It’s hardly the first time Boston-area hackers have been in the headlines.
But it’s potentially the most serious.
The strong technology industry and universities here foster people with the right blend of technical expertise, audacity, and subversiveness to help feed a thriving and longstanding hacker community. In the 1990s, a group called L0pht Heavy Industries (pronounced loft) became well-known for publishing security flaws in computer software, eventually testifying before Congress that it could take the Internet down in a half-hour; more recently, a group of MIT students earned notoriety for finding a way to hack the MBTA’s CharlieCard.
But now that a recent MIT graduate has acknowledged trading multiple e-mails with the Army private who stands accused of giving the whistleblower Web site, WikiLeaks, thousands of pages of classified war records, the hacker community is in the spotlight.
Hackers are not one kind of person: some take apart hardware, like teens who used to dismantle car engines.
Others try to find vulnerabilities in networks and software, burrowing through firewalls and other security features — often with the goal of exposing flaws so they can be fixed. At the extremes are those who are outright computer criminals, pirating company or government secrets or victims’ identities.
But a common thread is the idea that constraints and limits imposed on a system can be surmounted: “Information wants to be free” is their rallying cry.
As the mantra suggests, many hackers view their probing of computer systems as a social good — disclosing flaws in computer security, for example, so that millions of people who may be at risk can better protect themselves.
But the law often has a less generous interpretation of their actions.
“I think there’s definitely some ambiguity around how far you can really go to make information free without violating the law,” said Zach Lanier, a hacker who lives…