I came along this article and as a cs major myself taken 2 computer security classes already, it is quite an interesting question to ask, should I be proud to be a hacker? Well for now, I can’t label myself as a hacker cause I never hacked anything real and I probably shouldn’t. But in my opinion, I am sure some of my fellow classmates would agree with me, that hacker is not a easy to get label and it is a recognition for a computer person. There are hackers doing bad things, taking advantages of the technology vulnerabilities but “hacker” has more meanings now.
According to the article “The word is not the evil word it used to be because companies now employ people who legitimately call themselves ‘white hat hackers,’ ” said Doug Jacobson, the head of Iowa State University’s highly regarded information assurance program. “People make a living doing this legitimately. The word has lost that tone of evil.” From the news, a lot of the top hackers are hired by top companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple and the list goes on. Here is a news about “twitter hiring one of the best iphone hackers to protect the tweets.” Hackers are smart people. The best way to protect something is first to understand where are the weak points.There Twitter wanted someone who understand the system’s vulnerability in iOS when they started the deeper integration with iPhone.
Many companies also have high rewards for hackers who found serious vulnerabilities. From this link, Goole rewarded $60,000 to a security researcher who cracked its Chrome web browser during a hacking contest.And another link , Facebook would expand rewards for hackers. In the article Ryan McGeehan, who manages Facebook’s security-incident response unit, is quoted as saying: “If there’s a million-dollar bug, we will pay it out.”
I think my point is that nowadays, “hacker” shouldn’t be related to evil and crime, not just in the techy nerdy circle but also for general public to see the values good hacker, also known as white hat provides. As technology gets more impact in our everyday life, and companies like Facebook and Google become more like everyday brands, the public has more exposure to the underground mysterious hacker news. People also look at the things more on defensive side than the offensive side. Like the end of the article, hopefully one day, my mom won’t think being a hacker means I am a criminal.