Cyber Security’s Influence on Modern Society

The world of cyber security is evolving every day, and cyber-criminals are trying to take advantage of it to gain as much money and power as possible. As the Internet continues to grow, more people around the world join the Internet. The purpose of this is to see how much of an importance cyber security has and how cyber-criminals are able to utilize the cyberworld for their own personal gain. Research has been done on how the cyberworld got where it is today. Additionally, individual research has been done in an effort to learn how to hack. A hack lab has been created and a study has been done to see if it is possible to hack into a cell phone within one month without obtaining any knowledge prior to the start of the study

Community action for sustainable housing: Building a low-carbon future

This paper presents a new analytical framework of 'grassroots innovations' which views community-led initiatives for sustainable development as strategic green niches with the potential for wider transformation of mainstream society. This framework is applied to a low-carbon, low-impact, community-based sustainable housing initiative in the USA that pioneers straw bale housing techniques within a strong community-building ethos. The project is evaluated according to New Economics criteria of sustainable consumption, and is found to be successful at localising the construction supply chain, reducing ecological footprints, community-building, enabling collective action and building new institutions and systems of provision around housebuilding. However, viewing it as a strategic niche with aim to influence wider society, it is clear that it faces significant challenges in diffusing its ideas and practices beyond the niche. Its model is not necessarily suitable for scaling up or widespread replication; however, the scope for niche lessons to be adopted by mainstream builders is greater, given a supportive policy environment. Recognising the innovative nature of green niches at the policy level could lead to new approaches to governance of bottom-up community action for sustainable development

Hackers: cybercriminals or not?

Treball Final de Grau en Criminologia i Seguretat. Codi: CS1044. Curs: 2018-2019The development and constant evolution of new technologies (ICTs) has originated a society that is constantly connected to the Internet. Obviously, this offers advantages, but it also creates important problems. There is always a fraction of people in all societies who act inappropriately, break the law or use illicit means to take advantage of others. The Internet provides a place for cybercriminals and allows them to exist and flourish. These recent years, issues concerning cyber security have received significant attention and have become a priority for many governments, organizations, and industries. Today, the technological advance is continuous and this brings crime new opportunities. One of this is the unauthorized access to computer networks. The current study focuses on this cybercrime, the hackers and the image that society has about them. In particular, a view of hackers that it is intended to distinguish them from cybercriminals and to assist law enforcement in understanding the way hackers think. The paper starts with the definition and history about hackers to continue with computer crimes from a criminology perspective and the way hackers are seen among people. Hacktivism, which is a new way of protest using the Internet, is addressed as well. Also, the paper presents laws, applicable to the computer crime, and highlights the issues about tracking and tracing these types of crimes by comparing United States and Spain

Trust in social machines: the challenges

The World Wide Web has ushered in a new generation of applications constructively linking people and computers to create what have been called ‘social machines.’ The ‘components’ of these machines are people and technologies. It has long been recognised that for people to participate in social machines, they have to trust the processes. However, the notions of trust often used tend to be imported from agent-based computing, and may be too formal, objective and selective to describe human trust accurately. This paper applies a theory of human trust to social machines research, and sets out some of the challenges to system designers

The gift of the code: A culture of an operating system

“The Gift of the Code” explores the boundaries between technology and sociality, computers and cultures. Based on long-term ethnographic research among users and developers of GNU/Linux Operating System, this work analyses how Linux developers and users consume, create and exchange an as much technical as cultural discursive construction of sociality. Like a modern-day kula ring, the Linux code is analysed in terms of a gift: one cannot keep it for one’s self, it contains obligations and a promise of future reciprocity. It is a collective gift of the self-ascribed Hackers that come from different geographic places and meet in lines of code, socializing by exchanging ideas about the code and about themselves. This work shows by what means the computer hackers of Linux, abiding to the original definition of the word, actively constitute their community using discourse: language, e-mail, internal meritocratic hierarchies based on technical ability and ethics of the group, boundaries of exclusion and inclusion. This project is about power relations, resistance networks and the hegemony of a techno-scientific self-indulgence of some post-residents of an imagined cyber-West. Equally, it is about the giving of gifts, hacker culture and the ‘fun’ of hacking, creating and maintaining a ‘guerrilla’ operating system. Studying the anthropology of GNU/Linux operating system is a journey towards an investigation of what makes the social into technology and how technology is translated into sociality

