General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow available are "hackers?"
Been reading a few incidences of politicians, and the common
person getting hacked..democrat running against pro-russian
and pro-trumph republican..In wichita ks. a prominent attorney ie.,
runs lots of ads on tv...hired a hacker to go after people that
were critical of him...Just wondering if these 'hackers' are easy
to find...or what?
lapfog_1
(29,199 posts)what do you need done?
Some ag sites I wouldn't mind "rearranging" ...
wasupaloopa
(4,516 posts)My wifes company is sending some of their IT people there to learn some things from them.
HipChick
(25,485 posts)I've attended several...very bright folks
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Very intelligent, but paranoid and a bit of an asshole. We had a great intellectual conversation but I would prefer not to meet him ever again.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)I know a company which on purpose hires anti-social weirdos who just live for this shit.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)Literally anyone can be a hacker.
If you guess your exs password and snoot in their gmail your a hacker.
Or you could be a more advanced one who can do complex stuff.
The vast majority of what people consider hacking against targets and peopel abd organizations comes a lot less from people having technical skill and a lot more from them exploiting that people screw up and give away information.
The hack on the DNC is a prime example. It wasnt sophisticated at all, it was something a high school kid could pull off. They learned what John Podestas Gmail account was and sent an email that looked like it was a security alert telling him to change his password, with a link to a fake gmail website that harvested his password.
It was a very basic lack of security that led him to give them his password. It didnt help that he asked a DNC IT staffer who told him it was a legitimate email.
It wasnt sophisticated at all. Hell, it used bit.ly to shorten the URL to the fake google website, a simple giveaway and evidence they were not even trying that hard.
Almost all hacking gets into system like that, trucking people. Be it phishing emails, social engineering by calling people, or other means to get people to give access.
Very little of the hacking in the world is from people who are doing what you see in movies and just brute force breaking into computer system. Almost all comes from legit users of a system compromising their credentials and allowing someone to get access they can exploit.
As an example of how easy it is, lets say I wanted to screw with DU users. I would buy domain names for DU with common misspellings of it, as people often make typos in long URLs. Then I would set it up to look like DU, prompt you to log in and then store the passwords you give. Then even redirect you to the real DU where you are already logged in or you think it didnt take and just put your credentials in again- without a second thought. But now I have your login and password.
Do I need more credentials? Easy enough to make troll accounts on Facebook and post links to to the fake DI claiming its to hot topics, targeting groups that are likely to have DU members.
Before long I have hundreds of credentials. I go on, change your passwords and Im posting as you. And if you used the same password for that same username or email anywhere else I can own that too. If you have the same password here as the email you used to register I own all that now once I changed the email, then I can get into anything and everything you have registered to that email.
blogslut
(38,000 posts)A lot of "hacking" is just running proven scripts, knowing hardware vulnerabilities plus a little bit of social engineering kung fu.