Is The Middle East A Hacker Hotbed Leading A Software Piracy Jihad?
- By Grey McKenzie
- Published 07/11/2008
Grey McKenzie
National Cyber Security Founder
Cyber security watchdog Grey McKenzie is one of the nation's leading Internet security experts.
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"This is the way they're fighting back against American aggression,"
says Samir Hamade, a professor of information science at Kuwait
University.
"They say a lot of companies are giving money to Israel, so it's even better to use pirated software than licensed software since you're taking money from Israel." reports Borzou Daragahi, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times.
He goes on to say...
"Piracy cost the U.S. software industry $48 billion in potential revenue last year, up from $40 billion the year before, according to the Washington-based Business Software Alliance.
The Arab world, with areas where more than 90% of the software is pirated, is a haven for hackers such as Mahaini.
They're driven by profit as well as the challenge of outfoxing some of the biggest brands in the global software industry: Microsoft,
Adobe, Symantec, Cisco.
But there is also a political dimension to their piracy.
In Syria, which is under tight U.S. banking sanctions that make online transactions and American software sales all but impossible, the hackers consider themselves righteous heroes.
"I can understand how a hacker who is following the hacker ethic could feel that way," says Richard Ford, an associate professor of computer science at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla.
"There's this idea among hackers of information wanting to be free and that you should have access to software tools."
In Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, stealing or using pirated software is also viewed as part of the struggle against American power and policies seen as biased against Arabs and Islam."
Full Story
"They say a lot of companies are giving money to Israel, so it's even better to use pirated software than licensed software since you're taking money from Israel." reports Borzou Daragahi, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times.
He goes on to say...
"Piracy cost the U.S. software industry $48 billion in potential revenue last year, up from $40 billion the year before, according to the Washington-based Business Software Alliance.
The Arab world, with areas where more than 90% of the software is pirated, is a haven for hackers such as Mahaini.
They're driven by profit as well as the challenge of outfoxing some of the biggest brands in the global software industry: Microsoft,
But there is also a political dimension to their piracy.
In Syria, which is under tight U.S. banking sanctions that make online transactions and American software sales all but impossible, the hackers consider themselves righteous heroes.
"I can understand how a hacker who is following the hacker ethic could feel that way," says Richard Ford, an associate professor of computer science at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Fla.
"There's this idea among hackers of information wanting to be free and that you should have access to software tools."
In Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, stealing or using pirated software is also viewed as part of the struggle against American power and policies seen as biased against Arabs and Islam."
Full Story
