Hacking for Money

Hackinghas changed.  It used to be a college kidwho liked to explore networks late at night, sitting in his dorm room at hiscomputer, sipping Mountain Dew.  Or maybea thief trying to steal credit card numbers--a criminal, but not a violent,gun-toting criminal.
Thathas changed.  Consider the new term inuse:  Advanced Persistent Threats.  That's what they call it now.  Instead of independent actors, hackers havebecome employees of governments, corporations and criminal syndicates.
Hackinghas gone from being a tool of exploration to a weapon of choice.  It is flexible and provides those who engagein it with plausible deniability.  Inthis weaponized version, hacking can steal intellectual property and technologyfor economic or military gain, sabotage enemy infrastructure and crush internaldissent.
Anarticle by Adam Piore in the January issue of Popular Mechanics provides somegood examples of these variations.  In2011, a cyber attack on Japan's Mitsubishi corporation targeted both militarydata about submarines and missiles, and civilian data on nuclear powerplants.  After an investigation, Japanconcluded that China was behind the attack.
Backin June of 2010, Iran's nuclear program discovered its computers were infectedwith the Stuxnet worm, a type of malware which loads faulty code into thesystem.  Because the United States andIsrael have openly opposed Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, they were themain suspects in the sabotage.
Oneof the scariest applications of hacking is for political oppression.  Iranian hackers invaded the Dutch companyDigiNotar and used the data to intercept and identify 300,000 Gmail users inIran.  In a tightly controlled regimelike Iran, opposition parties use email and social networks to communicate, sothis type of hacking poses a direct threat to their safety.
Inaddition to all these, criminal hacking has expanded into well-funded groupsusing very clever methods.  But accordingto Piore's article, the most aggressive hackers are countries, especiallyChina, Russia and Israel.
Asan online individual, you're probably not of interest to anyone other thanidentity thieves and spammers (and advertisers and your own government.)  But ifyou work in any industry related to military technology, computer services,telecommunication or infrastructure like water and electricity, you may findyourself targeted through social network messages and email containing baitlinks that will load malicious software onto your home or work computer.  So think carefully before you click that nextlink.

(The pic is of a VenusFlytrap trying to eat a frog and is from www.animalseatinganimals.com)