2016-06-19
Beomsoo Kim (Barun ICT Research Center, Yonsei University)
Jaeyoung Jang (Graduate School of Information, Yonsei University)
The scale of the damage caused by hacking has been steadily increasing. At the same time, various research has been conducted to understand motivation of hacking. Beomsoo Kim and Jaeyoung Jang examined the motivation for learning hacking skills of students, who joined the Korean Universities information security club to acquire security and hacking techniques.
The results show that hackers, in the early stage, learn hacking skills with the purpose of interest and entertainment rather than recognition from others or monetary rewards. As they gain experience and are able to hack information more easily, their attitude changes and their performance improves. However, when hackers, in the early stage, recognize that hacking could affect society negatively, it discourages them from learning or performing hacking.
Therefore, if hackers realize the negative impact on society, and are aware of the laws and regulations about hacking as well as the ethical development and management of IT, hackers would be less likely to engage in hacking activities. On the other hand, to train white hackers for cyber defense and vulnerability checks, an environment needs to be established where superior candidates can easily gain access to good, high-quality information regarding hacking.
Information Systems Review, Vol. 18, No. 1, March 2016