Objectives

Students will be able to:

  • show understanding of computer ethics, including copyright issues and plagiarism
  • distinguish between free software, freeware and shareware
  • show understanding of the ethical issues raised by the spread of electronic communication and computer systems, including hacking, cracking and production of malware

Ethics

And the digital god pronounced:

  1. Thou shalt not use a computer to harm other people.
  2. Thou shalt not interfere with other people's computer work.
  3. Thou shalt not snoop around in other people's computer files.
  4. Thou shalt not use a computer to steal.

Imagine if we were allowed to do all of these things without any consequence:

  • copy someone's digital work and say it is our own - plagiarism
  • crack copyrighted software and adapt it for our own purposes
  • create malware with malicious intentions eg to create a DOS attack on a server or a keylogger to steal a user's activity on a computer
  • misuse someone's personal information stolen by a phishing or pharming attack

All of these are examples of unethical uses of computers.

Ethics are important when using computers because, without them, computer users are not safe from being attacked in some way.

Phishing and Pharming

Phishing is when you receive a legitimate looking email from someone eg your bank manager. If you click any links, you may be redirected to a fake website where you will be tricked into revealing personal information such as a credit card number or login information to your bank account.

Pharming is more sophisticated. Hackers will edit the information in a DNS server such that you will unwittingly be redirected to a website you think is genuine but it is fake. You will probably log in, revealing your username and password and possibly other sensitive info.

Here is a recent example.

Have you ever used LINUX?

It is an open-source operating system.

Users can download it, adapt the code and share their work! This is an example of free software.

There are other applications that users can download and use for free but it is copyrighted and you cannot alter it.

This kind of software is known as freeware. Google Chrome is an example of this.

There are other kinds of software that you can download and use for a period of time, after which you would need to pay to continue using it.

This kind of software is known as shareware.

Malware

There are three common types of malware:

The following animations introduce all three:

Viruses

A virus can get onto your computer if you insert an infected USB stick into your USB port. Or, you might click a link in your email and unwittingly download a virus.

A virus will attack programs and files on your computer.

It can make copies of itself! So it can attack multiple programs and files. Making copies of itself is called self-replicating.

Do you wish you could self-replicate?!

Anti-virus software scans your computer system for viruses. It can detect the presence of a virus and delete it or quarantine it. Your anti-virus software needs to be up-to-date, however, as hackers are unethically creating new viruses all the time.

Click the USB port below to insert the usb stick into the desktop machine.

 

Trojans

A trojan is a kind of virus. You think it is a normal, safe file or program but it isn't. It is secretly doing all of the things that a virus can do. However, trojans cannot self-replicate.

Use anti-virus software to protect your system!

 

Worms

A worm is very interesting! It can attach itself to an email you are sending and infect the systems of everyone who receives the email, without them even clicking a link! Yes, worms self-replicate.

Worms behave like viruses, copying, modifying and corrupting your data and disrupting your system.

Research powerful anti-malware software to protect your system from a worm!

 

Past Paper Questions

Tags

unethicalcopyrightfreeware shareware malware hack creative commons disrupt illicittrojanwormvirus