On Friday, April 17, 2015, Francesco Ongaro participated as a speaker at the International Journalism Festival, presenting for about an hour his subjective view of the hacking landscape over the past 30 years.
The second title we can give to this talk is the disillusionment of the hacking world, or how the advent of money has changed (or even "killed") the underground.
The video begins with a general overview of security, defining what a vulnerability, a bug, and an exploit are. These typical software issues have increased in recent years alongside the complexity of applications. The more complex the software, the more bugs are present. However, it is important to remember that not all bugs are exploitable vulnerabilities.
Once the principles of security are defined, the talk focuses on the underground world, how it was born in the 60s, and how it has developed up to the present day. During the explanation, all the experiences lived by Francesco emerge, and how in the early days of the internet, it was nothing more than a large community.
From this large community, the first groups of Hackers were born, and the video analyzes the following points:
- Which were the most well-known Teams;
- The classic psychology of a hacker;
- A typical day in the life of a Hacker;
- The desire for knowledge and sharing;
- The fun for which it was done.
All this was Hacking until the advent of money.
The cyber security market was born, and this led many people to start working in this field without perhaps having the experience or skills to perform the required tasks. Over time, this situation led to various attacks that more experienced individuals began to carry out against even very important companies. Almost in parallel, therefore, with the birth of the cyber security market, the "black hat economy" also began to develop. Hackers who specialized in selling their services to harm other companies. These operate as if they were normal criminal organizations. Just think of drug trafficking. Certainly, there is someone who creates the site to sell it, but it is unlikely that the same person can follow all the phases of the process from obtaining the goods to the sale.
In all this, while the black hat economy develops, companies together with governments have not yet managed to solve some basic problems such as phishing, fake antivirus, or the cryptolockers we hear more and more about.
In conclusion, Francesco explains the dynamics that have led to the current situation. That is, the complexity required to develop exploits today and the little consideration there is for the world of cyber security. Nowadays, few people can consider themselves hackers, and they are usually the most self-motivated, which is the true nature of every hacker.
