Читать книгу Hacking For Dummies - Kevin Beaver - Страница 42

Perhaps more important than a hacker’s skill level is their motivation. The following groups of hackers have different motivations:

 Hacktivists: These hackers try to disseminate political or social messages through their work. A hacktivist wants to raise public awareness of an issue but wants to remain anonymous. In many situations, these hackers try to take you down if you express a view that’s contrary to theirs. Examples of hacktivism are the websites that were defaced by the “Free Kevin” messages that promoted freeing Kevin Mitnick, who was in prison for his famous hacking escapades. Others cases of hacktivism include messages about legalized drugs, antiwar protests, wealth envy, big corporations, and just about any other social and political issue you can think of.

 Terrorists: Terrorists (both organized and unorganized and often backed by government agencies) attack corporate or government computers and public utility infrastructures such as power grids and air-traffic control towers. They crash critical systems, steal classified data, and/or expose the personal information of government employees. Countries take the threats that these terrorists pose so seriously that many mandate information security controls in crucial industries, such as the power industry, to protect essential systems from these attacks.

 Hackers for hire: These hackers are often (but not always) part of organized crime on the Internet. Many of these hackers hire out themselves or their ransomware and DoS-creating botnets for money — lots of it!

Criminal hackers are in the minority, so don’t think that you’re up against millions of these villains. Like the email spam kings of the world, many members of collectives prefer to remain nameless; the nefarious acts are carried out by a small number of criminals. Many other hackers just love to tinker and only seek knowledge of how computer systems work. One of your greatest threats works inside your building and has an access badge to the building, a network account, and hair on top, so don’t discount the insider threat.