Understanding the mindset of hackers in 2021
Cybercrime has seen an increase in the last decade. Cybercrime and cybersecurity costs have risen rapidly, with organizations now having to pay higher to secure their infrastructure. McAfee, a major cybersecurity company, reported that cybercrime cost $600 billion in 2017. In 2017, individual attacks cost $5 million, with $2.75million lost due to downtime or productivity loss.
In 2016, the cost of protecting organizations was estimated at $81 billion. The total cost of protecting organizations has been rising as a result of the increasing cost of cybersecurity solutions. Cybercrime is costing the world economy a lot of money. This money could have been used for more productive purposes, but it is either being used by cybercriminals or going towards cybersecurity solutions.
It is important to look at hackers from a psychological standpoint in order to understand their motivations and to determine what can be done about it. This article will examine the characteristics and ways hackers think.
Understanding the psychology of cybercriminals is essential to better understand why there are so many cases and how they will continue to rise. Cybercriminals have the technical knowledge to hack into networks and systems to steal data, money or compromise the integrity of systems. These are the most common types of hackers
Grey and white hats won’t use their cyber skills. If they do, they will attempt to educate the victim about vulnerabilities and ways to mitigate them. If they believe they can make a financial gain from the attack, black hats will target individuals or organizations. Hacktivists have the ability to target government agencies and corporations with a large social influence. They will do this to send a message. Cyber terrorists will target critical infrastructure, such as nuclear energy plants.
It is important to understand their characteristics in order to understand the psychology behind hackers’ ability to commit crimes that are nearly impossible to execute. While most of the traits are similar, it should not be taken as a sign of complacency. Organizations should invest in new use cases and discovering if there are others. These are the most common characteristics of cybercriminals.
They are patient
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Hacking is not a one-off event. Hackers are known to take their time and carefully study their targets. They make observations about how the system they are targeting works, its security, who uses it, and when it is active. After they have completed reconnaissance, they scan the system to identify its technical specifications and any vulnerabilities.
Hackers will only attempt to hack the system to steal money and data, or compromise it if they are certain of its vulnerabilities. These stages can be replicated for other targets such as users or networks. Each stage is not easy to replicate, so hackers must be patient.
They could attack the system without knowing what security systems are in place. If this happens, the attack could fail and the organization could be triggered for more security. Hackers are patient and also have patience when hacking. Hackers who are veterans have learned programming languages to be able read and reverse engineer code to find vulnerabilities.
You must spend a lot time learning how code can be analysed in different languages to become an expert. This is how hackers prepare for cybercrime.
They are determined
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