Why hacking

Mostly they do report the vulnerabilities found to the concerned parties, but they also demand compensations in return. If not rewarded properly, they might exploit the vulnerabilities as well. Credit: raconteur. I am sure you guessed this. One of the most common reasons for hackers to hack is to steal or leak information. This could be data and information about your customers, your internal employees or even private data specific to your business.

These are cases where hackers typically go after big targets in order to get the most attention. Some of the biggest examples are the Ashley Madison hack or the Starbucks app hack. In the Ashley Madison hack, hackers were able to break into the customer database and get access to all the information including many private pictures of popular celebrities. This incident was a big shakeup in the Internet world which also affected private lives of many people.

A lot of times, hackers also steal information in order to assume your personal identity and then use it for something else like transferring money, taking a loan, etc. Such incidents have increased after Internet banking and mobile banking have started to become more popular.

With the growth of smartphones and mobile devices, the potential for monetary gain through hacking has also increased. Even though there has been a lot of media attention about all the above companies being hacked, most businesses still believe this won't happen to them.

By not being proactive about security, you are only putting your data at risk. Hackers just love to take something down. And then also leave a statement on the website - more on that later. But hackers have successfully taken down many services by creating bots that overwhelm a server with traffic, thus, leading to a crash. These days, there's also DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service attacks which use multiple infected systems to take down a single major system leading to a denial of service.

There are other ways also, like infecting a large network with malicious software inserted onto one computer either through email or otherwise which leads to a chain reaction affecting the whole network. Server disruption attacks usually have their own personal motive. Mainly, it is to render a service or website useless.

Sometimes it can also be to make a point. The hackers who fall into this category are very interesting. They don't care about money or data. Anyone who uses a computer connected to the Internet is susceptible to the threats that computer hackers and online predators pose. These online villains typically use phishing scams , spam email or instant messages and bogus websites to deliver dangerous malware to your computer and compromise your computer security. Computer hackers can also try to access your computer and private information directly if you are not protected by a firewall.

They can monitor your conversations or peruse the back-end of your personal website. Usually disguised with a bogus identity, predators can lure you into revealing sensitive personal and financial information, or much worse. While your computer is connected to the Internet, the malware a hacker has installed on your PC quietly transmits your personal and financial information without your knowledge or consent.

Or, a computer predator may pounce on the private information you unwittingly revealed. In either case, they will be able to:. As technology gradually becomes more sophisticated and integrated into our daily lives, the reason and motivations for hackers to access your personal and private information also exponentially increases. For instance, only within the last years has internet banking become almost a global standard.

Prior to the advent of internet banking, it was almost impossible to send or receive money without sending personal checks or using cold hard cash. Nowadays, people can pay send their friends money or even pay bills with the click of a mouse. Although these online services make our lives more convenient and easy, it has also presented a problem with hacking. The main question we should be asking ourselves is why do hackers want to hack?

Here are 6 reasons or motivations behind hacking attempts! Vulnerability Scanning, as the name suggests, is a security technique that is used to identify security weaknesses in a computer system. Most times, this security measure is used by network administrators for obvious security purposes. Another reason to hack a system is to steal information or money. A large portion of hacking attempts fall into this category. Banks and large companies are common targets for hacking jobs, but sometimes smaller companies or even a specific person's computer are targeted, as well.

There are also some hackers, including hacking groups, that target a company to disrupt business, create chaos, and be a nuisance.