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4 Horsemen Of The Apocalypse
4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse
AKA the types of Hackers, I would not go so far as to say that a hacker would be the ending of the world with conquest, famine, war and plague, but for any business owner after they have been hacked and all their data stolen or locked and a ransom has been demanded to give their precious data back, after a violation like that, they probably feel like their whole world has ended.
Let’s have a look at some of the attributes of a hacker:
• Are they Internal or External – are they part of the organisation that has been hacked or are they on the outside?
• Do they have the resources and skills? like lots of money, lots of good and up to date modern powerful computers? Do they have a lot of personel with excellent skills to perform what they do?
• What is their intention or motivation – Why are they doing this, what is their goal, is it monetary? Is it political? Is it social? Is it for intelligence? Or Is it just plain devilment?
• OSINT – which is open source intelligence, this is like Facebook or Instagram, a hacker can find out a lot about a person through social media, this is where the cops first look to check someone out, there is so much about an individual that anyone can find out about someone and hackers do this with great skill.
Types of Hackers
Script Kiddies – these are the amateurs of the hacking world; they use scripts and tools from other hackers. Usually students or people who want to impress their friends, just because they are called kiddies this does by no means reflect their age. They can be more immature, but unfortunately just as dangerous. They like to pick locks, but most of the time don’t get through strong defences. They can damage websites, write malicious scripts that can cause enough damage to any business, these guys do this for the thrill of it, to gain recognition amongst their peers. Most of the time they do not have enough programming skills and leave traces which leads to their detection and are often caught.
Hacktivist – these type of hackers who will be trying to convey a message, whether it be political or social, wanting to prove a point for example going against the fishing trawling industry who are wiping out the fish stocks or industries that are chopping down green belt or forest areas of land for road and building development. They use this as a platform to gain following and support to promote their political or social agenda. It is no different from any other cybercrime no matter what their reasons or motivation and is still illegal.
Organised Crime – These are the hackers that have one motivation and that is to make money and will hack and install viruses and malware ruthlessly for monetary gain.
Nation States – these can be governments of countries that want to hack other governments of other countries for state secrets, military secrets. They have lots of money and resources and have very sophisticated tools and highly skilled people. They are the type of hackers that don’t want the other side to know they have been hacked or won’t demand anything. They will hang around invisible in the background within the system gathering intelligence.
Insiders – these are usually employees within an organisation but can also be part time contractors or anyone within an organisation that has a username and a password. These can be anyone within an organisation’s infrastructure.
Competitors – Usually hackers from rival companies wanting to steal information, goods, customers, new and emerging technologies. This could also be just spying on the competition to try and stay one step ahead.
If you would like to chat to us regarding your Cyber Security, please call Control IT Solutions on 01738 310271
