cybersecurity: how to know your hacker

As my tech clients will tell you, I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to anything cybersecurity. Back in 2015 when I started writing about cyber, one of the first things that I learnt was that there are different types of hackers. What sets them apart from one another is their motivations.

Black Hat hackers at the ones most people are familiar with. These cyber criminals are out to cause your organisation problems, whether that's by stealing data, corrupting files or disrupting your operations. Their reasons can vary.

In 1993 a hacker group calling themselves "Zippies" staged an attack known as the Intervasion of the United Kingdom to protest the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. The resulting DDOS (denial of service) attack shut down the UK government websites for more than a week!

In 2000, Michael Calce aka Mafiaboy was just a 15yr old high school student when he managed to successfully hack and paralyse the websites of some of the world’s best-known ecommerce and media titans including Yahoo, Dell, CNN, eBay and Amazon with a Denial of Service (DOS) attack that cost an estimated $1.1 billion dollars in damages.

I was quite surprised to learn that not all hacking is bad. White Hat hackers, also known as penetration testers or ethical hackers, have pure motivations for their hacking which is done with the purpose of identifying system and security vulnerabilities so that the organisation can fix them. Penetration testing companies have teams of ethical, white hat hackers, who've been carefully assessed and can work with you to improve your overall cybersecurity and an increasing number of organisations are choosing to have regular penetration tests to stay on top of any chinks in their cyber armour.

And finally, there are the Grey Hat hackers. They don't ask for permission before they hack into your systems, but they don't perform illegal activities like black hats do. Instead, they generally want to do the right thing, but go about it in an controversial way. A great example is the hacktivist group Anonymous. In 2020, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, the infamous group of hackers and socio-political activists, Anonymous, temporarily disabled the Minneapolis PD, parent and government websites with the aim of addressing police brutality.

Hacking is a problem that isn't going away. In fact, around 30,000 organisations around the world are hacked on a daily basis, with around 43% being small businesses. Unfortunately, lots of SMEs are woefully underprepared for cyber attacks. Understanding a little more about hacking is the first step to better cybersecurity for your business.

Since 2015 I've worked with a variety of cybersecurity specialists creating content that helps people to understand why it's important to protect their business. Want help with your cyber content? hello@wickedcreative.co.uk