The Loose Knit Hacking Movement

The government and major companies have frequently leaked and misused the public’s information. For example, in Ted Koppel’s 2005 article on “Take My Privacy, Please!”, he mentions how Bank of America lost personal information on about 1.2 million federal government employees, including some senators. LexisNexis unintentionally gave outsiders access to personal files on over 310,000 people. Time Warner

This company is the juiciest part of the peach because everyone depends on them not only for valid information but proof, pictures, recordings you name it. As the website say “Our customers know they can count on us to provide what they need, when they need it, wherever they need it.” But what is that suppose to mean and why did they decide to use the word customers? Who are the industry partners and allies? Is the NSA only keeping surveillance on possible threats in the USA or are they watching U.S. citizens for entertainment or bigger purposes. If one was to really think about it it takes time to observe the environment to know for sure that something is wrong with it. It is just like looking into a camera and saying “there’s the bad guy”. Innocent U.S. citizens are being stoke and having their right for privacy violated. These are peoples lives.

In January 2007, TJX Companies Inc. released a statement to the press that an estimated 40 million of their customer’s credit card accounts had been compromised (although final reports state that over 94 million accounts were affected) (Berg 2008). Through the company’s POS (Point of Sales) system, credit card information was stolen by a ring of hackers and approximately $4.5 billion spent on these cards (Berg 2008). What the hackers did was intercepted the credit card information from customers who swiped their cards at the store and then created their own physical cards using this information. Then they sold the credit cards to people, who turned around and used these cards at retail stores, like Walmart (Agrawal 2011). Three areas of weakness within the company’s IT systems that allowed for an attack of this scale were: inadequate wireless security, improper storage of customer data and failure to encrypt customer account data (Berg 2008).

In this day and age living in the era of the computer, it has become more mainstream and common to hear of cyber attacks, and crime being committed on the internet. Activism however, has become a prominent way to protest or argue a political view. Using related technologies and the internet have become a vital way for some to share their views. With the rise of the internet, “hacktivism” has become a prominent way for protest groups to express while also promoting a political agenda often related to free speech, human rights, and freedom of information.

The actual hack against HBGary Federal occurred after the Financial Times published a story on Saturday Feb 5, 2011 HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr claimed his company’s researchers had unmasked to the real identities of top members of Anonymous by monitoring chat rooms and Facebook groups they frequented. Barr identified a co-founder of the group, who goes by the name Q, and said he planned to give some of the information to the FBI. He also planned to present his findings at a security conference in San Francisco next week.

From November 27 to December 15, 2013 Target Corporation released 70 million customers’ personal information. On average, it takes companies 200 days to uncover they are being hacked (Lunden, 2015). It only took Target 12 days to figure out the crisis that began happening. On December 19, Target originally said only 40 million credit and debit card accounts may have been compromised during Black Friday weekend to December 15. “The information stolen included customer names, credit or debit card number, and the card’s expiration date and CVV” (McGrath, 2014). Although Target never clarified how they were hacked, security experts say that hackers targeted their POS system. “Target spent $61 million through Feb. 1 responding to the breach, according

On September 8, 2015, it was discovered that a Patriot Financial Services (PFS) employee, whom provided customer support services to clients, had stolen personal financial data from approximately 50K of their customers. The data stolen by this employee was comprised of personal customer information including full names, home addresses, social security numbers, contact numbers, bank account numbers, driver 's license numbers, birth dates, email addresses, mother 's maiden names, pin’s and account balances. The suspect employee then proceeded to leak out this

In the past 12 months, there have been nearly 432 million accounts hacked belonging to many websites and applications. Many of this information stolen was sensitive, personal data such as credit card information, phone numbers, passwords, and even addresses.

Identity theft is, unfortunately, a commonplace in today’s world. Technology is ever advancing and evolving making today’s purchases obsolete. The obsolesces of technology plagued TJX. The company was attempting to get through under the radar with the enterprise security systems. “Because of the lax security systems at TJX, the hackers had an open doorway to the company 's entire computer system” (Weiss, 2014). TJX was cognizant of the breach and withheld information from stakeholders of the business. “Once a breach is discovered notification to consumers is paramount.”

