CYBER ATTACKS

CYBER ATTACKS

Did you know that Cyber attacks for today exceed 1,523,196 and is about half a million less than yesterday's 2,043,871 cyber attacks. If you don't believe me, you can verify it for yourself here. The malware families that account for about 40 percent of all recorded attacks are from the Worm32.Conflicker, the Virus.Win32.Sality, the Cutwail botnet and the Neutrino Exploit kit. These treats have been  religiously turning MS Windows computers into DDoS and spam-spewing botnet drones for at least the  past five years. But now, that Cryptowall ransomware version 4 was released, corporate cyber security companies are on a back foot. This is exactly what is portrayed in the Series Mr. Robot when Evil Corp's entire data centre got hacked and  encrypted with 256-bit AES encryption.

Hacks taking place every the day

The trick to doing this, is to open a backdoor through some unauthorized remote administration software. Once this is done, you essentially own the target computer system. Trojans like Cryptowall, Netbus, Back Orifice and SubSeven have several customizable options to get the job done.

Looking at the daily cyber war far between attacking countries like USA, China,  Portugal,  Germany,  Russia,  Sweden,  United Arab Emirates,  United Kingdom,  Netherlands,  and Turkey, etc, and target countries like USA  India,  Chile, Sweden,  United Kingdom, Taiwan,  Poland,  Brazil,  Norway,  Russia, flinging virus and Trojans at one another is bound to strain relations.

Hackers are attacking targets across all borders

Some of the malware threats are:- 

Worm32 Conflicker
Banker.Win32.Bancos.K
Trojan.Win32.ZeroAccess.A
Worm.Win32.Brontok.B
Trojan.Win32.Virtu.A
Trojan.Win32.Mwzlesson.A
Virus.Win32.Sality.
Operator.Andromeda.gx
Operator.Cryptowall3.bbe
Operator.Trojan.Win32.Grafter.e.a
Trojan.Win32.Smokeloadr.C

FSOCIETY

F-Society, Fsociety, fSociety, fuck society.

Mr. Robot is probably the best series I've seen in 2015. The story line revolves around an anarchic, highly secretive, anti-establishment  hacker group named "fSociety" based in Coney Island New York, intent on recruiting Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) to help them with their mission to destroy the conglomerate E Corp and in the process cancel world debt . Elliot is  a socially anxious yet morally righteous "white hat" super-hacker,  whose day job with Allsafe Cybersecurity is to protect E Corp's servers against external exploits. Fsociety contact Elliot using a Distributed Denial Of Service (DDoS) attack that takes E Corp offline, but leaving a message in the DAT file on  one of E Corps servers for him. As a result Eliot becomes cautiously affiliated to  "fSociety"  which is led by Mr. Robot (Christian Slater). After disabling the rootkit that was responsible for the DDoS, instead of deleting the file, he changed its root attributes, granting himself sole access.

Elliot, Mr Robot and Darlene after the E corp crash.

Elliot is a social outcast, skitso, a little nutso and very different, continually hallucinating about traumatic incidents that he experienced as a child by his father who was his best and only friend. Living alone and lonely, existing in his own mental space and his own reality, his narcotics-clouded brain, blocked out the fact that the alluring coder Darlene (Carly Chaikin) is actually his sister, even though they interacted to some degree, and that fSociety's imaginary leader "Mr. Robot" was in fact their late father. Elliot also frequents a therapist, Krista Gordon who assists him to deal with his anger, his anxiety and  his introversion but not out of choice. He is a hacker my night and exposes offenders who he feels needs to tow the line. At the end of it all, Elliot's  often unreliable  mind couldn't piece together E Corp's take down nor could he recollect whether or not he orchestrated it.

Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek) in Mr Robot

In their  determination  to bring down the world corporate structure, fSociety members adopts a disguise that looks somewhat like the the Monopoly Man when flighting their video manifestos, making demands that E-corp donate all the ill-gotten gains to charity and give all the clients a reprieve. But when E-Corp doesn't comply with their demand, they encrypt all their data with 256-bit AES encryption ransomware, disabling all banking, credit transfers, credit card purchases etc. In the real world, to decode AES-256 bit encryption would take approximately trenonagintillion  years to exhaust half the combinations of a AES-256 key. Restated, some  ~6.7e40 times longer than the age of the universe which is estimated to be 14 billion years in existence.

Support for fSociety for cancelling the debt of masses

All this has a very current day ring to to it especially as ransomware is used to encrypt business computers globally. Ukranian hackers have been instrumental in extorting money out of American businesses with CryptoWall and CTB Locker for almost three years and there isn't much that the FBI and the CIA can do about it.  Mr Robot series paints a picture of a global corporation that is the villans, and the hacker collectives, each battling with his own mentally and personal socially issues, as the heroes that society roots for.  The underlying message says that all it takes to destroy the financial world is a few crackpot hackers and and internet connection.

