Let’s talk about hacking, the way it’s depicted, and how those depictions compare with reality. A commonly used definition for hacking is the act of compromising digital devices and networks through unauthorized access to an account or computer system. Hacking is not always a malicious act, but it is typically associated with illegal activity and data theft by cyber criminals. Hacking refers to the misuse of devices like computers, smartphones, tablets, and networks to cause damage to or corrupt systems, gather information on users, steal data and documents, or disrupt data-related activity. You probably already knew that, but there are a great many nuances and details to hacking that you should be aware of.
The term “hacking” originates from the 1970s, though it only came into common use during the 80s, with movies like Tron and WarGames. In 1980, a group of teenagers cracked the computer systems of major organizations like Los Alamos National Laboratory, Security Pacific Bank, and Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and a Newsweek article covering the event became the first to use the word “hacker” in the negative light it now holds. This event also led Congress to pass several bills around computer crimes, but that did not stop the number of high-profile attacks on corporate and government systems. Of course, the concept of hacking has spiraled with the release of the public internet, which has led to far more opportunities and more lucrative rewards for hacking activity. This saw techniques evolve and increase in sophistication and gave birth to a wide range of types of hacking and hackers.
There are five main motivations for hackers today: financial gain, corporate espionage, notoriety, political statements, and/or state-sponsored hacking. In addition, there are three types of hackers who carry out these activities: black, white, and grey hat hackers. Black hat hackers are likely what the average person thinks of when they think of a hacker. These individuals go out of their way to discover vulnerabilities in computer systems and software to exploit them for personal, national, or corporate gain. They can have a massive negative impact on computer users and the organizations they work for. White hat hackers, on the other hand, are the quote in quote “good guys”. They actively work to break into systems to expose vulnerabilities to the people at risk. For instance, these hackers would discover vulnerabilities in Windows 10 and inform Microsoft so they could patch the vulnerabilities before people with malicious intent aka bad actors can take advantage of them.
That leaves grey hat hackers. This encompasses the wide range of hackers between the white and black hat hackers at either end of the spectrum. Unlike black hat hackers, they attempt to violate standards and principles but without intending to do harm or gain financially. Their actions are typically carried out for the common good. For example, they may exploit a vulnerability to raise awareness that it exists, but unlike white hat hackers, they do so publicly. This alerts malicious actors to the existence of the vulnerability. However, given that vulnerabilities are most dangerous when only black hat hackers are aware of them, grey hat hackers are still primarily acting for the good of the public. Simultaneously, governments and corporations would certainly prefer these individuals did not operate in the way they did.
We have now talked about who is hacking and why they are doing it, let’s now discuss how they make this happen. For one, it’s an outdated misconception that most hackers consist of lone rogue programmers who are highly skilled in coding and modifying computer software and hardware systems. Today, hacking is a multi-billion-dollar industry with whole teams of people working to infiltrate systems and even more common today, working to trick users into granting them legitimate access. Social engineering, or tricking users into giving up passwords or other compromising data, is easily the most common form of modern network infiltration. The notion of hackers spending hours upon hours attempting to crack some code to infiltrate some computer or network is a bit of a dated, inaccurate view of hacking.
We are finally onto misconceptions about hacking. Hollywood has been trying to portray hacking in an entertaining way for about forty years now, and they have taken many creative liberties in their portrayals. For starters, one of, if not the most common trope of hacking in films and TV, is this visual of hackers typing code at this absurd speed, the faster, the better. While talented hackers can certainly write code much faster than the average person, creating a program is a slow, deliberate process that involves a lot of trial and error. Plus, keep in mind that hackers are not writing an essay or novel; a lot of writing code involves copying and pasting the same lines of code repeatedly. Along those same lines, there is no spellcheck or autocorrect in your average programming language, so typing absurdly fast is most likely just going to lead to mistakes that these individuals will have to spend hours trying to go back and fix.
There are many misconceptions of hacking in media, truly too many for me to cover in this article, but the other one I want to debunk is the visual representation of hacking on the computers themselves. The problem that films and TV shows face with showing hacking in popular media is that it is very uninteresting to look at. Often, you’ll see these digital 3D representations of computer systems and hacking programs, but this is extremely inaccurate. Malware is scary and dangerous because of the damage it can do, but visually, it’s usually very mundane. If you have ever downloaded any normal software or file or anything that has the capability of altering a computer, you know what it looks like to incidentally use malicious software. Hackers today deliberately design malware and hacks to look normal; they do not want to stand out, at least not until after they have what they want.
Hacking is so incredibly important in this modern age of digital dependence. We are already at a point where we have come to rely on computers and technology in every facet of our lives, even if we do not necessarily believe so. Banks, hospitals, and many more businesses and organizations need computers to operate effectively and efficiently, so hackers who are out to compromise those systems, for whatever reason, must be understood and discussed in a realistic manner. We are not out to bash media’s depiction of hacking and hackers, they’re just out to entertain, but it is important to know just how inaccurate those depictions are. Hacking, generally speaking, is not interesting for the average person to look at. There’s no progress bars or 3D environments or fingers movin' so fast it’ll set the place ablaze. You likely will not know about a hacker compromising your system until your computer stops working the way it’s supposed to.
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