against security violations, as mentioned above. Likewise, you can save your computer system from hacking and malicious hackers and software which violates your safety (Suiter, 2013). Although these points sound plausible to justify hacking, they are not as trustworthy and persuasive as the reasons that hacking is not to be seen in classrooms. These points are, though, not as compelling as those used to justify this study. Today's society is a world of competence and technical skills in which the required and relevant information and experience are provided greater weighting than needless teachings in the schools.

Critique

Hacking is the process of detecting and exposing flaws in computer systems and/or networks. Having committed a crime using technology and communication technology infrastructures is known as cybercrime. Ethical hacking is concerned with enhancing the integrity of computer programs and/or connections. Hackers are considered as serious criminals as they commit a lot of crimes. A prevalent crime committed by hackers is stealing money from people's bank accounts. They get access to account holders' personal information like their user names and passwords of their bank accounts and steal all the money within no time (Burkart & McCourt, 2019). The most reported crimes in this regard are stealing money from debit and credit cards. According to several reports, more than 8.5 million credit cards were hacked in 2020 in the U.S. These cards were hacked easily. Then hackers made purchases and massive transactions without the knowledge of the actual cardholders. If schools teach such things to students, it will harm the young minds, and they will most likely be addicted to such crimes. Schools and other educational institutions' purpose is to impart education and inculcate moral values in the students rather than teaching them such illegal and unethical activities. Students face many distractions, such as unnecessary use of social media, mobile games, apps, etc. The over-usage of such things is affecting their studies and cognitive skills. If they are taught hacking, it will be like adding more fuel to the fire, getting the students away from their prime objectives of education. They get over-excited and involved in these activities out of greed or adventure (Cornell, 2019).

According to recent risk-based results, the number of documents exposed significantly rose in 2020 up to 36 billion. From January to September, 2 935 it was officially announced that with a 8.3 billion documents were hacked. This year there have been a host of notable privacy violations. The Twitter stories agreement, however, was most likely the headlines carried by many prominent celebrities. Three teens were able to enter public accounts quickly by persuading the social network firm staff that they were peers who wanted access to the customer support site. Though it sounds easy, it is more common and successful social engineering than many people know. (BBC)

This disturbing growth and complexity in social engineering tell us that training and building a culture of cyber protection are just as critical as every other type of IT hygienic. Today businesses ought to inspire workers to accept that they are guardians of knowledge for companies and play an enormous role in secure and sound management. Multi-factor authentication can secure crucial systems and accounts which access them. To ensure critical networks and records, the Zero Trust initiative would be a far more significant factor. The scale and complexity of these attacks remind us that deterrence just constitutes half the battle.

 

Sian Weibo encountered a similar problem of violation of privacy. It broke the news in March 2020 that more than 538 million Weibo social network users might sell personal information online. In the middle of 2019, a hacker reported to have hacked Weibo and acquired a database alleging to include 538 million users' data and sold the $250 in info on the dark web. The database was not especially useful concerning "have potential" as it did not include payment details passwords. However, the documents included PIIs for 172 million users, such as actual names, user names, gender, place, and phone numbers. The information that is disclosed may result in theft, scam, and other forms of impersonation.

Conclusion

To conclude the whole discussion, it may be inferred that privacy breach is one of the significant issues resulting from ICT in almost every walk of life in this rapidly growing and competitive world. It has significantly contributed to a number of social and professional challenges faced by individuals and organizations. Government must devise and implement strict policies to address this issue. It must be made sure that hacking shouldn't be taught anywhere as it comes out with several adverse effects caused by it. Educational institution must play their part by raising awareness among the youngsters about this grave issue. Every school must teach subjects that are necessary and relevant to students' lives, characters, and careers. Youngsters must be taught how to become useful and valuable members of society by adding value to their fellow-beings. Particular curriculum and training programs should be devised to teach moral and ethical values to the students. The teaching of things like hacking wastes their precious time and energy. If they do so, they may bring distractions to their minds affecting their cognitive growth as well. Cybercrime departments must be made more active to counter this issue particularly faced by corporate sector that is greatly affected by the adverse effects of privacy breaching resulting in the loss of their precious data and information. In short, although students may get some advantages by learning to hack, they must not go for it as its disadvantages outweigh their advantages.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

 

“Hacking Culture.” Hacker Culture, by Douglas Thomas, NED - New edition ed., University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis; London, 2002, pp. 5–46. 

 

Hacking 230.” The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet, by Jeff Kosseff, Cornell University Press, Ithaca; London, 2019, pp. 190–206. JSTOR,

 

“Hacking and Risk to Systems.” Why Hackers Win: Power and Disruption in the Network Society, by Patrick Burkart and Tom McCourt, 1st ed., University of California Press, Oakland, California, 2019, pp. 28–57. 

 

“History, Heresy, Hacking.” Hacking Diversity: The Politics of Inclusion in Open Technology Cultures, by Christina Dunbar-Hester, Princeton University Press, PRINCETON; OXFORD, 2020, pp. 32–48

 

Suiter, Tad. “Why ‘Hacking’?” Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities, edited by Daniel J. Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 2013, pp. 6–10.

 

BBC. "Cyber-attack hackers threaten to share US police informant data." BBC news (2021).

 

 

 

 

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