However, the series does however gives laymen especially the corporate types a perspective of the data world of cyber spying, viruses, honeypots, spiked emails, trojans, rootkits, ransomware, encryption keys and other computer system vulnerabilities. The TOR network and onion routing protocols are mentioned a few times and in the very first episode it is highlighted that whoever owns the end nodes, owns all the data that traverses it. Meaning if any hacker owns the ISP of the business his targeting then every bit of data that flows through their data pipe belongs to him or her.

Scenes showing hackers destroying their own computer equipment "wipe down mode" is a bit overboard, and microwave oven and incinerator are a bit dramatic since power supplies and computer boxes are incapable of retaining any data. Most experienced hackers cover their tracks very well and leave no evidence behind unless they want to be caught. Except for the hardrives, the computer's BIOS, routers, cellphones and flash memory, the majority of other computer components save no information about use whatsoever. 

A CPU cooking in a microwave

Computer hardrives, hubs/switch, power supplies incinerated

Besides, the Computer Abuse and Fraud Act is notoriously difficult to navigate and just as difficult to prosecute suspects. Considering hackers using  the TOR browser is routed through several connections all over the world and changes their IP number through proxies at least 3 times masking  their true identity online and making their connection appear as if it is coming from another country like Estonia for example. So the "IP address evidence" that is left behind  is not theirs but rather totally anonymous.  In fact the FBI has been paying a university crack team a million dollars to decode the TOR onion protocol yet more than 2 million hacks  are taking place daily globally.

TORRENTS

TORRENTS

Man is a self centered social creature with an inmate need to associate with other like minded social creatures. As such, they hob-nob, mingle,  brag and boast about themselves, their abilities, their possessions and their achievements to the point that it makes other people  sick of their bullshit. Today the Internet is inundated with social networking apps with dozens more still pending, not to mention those on the distant horizon. Platforms for these hyper social individuals that just crave the needs to be in everyone else's face, faking it as if they going to win an Oscar for it. Currently the most prominent of these platforms are Facebook, Twitter, PerfSpot, Instagram, MySpace, Bebo, Xing,  Sonico, Millat Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc, but in no particular order. 

Admittedly social networking has made global communication easy, quick, transparent and very convenient, especially for those who have family and friend abroad. One would think that Telcos are loosing millions in revenue, since nowadays few people are using the telephone networks for telephonic communication. But in reality that's is a myth, they are not loosing millions but instead raking in billions in revenue from bandwidth sold to virtually everyone who owns a smart phone or has an internet connection. Yet most people only use a fraction of the data bandwidth that they pay for monthly, forfeiting several megabytes if not gigabytes. Instead of the Telcos allowing their patrons to accumulate or consolidate their unused bandwidth over time, they usurp it, and this translates to an even greater bottom line for these giant Telco world wide. 

There are some people that are pissed, who hate these policies, and see this as corporate theft and are angered by it, to the point that they resorting to hacking  Telcos. Case in point,  the Talk-Talk lost thousands because of ongoing hack attacks. Their CEO very calmly apologized to the patrons for their inability to secure their networks, but never for stealing from their clients. Be that as it may,  another "social networking platform" known as Torrents can quite easily be used to spend your excess data bandwidth instead of donating it back to these already wealthy Telcos and at least get some books, movie series, full movies, etc in return. A Torrent is a digital file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed and uses trackers to interconnects peer to peer networks. 

Bit torrent, Tribler, μTorrent, Tixati, Bittornado, Vuse, Mediaget, Frostwire, Bitlord, Deluge,  Bitcomet, etc... are just a few Torrent clients for Windows, Mac, Android and Linux, amongst several others. Torrents allows your computer to connect to hundreds of other host computers globally. However, the files you choose to download are not hosted on any particular computer but on hundreds of computers strewn all over the internet each seeding a few bytes of the file you need  until the file is fully downloaded. Torrents can be used to download anything from computer software, books, tutorials, music, movies, series, and even porn, if that tickles your pink parts. 

They are very unlike the regular social networking apps that allow people to pass off  their bullshit as insight and their fake comments as caring, spending endless hours umbilicaled to the networks and setting themselves up to be get hacked. Once the files you chose are downloading your computer seeds the file to others who also wish to have the file in question. Torrents can download at speeds of more than  1.5G in an hour or as slow as a 10 megabyte files taking several hours to download. However, Torrents are frowned upon by the authorities and many Torrent sites like Piratebay , and Kickass, Isohunt,  have been forced to close down because of "copyright infringement". However prior to this, these sites have been duplicated and operate in the.org domain. There are also several other Torrent sites like Megatorrents,  Torrentz,   Limetorrents, Torrentfreak, etc. So take extra care when downloading ,  copyright  computer software,  music, books, etc, because the authorities, spooks and government agencies, could track your IP and prosecute you under US Digital Millennium Copyright Act. An alternative is to use the Tor browser if you wish to browse anonymously, without leaving behind a browser history. Several of the Torrent sites are hosted on servers that serve pornographic materials, so if you a bit of a prude, steer clear of Torrent sight because popups can turn out to be quite embarrassing especially if you using a computer in a public place.

