Hackers are not What You Think

"Anonymous Hacker" by dustball is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Culture tends to depict hackers as computer geniuses. You might think of a guy aggressively typing away on their keyboards with tons of code flying up the screen to try to get into something they shouldn’t, as fast as they can. You might see them wearing a mask or have distorted voices when they speak. You may think of something like the picture above. You may think this because of movies or shows you watch; it is certainly true from what I have watched. However, the majority of the time this isn’t what hackers really are. Then if what we typically think of hackers as is not accurate, what are they really like?

There are many ways you can get hacked by someone. One of the most prominent ways is by phishing attacks. These are attacks that are targeted towards individuals. They are usually emails sent to you that lead to website the look real but are scams. They ask you to type in your credentials. They then log what you type and can now get into your account or accounts if you use the credentials for other accounts. Before you even know it, you have been “hacked” and all it took was a fake website an email. This takes more tech-savviness than what more people possess but isn’t what you’d normally think for a hacker.

However, there is one group of hackers that fits the pop culture bill quite well, and they are the Carbanak Gang. This group of hackers, hacked into bank networks and stole up 1 billion dollars. This was quite a bit harder than the hack described before, but also has some similarities. For one they also used a phishing type of attack, except for the emails looked as if they were sent from colleges and contained malware that allowed access to the bank’s computers. They would then observe and learn how the bank operates before they would do much else. This took a lot of patience, time, and planning. When they thought the time was right, they would then send money to ATMs and move that into dummy bank accounts and make millions. As you may be able to see pop culture doesn’t depict hackers very accurately. They are in some cases pretty close, however, they usually take a lot of time and planning which is not usually found in movies.

"Heist!" White Rabbit Project, Netflix, www.netflix.com/watch/80107439.