21st Century Hackers

Author

• Kenji Logie, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Date of Degree

9-2026

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Criminal Justice

Advisor

Marie-Helen Maras

Committee Members

Jana Arsovska

Kevin Wolff

Dalvin Hill

Subject Categories

Community-Based Research | Criminology | Cybersecurity | Sociology of Culture

Keywords

hack, hacker, darknet, forum, knowledge sharing, communities of practice

Abstract

Hackers have been studied across various contexts and from multiple perspectives for over 50 years. During this period, definitions and classifications have been developed and revised to reflect the historical contexts in which they were generated. Several studies have examined hackers through a cultural lens. Other studies have examined hackers on college campuses or at public conferences. This study developed a hacker taxonomy and empirically tested two hacker taxonomies using manual and automated content analysis of more than 6,000 posts created over a six-year period on the Hacking sub-Dread forum on the darknet. The taxonomy reflected the realities of the 21^st century hacking forum, including both technical and nontechnical members. In addition to the hacker taxonomy, hacker specialization, skills, tools, hacker knowledge-sharing types, knowledge-sharing behaviors, and operational roles and transactional activities associated with each taxonomy type were identified. The study found that the 17 hacker types in the taxonomy, along with three learning mechanisms from the criminology literature, coexisted on the Hacking sub-Dread forum. While Novice hackers dominated the Hacking sub-Dread by post count, other taxonomy types played crucial roles in educating Novices and performing other functions. Data-driven definitions for each hacker type, along with associated categories, were generated from the coded data and resulted in operationalized definitions for studying hacking environments. Automated content analysis was also used to identify hacker targets in the dataset. The study also found that several hacker activities and hacker types did not align with conceptions of hackers reflected in the hacker culture and values artifacts. Finally, studying learning mechanisms designed for real-world contexts with a population not typically examined longitudinally produced unexpected yet important observations.

Recommended Citation

Logie, Kenji, "21st Century Hackers" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6827