Computer Hacking and the Techniques of Neutralization

Abstract

Nowadays, experts have suggested that the economic losses resulting from mal-intended computer hacking, or cracking, have been conservatively estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars per annum. The authors who have contributed to this book share a mutual vision that future research, as well as the topics covered in this book, will help to stimulate more scholarly attention to the issue of corporate hacking and the harms that are caused as a result. This chapter explores malicious hacking from a criminological perspective, while focusing on the justifications, or neutralizations, that cyber criminals may use when engaging in computer cracking--which is in the United States and many other jurisdictions worldwide, illegal.