The image of a
hacker that popular media would have you believe is that of a shady
loner. Someone who acts for themselves, ruthlessly targeting innocent
people and organizations. This is a bit unfair as hackers come in all
shapes, sizes, and unsurprisingly, genders. It's a bit of a misnomer
characterizing hackers as villains, as they are providing an
increasingly valuable skill set to the software and security sectors.
This nefarious
image arises from the anecdote everyone's heard. Someone's credit
card information has been stolen, and the perpetration is some
faceless hacker. We've come to know and despise this caricature, with
good reason too. Hacking itself is simply circumventing security
measures in order to gain unauthorized access to data. Hacking has come to be the leading cause of data breaches, and is only poising to be a bigger issue to the private and public sector 1.
This doesn't
necessarily have to happen using a computer, it can be as simple as
making a phone call posing as an IT administrator, fishing for a
password. It all comes down to the fact that information is valuable.
Where there is money, people will be willing to justify their means
to acquire it. However, the field itself draws many in as hobbyists
and experts alike. Sometimes the act of breaking new software is it's
own reward2.
As a result, many
software firms invite hackers to test their software. This allows
them to have faster turn around on security issues. Hacking has
become a sort of sport, in which groups at conventions like DefCon
attemp to best each other. This can be lucrative, as software
companies offer prizes to those who can break their systems3.
Hacking has taken
a political stage as well. Since so much data is being stored
digitally, it is a huge deal to states defense. Cyberwarfare has
become a real thing, unfortunately. It poses a threat to state
defense the way espionage does, and the battlefield is still
unmapped. We are barely on the verge of the what countries are
capable when concentrating their efforts on cyber-assault. Recently
it was reveaeled that the stuxnet worm that infected Iranian nuclear
facilities was designed by Israeli and US operations. This is the tip
of the iceberg, as systems more vulnerable exist 4.
No comments:
Post a Comment