Hacking Your Personal Information- Easier Than You May Think

According to the New York Times article “New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users,” hacking one’s personal information is easier than one may think. A new, free program called Firesheep now allows people to see what other users of an unsecured Wi-Fi network are doing and then log on as them at the sites they visited. This program grabs Web browser’s cookies, bits of code that identifies your computer, and is able to get your settings and other private information from the site. This allows users to be you on the site and have full access to your account.

The scary thing about this program is that it is so easy to use, and general members of the public are not taking precautions to protect themselves. Firesheep is more popular than people may think, more than a million people have downloaded the program in the past three months. Fortunately, sites that employ the cryptographic protocol Transport Layer Security are safe from the snoopers. PayPal and many banks use this feature, but most other sites that people trust with their information to do use this privacy safeguard. Web sites state that they do no encrypt all of their information because it will slow down the site and carries a large expense.

To protect yourself, change the Service Set Identifier or SSID of your wireless network from the default name to something less predictable. It is also recommended that people not use public Wi-Fi. I think it is important for the public to have knowledge of such programs and to take the proper precautions necessary to avoid identity theft.

Hacker's Paradise

Since the creation of the Internet the number of users has continually grown every year. In a recent study conducted by the University of Southern California in 2010 it was found that 82% of Americans now use the Internet on a regular basis. With ever-increasing numbers of people logging in, it is inevitable that there will be individuals who will seek to use this new connectivity for malicious reasons.

In the New York Times article “New Hacking Tools Pose Bigger Threats to Wi-Fi Users”, discusses the ease with which hackers may seize personal information. Wi-Fi hotspots in particular make accessing users information extremely easy for hackers. According to the article in the New York Times, a recently designed program called Firesheep can be downloaded for free off the Internet and, if used at a Wi-Fi hotspot, will allow the user to steal the confidential information of people accessing the Internet through the hotspot.

In the past, hacking required high-tech equipment and an advanced knowledge of how computers worked. Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Simple, free programs that are readily available over the Internet are now all that is needed to steal valuable personal information. Due to this increasing security risk it is more important than ever to safeguard our online information and to verify that the websites we visit are properly protected.

Taking Anonymity Too Far?

We've been hearing a lot of arguments about the benefits and deficits of anonymity online. Personally, I believe that benefits like being able to freely talk about personal problems, ask questions without the fear of being judged, and easily make all different types of new friends outweigh the negatives. However, there's always a group of people that takes things to the extreme. In terms of embracing and reveling in anonymity online, there is nobody who has taken this to such as an extreme as the infamous Anonymous.

Anonymous are a group of "hacktivists" (people who use hacking/cleaver usage of computers as a means to promote a political goal) who hide behind the mask of the Internet, as well as their symbolic Guy Fawkes masks (first seen in the movie V for Vendetta) to express their opinions. These people basically come together through the 4chan Internet community, which is an anonymous imageboard website that I have heard eloquently described by friends as a "condensation of the cesspool that is the internet". 4chan is extremely good at banding together for a cause, whether that is locating an image of a chart you vaguely remember seeing once in a text book, populating the latest meme, or launching an assault against human rights violators.

One of the most notable things Anonymous done is its crusade against the Church of Scientology. It all began as a little quibble over an video uploaded onto YouTube that the Church asked to have removed, and Anonymous insisted removing it would infringe upon free speech. This evolved into a war against the Scientologists for "exploiting church members and limiting free speech". They organized a series of attacks through the internet. Some of these carried over into the real world, manifesting as actual protests spurred by videos like this, causing over 7,000 protesters to gather worldwide on two occasions. While the merits of this particular agenda can be debated, they sometimes do have truly good intentions.

To cite a timely example, 4chan have been standing up for the Tunisian people. Together, they launched attacks on Tunisian government websites and even managed to post this message of warning ending in:

We are Anonymous.
We are the angry avatar of free speech.
We are the immune system of democracy.
We do not forgive censorship.
We do not forget free speech.
Expect us - always.

This looks philanthropic and lovely, but they also have a sick, anti-society side. Their 4chan roots show and they uphold the "cesspool" qualities the website is famous for. Many people were quite disturbed, for example, on May 20, 2009 when YouTube was flooded with uploads of porn. Often, it was disguised as a family or kid-friendly video. While they claimed to be doing this as a response to the removal of some music videos, I think that they just wanted to show off their power by pulling off something abhorrent.

I think that as long as Anonymous don't get so radical that they begin blurring the lines between activism and terrorism, it is probably good to have a group of people out there who is organized enough to speak against wrongdoings with a single, powerful voice. I'll pose the question to you, though: champions of human rights, or ne'er-do-well hackers with too much time on their hands?