Psychological Theories of Crime and Hacking

Today's society is in the midst of a technological revolution. With advances in computers and telecommunications most businesses and many individuals have become dependent on computers and networks to carry out everyday activities as of 1996 13 million hosts systems were accessing the Internet, and that by the year 2000, the number will have risen to over 200 million. The rush to embrace the new technology has also introduced a new category of criminal The term hacker has had many connotations over the years. It was originally associated with outstanding and radical programmers in the computer science fields (usually from Berkley, Stanford or Theories of Crime and Hacking 2 MIT) (Chandler, 1996). Today it refers to an individual engaged in a form of criminal behaviour, hacking. Hacking can be formally defined as either a successful or unsuccessful attempt to gain unauthorized use or unauthorized access to a computer system (Howard, 1997). Society is now attempting to come to grips with this new criminal activity which knows no geographical boundaries and blurs the notion of criminal jurisdiction (Hutchison, 1997; Hafner & Markoff 1995). Behavioural science has been remiss in its research into the phenomena of hacking and as such there has been little or no empirical research in the areas of psychological profiles, and causes of the behaviour (Karnow et al., 1994). In order to understand the criminal behaviour of hackers, it is necessary to examine the traditional psychological theories of criminal behaviour and how they apply to hacking.