RANSOMWARE

2015 WAS THE YEAR OF RANSOMWARE  

Computers and ICT networks are prone to electronic failure but with the expert help of ICT professionals, network up-time can almost be guaranteed to 99.98 percent. However, for the past decade computer and network redundancy and global replication services, ISP's and corporate networks have been under attack from, Heuristic Computer Viruses, Worms, Malware, Spyware, Trojan/backdoors, Adware,  Rootkits,  Scareware, Keyloggers, and the worst of all Ransomware attacks that appear to be more personal.  Not to mention the physical threats by hackers, making the jobs of network security personal more intense and challenging. Costing companies huge additional and unnecessary expenses globally. 

It is predicted that Ransomware is going to be the greatest emerging security risk in 2016 and the general consensus is that 2015 has been the year of Ransomware. The purpose behind all intrusion software is to disrupt, create chaos, steal data and extort money. The reasons, avarice, sadism, vindictiveness, arrogance, aggression, envy,  anger, bitterness, jealousy, hate, narrow-mindedness and plain unadulterated evil. Can you even imagine a cracker hacking your computer system stealing your personal information as well as take over your computer holding  it ransom until you make their specified payment and endure the uncertainty whether or not thy will release you computer once payment is made. 

Globally security experts are doing the utmost to reverse engineer Ransonware software in an attempt to put a stop to this thievery. 
Surprisingly there are number of them amongst which are TeslaCrypt, Alpha Crypt, CryptoFortress,  Chimera , CryptoWall, Ransomware infection, MBR Ransomware  (MBR stands for Master Boot Record), CryptoLocker and the worst of all CTB Ransomware (CTB atands for Curve-Tor-Bitcoin). Crowti (aka Cryptowall) and Tescrypt (aka Teslacrypt) are two Ransomware families that cyber gangs and e-criminals used  to infect  more than half a million Computers  running Microsoft Operating System and Microsoft Security Software. In fact the majority of Ransomware is targeted at the Microsoft Windows operating system and is sent as spam and e-mail attachments with the following names.

disgruntled.zip
facto.zip
headband.zip
woodworking.zip
firefly.zip

If the attachment, is unpacked, it unloads a .scr file, which if activated will launch a dropper of the Dalexis class.  It will then connects to a series of hard-coded URLs, from which it will download  CTB Locker.  CTB Locker will change  all your file name extensions to .crypt however the various flavours of Ransomware can change it to any of these  file name extensions listed below. (NB! This list is not exhaustive)

*.aaa
*.abc
*.cry
*.cpyt 
*.crypt 
*.crypto
*.darkness
*.ecc
*.enc
*.exx
*.ezz
*.kb15
*.kraken
*.locked
*.nochance
*.obleep
*.vault
*.zzz

One way to combat Ransomware is to keep a snapshots of the files in a secure area of your network that wouldn't be affected by Ransomware if the  machine is infected. Alternatively store an offline backup image of your hard drive so that your data can easily be restore. Refrain from downloading or access e-mail attachments from people you don’t know and never  click on  e-mails links you receive from unknown e-mail addresses. Also make absolutely sure your  anti virus / security solution is up to date and able to detect and block CTB Locker, and change your online security protection level by adjusting your web browser security settings.

THE DEEP WEB

THE DEEP WEB

For the past few months, Hackers have been making it to the news headlines virtually everyday and a lot has also been said about the "Deep Web". It is said that terror outfits flourish in the "Deep Web" and black market goods from illegal drugs, medical prescriptions, and firearms, etc, can be purchased directly from websites like Alpha Bay, Dream market, Korova, Outlaw Market, Valhalla (Silkkitie), etc,  and you can even hire a hit man to kill your mother-in-law. Having said purchase, implies online credit card transactions, but using this form of payment on the "Deep Web" could render your banking account empty. The way to transact on the "Deep Web" is to make payment with Bitcoins. Bitcoins are rapidly becoming one of the most popular currencies for both online and offline transactions. Bitcoins can be purchases from Silkroad and will require you to set up an account. Transactions are done with a a bitcoin address and a unique private key / PIN number (private wallet software). 

