Computer Crime: The Crime Of The Future

Title	Computer Crime: The Crime Of The Future
# of Words	1113
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	4.45

Computer Crime: The Crime of the Future

Computer Crime: The Crime of the Future

English II
6 April 1996

     Explosive growth in the computer industry over the last decade has made
new technologies cheaper and simpler for the average person to own.  As a result,
computers play an intricate part in our daily lives.  The areas in which
computers affect life are infinite, ranging from entertainment to finances.  If
anything were to happen to these precious devices, the world would be chaotic.
     There is a type of person that thrives on chaos, that is the malevolent
hacker. Some hackers act on revenge or just impersonal mischievousness.  But
whatever their motives, their deeds can be destructive to a person's computer.
An attack by a hacker not only affects the victim, but others as well.
     One case involving a notorious hacker named Kevin Mitnick did just that.
Mitnick is a very intelligent man.  He is 31 and pending trial for computer
fraud.  When he was a teenager, he used his knowledge of computers to break into
the North American Defense Command computer.  Had he not been stopped, he could
have caused some real national defense problems for the United  States (Sussman
66).
     Other "small time" hackers affect people just as much by stealing or
giving away copyrighted software, which causes the prices of software to
increase, thus increasing the price the public must pay for the programs.
      Companies reason that if they have a program that can be copied onto a
disc then they will lose a certain amount of their profit.  People will copy it
and give to friends or pass it around on the Internet.  To compensate, they will
raise the price of disc programs. CD Rom programs cost more to make but are
about the same price as disc games. Companies don't loose money on them because
it is difficult to copy a CD Rom and impossible to transmit over the Internet
(Facts on File #28599 1).
      One company in particular, American On-line, has been hit hard by
hackers.  The feud started when a disgruntled ex-employee used his inside
experience to help fellow hackers disrupt services offered by AOL (Alan 37).
His advice became popular and he spawned a program called AOHell.  This program,
in turn, created many copycats.  They all portray their creators as gangsters,
and one of the creator's names is     "Da Chronic." Many also feature short
clips of rap music (Cook 36).
      These programs make it easy for people with a little hacker knowledge
to disrupt AOL. These activities include gaining access to free accounts,
gaining access to other people's credit card numbers, and destroying chat rooms.
The following is an excerpt from a letter from the creator of AOHell to a user:
     What is AOHell? AOHell is an AOL for Windows add-on, which allows you to
do many things.  AOHell allows you to download for free, talk using other
people's screen names, steal passwords and credit card information, and much
more.  AOHell is basically an anarchy program designed to help you, the user,
and destroy AOL, the enemy:
     No matter what AOL says to you, nor what even Steve Case* himself may
say about AOHell, don't be too quick to judge.  America On-line may say anything
to get you to stop using AOHell.  They may say it's a virus, they may say it'll
cancel your account, hell, they've even tried to suggest it may steal your
password and send it to the author. None of this is true however.  Free AOL does
not interest me, as I have many ways ...

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