Hacking Offences: High Tech Crime Brief

This paper describes how computer hacking crimes are defined in Australia. The term 'hacker' has multiple meanings and variously describes a person who explores programmable systems, who is obsessive about programming, who is able to program quickly, or is an expert in a particular program. More generally, it refers to an expert enthusiast, one who enjoys creatively overcoming limitations, or a malicious meddler seeking confidential information (Reymond 1996). Levy (1984) described three generations of hackers, beginning with the programming pioneers of the 1950s and 1960s, followed by those who developed the earliest PCs and then those programmers who developed computer games. Taylor (2000) added a fourth generation - those who illicitly access other people's computers. This is now the common meaning given to computer hacking (PJC 2004). However, because of these overlays of meaning, it is difficult to match the common understanding of what constitutes computer hacking with anti-hacking laws