Why Do You Hack?

12:20 PM -- Do you regularly try to access computer systems and data that you aren't authorized to access? If so, then we'd like to ask you a few questions.

No, we're not working for the cops. In conjunction with our sister organization, the folks who run the Black Hat conferences, Dark Reading is conducting its first official "hacker survey," a ten-minute poll designed to discover the motives and means used by today's security researchers.

Y'see, every day we here at Dark Reading are told that hackers' motivations are shifting, and that their methods for penetrating secure systems are changing as well. It's fine to hear about these trends from security experts, but we'd much rather hear about them firsthand from you, the people who are actively finding the vulnerabilities and launching the exploits.

If you are a "hacker" or a security researcher, please take a few minutes to complete this survey. Your responses will remain completely anonymous -- our efforts have nothing to do with identifying any individuals. What we're trying to do is identify trends in security research and system penetration, and learn more about the reasons why people do this research -- and how.

If you regularly try to penetrate the defenses of any computer systems, please take a few minutes and answer our survey right now. And please, if you don't engage in this sort of security research, don't answer the poll. In this case, we're only interested in the responses of those who seek to penetrate systems for fun, profit, professional advancement, or criminal intent.

We'll publish the results of our poll early next week. We hope we'll be able to offer some insights on security research trends -- this time, straight from the horse's mouth.

— Tim Wilson, Site Editor, Dark Reading