Hi, everyone and welcome back to【Geek Time】. Welcome back to the studio, Brad.

Hello.

So what we're gonna talk about today? I thought we're gonna talk about something quite relevant to you, Brad. I know that you have a another degree in something related to computers.

Eh-huh. So I have a degree in electronics engineering with a minor in cyber security.

Cyber security, great. I thought we can talk about hackers and hacking. And we're gonna talk about the basics. We're also going to talk about a lot of the concepts relating to these. First of all, is hacker necessarily an evil existence？Is it bad like a criminal？

Not really. So hackers originally weren't even people who did things on computers. They were just people who took things apart, made them better as computers became more prevalent. They started to moving to doing things on computers. It wasn't until later that it became more of a buzzword used for people who are doing illegal things.

So hacker, I remember one of my other episodes were talking about life hacks are basically these little tricks you can use to make your life better. So hack is basically quite neutral. It just means trying to figure out how things work.

And that's basically what people did. They figured out how something worked and figured out how to make it better, maybe changing one or two components and finding just ways that would make it work in a better way.

It does sound like a quite geeky word.

It definitely is.

Even though I don't really know that much about hacker, but I remember reading some articles about the idea or the differences between hacker and cracker. They seem to be two sides of the same coin. In Chinese, we actually call hacker black. We use the word black, but cracker some people translate it into... So it's more like a negative sense. Is that what it is --two sides of one coin？

Hackers were never originally anything bad. People who were cracking were the ones who were doing illegal things. But when the media picked up on like hacking and cracking, they didn't really know what the words meant and they just stuck with the word hacker because that sounded so much worse like you think about the word hack, you have a hack saw, which is something people use to cut up dead bodies and all these types of things. And they probably stuck with that word because it just sound so much more menacing.

But what exactly do hackers do？You often hear someone hacked into the program, hacked into someone's a computer. Is it like an invasion of sorts？They use some sort of program, they try to get into a system.

It just depends on the situation they use different methods, but they find ways to get information from your computer by either watching the network. That's all the information you're sending out of your computer or getting into your computer and actually looking through your files. Basically they get into your information.

They do that mainly by creating a program or creating something so that can help them get into your computers?

A lot of the higher level hackers they actually design and develop their own programs and ways of getting into systems. Some people, when they first start out, they are just downloading programs and then using them on their own. Anyone can go online and find like a hacking program. We usually typically call them script kiddies because they're just like someone who goes online and they find a script and the script is basically something you type into your computer and run. So basically I got a command prompt do you type in a string of text and it does something in the computer.

So script kiddie would be like the beginner, the novice hackers or the hacker wanna be. Script kiddie, kiddie means little kids. So script kiddie sometimes is translated into... Usually someone who's probably quite young and don't really know the real essence of hacking.

Its actually kind of interesting because it's either young kids or parents. Parents download programs to get into their kids stuff.

I see. The other thing I heard about hacking is the idea of different hats.For example, I've heard black hats, white hats. And I have no idea what those mean.

There's actually three camps. There is black, gray, and white. And typically you'll hear black and white because there's two sides, right？The black hats are the ones who are typically referred to as attackers. The industry they're either referred to as a black hat. There are people who are doing things that are illegal. They're hacking computers and they're breaking the law, doing it for monetary gain or revenge. Whereas you have the white hat and they're the people who are like me who go into a program at a university and study cyber security.

To defend systems essentially.

Yeah, so we learn how to do the bad things. So we can learn how to defend against those things.

It reminds me of the white magic and the dark arts in Harry Potter. It's more like you need to know how to defend yourself against dark magic. But technically you can go rogue and become a hacker.

It's really hard to stay on one side, right？There are people who are just completely black hats. There's very few people who are strictly white hat. And that's where we get into this gray area, the gray hats, the necessary illegal.

Right, and so like if I work for a company. That company is gonna hire me to actually hack into their system and find ways to defend their system, to find ways to make sure the system is secure. So I hack into the system legally as a way to protect them. Now a gray hat, on the other hand, isn't employed by a company and they'll go into the company and they'll find something and say, Hey, I found an exploit and I actually got into the system. Now what they've done is illegal because they've broken into a system, but as a way to kind of like make up for it, they send an email to the company and they say, hey, your system is exploitable. You should fix that and they might ask for a fee or something like that.

