BotNet News

Hacking is the creative, subversive exploration of digital code and systems that allows us to see into vulnerabilities we might not otherwise be able to find. In the hands of criminals, however, this can become an unlawful enterprise motivated by monetary gain, protest, information gathering (spying), or simply the “fun” of breaking into systems and networks.

The term first appeared in print in the late 1970s and was popularized through two movies released in 1980, Tron and WarGames, that introduced hacking to a wide audience. It also started to evolve into specific activities that spanned more than just computer systems. Members of MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club used to ‘hack’ their high-tech train sets to modify their functionality, and later hackers began to exploit operational characteristics in telephone switching networks. The most famous of these was John Draper, whose use of a toy whistle found in Cap’n Crunch cereal allowed him to manipulate the frequency of the signal that long-distance phone carriers used to indicate they were ready to route a call.

In the 1990s, cybercriminals became more sophisticated, using stolen credit card information to extort ransom or even to hijack the entire internet with Distributed Denial of Service attacks. At the same time, hacktivist groups such as Anonymous rose to prominence and caused major embarrassment and disruption to large corporations and government agencies.

Today, the world of hacking has grown industrialized and is an extremely lucrative business for organized criminal enterprises. Adversaries can now rent or purchase turnkey malware kits that provide them with the tools they need to successfully breach a system, including credential stealers, lateral movement modules, privilege escalation scripts, and exfiltration mechanisms. The modern hacker is as much an assembler as a coder, putting together threat chains from components readily available online.