As a child of the 90’s, you’ll hear the word ‘hacker’ and remember Jonny Lee Miller and Angelina Jolie doing fascinating things to corporate networks using only floppy disks, dial-up modems and terrible aliases. The film glamorised an underground movement and captured the possibilities delivered by the burgeoning internet phenomenon, positioning hackers as keyboard crusaders with a cause. Fast-forward nearly 20 years to a world where even your grandparents have Facebook accounts – and hackers are still there.

In the 21^st century, many so-called hackers are employed to protect the interests of Big Business from security attacks – but there’s still space for the bleach-haired teenager with a well-developed sense of mischief, too.

Hacking Taxonomies

The culture of hacking has, indeed, grown to such a point that a distinct taxonomy of the good, the bad and the corporate has emerged. Though the term itself was originally coined to describe ‘a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary’, films like Wargames and Hackers gave it a sinister cachet. While there are upwards of 20 different ‘categories’ of hacker, the three major groupings could be described as ‘Black Hat’, ‘White Hat’ and ‘True Hackers’. Dominic White, South African CTO of international Information Security company SensePost says the term ‘hacker’ has a broad definition. “Lots of people call themselves hackers, and the media will call pretty much anyone a hacker, so things get blurry,” he says.

True hackers stick to the original premise of hacking and take great delight in disassembling elements of the digital realm and rebuilding them better than before – illustrating and correcting weak points and adding their personal tweaks to existing code. True hackers are generally interested in expanding their knowledge base and seek to explore systems without damaging them.

White Hat hackers are described as those who stick to the original hacker code of ethics (access, freedom of information, and improvement to quality of life) and are generally involved in securing and protecting information systems. White Hat hacking has spawned a host of terminally-uncool corporate job titles like ‘Vulnerability Researcher’ and ‘Information Security Manager’ – though having ‘Penetration Tester’ on your business card is either going to win you immense street-cred, or get you banned from your local bar.

Black Hat hackers are the ‘cool kids’ – they don’t stick to the hacker code of ethics and mount electronic attacks with malicious intent, often for personal gain. Rebellious and ego-driven, Black Hat activities range from cracking codes to allow them (and others) free access to software, to participating in information warfare, to writing viruses which can cripple, destroy or defraud software or a system. E-Toll system managers, beware.

There are a number of unifying factors across the categories, though: hackers have an unquenchable desire to learn and understand; they’re not afraid to ask questions, or find answers, even if boundaries are crossed; they do things differently – often things others don’t expect; they put long hours, usually at night, into their pursuit and there’s often a grungy sense of style associated to their output.

Hacking in SA

In terms of classical definitions, White says that the fastest-growing local hacker community is ‘White Hat’. Despite that, he says that SA does have a fair share of criminal hackers. “Our numbers aren’t notable,” he says. Local security attacks have been limited, with one or two notable exceptions. “There’s been the odd show every now and again, usually after Carte Blanche runs a segment, but they’re not known for being discerning about it. One of the largest recent alleged ‘hacks’ that got world attention was the PostBank heist for R42million – but it’s arguable whether it could be classified as hacking or not. People who commit computer-related crimes are driven by the same motivations as with any criminal activity. Criminal hacking is dominated by criminals – the concept of the bored teenager breaking into banks for fun is a very 90’s concept,” says White.

Internationally, a loose collective of hackers who call themselves ‘Anonymous’ has emerged as either the biggest threat to, or biggest champions of the security of online information. Known for well-publicised stunts and attacks on government, corporate or religious websites, ‘Anons’ are either anarchic pranksters or information freedom fighters. Recently, they’ve come out in support of Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks and the ‘Occupy’ movement and been targeted by the FBI. In a classic display of subversion, the group responded to FBI claims that the movement had been dismantled after LulzSec hackers had been arrested by leaking email addresses, physical addresses, names, mobile phone numbers, and other information, taken from the FBI’s Regional Forensics Computer Laboratory. White believes that the movement falls more into the ‘Hacktivism’ category (see sidebar) than being a criminal enterprise.

Safe Hacks

In terms of reclaiming the foundational meaning of the term ‘hacker’, there’s a movement called ‘Lifehacking’ which seeks to find simple solutions to everyday problems. Based on inquiring minds and a spirit of adventure, the Lifehacking movement is hacking in its purest form – understanding through deconstruction and delivering solutions to increase productivity and efficiency through novel shortcuts and tricks.

The term was first used in 2004 during the O’Reilly Emerging Technology in San Diego by technology journalist Danny O’Brien to describe the ‘embarrassing’ scripts and shortcuts productive IT professionals use to get their work done. After his presentation, use of the term spread in the tech and blogging community. The American Dialect Society voted ‘lifehack’ as the runner-up for ‘most useful word of 2005’, after ‘podcast’. ‘Lifehack’ was also added to the Oxford Dictionaries Online in 2011.

Lifehack.org is credited as being the grandfather of lifehacking sites, offering a more philosophical tack on lifestyle improvement. Lifehacker.com offers a repository of information on value for money deals, software alternatives and tricks to improve productivity. Reddit’s Lifehacks tag is awash with life-improving suggestions so simple you’ll bang your head against the wall in disbelief that you’ve never thought of them – there’s also probably a simplified head-banging technique on there. Whether turning pants hangers into cookbook holders or explaining the real reason cooldrink can tabs have a hole in them (to hold your straw in place – duh), lifehacking is a phenomenon born of the original spirit of the internet – the sharing of information.

Hacking Techniques

Black Hat hacking techniques are varied and clever. According to White, some of the more common ones include:

• Web attacks: Finding and exploiting vulnerabilities in web sites, for fun (e.g. defacing the page) or profit (e.g. distributing malware).
• Client-side attacks: Exploiting vulnerabilities in a user’s software, usually via e-mail, to load malicious software.
• Open Source Intelligence (or doxing): Collating information from public Internet sources to produce a much larger set of information than the target realised was available. These are sometimes published to prove a point.
• Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attack: Preventing the operation of an online service by overloading it with requests.
• Advanced attacks: Advanced and significant compromises of companies or countries, often performed by nation-state actors, sometimes referred to as Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs).
• Wireless attacks: Intercepting wireless communications and modifying them to gain access to a victim’s online accounts or information

 Useful Lifehacks

From the mind-numbingly simple (use an accented letter like ö in passwords to make them harder to guess) to the fiendishly-brilliant (use a staple remover to separate your keyring when adding or removing keys), lifehacks are a tribute to the marriage between human ingenuity and too much spare time. You’ll save hours of your life after considering a novel way of undoing a knot – don’t pull from underneath, instead twist the loose end as much as possible and push it through the knot. You’re welcome.

*This article originally appeared in TFG Tech.