But first, the "Deep Web" is also known as the  "Invisible Web" and the "Hidden Web", which is Internet jargon (search terms) referring to the content on the World Wide Web that are not indexed by search engines. Many believe the "Hidden Web" to be 97 percent larger than the Internet as we know it, of which only 3 percent is available to search engines.  This is true to a degree because most private networks that make up a huge chunk of the Internet do not permit  web spiders to crawl their sites because their robots file denies access to web crawlers hence not available in regular search results. It is also said if you need to buy anything illegal from sites in the "Deep Web" you have to access the sites via a a VPN using a Tor browser in order to fly under the radar of the FBI and CIA and NSA. 

If you desire privacy and a degree anonymity when browsing the net, then the Tor network is an excellent idea, but you sacrifice speed. If you are using Linux then JonDo IP changer is a safer option than Tor. A Whonix-Gateway distro, provides even better protection against IP and location discovery on a Workstation. Then there is also the Tails distro which includes really cool networking features, using the Tor browser that does a good job of hiding  your identity and prevents traffic analysis by zig-zaging your connection through an array of anonymous servers.  These systems are secure but if you download anything fro the Internet via Torrent Network you still risk to expose your IP number which can be easily traced. The Tor browser can be downloaded here.

CYBER WARFARE

CYBER WARFARE

On Friday the 13th November 2015, social network giant Facebook deleted the group page of the Cyber Hacktivists  Anonymous which was exposing a list of more than a thousand pro-ISIS social media accounts. Facebook announced that the existence of the group was a "violation of their Terms of Service and Community Standards" and subsequently banned all Anonymous administrators, without prior warning and without giving any reason. Exposing the pro-ISIS accounts was in retaliation to the bloody terror attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of more than 130 people and left over 352 injured. The hacktivist collective Anonymous has publicly declared total war against ISIS. One of their spokespersons, spoke in French, on a video posted on YouTube saying  "Anonymous from all over the world will hunt you down. Expect massive cyber attacks" whilst hiding behind their signature Guy Fawkes mask.  

The French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also said that "war" had been declared on France and that "anybody who attacks the Republic, the Republic will fight back." "They will not destroy the Republic, it is the Republic will destroy them," he added. In retaliation French jets have been bombing  the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria since Monday the 16th November. 

Meanwhile, in response to Anonymous' statement, the militant group ISIS  released a statement, responding to Anonymous’ declaration of total war, calling them IDIOTS, and suggesting anti-hacking tips to their supporters to protect themselves against cyber attacks. The reply from ISIS to the Anonymous group was sent via one of the ISIS-affiliated official channels, dubbed “Elite Section of IS”, using the messaging app, Telegram.

An Anti-terrorism "ethical" hacker group known as Ghost Security Group (GSG), going after ISIS says that ISIS regularly use cryptocurrencies to fund its terrorist operations.  Adding that they hired a team of blockchain analysts to trace several Bitcoin addresses and found one  account containing $3 Million in US dollars worth of Bitcoins. 

Even though ISIS is called the Islamic State is has very little to do with Islam if any. ISIS is an abbreviation for Israeli Secret Intelligence Service a.k.a  Mossad (Israel's intelligence agency). ISIS is in fact a collective American-CIA-Mossad-Saudi Intel Covert Operation. Fidel Castro  slammed the  USA/Israel for creating ISIS and retired Lieutenant  General  Ian McInerny said “We have helped create ISIS”. NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that British and American intelligence agencies and Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).”  The leader of ISIS is known as Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi but his real name is Elliot Shimon, a Zionist Jew born from two Jewish parents, trained by Mossad in espionage and psychological warfare against Arab and Islamic societies.  He is a blackhat hack. The ISIS objective is to create unrest and chaos in the middle east -from Pakistan to the Mediteranian Sea, by deceiving the brain-dead public with the "Renegade Muslim" facade in plain sight while they steal the oil and gas.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria Pipeline and the Qatari pipeline needed access via Syria to reach the Mediterranean coastline for the oil tankers to transport it to the Americas. In order to control the the pipeline from end-to-end America declared war on Sadam Husain for weapons of mass destruction and in the process vanquished Iraq killing thousands of Iraqis, taking control and setup several US army bases. A blink of an eye later, America's war on terror attacks Afghanistan demanding that the Taliban hand over Osama bin Laden and expel al-Qaeda, vanquishing the country killing thousands of Afghans, taking control and setting up several US army bases. Then, sanctions against Iran for their used of Uranium  for electrification and its possible use for weapons of mass destruction. But  they still working on Iran. Meanwhile Syria the last piece of the puzzle goes up in flames  with barrel bombs being dropped on the masses and America declaring was on ISIS on all fronts  and bombing the Syrians into submission. All the ISIS killings are purely collateral damage  because with the pipe line is more valuable than people. With all this middle  eastern turmoil, ISIS has now grown into veritable armies with modern advanced weaponry and vehicles with thousands of foot-soldiers covering the faces so that the masses cannot identify them as Caucasians. To achieve their goal of  world domination / new world order, with America at the helm, they have unceremoniously killed tens of thousands of innocent bystanders. 

