Not all cybercrimes are targeted at money…
Unfortunately some hackers are not interested in monetary gain again. They just want to steal your data to prove that they can. They simply want to prove to themselves or their hacker friends that they can break pass your defenses…funny right?
Just as there are different types of hackers, their methods and strategies also differ, and so do their motivation. Some hackers just aim at making one’s life miserable and other hackers just want to be seen and heard. To some, it’s a way of showcasing their intelligence to the world.
This brings us to the question “what does a hacker actually want?”
To Steal Infrastructure
A hacker will want to have access to computing resources and not pay for them. So in this instance, he launches an attack that is designed to steal such resource. When this is done, it allows him take control of the storage, files and other resources owned by someone else. He sometimes does this to host a website for himself or even run ads. He does all that for his personal growth, not for the money.
To Deny Service
Why would anyone want to deny service to the general public? It might be simply because they can, or just to cause harm. In October 2016, there was a distributed denial-of-service attack launched against the domain name system provider. This attack caused major internet platforms and services to be available to a number of users in the world. For a couple hours, high-profile websites like Esty, Github, Spotify and Twitter suffered service interruptions and altogether went offline.
The hackers that carried out this malicious act obviously didn’t do it to gain money, they only did because they wanted to prove their intelligence and also to deny service to people.
To gain Political Relevance
Hackers use hacking to make a political statement or promote social change. They steal embarrassing information from a victim company, cause operational issues for the company or wreck a havoc that will cause the company’s attention to be drawn to the hacker. When this is done, it gives the hacker leverage over such company and he can use this opportunity to make whatever request he wants. This group of people is what I call “online political thugs”.
To be Seen and Heard
It takes a level of intelligence to crack a system. Your IQ has to be very high for you to understand the algorithms of any system and then to think of ways of gaining access without knowledge of the owner. Hackers have displayed such intelligence in carrying out their activities and so they want to show off the skills they’ve got.
So you see, hackers don’t only want your money. There are other areas of interest to them. So next time when you want to be careless with your data with the thought that you can recover it easily by paying off the hacker, you might want to think of if the guy responsible is after your money or something more.
