Hacking

Recently I experienced my first real instance of being hacked, at least the first that I'm aware of. Thankfully it wasn't that bad, in fact it seemed rather benign but the fact that I can't say for sure whether that was the case says a lot about hacking in general. What happened was in regards to my social media. Earlier yesterday I received a strange message on Facebook from my mother. It was a link to a Youtube video called "knd360" and when I clicked on it, it just asked for my Facebook login information and wouldn't do anything when I put it in. Looking back, putting in my information was probably a bad idea, because when I did it, nothing happened initially, but later in the day things got strange. They say it's not smart to give out personal information online, but I did so for two reasons: A, because it was a link from my mother, a pretty trustworthy source, and B, because it was just a quick instinctive thing. I didn't think about it too much, but I really should have because later in the day, that same link automatically got sent to around 200 of my Facebook friends, causing much confusion for myself and all of them. Around 4:45, I began getting all sorts of messages from friends of mine asking what it was that I supposedly sent them and it was a bit overwhelming. The link obviously wouldn't open for them, just as it didn't for me, but it's alarming nonetheless that someone was able to send something to so many people I knew without my permission to do so. It's actually quite frightening, when you think more about it. It also seems that some of them were victim to the same scam because I then received a few messages back with the link and one with a similar one. That leads me to believe that they also clicked on it, but then again, why wouldn't they? It was something that appeared to be from me, a person that they knew. That's terrifyingly deceptive, and once I reset my password and took some other measures to resecure my account, I posted a message apologizing for the ordeal and explaining what happened. I also made a funny backstory as to why it happened to sort of make a weird occurrence into a funny one and it seems that some of my friends and family enjoyed that. The whole thing was odd, but from what I can currently tell harmless for the most part. I know I'm not unique with this either. I remember not too long ago, I received a strange link from a friend I hadn't heard from in a while, from which I gathered that she was hacked at the time as well, meaning that it's not all that uncommon. Again, these instances weren't too bad, but I've heard of cases of hacking that have been catastrophic, life destroying even. These are often in the context of identity theft and extreme defamation, which can be terrifying and when I saw that the link had been sent to so many people I knew, I'll admit that I was worried this might be the case with me. It obviously wasn't, but it could have been. There are some malicious people out there, people that care little for the wellbeing of others and the age of the internet is absolutely perfect for them. I don't know a whole lot about hacking, but I do know that it's an extreme invasion of privacy. It's violating, it can be humiliating, and it can even be life destroying. Then of course there's larger scale hacking, and you may be thinking that you know what I'm about to bring up. If you guessed it was the 2016 presidential election, you're correct, and why shouldn't I bring that up in the context of the topic of hacking? News coverage concerning the Russian hacking was rampant and for good reason; it was substantiated. After looking into it a little bit, I found out that Russian agents attempted to hack into voter registration databases in all 50 states, and they were successful in a handful including my home state of Illinois. As alarming as this is, the most terrifying thing about it is that it was just one part of the operation. There was also the well known misinformation campaign over social media including but not limited to Twitter and Facebook. "Russian bots" were and are a well known thing and I believe I've encountered a few. Just for a little bit of background, "bots" are fake social media accounts. They don't belong to real people, but rather have been designed to spread a certain message repeatedly. This makes many of them pretty easy to spot. In the instance of the Russian bots attempting to influence the 2016 election, they often had ridiculously over the top pro US imagery and statements on their profiles and they also mindlessly repeated pro Trump sentiments all over social media. They look odd, but with all of the legitimate profiles that look like that, it's sometimes difficult to tell who is real and who's not. This obviously had the desired effect of making it seem as though Donald Trump had many more supporters than he actually did, in order to sway simple minded undecided voters into believing "there must be something to him if he has all this support". With the social media campaign, and all of the active hacking, it's depressing to have to admit that it all worked. Look at who is in the White House; a man who is sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, Russia, and wants to weaken NATO, playing right into the hands of the aforementioned. If you don't know a whole lot about history, or about what Russia is currently like, you may be asking "why is all of this coming from there?". Well, there's a good reason for that. Historically, Russia has been an adversary of the US for a very long time, that's what the entire Cold War was about. "But isn't the Cold War over?" you may be asking, to which I would say, not necessarily. It's over in the official sense, since obviously the Soviet Union is no more, but there are obviously some residual sentiments of the US and Russia seeing each other as enemies. That's honestly not surprising though, seeing as that was the general assumption for around 50 years, but I'm getting a bit off topic. Present day Russia is a hotbed of illicit online activity, particularly hacking. Putin actually utilizes the prevalence of hackers in Russia to his advantage, but the way he does so is admittedly clever. All of the hackers aren't actually government agents, but more of internet privateers of sorts, hired indirectly by the Russian government to assist them with pro Russian initiatives. I would assume that some of those operatives are in it for patriotic reasons, but I would also guess that some just want the money but from my position it really doesn't matter. Motivation doesn't change the fact that they orchestrated a largescale operation to influence another nation, my nation, which is vastly more violating than the stupid link thing that happened yesterday. The way hacking is portrayed in media, especially in late 80's and early 90's movies and tv shows, is a bit problematic in my mind. They're glorified, as though the hackers are just smarter than everyone else. However, it should be said that this changed later on. In later media, hackers are more often portrayed as malicious which is what they can often be. I'd say this is due to the fact that in the adolescent years of the internet, people became more aware of how dangerous hackers could be, and their image was thusly changed in popular depictions. Often hackers are portrayed as neither good, nor evil, but rather simply as agents of chaos. People who don't really care about anything but themselves, their own entertainment, or even their own bank accounts in extreme cases. Again, I don't know much more about hacking than the average person, but I would say that it's something that tends to attract those that don't like rules. Obviously it's breaking rules by it's very nature, making it only fitting that the practice would attract those with a tendency towards a nihilistic worldview, but I've read that it's not just that. There is such a thing as ethical hacking, which is often an effort to combat it's more malicious counterpart, which is something I see as not necessarily good, but simply as necessary. Cyber security is something that we just can't afford not to have in the world today. As hackers advance, so should those that seek to curb their influence.