Provide replies to Discussion 4

Main Que:Provide an example based on your professional experience of what motivate hackers to attack computer networks?

Provide replies to below discussions in 150 words .There are 2 discussions to reply.

Sachin:

Human mind works in mysterious ways and when we dig up more reasons behind hacking, it becomes more evidential. Obviously, Greed and Power are the two main reasons behind hacking. But other times, it is also driven by Fun, Disruption and even Espionage. Greed is when the hackers try to access the system for their own gain. Such gains could have monetary value, or it could be done to steal someone else’s proprietary things. Power is when the hacker tries to make a statement that they have the absolute control over some other system. It will help them to demonstrate their ability to intrude in some other system. Hackers often hack into systems for fun. Typically, these kinds of hacks does not leave much damage and the hacker has no reasonable logic behind the hack besides their own amusement.

Disruption is done when the hacker simply wants to impede another person’s or organization’s progress and cause chaos. It could be backed with strong intention to take revenge and bring down the reputation. Espionage is generally motivated by the political powers and it is done by one country to another. One of the examples of the espionage is when North Korea hacked into Sony’s system to bring down the movie they did not want to be released. It was due to political reasons and cause international dispute.

Example

There is an incident from Florida where a hacker installed a ransomware in computers for his financial gain: “Florida city is paying $600,000 in Bitcoins to a hacker who took over local government computers after an employee clicked on a malicious email link three weeks ago.” (CNN, 2019). This incident compelled the officials to pay 65 bitcoins in return to unlocking the files locked by the ransomware. The cost of the ransom is going to be covered by the insurance, but it definitely puts the information leak risk. Several thousands of the employees are affected by this.

City officials told that the hacker will be investigated despite they are being given the ransom amount. The incident has been reported to the FBI which has begun the investigation. The incident has also raised concern over other government official website which are being hacked in increasing numbers these days. This incident is a major wake-up call for the government to add extra cyber security apparatus and introduce tough rules regarding the hacking.

Sruthi:

Hackers, I believe are intelligent who use their talent for all the wrong reasons. They try to invade into the networks of the companies in unauthorized ways. There might be many different motivations behind the hacking. In order to deal with these hackers, it is always encouraged to have a better understanding and insight into the motivations of the attackers. Cyberterrorists, Hacktivists, cybercriminals etc. have a different kind of motives behind them hacking the computer systems or the network connections. Cyberterrorism is based on two concerns – attacks through technology in cyberspace and traditional terrorism.

From my professional experience, I get some emails which are called a phishing attack. The motive behind the false emails is scaring the normal people with different reasons. They scare the people saying they are due to pay a lot of money or lost their money. They mainly use emails to send out emails to scare and worry about normal people. The other personal experience I had was social media account being attacked. They have sent personal messages to the friends’ list and also shared bad posts on social media. This is something hackers enjoy by sharing bad posts and this helps them to gain financially. Many hackers care about money. Hackers always care about accessing our personal, financial or health data.

Few hackers get motivated by taking the technical challenge. The hacker maneuvered this colossal botnet to launch denial of service attack against a music web site for three months before the police detected it (Xingan, 2017). Hackers also try to practice and show up programming skills. They try to identify flaws in computer systems and make sure there is no code defect in the software. Some hackings are motivated by harassment and murder. Hackers have been motivated for several reasons like for the hacking community, employment-related motivations, recreation, motivated by self-defense and executing trap marketing.