Outline of a Communications Model for Hacking and Cybersecurity

• In Event: Hacking

Abstract

The normalization of computer hacking and database breaches, with resultant losses of personally identifying information and intellectual property, adds considerably to the distrust and uncertainties of ostensibly private Internet communications. This paper takes a sociological approach to computer hacking within complex social systems and their subsystems, including legal and economic subsystems. It explores computer hacking as a variety of strategic-rational communicative action oriented towards offensive and defensive uses of the Internet by state and corporate actors. It defines hacking functionally, in terms of computer operations which exploit knowledge and information useful for gaining advantages in agonistic or adversarial social relationships. It situates hacking as a technology practice which can be utilized strategically and interpreted symbolically as a speech act, and demonstrates these abilities with a case study of the 2014 “hack of the century” against Sony Pictures Entertainment. The paper promotes a Habermasian “system-and-lifeworld” sociology for approaching computer hacking from the standpoint of strategic communicative action.

Authors

• Patrick Burkart, Texas A&M U

• Tom McCourt, Fordham U