Convicted Hacker: “I steered clear of charities”

I recently had the opportunity to meet with a convicted hacker (now a penetration tester, or "ethical hacker").

More on his story another day, but one thing Justin said is worth singling out—it adds colour to a trend I mentioned recently.

One of the first things Justin was quick to point out when we met was that he never targeted charities or schools. Interestingly, financial gain was never his motivation—instead, it was the satisfaction of achieving something technically challenging.

This helped me realise that I had been generalising an industry made up of individuals and organisations with very different motivations and goals.

Justin was linked to the "hacktivist" group Anonymous, though by his own admission, he didn't fully subscribe to their general ethos—he was caught up in the excitement of the technical challenge (starting in early high school).

I couldn't find any direct evidence of Anonymous extorting or otherwise disadvantaging charities or schools, so maybe it's an unspoken rule. I tried to find a manifesto, but there doesn't seem to be a central one.

In a twist, though, Anonymous has used stolen credit card details to donate to charities. They left a video calling card, which would be interesting to watch, except it's disallowed in Australia—go figure. 🙂

While trying to better understand the term "hacktivism," which is a subset of hacking, I came across this fascinating article from The Guardian, where Anonymous exposed a high school sexual assault in the US by leveraging their millions of online followers.

While there have been recent reports of some cybercriminal groups increasingly targeting charities, this should not be interpreted as an industry-wide trend. Many hacker groups still consider attacking charities to be unethical and off-limits. This aligns with what we learned from Justin's experience and Anonymous's apparent practices.

Andrew Walker
Technology consulting for charities
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-walker-the-impatient-futurist/

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