Be that as it may, France is currently in the global spotlight because as few as 130 innocent people were killed yet the entire civilized world turns a blind eye when tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians men women and  children are massacred by  Israeli settlers, gunmen and Israeli Government policies. Conservatively speaking, between 2000-2005 as many as 4,907 Palestinians were killed and as many as 8,611 wounded and between 2006 and 2015 as many as 5,500 Palestinians were killed and as many as 20 400 wounded, but spotlight, not even a candle. Shame on all of you!

ONLINE PRIVACY

ONLINE PRIVACY

Social media has taken the world by storm and has provided the powers that be, the ideal way to hack you and me.  Adult dating sites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, YouTube, Google+, Meetup, Disqus, Medium, Renren, Pinterest, Instagram, Secret, Vine, WhatsApp, Flickr, Qzone, VK, Tumblr, and the rest of the social media slice of the Internet can be equated to a  global collection of profiles, admissions, personal ledgers, or even diaries. It constitutes the largest collection of volunteered personal information ever and the greatest incentive to would be hackers to mark you. In days gone by, personal ledgers were kept by many in which to tabulate their thoughts, record their ideas and purposefully expose their fears to a book. A  book that played the role of a non-human psychologist, if you like.  It merely acted as a wall to bounce ideas off, tell your secrets to, share you deepest thoughts, reveal you innermost desires, even talk to if needs be, though never expecting a reply. 

Personal diaries and personal ledgers helped many people to retain their sanity and deal with their demons, but as personal ledgers slowly died out, it was replaced by the psychologist and his couch. For many a "would be patient", bouncing the mental anguish off a quack was often a futile and expensive exercise, whereas for many a physiologist, a very lucrative money spinner. The more people who thought they needed the help of a psychologist, the more psychologist brain washed them into using their services. 

I don't deny nor dispute that there is a need for psychologist in society, but they tend to diagnose everyone with  some sort of schizophrenia or the other. Prescribing the same regimen of drugs to everyone from Retalin, to Adderall, to Concerta, to Vyvanse, to Imipramine, to Inderal, to Invega Sustenna, to Ambien, to Celexa, to Prozac, to Thorazine, to Valium, to Zoloft, to mention but a few, even  though we all have a biochemical individuality, in fact and absolutely  unique biochemical individuality.

Some parents even felt the need to send their children to psychologist for evaluation who then became regular couch subjects. This turned out to be an ingenious cash cow model that kept psychologist near the top of the food chain for some time and also kept the masses sedated and conditioned to be perfect zombies. But the psychologist are being phased out by the social media networks, where the masses are comparing notes,  with fake  friend discussing their personal issues, their mental issues, their health issues, their psychological issues, etc...  entrusting their deepest and darkest secrets to strangers, and others soliciting commentaries who are as effed-up. Besides bolstering their own achievements and lying through their teeth about it, exposing themselves, divulging personal data and volunteering way too much information about themselves. So much so, that the bullshit on the social media networks is fast replacing the bullshit that their patients construed as insight. 

As if it's not bad enough that everyone out there have their own share of problems, be they chicks with daddy issues, or guys with mommy issues, sex addictions, drug dependencies, need for acceptance, dependency syndrome, peddling drugs, kleptomania, alcoholism, prostitution, bullying, theft, lies, cheating wives and sugar daddies, etc. The NSA and the FBI are also added to this mix. Yes, the NSA has been pushing for cooperation from Google, Yahoo and other search engines to feed them with profiles of "misfits", suspect offenders, pedophiles, etc... This means that you and I and everyone else we know, are being poured though a sieve, being judged for what we say or do online, for what we buy and sell online, and the websites that we visit. 

Google is god of the internet and stores all your search history and I'm not talking about your browser history that is stored on your computer which can easily be erased or configured by selecting the paranoid tick in your control panel  Control panel \ Internet Properties \ General \ browser history \ settings \ history \ 0 days. Here I'm referring to your Web & App Activity that may go back several years and can by found in the settings menu in the bottom right hand side of Google's search page. Why you may ask, why does Google do this?  Because governments compelled them to do so. Google and Yahoo have maps on their sites that you can visit to see how many of your fellow countrymen or women is in the NSA's spotlight, all thanks to social networks.

The Tor browser is an option  if you feel that its best to surf anonymously but the FBI is trying their utmost to get the profiles of people who surf anonymously and wish to enjoy some privacy. There are rumours that the FBI hackers are too lame to do it themselves, so they agreed to pay Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, USA, $1 million to hack the Tor network and deanonymize its users.  So who’s hacking who? However, the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation)  is doing their level best to get court injections against the FBI and the NSA's abuse of power and save us all from becoming suspects or victimized for what we say online..  



