By Michael J. Martinez
ABCNEWS.com Feb. 4 -
Computer hackers see themselves as intellectual rebels, free-speech
advocates and knowledge seekers, dedicated to cruising the wrong way down
the information superhighway with their middle fingers defiantly upraised.
The authorities call them miscreants and criminals. Hackers have been
blamed for more than $236 million in damage in the past year alone,
according to the San Francisco-based Computer Security Institute (CSI).
Fighting back, four major computer companies - Cisco Systems, Sun
Microsystems, Lucent Technologies and Network Associates - banded together
last week to form a consortium called the Security Research Alliance to
improve network security. Meanwhile, the world's most famous hacker, Kevin
Mitnick, who was arrested in 1995 for massive credit card fraud and other
exploits that totaled some $80 million in damages, sits in a Los Angeles
jail cell awaiting trial. And the hacker community itself is facing a
subtle but growing cultural divide: a generation gap in the proudly
youthful hacker subculture.
--I want nothing less than the most. El Victor