1. Hackers and Hacking
George Pearson rev. 05/29/2018

2. Original Hackers from MIT in the 1960's
Programmers
Playful, creative, curious
Liked to see how things (programs) worked

3. Original Hacker Ethic Information should be free Mistrust authority
Sharing; openness
No false criteria- skills, not sex, race, age
Improve the world

4. New Hackers- Steven Mizrach
Hackers, crackers
Virus creators
Pirates
Cyberpunks- free encryption tools for Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
Anarchists- free “illegal” information

5. New hacker ethic Protect privacy Self-defense Share Exceed limitations
Do no harm (harm variously defined)

6. Contradictions Individualism and transparency
Do no harm and self-defense
No false criteria and young, male, limited social skills demographic
Assange embodies all these contradictions

7. Popular understanding of hackers muddled

8. What do hackers do? Explore Penetrate networks Test security
Data theft
Cyber attacks
Virus creation

9. Types of hackers Work without permission
White Hat
Authorized
Defensive
Commercial
Probe for weaknesses
Black Hat
Break in to:
Steal
Vandalize
Disrupt
Hacktivists
Lulz
Gray Hat
Work without permission
Reveal vulnerabilities to improve securites
May operate outside the law
Helpful, not malicious

10. Hacking for hacktivism
When Wikileaks diplomatic cables went up
WL attacked by the jester
A Right-wing hacker
Used DDoS

11. Distributed Denial of Sevice (DDoS)
Hacker controls Zombies
Zombies hijack innocent computers (reflectors)
Reflectors ping, or send packets, to victim
Victim overwhelmed by traffic
Slowdown, or site brought down

12. WL switched to Amazon: servers Huge, absorbed attacks
Sen. Lieberman pressured Amazon to drop WL
Visa, MC, PayPal, also pressured and followed suit
Payments to Al-Qaeda still OK
Wikileaks disrupted, survived

13. The Counterattack: Anonymous
3,000 or so participants
Loose, decentralized cells
Experts and enthusiastic newbs
Very Internet: herd, votes on targets, attacks, tramples or deflected

14. Operation Payback Originally in support of piracy Switched to WL
Brought down Swedish prosecutor’s site, MasterCard
Amazon too big, so targeted PayPal
Ineffectual, maybe because key hackers use it

15. A favorite tool for ddos
LOIC
Low Orbit Ion Cannon
Traceable
Users usually arrested (scriptkiddies)

16. Hacking for the Lulz Lulzsec a splinter group of Anonymous
Hacked PBS for Frontline documentary on WL

18. Lulzsec hacks the FBI High profile and human error led to downfall
Series of arrests in 2012
Hector Xavier Monsegur, "The Real Sabu" turns informant/white hat
Chilling effect on hackers?

19. Hacking for the Money 40 million Target customers (2013)
56 million Home Depot customers (2014)
Salted Hash, others use Ashley Madison data for extortion (2015)
Yahoo: 1 billion accounts (2016)
Data sold on global virtual black markets

20. What does it all mEan? Information Revolution
Old- information, data useless unless humans mediated (knowledge)
New- information can do things on its own (data)
Don't need people to "know" the Internet of Things

21. So….
Is hacking, even DDOS, a legitimate form of activism, even speech? Or, a denial of speech, with a chilling effect, leading to chaos?

22. And Now hacking is for governments, not just individuals

23. Cyberwar in the Shadows
Russian attacks on Georgia, Estonia (2007-8)
US, Israeli Stuxnet destroys 20% of Iranian centrifuges (2010)
Ukraine, Russia trade attacks (2014-present)
North Korea cripples Sony networks, obtains s, reports, data (2014)
China obtains personal information and fingerprints of 20 million federal workers (2015)
Russian hack of the DNC and Clinton campaign (2016)

24. The grim prospects of Failure to cope with new a information environment

25. Dark America? Cyber war defeat Compromised elections
No Internet (or power) for weeks, even months
Disruption of infrastructure
Economic collapse OR

26. government crackdown?