Someone gave me some advice on setting up a home lab, so I was messing around with my own computers for a bit. I was thinking that if I set up my most powerful computer as a hypervisor (i.e. it can host virtual machines simulating other computers) I can connect to it from my laptop and mess around with it that way.
No news on the job front, alas.
I wanted to talk more about what happens when you surf the net, but first I wanted to say something about hacking. Hacking, btw, is more of a mindset than anything else, a willingness to look at the various tools in place and see the potential for unexpected uses. Sort of like the way Afghans would repurpose solar panels to suit themselves. Anyways, that mindset can be used for both good and bad, but isn't inherently evil. Even though most people nowadays think of 'hackers' as criminals, it's not true.
It takes someone very knowledgeable about computer architecture, programming, and the like to exploit a vulnerability. We were supposed to do this as an assignment in one of my classes, and let me tell you, it was hard. Going back to my earlier post, such a skillset could be compared to a skilled man-at-arms back before guns became a thing. It took years of hard work and practice to become an expert swordsman, and the same goes for expert hackers.
With the power of programming and the ease with which we can copy and share information, a really good hacker can create a program to exploit a vulnerability, and then make infinite copies of that vulnerability. I used wizards and spells in my previous analogy because it seemed a bit more accurate than describing a gunsmith and the mass distribution of automatic rifles.
The knowledge and skills required to be a 'wizard' (or 'hacker') may create a limit, of a sort, on how much trouble they can wreak directly, but the ability to share anything they find means that anyone - even your mother, father, grandmother or grandfather - can conduct a cyber attack. I have come across a few vague articles talking about the criminal business model for such things, and it sounds like there are people hired to conduct attacks who probably don't know much more about computers than anyone not in the computer industry. (So, really, not all cyber attackers have the skills to be a 'hacker'. I think the term I've heard people use for them is 'script kiddie'.)
No news on the job front, alas.
I wanted to talk more about what happens when you surf the net, but first I wanted to say something about hacking. Hacking, btw, is more of a mindset than anything else, a willingness to look at the various tools in place and see the potential for unexpected uses. Sort of like the way Afghans would repurpose solar panels to suit themselves. Anyways, that mindset can be used for both good and bad, but isn't inherently evil. Even though most people nowadays think of 'hackers' as criminals, it's not true.
It takes someone very knowledgeable about computer architecture, programming, and the like to exploit a vulnerability. We were supposed to do this as an assignment in one of my classes, and let me tell you, it was hard. Going back to my earlier post, such a skillset could be compared to a skilled man-at-arms back before guns became a thing. It took years of hard work and practice to become an expert swordsman, and the same goes for expert hackers.
With the power of programming and the ease with which we can copy and share information, a really good hacker can create a program to exploit a vulnerability, and then make infinite copies of that vulnerability. I used wizards and spells in my previous analogy because it seemed a bit more accurate than describing a gunsmith and the mass distribution of automatic rifles.
The knowledge and skills required to be a 'wizard' (or 'hacker') may create a limit, of a sort, on how much trouble they can wreak directly, but the ability to share anything they find means that anyone - even your mother, father, grandmother or grandfather - can conduct a cyber attack. I have come across a few vague articles talking about the criminal business model for such things, and it sounds like there are people hired to conduct attacks who probably don't know much more about computers than anyone not in the computer industry. (So, really, not all cyber attackers have the skills to be a 'hacker'. I think the term I've heard people use for them is 'script kiddie'.)
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