The word hacker has a negative connotation. Not every hacker is a criminal and not everyone who commits a crime is a hacker. Nowadays, people often talk about ethical hackers. These are good hackers. You used to have in the black and white western movies the cowboys with a white hat and cowboys with a black hat. The cowboys with a white hat were the good guys. The guys with the black hat were the villains. In the hacker world, you have the white hats - the good hackers - and the black hats - the bad hackers. Compare it to a house. A good hacker investigates the house and sees if he can get in through the window, for example. About that, he or she informs the owner of the house. The bad hacker goes in and steals your tv. In the hacker world, more terms come from the old westerns. One example is “bounty”. Hacksclusive's subscription names also come from the westerns: Sheriff, Deputy and Marshall.
The first hackers
Computer crime as we know it today began well before the concept of hackers in the sense of breaking into computers. The first primitive punch card systems, the precursors of modern computer systems, were already being sabotaged. To our knowledge, the first computer crime that resulted in a conviction occurred in America in 1966. A programmer working for a bank added code to the bank's software that prevented him from overdrawing his account.
The first hackers we know of targeted the U.S. telephone network and were called phreakers. One of the most famous phreakers is John Draper, and his nickname is Cap'n Crunch. He discovered that with a whistle from a box of Cap'n Crunch, a type of cereal, you can fool the telephone exchange. The whistle makes tones at a frequency of 2,600 herz (vibrations per second), allowing you to make free calls. Draper later develops a so-called bluebox with Steve Wozniak. An electronic box you can use to make free calls. Later, Steve Jobs helps sell the boxes. Still later, Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple. Hackers think differently from others. This certainly holds true for Jobs.
The first hackers were active on so-called Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) in the 1980s, often calling themselves “eleet” (elite). When you have “eleet” status on a BBS, you can access all files, games and special chat rooms. Eleet was also written as 31337. One of over 60,000 computer ports. A computer port is, say, a door used for a specific purpose. The best known ports are ports 80 and 443 which are used for surfing the Internet with a browser. This is how leet speak came into being. A hacker language where letters are replaced by numbers and special characters. For example, 31337 H4X0R, an eleet hacker.
Hacker community
Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, as the computer made its appearance in our living rooms, the hacker community developed rapidly. In 1986, a hacker calling himself “the mentor” published the Hacker Manifesto. This still gives a good insight into what drives white hat and black hat hackers. More and more hacker groups emerge. The war, rather the contest of who can pee the farthest, between Legion of Doom (LOD) and Master of Deception (DOM) between 1990 and 1992 gets pretty out of hand. Several hackers receive prison sentences. This is also the first time we see hackers being used as spies by state actors or hackers acting as spies. German hackers steal American military information and want to sell it on to the then KGB, the Soviet Union's secret service. It is also the time when the first two black hat hackers gain world fame. Kevin Mittnick and Kevin Poulsen. Mitnick, a skilled social engineer, tricked people into giving him sensitive information. For example, he once convinced a Motorola assistant to send him the source code for a smartphone. Poulsen, on the other hand, gained notoriety for rigging a Los Angeles radio contest to become the 102nd caller, winning a Porsche. Both were eventually arrested and later shifted to ethical hacking.
Anyone can hack
The far-reaching digitalization of our society means that basically anyone can hack. Someone who is a little handy with Google can get very far. Not just to search for handy hacking tools, by the way. You can also use Google to hack. Just search on Google Hacking. People, especially young people, who know little about computers and cause digital misery are also called script kiddies. An example is the then 18-year-old boy who was arrested for DDoS attacks on Tweakers, Binck Bank and the Tax Office. By his own admission, he purchased 40 euros' worth of capacity from a “stresser,” an online service that can be used by companies to test their DDoS resistance, but can just as easily be used for an actual DDoS attack. When asked why he had done it, he replied “just because he could.”
Ransomware as a revenue model
Crime is rapidly moving from the physical to the digital world. The number of criminal hackers and gangs has grown exponentially in the past decade. The business model for a little cybercriminal is ransomware. Hostage software in Dutch. The chance of getting caught is low and the profits are huge. The suspicion is that only 10% of the actual number of cybercrime cases are reported. Of those, only 10% are solved. Companies, in particular, often avoid reporting due to fear of reputational damage. Ransoms typically demand around 2% of a company’s turnover, with the largest known ransom payment being $40 million, made by the American company CNA.
By the way, it is not only criminals who use ransomware or malware to achieve their goals. In recent years, all kinds of state hackers have deployed ransomware to achieve their goals. Think of WannaCry and NonPetya. WannaCry was ransomware distributed by North Korea. NonPetya was an attack by Russia on Ukraine. This attack initially appeared to be ransomware. In reality, it was malware that destroyed the hard drive of any infected computer. Worldwide, NonPetya caused a lot of damage. These incidents highlight the ongoing digital warfare that often goes unnoticed.
In conclusion
History shows that hackers come in all shapes and sizes. Their numbers are still increasing. There are good hackers and bad hackers. There are statewide hackers and spy hackers. There are script kiddies. Not to mention hacktivists. Probably soon we will see the first robot hackers. One thing all hackers have in common:
Where do you come from anyway
Where the digital houses are
Do you also have your own language
Yes that $pR3k3N all of us
Do you do something we don't dare
Yeah 'cause we're real hacker smurfs
This is a song with a nice chorus
We're big and you're small