Welcome to the Internet. Like most computer systems a lot of it is Garbage in Garbage out. Meaning the information submitted is only as good as it was entered in the first place.
Some information is much like this article is based on personal opinion. Meaning if you add five bucks to it you could purchase a cup of coffee at your local quick Java vendor.
The real money is in personal information and this falls into several categories. Identity theft currently is on top of mine. How hidden is your Social Security Number? Your Credit Card Number? Your age, name, place of residence, favorite password?
We first look at where we give this information out. Social Networks, that cool chat site. We type in “Debby, 27, Atlanta, pookiegirl21″ yes that is my real log in name, age, location, and password I used when I first started using early Chat rooms. Garbage in? oh ya.. for a guy named Mark, age (over 40 at the time) living in Ocean Shores, Washington. Working with the systems operators to catch child predators.
This was one of the first hot spots for criminal activity perpetrated by net thieves; we call them, Hackers. The internet was first set up as a military tool where you needed a pass word just to get onto the system. Think of it as your home computer when you turn it on in the morning. With thousands of users with little experience the entire network was about as secure as your home system. All you needed to log into government files was a common name and the name of a pet or girlfriend. For the average hacker this was fairly simple. The information usually was fairly good and quite interesting. Think of it as logging onto CNN or News Week. The hacker could be just like James Bond sneaking into top secret labs looking for triggers.
Many of us used Telnet to make long distance phone calls into Universities for free. This tied up phone lines needed by students and professors but there was just quantities of actually really good information at our finger tips. Think of it like logging into Google! Universities soon added more phone lines and asked the general public to only log in late at night, by blocking “unanimous, user” during the day. (note: that was the default password to almost every non-secured computer on the net at that time).
As time went on more sites were opened up to the public so we did not have to “Hack” our way into the site.
Over time for Hackers, learning how to make money on the net became more and more creative. Membership fees were being sold to gain access to data files. These membership sites soon became a hot topic for exchange of hacker information. Yes, I’m talking about the coveted “letmein, letmein” (let-me-in) password to gain access to porn. These cash cows were being milked or should I say everybody else denied service to theses sites because of all the freeloaders jamming through that same small open door screaming “letmein, letmein”.
As any good lock is developed, there is a way to pick it to gain access. As service providers for a fee created better security to keep non-paying users out the hackers developed better key generators to crack the code. Nothing was Hacker proof!
The software industry had also found the net where thousands of individuals were willing to use their credit cards to buy computer programs such as word processors, net browsers, and computer games.
No longer needing to find a foreign spy ring willing to pay for top government secrets that could land you in prison for a long time. Hackers moved to capturing credit card numbers. How is this possible? Every key stroke you type and send over the net is passed through many other computers now called hubs. To test this you can drop to a dos prompt (cmd.exe) and type “ping 69.22.138.130″ you will see there are several jumps logged back as the information is sent from your computer to your service provider to a main hub to the 69.22.138.130 site. To see the route your ping request went type in “tracert 69.22.138.130”
*for those who want to know 69.22.138.130 is www(dot)foxnews(dot)com
A Hacker could listen to the credit card number as it passed through any one of these computers as simple as setting up a wire tap (keystroke trap). For the Hacker it was much easier just simply allow his home computer to be part of the hub network of servers as a relay hub.
Why you ask? A Hacker now could purchase real things with someone else’s credit card without having to pickpocket out of your pants or purse!
What could he buy with it? At first it was mostly porn. Later software, computers, printers, and even alcohol! This became boring and there were bigger money fish to catch. Banks were hit; the smart hackers only took a fraction of a cent from idle accounts while others took the whole thing. This was no longer porn sites that were being hit. Deep pockets were losing lots of money so greater encryptions were created, to protect data should the hacker get past the passwords. Only to be hacked in just a few short minutes.
Is this starting to sound like spy vs. spy? In a way it actually is. For a section of the population locks were made to be broken or cracked. For many companies it soon became clear that the only way a computer was safe from the hackers was to have it separated away from the net. The idea was to keep the doors closed. Even then with the windows and doors closed and the phone lines and high speed fiber optic cables separated corporation secrets leaked out. This was done on floppy disks, memory chips and yes with the help of computer viruses, the information got leaked out to a machine that was tied to the net.
It is one thing to have access to this article written in an open forum, but currently we as a society are placing more and more trust with critical systems and information onto the web with no better security than those early, pay for porn sites.
Today there is a rush for a “Smart Grid”. To have the entire electrical service provided to every home business and government agency to be tied into this “Smart Grid”. Yes it is nice to be able to turn your home VCR and your hot water heat on or off from anywhere you have internet service, anywhere in the world. BUT so does any half whit Hacker!
What would it be worth to a company to know what is inside your refrigerator? Maybe the milk is past the pull date and the microchip embedded in the container pings a sensor in your refrigerator to let you know you need to buy more milk. Would it be worth it to the company to be able to send a coupon to you in an e-mail that you could print out and purchase milk on the way home?
What about your local Public Utility, that pays for electricity at the lowest rate. What if a power company in France turns off your hot water heater in the middle of the night and sells that unused power to folks in Germany at the highest rate for that hour in the world?
You would not even know that you had been robbed. Whole communities could be cut off with rolling brown outs and the power be sold to the higher bidder. You may think I am blowing hot air over this and it would not happen. The reality is it already happened and the perpetrators of the crime are doing twenty five years in federal prison right now!
Nothing can be done to keep this from happening if the systems are tied into each other in a “STUPID SMART GRID”.
No longer would you need an internet service provider. By simply plugging into a smart grid power source your computer, TV, radio, could access anything on the web. Also, at the same time anybody could access any system plugged into the smart grid.
This article only scratches the surface as to why this is such a bad idea.
