SmartFlio Daily: Hackamania

dimanche 5 janvier 2014

Hackamania | by Bach Habi

Hacking is becoming the new addiction leading us to the current era of "Hackamaniacs" addicted to causing nothing more than "Hackamania"

The advent of the internet, brought about a revolutionary way for people to socialize, share, exchange information, ideas, trade amongst many other positive attributes, but like a double edged sword it had its negative attributes aswell, which on a scale balance each other out here's why;

The past couple of months have witnessed increased security breaches by hackers. Which constitutes what is called a 'cyber crime'. Hacking (or in some quarters #hacktivism #hactivists) is classified as one. This chain reaction of breaches everything from Jeep's twitter account

To Sony Playstation Network's shut down for a few days as well as their Qriocity service due to an “external intrusion” that compromised an estimated 77million user accounts.

Infact hacking is so rampant that Forbe's placed the stats at 30,000 websites a day, after a Sophos Labs survey. Hacking in itself is not a new phenomena it has existed since the days of Nevil Maskelyne disrupting John Ambrose Fleming's public demonstration of Guglielmo Marconi's purportedly secure wireless telegraphy technology, sending insulting Morse code messages through the auditorium's projector.

The most recent of this #hackamania was Facebook, Twiiter, Yahoo, Gmail & others, the scale according to researchers at cyber security firm Trustwave was "2 million Facebook, Gmail and Twitter passwords stolen" in what was called a "massive hack" according to a CNN report. The study broke down the findings as follows; On Nov. 24, Trustwave researchers tracked a server, located in the Netherlands. They discovered compromised credentials for more than 93,000 websites", including:

318,000 Facebook (FB, Fortune 500) accounts
70,000 Gmail, Google+ and YouTube accounts
60,000 Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) accounts
22,000 Twitter (TWTR) accounts
9,000 Odnoklassniki accounts (a Russian social network)
8,000 ADP (ADP, Fortune 500) accounts (ADP says it counted 2,400)
8,000 LinkedIn (LNKD)accounts

Snapchat and Skype users fell prey too, in an article entitled "Happy New Year? Snapchat and Skype Get Hacked" it was revealed that "A hacker website reportedly posted the usernames and partial phone numbers of 4.6 million Snapchat users yesterday. In an apparently unrelated attack, Skype's official social-media accounts were also hacked, with messages posted by the Syrian Electronic Army." it went further on to specifically say "The hackers posted on Skype's official Twitter, "Don't use Microsoft emails (Hotmail, outlook), They are monitoring your accounts and selling the data to the government." some call this alarming and informational, maybe thats why we didn't hear the expected outrage you'd typically hear when one's privacy is invaded.

Is privacy dead then? can we genuinely say, we have reached an age, where not only is #hackamania a growing addiction, but one who's victims have grown addicted to? From the recent non-response by users who have had their accounts compromised, we can honestly say that privacy just took the final nail in the coffin.

ABC estimated the damage to a tune of "$1 Trillion worth of intellectual property stolen due to hackers gaining access to confidential data". This is monumental, but what was even more worrisome was why this surge, according to the article entitled "Recession Turns IT Workers Into Hackers" the prime cause "Any employee who has been laid off or fears he might soon lose his job could potentially steal proprietary information and is a threat to the company. Experts said IT workers are particular dangerous subset because they best know a company's security weaknesses." the article went further to state that "Forty-six percent of the American companies surveyed for the study said "laid-off employees are the biggest threat caused by the economic downturn," followed by hackers with no connection to the company" In a nutshell the threat is not only confined to everyday users but also to companies and corporations too.

But, what is worrying from all of this is the snail-like backlash you almost didn't hear from not only everyday users but also privacy rights advocates. Unsuspecting victims loose sensitive financial information through the 'eTheft' of their financial data via credit card fraud. In a recent article, in the Inquirer millions of people fell victims to a major financial hack. " in December, and saw some unknown – so far – parties walk off with the credit and debit card details of 40 million people. Yes. More than the population of Canada lost details relating to their financial, personal and property in an assault on the store Target." the article went on to say, "A hack on Adobe gathered together threads from a range of parties and set companies and their security falling like dominoes. In October the firm said it had been hit in an attack that had affected tens of millions of customers, the firm settled on 38 million." some were even estimating a much higher figure "Adobe stuck firm to its 38 million count, but in some quarters numbers as high as 150 million have been mentioned "

Looking at the scale and frequency of attack, the figures are frightening, and gets even worse, but surprisingly #hackamania has not gotten the appropriate outrage one would typically save for such a threat or as far as cybercrimes (or in some quarters #hacktivism #hactivists) is concerned. Why then was there no uproar to what would normally constitute an invasion of privacy and breach of trust? is it because, perhaps we view Hackers as "Online Robin Hoods" (#onlinerobinhoods). Since these "Online Robin Hoods" have assisted in shedding light on some fraudulent acts or exposing institutional crimes against the unsuspecting.

In conclusion, i have come to see, this tug of war between one man's 'Cyber Criminal' being another man's 'Online Robin Hood', as a reflection of where we are today in the 'IToSphere' of things, where the roles of evil heroes and good heroes are interchangeable, confusing the user who is caught in the middle of this crossfire of interchanging roles, interchanging allegiances, interchanging stances, interchanging responses, from having a focused reaction. Which leaves one wondering does bad beget good?

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