. Hacktivism

27/03/02 Hackers' Samaritans' must be punished '.
A type of hackers, recently defined as 'Samaritans', consists of those who do not cause any damage to the infrastructure that is accessed, indicating those responsible for the security infrastructure of the same flaws that remedy. But for most of the laws passed in recent years in Western countries condemning these actions should be pursued in an exemplary manner those who make them. He's talked to the conference 'Information Security in the Age of Terrorism', in which some experts were confronted with one of the brightest hacking community, quell'Adrian Lamo (pictured) which, with its raids 'clean' has discovered glaring flaws in network as important as that of the New York Times or World.com (see Farsi a ride in the backbone of World.com and Bucato the internal network of the New York Times ). Lamo has always helped the same companies that voluntarily reported the holes, which has systematically preserved by successive complaints, even in the case of World.com was thanked and praised publicly. The case related to the New York Times, it remains a sword of Damocles, as the newspaper did not require the availability of Lamo and is considering several options, including the complaint. All security experts who participated in the conference were unanimous in stating, however, that companies and institutions violated but not damaged should think very well before reporting such behavior. According to Jonathan Couch, engineer of the Sytex Inc. 'ethical hackers' do no harm, and they raise the state of the art security, providing a quite appreciable. There are dissenting opinions that say that if the law was wrong should change it, but no one still feels the need and others who question the honesty of Lamo, as reported security holes in the Times itself after a few weeks. But the twenty-one responded that he is not behind these things every day, because it considers his hobby. Perhaps risky, but always a hobby.