What Hacking and Model Train Sets Have in Common
Summary
Although hackers are usually labelled in the media as cyber criminals bent on stealing data and causing all kinds of other digital damage, the correct term for that form of illegal hacking is cracking. This was in the days of the Apollo program by NASA, where the Instrumentation Lab at MIT was tasked with developing the computer hard- and software that would land people on the moon, much to the surprise and dismay of established companies like IBM. After a grey hat hacker discovered a security problem at Facebook in 2013 and was then repeatedly rebuffed by the company, he decided to take Mark Zuckerberg by storm by using the leak to post a notification on the CEOs timeline. This “shoot the messenger” approach is widely regarded as an unwise move, because once an organization is known for taking legal action against researchers who disclose a weakness, they will receive no more such notifications in the future – or far fewer. This agency, also called the CCB, has announced a policy that protects individuals or organizations from prosecution – contingent on certain “strict” conditions being met – when they report security vulnerabilities affecting any systems, applications or networks located in Belgium.