Meanwhile, a type of malware known as ransomware has been restricting users from accessing their own website or computer system by uploading the above notice, locked by the FBI or Justice Department on their systems. It forces   "offenders" to pay a ransom / fine in Bitcoins via specified online methods before they can  get your own systems or data back. The hacker known as Slavik  who also wrote the Zeus banking trojan, is responsible for the   CryptoLocker Ransomware Virus and has been using the FBI  to extort money from victims. 

HACKER MENTALITY

HACKER MENTALITY

Hackers are thinkers. They visualize what others can't. They see the world differently. They are super curious. They tinker with things in order to understand them.  They hunger for knowledge that interest them. Einstein was a tinkerer, a preoccupied thinker, so much so that his teachers said that he won't amount to anything. Yet, we all know what his intellectual contribution was to the global society. He saw the world differently and he could have been absolutely wealthy but his interests weren't monetary.  Likewise Tesla a was a tinkerer totally preoccupied by his interests having time for nothing else because he saw the world differently. He could have been stinking rich but be chose the art of tinkering over money. They wanted to empower the masses and create a better future for all. They were eccentric men, yet there are loads of people today that are wired like Einstein and Tesla, even share their eccentricity, though they may not be as intelligent or perhaps even more so.

Albert Einstein, tinkerer, hacker, scientist.

 The masses call these people hackers and nerds. Yep, Nerds...  a derogatory term used by the masses to talk down on them as if they are inferior. But quite the contrary. These hackers and nerds are the ones who brought them the bicycle, the internal combustion engine, electricity, the telephone system, the computer, the internet, the smartphone, satellite TV, and so much more. Without the nerds where would the masses be technologically?  Professor Tim Berners-Lee conceptualize URIs, HTTP and HTML the invented the World Wide Web. James Gosling developer of  the Java Programming language. Linus Torvalds  is the creator of the Linux kernel and its principal developer, and the list goes on. Realistically is was never about the money for them  but rather the sharing of knowledge to empower others.

Nicola Tesla ... whose ideas were usurped by Edison, much like
Zuckerberg usurped Jarkko Oikarinen's IRC and turned it into Facebook.

Admittedly some of these master minds opted for the money. Wasniak didn't but his partner Jobbs did. Tim Paterson the inventor and originator of MSDOS didn't but Bill did, making him one of the riches men in the world. IRC was an amazing app designed by Jarkko Oikarinen which since the days of inception  was free, gratis and verniet. A sucker like Zuckerberg copied IRC added some bells and whistles called it Facebook and became stinking rich in the process. These are the sellouts. Money motivated them above the art of hacking  and sharing,  not desiring equality but disparities in wealth, to the point that the world's wealthiest 5%  is sitting with 95% of the global wealth and the remaining  95% of the masses share in the 5%. Disgraceful! Many of them having made their fortunes on the backs of child labour (Apple, Microsoft & Samsung) in their supply chains, adding to the already enormous Third World Debt Crisis.

The above passage gives the impression that hackers and nerds are all male, but this is certainly not the case. I have encountered that "chica" who could show me a thing or two when it comes to high-tech. As a whole, hackers are rebellious by nature, non conformists, often loners preferring the company of computers over people. They prefer  to do their own thing, and not be bogged down by a 9 to 5. They cannot see themselves as obedient Zombies who conform to the system by subjecting their income to the trinkets of society. You know... that prestigious car that gives others the impression that you are "all that", though they are knee deep in arse mousse because of debt. That pretentious house  with the swimming pool and entertainment area with which to lure friends to impress. Those life, car and household insurances that were all grudge purchase anyway, which they endure under great strain because the Jones' have them. That expensive lifetime gym membership that's costing them an arm and a leg which they hardly use, except as a conversation piece.  Not forgetting the maxed out credit cards that they constantly juggle not to embarress the arse mousse out of your families. Slave to the system with debt as the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Dept up to their freaking eyeballs.

That's what gets these obedient slave,  Zombies jumping out of bed at an unruly hour of the morning, braving the traffic to get to work on time to earn that measly salary that they are unhappy with to pay for the trinkets that they don't really need which they were enticed into by the system even though it's not what they really wanted   in the first place. They are spokes in the  system and getting out is most difficult hence its best not to get into the system in the first place. That's why hackers keep it real and therefore don't deserve the negative connotations attached to the term. Admittedly there are angry hackers who tend to be anarchists,  evil enough to destroy the establishments, but you have those types in all walks of society. Then their are wannabe hackers ... the script kiddies (crackers) who gave hackers the bad name by hacking into networks haphazardly because they lack real hacker knowledge. This hacker stigma has led to the White hat, Black hat, blah, blah blah by those who wants to label everything.  The cybersecurity problem of today doesn't lie with the hackers but falls squarely the shoulders of operating system manufacturers who couldn't design  a secure system in the first place. And secondly on the heads of the dumb asses corporates employ to guard their networks who don't know enough to hack their way out of a wet paper bag.

