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You have surely heard of hackers, but do you really know how they work? Hackers are well known for being bad guys, though there are certainly good hackers out there too. Here’s a brief guide to help you understand how a hacker can hack:

Directions for Hacking are Easy to Come By

Hackers don’t have to look far for help, especially if they don’t know much about hacking. First is a well-known website known as Kali Linux. It has a ton of tools available for hackers, and the site features many links to

Social Security numbers and credit card numbers are not the only types of data that hackers are after. Now, they are looking at frequent flyer accounts, and they are stealing reward miles, and then selling them online.

How do Hackers Steal Frequent Flyer Miles?

As with other types of ID theft, hackers use info that they have illegally obtained to access frequent flyer accounts. With more data breaches happening than ever before, hundreds of millions of records are exposed, and thus, hackers have g

Have you ever used Facebook to sign onto another site? Many of us do this pretty blindly simply because it is very convenient. But, this convenience could come at a cost.

You know the drill. You go to a website and it says “Log In With Facebook.” or Google. Usually, it just takes a couple of clicks and no logging in with other usernames or passwords. However, when you do this, Facebook essentially becomes your online identity. This means that anyone who knows these credentials have access to your

As you might know, at the end of July, all types of hackers came to Las Vegas to attend Blackhat 2017. During the conference, some pretty scary hacks were exposed, and we can all take this as a lesson on what we are up against in this technology-heavy world. Here are some of the scariest hacks we learned about during Blackhat 2017:

Carwash Hijacking

Nothing is safe from technology, and these days, carwashes are an unexpected target for hackers. It is perfectly possible that a car wash could be hac

In July, more than 15,000 security pros, hackers, hobbyists, and researchers met in Las Vegas for the Black Hat Conference 2017 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. This was the 20^th year that the security conference was held, and both black and white hat hackers joined together to discuss security.

For two decades, Black Hat has gained a reputation for demonstrations of some of the most cutting-edge research in information security as well as development and industry trends. The event has also had its

The term, or in this case the word “blackhat” in tech generally refers to a criminal hacker. The opposite of black is white and a “whitehat” is a security professional. These terms originate from the “spaghetti western” movies when the bad guy cowboy wore a black hat and the law wore white hats. Fun huh?! Blackhat is also the name of the largest conference on the planet for information security. The conference itself is 20 years old and as Alex Stamos who is the CSO for Facebook and also Blackha

You might think it’s crazy to actually hire a hacker, but if you don’t have an ethical hacker on your security team, you could be playing a dangerous game.

Ethical hackers are called “white hat hackers” and are legal hackers, that help businesses find security problems in their networks. Developer and security teams, who build out codes, should have a white hat hacker on their side. This way, they will know from the start if the code is vulnerable. This is also known as “application security”.

How

Yes, believe it or not, ransomware has become such a booming business for thieves, that these cyber thugs even provide bona fide customer service departments to guide their victims!

When ransomware infects your computer, it holds your files hostage; you can’t access them—until you pay the hacker (usually in bitcoins). Once paid, the crook will give you a decryption “key.” Sometimes the fee will go up if you don’t pay by a deadline. Fees may a few to hundred to several hundred dollars to way more

Hackers and wannabe hackers can easily purchase cheap tools of the trade online. The security firm Dell SecureWorks Inc. confirms this in their latest report and adds that underground markets for hackers, including those from Russia, is thriving.

The “Dark Web” is the go-to place for hackers looking for guidance and tools like malware. Yes, you can buy malware. If you don’t want to be the hacker, you can hire a hacker.

There’s any number of reasons why a non-techy person would want to hire a hacke

A bug bounty refers to the reward a bad-guy hacker gets upon discovering a vulnerability, weakness or flaw in a company’s system.

This is akin to giving a reward to a burglar for pointing out weaknesses in your home’s security.

But whom better to ask than a burglar, right? Same with a company’s computer systems: The best expert may be the black hat or better, white hat hacker.

An article at bits.blogs.nytimes.com says that Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, PayPal and Yahoo are on the roster of

You probably think you know what a “hacker” is, but the images portrayed in the media can be misleading. You may be thinking of a geeky-looking guy who causes peoples’ computers to get infected with viruses or cracks passwords to raid the accounts of big business. This is one kind of hacker, but in a broader sense a hacker is a person (male or female) who uses their programming skills and technical knowledge to create and modify computer software and hardware by finding their weaknesses and expl

Hackers with big skills and a big ego will be drawn to Facebook and Twitter as their targets. But they’ll also target dozens of other companies, reports an article on arstechnica.com.

One group in particular stands out as the attackers, using zero-day exploits. They are known as Wild Neutron and Morpho, says the article, and have been active possibly since 2011, burrowing their way into various businesses: healthcare, pharmaceutical, technology.

It’s been speculated that the hackers want the insid

Want to earn up to $4.2 million? Then find the hackers on the FBI’s most wanted list. Or at least give the FBI information leading to their arrest and/or conviction. These snakes have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars. Here is the list from the hackernews.com:

Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev (reward: $3 million)

• Ironically, one of his aliases is one of the most common (and thus easily cracked) passwords: lucky12345.
• He’s the brains behind the GameOver Zeus botnet and CryptoLocker Ransomware.
• Over

Is it Bank of America’s fault that a hospital was hacked and lost over a million dollars? Chelan County Hospital No. 1 certainly thinks so, reports an article on krebsonsecurity.com. In 2013, the payroll accounts of the Washington hospital were broken into via cyberspace.

Bank of America got back about $400,000, but the hospital is reeling because the hospital says the bank had been alerted by someone with the Chelan County Treasurer’s staff of something fishy. The bank processed a transfer reque

Billions and billions—it’s only a matter of time before this becomes the number of hacking incidents in a single year, because just in 2014, over one billion records were hacked out of 1,500 different hacking incidents, says a recent report.

Some other findings from the report:

• A little over half the breaches involved credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other personal information.
• Most hacking incidents occurred in the U.S.
• 55 percent of the incidents involved retailers, primarily affec

Ever see those public bulletin boards with all the business cards on them? Don’t be surprised if you spot one that says “Hacker•for•Hire.” These are hackers who will, for a nice juicy fee, hack into your wife’s Facebook account to see if she’s cheating on you.

However, there’s at least one hackmaking site that matches hackers to clients who want to infiltrate a network for personal gain or even revenge. The site, Hacker’s List, is a good idea, certainly not the first of its kind; the site’s found