Paper short abstract:

What is the relation between hacking and industry? We examine the relation between hacking and corporate infrastructure development and maintenance. In particular, we focus on hackers that target mobile phone networks, and we characterize the relations between hacking and corporate practices as agonistic.

Paper long abstract:

For a long time, public, research, and industry perspectives upon hacking have been dominated by concerns for cyber-war, cyber-security, cyber-criminality, and copyright infringements. Recently, however, we are witnessing (and we have become interested in witnessing) changes in perspective. Hacking is increasingly framed in terms of creativity, engineering skills, democratized entrepreneurship, and innovation—framings some of which have long been suggested by the hacking community itself, and variations of which are now echoed by research, policy-making, and industry. Yet, what exactly is the relation between hacking and industry? In this paper, we examine the relation between hacking practices and practices of corporate infrastructure development and maintenance. In particular, we focus on hackers and 'security researchers' that target mobile phone networks, uncovering security weaknesses and forcing corporations and/or policy-making to react with technological and/or regulatory changes. Based on a retrospective case study of more than a decade's so-called 'security hacking,' we characterize the relations between hacking and corporate practices as sustained agonistic, often adversarial struggles. Before this backdrop, we will pose the question whether or not hacking thus understood can be—and should be (and by whom?)— subsumed under tropes of creative destruction and disruptive innovation.