The Cyber War Essays - Cybercrime, Hacking, Hacker, Phreaking

The Cyber War The Internet is a wondrous place. Practically anything you could ever want is available on the Net. It's like a big city, it has distinguished areas, and the sex- ridden slums. It has the upstanding citizens, and it has the criminals. On the Net there really is more crime than in a large city, though, mainly because of the difficulties in tracking and prosecuting offenders. Even from its beginnings the Internet has been a battlefield between phreaks and administrators. The Internet has not always been a public forum. In fact the Internet has been around for years. It is just a new fad (The More I Learn A1). The Net originally began as DARPANET, a government?created network, which was designed for defense communications. The Net structure is such that it could survive a nuclear war (Internet History). The creation of the Net can not be blamed for the existance of hackers though. Hackers are older than the Net itself, but the Net is the largest ?hacker haven' today (Spencer, Hacking McDonalds 6). The growth of the Net since its creation has been nothing less than astounding. In 25-plus years since the its beginning, the Net now has over thirty?million users using four million sites worldwide. Estimates rate the growth of the Internet anywhere from ten to fifteen percent per month (Spencer, Hacking McDonalds 6). The Internet was first released to major universities in the U.S. Since then, the universities have offered connections to small businesses, service providers, and even to the individual user. Sometimes these connections cost a fortune, and sometimes they can be obtained for free (Internet History). Although some of the universities have dropped off the Net for various reasons, every major university in the United States, and now most others in the world, have a connection to the Internet (Quittner 61). The Internet began very high?class, due to the fact that only super intelligent college students and professors could access it. The discussion over the Net stayed intellectual, with very little disturbance (Internet History). However, relatively recent changes in the availability of the Internet has changed that atmosphere. Now, almost anyone can access the Internet. Internet access is offered by every major online service (Hinowitz A1). The fact that the major online services charge for their use keeps many people away from them. Those people then simply turn to public dial?ups, which are free connections offered by universities that are available to the general public (Spencer, Know Your Territory). Because accessing the Net is easier, and it naturally the amount of information on the Net is increasing at the same rate, if not faster. In what is often referred to by Net users as the Resource Explosion. The amount of information circulating the Internet has increased more proportionately with the number of users (Spencer, Hacking McDonalds6). Of all the other factors contributing to the large percent of online crimes, perhaps the most influential is the design structure of the Internet. Experts agree that the underlying structure with no central hub, where each computer is equally powerful, gives unchecked power to the undeserving (Spencer, Stranglehold 8). The design also makes controlling the frequency of break?ins almost impossible as well. Both politicians and ?experts' believe the Internet as a whole will be regulated in the next five years. Hackers disagree, using the arguments that the Internet was designed to be uncontrollable, that the basic structure doesn't support regulations (Spencer, Stranglehold 8). I must agree. In a network run by users, which is designed to be impenetrable to attack, not even the government has much muscle there. In fact the Internet is one of the few places the government has little power. Because the Net is international, any regulations forced upon by domestic computer users can be en trapped by routing through an over seas computer (Savage). The government doesn't have the power to completely shut down the Net. In order to do that every one of the millions of computers on the Net must be disconnected. Even if only two remain, the Internet will continue to exist (Spencer, Hacking McDonalds 6). The ease of adding something to the Internet is also a factor preventing the total regulation of the Net. A new site