I see, they're not like totally malicious, but they're also not complete like clean and innocent.

What they're doing is illegal. And if they get caught, they will be prosecuted. But the way the laws are made, a lot of times gray hat hackers kind of get off because there's not a lot of laws to stop them.

I see. Sort of summarize it or put it in a simple way, black hats, they are attackers, so they're probably more like the the crackers, the more like the evil, the more negative sense of the word, the white hats are defenders. And gray would be someone in the middle. But you see a lot of hacker. I think I can speak for many of our audience. Mostly we see hackers in movies or in TV shows, and for me it's always like they're just typing really fast.

It never happens that way.

It looks pretty cool though. They also say like hackers can read each other, they can sort of communicate through secret language.

There's different ways of telling whether or not someone is a hacker like you wouldn't know it just like seeing someone walking down the street necessarily. People have telltale signs like when you're on like a system and I see this person is running their programs this way. They know that's probably this hacker.

I see so it's kind of like they have a tag. Another thing I always wonder is why do people become hackers？I understand if you're doing it for profit, right？Or if you're doing it because you're a bad person. But since a lot of these people probably are not necessarily for these reasons. Then why do people become hackers, just curiosity？

Mostly out of curiosity, most people who become hackers, they're given a computer as a child and they learn everything they can about it. And then they get into trouble. Yeah, most of them they value a freedom of inquiry. They're curious. They want to find out what's happening in the system. And a lot of times what comes out to be as they find information, they want information. But then there's a lot of companies that are trying to hide information, hide things. You see big companies like Apple and Sony. They have programs, but they don't want people to go in and modify the programs or do anything with the programs. And so they find ways to prevent people from going into them.

So basically hackers they want absolute transparency from companies or like from governments... And if they don't get it, they hack into it.

Some people realize that there is a need for maybe some security, some sensitivity and data. But some people they don't care, they want access to everything.

I see. In this day and age, data really is everything, is where everything lies. So do hackers work alone or are there any hacker associations？

There are a lot of hacker associations. Anonymous is one of those.

I've heard of that. They seem to have done a lot.

Yeah, so typically what happens when it comes to hackers is there will be a hacker and they will take on kind of like an apprentice and they'll have different groups. They may join with groups like Anonymous or they may just work independently. Hackers are kind of weird. They love working on their own, but they love working with others

Just they don't necessarily need to be with others, just remotely working with others.

Typically they will remotely work with others. They may never even meet a person. Some hacking groups will actually join together and actually maybe like rent a space together. But when it comes to some hackers, they could be anywhere in the world. It's kind of like a borderline society.

Anonymous, what is their agenda？

It's difficult to pinpoint a specific agenda because there are so many different people in the group and like it's changing every day, but the main kind of agenda that they have is that they want the governments to tell the truth. They want the governments to be open and not hide things from the public.

I see.

When you think of Anonymous, typically you're going to think of like the Guy Fawkes Mask which is related to Guy Fawkes.

V for Vendetta...and that's basically their symbol.

But that goes back to the man who tried to overthrow parliament Guy Fawkes. He is actually an actual historical person. The movie took that historical event to kind of fit into the movie. Yeah they use that mask as kind of like their figurehead.

So they probably believe that what they're doing is righteous, is the right thing to do. They are speaking for the general public. And does anyone know who they are?

There's been a few people who have gotten in trouble. A few of them have been arrested. There was a a company called HB Gary. And one of their employees told the FBI that he knew who they were. And so Anonymous went after him and HB Gary, the entire company. And it was actually funny because HB Gary was a cyber security firm. But they fell prey to all of the basic things that they shouldn't have done on a cyber security firm.

So by claiming that they know who belong to the Anonymous group, they actually got themselves in trouble and kind of destroy their company's reputation. I see.

Within a Super Bowl weekend, the company was basically destroyed.

So don't mess with hackers. All right. So I think that is pretty much the basics about hackers. We've talked about the difference between hacker and cracker different hats and the anonymous group. In the advanced episode, let us talk about how that is related to our life and what are some of the methods of hacking. And thank you again for coming to the show. If you have anything to add, if you have been hacked before, if you're a computer geek and you know about this hacking stuff, leave us a comment in the comment section, we would love to see them. Thank you Brad for coming to the studio.

No problem.

We'll see you next time. Bye.

See you.

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