With the improving technology, each day the society tastes new and different experiences.
However with every new technological invention, greater threats start to occur. Some of these
threats possess more serious dangers to the society. Hacking is one of them. In this age of
technology, hackers have an impact which can not be underestimated. They could be much more
threatening than most technological concerns such as AI or digital footprints, for the people.
They can easily access and steal almost anything you have online. Moreover they can and do
manipulate dangerous technologies. Also because they can hardly be controlled and they are not
trustable.
In Kaspersky’s website (2018) black hat hackers are defined as “Criminals who break into
computer networks with malicious intent.” (paragraph 3). It is also said that “They may also
release malware that destroys files, holds computers hostage or steals passwords, credit card
numbers and other personal informations.” (paragraph 3). Meaning they can reach to anything
you have on the internet. In this era where almost every individual has most of ther assets online,
these black hat hackers indanger safety and fairness in the society by getting theirselves the
rights to steal these assets. Kaspersky Company (2018) also declared that “Attack bots room the
internet to find unprotected computers to infiltrate, often through phishing, malware attachments
or links to compromised websites.” (paragraph 11). Meaning they do not even need to steal your
information or assets manually. They create bots which can reach to your computer through
online sources. This hard-to-track bots can cause harmful crimes and indanger the safety of the
people.
It is clear that almost every individual of the society is surrended by technological devices
which can be hacked and get used againts them. This technologies could be really dangerous nad
it could even take lives if it is in the wrong hands. Vaibhav Jha (2019) once said “Generally
airbags open when a car gets hit on its bannet, but here with the amalgamation of codes we can
open it anytime.”(p.4). Jha (2019) also added that “Breaks could be applied anytime by the
attacker which might result in a tragedy.”(p.4). This shows that even the tech which is used
densly and daily could cause harm to the society. If the hacker wants it, he/she can even cause to
deaths in traffic. However this small example does not define what hackers truly capable of. In
his article Andreas Kaplan(2020) said that “If the external data used to train AI is biased, then
such bias will carry over or even be amplified in the AI system.”(p.44). So if hackers could get a
hold of an AI system, they could cause a global crisis between countries and humans with this
powerfull system. They could even start a war with this tech, causing to death of millions. These
examples are only the beginning. There are millions of technological devices which could be
hacked in the world and the number is increasing every day.
Even if some people describe the white hat hackers as “good ones” none of the hackers could
be totally trusted. In their article Kaspersky Company(2018) said that “Gray hat hackers may
become black hats by posting the point of exploitation on the internet or even exploiting the
vulnerability themselves.”(paragraph 39). Meaning these so-called gray hat hackers expect
money and respect after they hack a system in order to get revenge which makes them no
different than criminals. Furthermore the untrustable hackers make the online world nontrustable for the average user. While defining black hat hackers, Kaspersky Company(2018)
pointed that “Some black hat organizations even have call centers…pretending to work for a
well-known technology organization such as Microsoft. In this scam the hacker tries to
convince…victims to allow remote access to their computers.”(paragraph 10). In our era, there
are still billions of people who knows nothing about technology and could be easily scammed.
Even if you know proper using of the technology you can also get scammed if you are not
carefull. Therefore this scam chain creates a trust issue againts the internet envorinment.
In order to protect themselves humans create new defence mechanism everyday. However new
technology era threatss could be much more dangerous than predicted. Some of them are clear to
the eye but most of them stayts hidden which makes them more dangerous. One of the biggest
threts of new era is “hacking”. Hackers possess a greater danger than technological devices
because they are humanbeings. Though we might predict the future and the actions of
technology, we can never predict what a human is capable of. Furthermore we can never fully
control a human which makes us the humankind the real danger.
References:
-Jha Vaibhav. 2019. Towards the preventions of Car Hacking: A Threat to Automation Industry.
Indian Journal of Science and Technology.
-Kaplan, Andreas. 2020. Rulers of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities of artificial
intelligence. Business Horizons. Vol 63.
-Kaspersky Labs. 2018. Black hat, White hat and Gray hat hackers- Definitions and
Explanation. [https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/definitions/hacker-hat-types].
İlhan Melih Özbey
22102875