Hacktivists Part I

In a recent TED discussion entitled Hire the Hackers!, Misha Glenny, a British journalist who specializes in organized crime, advocates quite obviously that we should be hiring hackers to improve our network security instead of arresting them. Glenny says that governments such as China and Russia have already started doing so and that the U.S.’s current technique is foolish: to hunt, capture, and incarcerate hackers. So how ‘bout it, should they be convicted or converted?

Well, who are we even talking about? If you haven’t already, meet the faces of cyber-insecurity:

LulzSec

&

Anonymous

Both are professional, worldwide hacking organizations. Both are very good at what they do. And both are very good at covering their tracks. What separates them is motivation. Anonymous is definitely more of a politically motivated group while LulzSec claims to do it just for entertainment value. They have hacked credit card companies, foreign governments, the FBI, the CIA, Sony Pictures, and the Sony PlayStation Network. In the battle between Chaos and Control, Chaos is winning, by a long shot. And if you don’t believe me then think of this, according to TIME magazine, cybersecurity incidents in U.S. government agencies have increased by 660% in the past five years. No that's not a typo, 660%. Not only that, some of these attacks came from foreign governments which I have no doubt were coordinated by their hired hackers. Needless to say, the threat is real.

That’s not to say law enforcement hasn’t made any headway. In June, 16 arrests were made nationwide for alleged members of Anonymous and in the same month Ryan Cleary, a 19-year-old with affiliations to LulzSec, was arrested as well. So what’s happened? LulzSec fled the scene! Despite asserting that Cleary’s participation was miniscule, LulzSec announced its retirement mere days after his arrest. In a tweet, they thanked their supporters and said, “The breeze is fresh and the sun is setting, so now we head for the horizon." We will see if their decision sticks or if it’s just a fake out. As for Anonymous, not much word from them, except for some current rumors that they will attack Facebook on November 5th. Why are they doing it? Cuz Facebook allegedly provided government agencies with personal account information. Again, we will have to wait and see what happens.

Stay tuned for Part II, where we will take a closer look at the individual hackers themselves, explore further the merits of hacktivism, and decide if hackers should be convicted or converted.