They’re calling for hackers everywhere to unite for a common purpose, to bring down Lex Lu-- Donald Trump. Appalled by his divisive ideas and witnessing the looming threat to civil liberty. Anonymous are seeking to rip the legs from under his high horse by revealing to the world who Donald really is, a self absorbed child who's only looking to benefit

In the article, “Someone Had Taken Over My Life” by Laura Shin, Amy Krebs describes what it feels like to become a victim of identity theft. She got a call one day unexpectedly from a major credit card company’s fraud department. They said someone had tried to access a credit card using Amy’s name, address and Social Security number. She thought someone had stolen her credit card and had maybe gone out to eat or purchased some items, but she was wrong. This was a bigger and more serious problem than Amy has ever imagined. It involved going to many court cases, and took at least a year to solve. Amy advises to be cautious with your information going forward, because even if you do all the right things and shred things, and ask all the right

In April of 2011, Sony had a major breach in its video gaming online network. Countless amounts of customer data were stolen, including personal information such as where they lived, who they were, and possibly even their credit card information. This attack happened to about seventy seven million Sony accounts (Cunningham). Cyber or Internet threats have been both increasing and been getting more and more sophisticated. In 2011, Saudi Arabia and Israel had been getting back at each other with personal information. Hackers from both countries gained financial and personal information about the other countries’ citizens and published it. A 19-year-old Saudi Arabian posted the financial information of six thousand Israelis. For revenge, Israeli hackers secretly gained credit card numbers and financial details from thousands of Saudi Arabians

In the midst of the holiday season, Target shoppers were shocked in December 2013 when the news came out, 40 million Target credit cards had been stolen (Krebs, 2013f) by accessing data on point of sale (POS) systems (Krebs, 2014b). Target later revised that number to include private data for 70 million customers (Target, 2014). The breach transpired between November 27 and December 15th 2014 (Clark, 2014). Over 11 GB of data was stolen (Poulin, 2014). Target missed internal alerts and found out about the breach when they were contacted by the Department of Justice (Riley, Elgin, Lawrence & Matlack, 2014).

This report was due to the leak of classified document by Edward Joseph Snowden, a former contractor for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) and former worker of the NSA (National Security Agency) through subcontractor Booz Allen Hamilton, a tech consulting firm. Based in the NSA's Oahu office, Edward Snowden was a system administrator as described by intelligence officials. As a system administrator, Snowden action of whistle blowing can be analyzed from different angle with different perspective. The impact of his act on the intelligence gathering itself was devastating. According to Keith Alexander, former NSA director, what Snowden has uncovered has brought about irreversible and noteworthy harm to the United States and its allies (Ackerman and Rushe, 2013). By discussing the harm caused by Snowden leaking the classified documents, we will be evaluating the damage that can be caused by unethical act done by a system administrator. Later on, the impact and reform that Snowden whistle blowing brought to system administration will be

In todays time just one hacker can infiltrate governments and companies and release mass amounts of private information and details. The secret hacking group, Anonymous is a group of unknown hackers that have recently been hunted down by governments around the world (mainly the US and British). They should not be looked at as “domestic terrorists” but as protesting citizens. Terrorists put fear into people, but Anonymous interests the public. They have even been called “Digital Robin Hoods” (Carter, 2012). Since Anonymous mostly goes after companies and organizations they believe are corrupt or bad, and since they don't do any physical harm to anyone they should not be persecuted and put in jail. They release private information about the websites of companies, religious groups, and governments to show the public who they really are and what they are really doing. They also use a tactic called DDos which is basically where Anonymous overruns a website so much nobody else can then on go on that website.The U.S. government goes after anonymous hacktivists and similar groups but turns a blind eye to pro US/anti Terrorist hackers. A con of what Anonymous does is that when they release private government documents via Wikileaks or different sources, other governments like China and Russia can access the information released which can possibly be threatening to the U.S.