HACKERS

HACKERS

Since the arrival of IPV6 and the Internet of  Things (IoT), millions of additional network nodes have extended the realm of the WWW. Needless to say, computer savvy individuals have an inherent curiosity, a burning desire, a need and an itch to interact with these additional network devices. This is as human as wanting to run the fastest race and win. Sing the best and beat the rest. Excel at school to prove your worth. This curiosity and the need to prove yourself goes far beyond the individual, it is the epitome of Governments behaviours. Both Russia and the US of A had the curiosity to go into space and the USA just had to dominate, needed to, or  wanted to ... semantics.  Global militaries have the curiosity to witness the destruction of military hardware and chemical weapons, so Netanyahu just had to drop phosphorus bombs on the Palestinians. They also wanted to out do one another with their displays of military armourments, the one boasting better than the other. This idea of mental prowess and greater ability even extend to the movie business, where Bollywood is bigger but Hollywood just has to prove that it's better. Kiddies cartoons even teach this attitude to our young children for example, Pinky and the Brain, with the Brain wanting to take over the world.... because he can.

If we look back to 1983 when  Ronald Austin of the 414s hacked the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Security Pacific Bank. He and his crew had the curiosity and the knowledge but lacked the computer network to practice on, and prove to themselves that they could do it. They didn't own nor could they afford a computer network of their own to play with, experiment on, hack, reconfigure, etc... So they just had to use the internet which only had 562 host computers at the time as opposed to billions of nodes today. If they had their own hubs, routers, gateway servers, DNS servers, proxy servers, mail servers  and a network with computer running  Microsoft, iOS, Linux, Solaris, Unix and VMS operating systems, they would never have done a live hack that landed Ronald a 3 years probation. They looked upon their hacks as  youthful pranks whereas the authorities saw them as criminals and black hat hackers.

What’s a Blackhat Hacker?

A Black hat hacker is an individual with exceptional computer knowledge, a computer guru if you like, who takes pride in beating cybersecurity expert at their own game by breaching or bypassing their computer network security purely because he can. This doesn't make him a criminal for outwitting his counterparts, it just puts him at the head of his game. So out of pure jealousy he is called a Black hat hackers or a  crackers or a dark-side hacker. Many of these "Black Hat Hackers" become cybersecurity experts and are employed as "White Hat Hackers" by large corporations.  World's most famous hacker Kevin Mitnick was one of the FBI's most Wanted, because he hacked into 40 major corporations just for the challenge, today he is a trusted security consultant to Fortune 500 companies and governments worldwide. He also mentors the theory and practice of social engineering. He published several books on cybersecurity, the latest being 'Ghost in the Wires'. However some "Black Hat Hackers"  hack with maliciousness intent, defacing  web pages, deleting log files, or even crashes the computers or take the entire network offline out of anger. Anger at having extraordinary skills but unemployed. Resulting in some  "Black Hat Hackers"  hacking for personal gain. When they do so, they are more often than not often members of hacking  tiger team. This is the stereotypical  young,  intelligent, highly motivated, energetic and curious male "Black hat hacker" portrayed in popular culture as the computer criminal involved with identity theft and the illegal sale of credit card numbers and fraudulent bank transfers. They are also labelled as the hackers who create computer viruses.

What’s a Whitehat Hacker?

A white hat hacker is normally paid cybersecurity consultants who contracts himself out to both small businesses and large corporations, to perform penetration tests by breaking into their protected computer systems and networks purely to asses the level cyber security. He then informs their IT departments of all computer and network vulnerabilities and how they should be plugged before malicious hackers breach their computers network for criminal purpose. 

Then there are also  "blue hat hackers" and  "gray hat hackers".  Blue hat hackers are normally security professionals working outside of computer security consulting firms who are contracted to bug-test computer system prior to going live. Their objective is to indentify exploits so they can be plugged. A "Grey hat"  computer hacker is an individual with exceptional computer knowledge but  whose "ethical standards" fall somewhere between  altruistic (Whitehat Hacker) and  malicious (Blackhat Hacker). A fence sitter if you like, a white hat that has going bad or a Black hat in the process of cleaning up his act. Uncertain of his loyalties.

