The role of hacker is deeply changed in the last decade, these strange activity were once kept away from government affairs, but the situation is changed, there has been an unprecedented technological evolution and principal countries have discovered a new way of making war, a new way of spying.
Today the hacker is the most important player for governments and cyber warfare but not only, private companies and industry of crime consider him as the repository of knowledge also the mastery of new technology. Today only a few read about vulnerability, a concept unknown to many professional but we are all aware of the potential risks related to this.
An essential element of a «cyber weapon» is the exploit of an unknown vulnerability known as zero day vulnerability, it is a factor that influences its efficiency and makes it possible to target specific applications or infrastructures. Governments and private business have suddenly discovered the importance of discovering bugs in the most common applications, creating a new market for the new precious commodity.
Hacker’s skill is essential to develop a cyber weapon, it’s fundamental for governments to approach what is considered the fifth domain, the cyber space. These professional could help military to protect critical infrastructures but could also be engaged to penetrate foreign networks in complex and hidden cyber operations.
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Israel and U.S. are the countries with major investment in the creation of new cyber units composed by hackers in offensive cyber operations and cyber espionage campaign. In many cases the governments have announced the recruiting of skilled hackers, NSA chief General Keith B. Alexander during last edition of Defcon Hacker Conference, asked the hacker community for help securing cyberspace.
If the number of hackers is controlled, what can be said about its operation? Differently from the past hacking has been influenced by consolidated procedures of analysis, hacking has become in many cases a profession. A profession which requires the right tools.
Hackers now has a multitude of tools and application and test systems to be studied, there are established methods essentially based on shared experiences with colleagues, Forums, events and web allow rapid circulation of information that facilitates very much the work of these professionals who once worked mostly in solitary and in total anonymity.
General Keith Alexander, director of the National Security Agency told a Washington forum that hacking practices is increasingly focused to cause severe economic damage. According to officials, hackers are stepping up the intensity of their attacks, moving from “disruption” to “destruction” of targets. The last wave of attacks against oil sector and banking have raised the possibility to block the operating of targeted systems, these types of destructive offense can wipe out data with dramatic consequences that once again affect the opportunity to establish the proper response to the incidents.
Alexander said “It could overwrite the ability of a system to turn on,” “Think about a company that loses all the data on its system… If you wipe out the data, you wipe out the ability of the system to operate.” According to U.S. official one of the first action to do to improve the collaboration between private sector and governments, the cooperation must be explicitly regulated in an efficient cyber strategy to respond to incoming cyber threats.
It is desirable that a common strategy to respond to cyber attacks is shared by primary actors of every sector. How many Sys Admins know about the protection against SQL injection attacks? How many developers know exactly how an hacker could exploit the lack of validation inside their code?
Reading reports of continued attacks all over the world. We believe that only a few really know how hackers try to circumvent systems of companies and organizations.
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