Rethinking the Digital Divide

In discussing and planning interventions around the “digital divide” people tend to think in terms of the binary oppositions of “digital-haves” and “digital-have-nots”. Information and communications technologies (ICT) programs sponsored by governments and other agencies to address the “digital divide” also tend to be “top-down” initiatives that focus on the provision of institutional aid and the development of infrastructure. Within these approaches ICT have-nots tend to be treated as the passive receivers of aid. The agency of digital-have-nots in gaining access to ICT has been rarely examined. In this paper we report on a study that has shown that ICT use patterns amongst those with poor access and utilization of ICT is diverse and complex. Results from a survey of 495 rural-urban migrants in Beijing show that self-initiated digital transition exists among this group of people. The transition from digital-have-not to digital-have is not a one-step process but rather an incremental process with multiple stages and multiple pathways. Findings from this study will provide helpful insights for policy makers and related stakeholders when discussing and planning ICT programs and activities designed to address the issues associated with the digital divide

Hearing the Voices of the Deserters: Activist Critical Making in Electronic Literature

Critical making is an approach to scholarship which combines discursive methods with creative practices. The concept has recently gained traction in the digital humanities, where scholars are looking for ways of integrating making into their research in ways that are inclusive and empowering to marginalized populations. This dissertation explores how digital humanists can engage critical making as a form of activism in electronic literature, specifically in the interactive fiction platform Twine. The author analyzes the making process of her own activist Twine game The Deserters and embeds the project within digital humanities discourses on activism and social justice, hypertext, electronic literature, critical making, and hacker culture. The Deserters is a text-based digital game based on the experiences of the author\u27s family as refugees from East Germany. The player\u27s objective in the game is to research a family\u27s history by searching the game-world for authentic documents, including biographical writings, journal entries, photographs, and records, thereby retracing historical events through personal experience. The Deserters aims at inspiring a compassionate and empathetic stance towards immigrants and refugees today. The author reflects on the ethical, narrative, aesthetic, and technical choices she made throughout the creation process of The Deserters to create a critical activist game. The results of the analysis demonstrate that Twine offers a unique environment for composing politically impactful personal narratives. From the project, the author derives best practices for activist critical making, which emphasize the importance for makers to imagine the needs and perspectives of their audience. The work expands digital humanities\u27 theoretical and practical toolkit for critical making

Conflicted Commons: A Local Makerspace in the Neoliberal City

The commodification of culture, space, and resources is incentivized by neoliberal urbanism. In response, we have seen an attempt to develop collectively organized, oppositional spaces within urban places. The tensions that arise when considering the production of commons in the development of the neoliberal city are the central focus of this paper. As I will observe, these spaces are subjected to commodification as they become increasingly de-politicized through neoliberal ideologies. In order to theorize about these contradictory elements, I observe a makerspace in Richmond, Virginia called HackRVA. Specifically, I consider HackRVA as an urban commons. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, I consider how HackRVA engages with the neoliberal city of Richmond and how the organization and maintenance of their space and their community reflects commoning as social reproduction. I find that HackRVA’s relationship to the city is complicated as the community within the space both contests and assimilates to the creative economy

Reliability, Validity, Comparability and Practical Utility of Cybercrime-related Data, Metrics, and Information

With an increasing pervasiveness, prevalence and severity of cybercrimes, various metrics, measures and statistics have been developed and used to measure various aspects of this phenomenon. Cybercrime-related data, metrics, and information, however, pose important and difficult dilemmas regarding the issues of reliability, validity, comparability and practical utility. While many of the issues of the cybercrime economy are similar to other underground and underworld industries, this economy also has various unique aspects. For one thing, this industry also suffers from a problem partly rooted in the incredibly broad definition of the term “cybercrime”. This article seeks to provide insights and analysis into this phenomenon, which is expected to advance our understanding into cybercrime-related information