CIA AND FBI HACKED

THE CIA AND THE FBI HAVE BEEN HACKED

The young Black Hat hacker crew that hacked into CIA Director John Brennan personal correspondence and that of other  government officials acquired very sensitive security information regarding top-secret Intelligence matters. This enabled them to struck again, but  now infiltrated the FBI. They identified themselves as CWA - "Crackas With Attitude" and subsequently hacked into an  even more important target, which according to them is a private law enforcement portal that granted them access to the US arrest records database and at least  a dozen more law enforcement tools. Amongst which are the  Enterprise File Transfer Service, a tool for sharing files, as well as Intelink the United States Government computer system Justice Enterprise File Sharing, and so much more.

The CIA and the FBI just got hacked

Cracka the leader of the hacker crew provided a screenshot of the arrest records database called JABS which stands for Joint Automated Booking System. This could give them carte blanche to erase criminals records of anyone who has one, for a price and even clean their own slates if they have criminal records or were previously incarcerated. This portal also grants them access to arrest  information of suspected terrorists, gang members and drug merchants.  I wouldn't be surprised if this  information end up on Tor network or Alpha Bay on the deep web for sale to the highest bidder.

JABS database query tool infiltrated by the CWA hacker crew.

However yesterday CWA posted a list of names, phone numbers, and email addresses of more than 3000 government employees, military personel and FBI agents working at various local police departments through the country into Pastebin and Cryptobin. This was done to coincide with Guy Fawkes Day and in solidarity with the "million mask march" of  hacker crew "Anonymous" from the Philippines. As an indication of their seriousness, they named this release  “Part 1” implying that there is more to follow.  Cracka, also said it is their way to hurt the government and not innocent people and that  they are doing this to help the people of Palestine and not for name and fame.

CWA has certainly opened up a can of worms by targeting both the CIA and the FBI of the United States and is sure to become public enemy number one. If they haven't been on the intelligence agencies radar before, they certainly are now.

CYBER WARS CONTINUED

 CYBER WARS CONTINUED

The US is hacking China and China is hacking them in return and somehow the  “biggest government hack ever” got past the Feds and the "multi billion-dollar intrusion detection and prevention system that stands guard over much of the federal government's Internet traffic". By the time the federal authorities finally detected an ongoing remote attack targeting the United States' Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computer systems, the hack was completed. 

During the first hack, some  4.2 million federal workers’ information was stolen, and during the second hack between 21 million to 25 million federal workers and contractors was stolen. But a even larger theft took place in 2006, when over 26 million files were stolen from from the Department of Veteran Affairs when US government data networks was breached. 

This hack may have spanned several months, before the White House  made it public, however it is believed that the attack bears the hallmark of Chinese state-sponsored espionage but no direct evidence has been provided. The add insult to injury OPM has also confirmed that 19.7 million background investigation forms and 1.1 million fingerprint records were stolen not to mention Edward Snowden  exposing NSA surveillance practices and records.

Famous Hacker - Keven Lee Poulsen (Dark Dante)

Two Russian computer hackers  Alexey Ivanov, 20, and Vasiliy Gorshkov, 25, were arrested by the FBI for  victimizing banks and 40 US businesses in 10 states and the theft of credit card numbers in a cross-border hacking case. They were lured to the United States and snared in a cyber-sting.  The case against them is built on reverse hacking by the FBI who accessed the Russian's computers.

According to the charges by government lawyers, the pair may be linked to hundreds of crimes, including the theft of 15,700 credit card numbers from Western Union in Denver in September. The breached US computers servers were running Microsoft software, who  acknowledged that security holes exist in some versions of Windows NT and offered to fix  them at no charge for at least two years. 

Associate professor Robert Morris at MIT (creator of Internet's first worm virus)

Apparently Russia has been cyberspying on the United States, several countries throughout Europe and Asia for more than seven years.  It is believed that a large  hacking crew known as "the Dukes" is spying for the Russian government since  all the signs point back to Russian state sponsorship.   Other reports confirmed that the Kremlin is behind cyber-espionage attacks and Regin seems to be their malware of choose. 

Russian hackers also penetrated U.S. industrial control networks that run critical infrastructures like the electrical grid and its been disclosed   that Moscow has formed a special cyber military  hacker unit as part of preparations for future cyber warfare. US  intelligence agency also singled out China, Iran, and North Korea as the primary nation states capable of conducting sophisticated cyber attacks and espionage stating that Politically motivated cyber attacks are now a growing reality. 

Infosec expert - Mark Abene (Phiber Optik)

US Statistics on cybercrime show a huge disparity between the number of attacks reported and the number of people who actually get caught. Based on this more and more computer savvy people are turning to hacking starting out with the firm intention of not getting caught. 

However, hackers like Kevin Mitnick, Eric Bloodaxe, Keven Lee Poulsen (Dark Dante), "Data Stream". "Knight lightning", Mark Abene (Phiber Optik), Paul Stira (Scorpion), Elias Ladopoulos (Acid Phreak), Robert Morris, who are worth their weight in gold have been caught and served time.