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.

CYBER WARS

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THE INTERNET OF THINGS

THE INTERNET OF THINGS

ICT and Cybersecurity experts warned that companies need to pay greater attention to their computer networks' cybersecurity and add that Telecoms company TalkTalk got hacked because “it wasn’t paying enough attention to its cybersecurity,” and that the recent  Ashley Madison attack,  is just the “the tip of  iceberg”.  They add that the growing threat by hackers is very real and that the cyber attacks comparable to the 9/11 event can be expected but needs to be thwarted before they happen.  With the arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) a lot more devices are connected to the Internet and this number is constantly growing,  and provides new ways for hackers to gain access to private and confidential data. Experts recommend that network security must be part of a company’s core infrastructure because the few professional cybersecurity companies globally just aren't  enough to stop the constant barrage of cyber threats. 

 Barack Obama and  Xi Jinping

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met as recent as the 25 Sept 2015 in Washington and reached an “understanding” not to use cyber spies to commit economic espionage and not to hack private firms in each other’s country for economic gain. But in less tan 20 days  a U.S. cybersecurity company claims that it has evidence that hackers linked to the Chinese government tried to violate a recent agreement between Washington and Beijing. American business have complained for a number of years that Chinese hackers have sought to steal trade secrets from U.S. corporate computers. In retaliation U.S. spy organizations have hacked into Chinese companies claiming that American officials performed these hacks  for national security purposes and not to steal Chinese trade secrets. Washington’s determination to eradicate Chinese cyber theft and ban all forms of digital protectionism resulted in regional trade pact with Pacific Rim countries  requiring  them to criminalize hacking attacks on U.S. companies.

US officials currently working on the Iran policy determined that the recent surge of cyber attacks by the Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials it possibly  linked to arrest of  Siamak Namazi an Iranian-American businessman. The Iranian military  Revolutionary Guards have regularly made hacking attacks on US government agencies in recent years but has increased  after the landmark international agreement to eased severe economic sanctions on Iran in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear program.  

The World  Wide Web is the direct consequence of  all the hacking taking place globally but even though these hacks cost global business move than  £200bn last year, the Internet is non-the-less an indispensable  global resource which no country can function without. It is in this sense that ministers of the Obama administration are demanding answer with respect to the protection of the vital undersea Internet cables.  The Russian government recently spooked US officials by dispatching a submarine equipped to cut undersea cables along the East Coast of the United States. 

However the threat is much closer to home. A  teenage hacker crew has been casing John Brennan director of the CIA and other  government officials. A hacker with the alias "Cracka",  hacked into an email account belonging to the FBI Deputy Director Mark Giuliano  getting into a Comcast email that’s under Giuliano’s wife’s name.  They even provided several screenshots to prove they hacked the account but declined to reveal how they did it.