SECRETS OF A SUPER HACKER.- By The Knightmare (Sabotage)

Computer sabotage is the physical destruction of computer hardware or firmware, or the tampering or erasure of information stored on a computer. The point of sabotage may be to force a competitor out of business, or, as is sometimes done with arson, to get the insurance money.  Computer hacking has only limited involvement with sabotage, since it is the goal of most hackers to keep computers secure, not to destroy them. Still, sometimes sabotage does creep into hacking in limited ways.

Reverse social engineering uses what is called sabotage, but it is actually just a bit of tomfoolery  seed to get a computer to temporarily misbehave. You will read about reverse social engineering later on.

Computer vandals frequently sabotage the information stored on computers after first using hacker's methods to gain entry to them. Vandals should not be confused with hackers.

Neither should those folks who introduce incorrect or misleading data into a computer system, or otherwise sabotage the data stored therein. An illustration of such data ampering is given by Thomas Whiteside in his book Computer Capers (Crowell, 1978). Between 1968 and 1972 the FBI planted false adverse information on radicals and other people who had wild political views into the computers of credit reporting agencies, "the idea being to harass those citizens by making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to obtain loans or other forms of credit." For all we know various agencies may be continuing this practice.