In 2011, a spinoff group of Anonymous calling itself LulzSec emerged and promptly carried a number of data heists and webserver takedowns against various organizations, companies, and government agencies that it claimed were suppressing freedom of information, violating consumer privacy, and persecuting Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, Pirate Bay, and the
hacker community. For fifty days in May and June 2011, LulzSec perpetrated a spate of online data intrusions, initially triggered as retaliation for the negative representation of WikiLeaks in the PBS Frontline episode "WikiSecrets," and also for Sony's legal action against the young hacker George Hotz, who had figured out how to jailbreak his PlayStation 3.
At that point it would be us, the
hacker community, that stands up and tells the world that this is a gross invasion of privacy.
With today's
hacker community revealing myriad vulnerabilities in transportation systems, any pretense to the effectiveness of this old approach to security has evaporated.
Russia also has a robust
hacker community. The cyberattacks in Estonia (2007) and during the Russia-Georgia war (2009) are examples of the potential danger.
But having said that, it would be necessary to say also that the
hacker community doesn't reject all forms of authority.
This shows the success of the United States government in communicating the seriousness of engaging in illegal hacking activities to the
hacker community. Meanwhile, the college student population is not getting the same message (Young, Zhang, & Prybutok, 2007, p.
The attacks ended the local
hacker community's silence on the new Republic Act No.
It is not easy to find the right people for cyber operations because the slice of the
hacker community that would make a quality cyber operator inside the government is only a sliver.
They can't afford high-priced IT and security talent on site; they can't afford a breach that threatens their very existence, and they know that the space they occupy is going to attract more, not less, attention from the
hacker community. Additionally, the proliferation of mobile devices driven by the need for any time - any place access to company data and service is adding to the enormous challenge of keeping these companies secure with limited IT resources.
At its core, the
hacker community is one of smart people who live for the high of exposing weaknesses in online systems, often not maliciously, but out of intellectual curiosity.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg's recent book Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website (Crown Publishers, 2011) opens a window into the world
hacker community and the activities of WikiLeaks itself.
Hackers are no longer accessing forbidden databases simply for their own amusement or for bragging rights in the
hacker community. Today's cybercriminals are sophisticated attackers who know that data equals profit, and they are willing to go to great lengths to get what they want.