The Pros And Cons Of Hacking

There used to be a time where hackers would simply deface, or change, a website's home page. As computing evolved, so did the hacks. Hackers went from defacing websites to hacking databases containing troves of usernames and password. Computing has now reached a era, one of digital mining; with digital mining comes a new type of hacker, a cryptojacker. These hackers abuse the trust between a website and a visitor’s computer to execute code in order to have thousands of computers mine this digital currency, or cryptocurrency, for them. As the computing community evolves and hackers progress the hack that they carry out seem less and less humane. This hack, among many others, brings up serious concern on the wellbeing of the Internet and the people who use it; security, or lack thereof, of companies that we trust with our personal information was also brought was because of this hack.

Normally when mining Bitcoin one would need to pay for spacing, heat and or cooling solutions, and, most importantly, electricity. These hackers managed to pass of all these costs onto unsuspecting victims. It is currently unknown at the total cost of damage done by the hackers because it’s unknown how many visitors had visited the affected websites and how long they stayed (“Cryptojacking”). All the victims that visited had their power, unknowingly, used and the cost of that will be passed on to them simply because it’s nigh impossible to track back all the victims. Additionally, the cost of hacks are typically passed onto the consumers in the end as well. Since many government websites were ones hacked they would want to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. Consequently, the methods of making sure are by investing into these companies or alternative solutions, government spending is paid for by the people in the form of