Not In It For The Money

I was a hacker for almost as long as I can remember. Even as a kid I lived to mess around with computers, programming, writing and cracking codes, and surfing to the darkest edges of the internet. What I couldn’t learn from manuals, chat rooms, message boards, or friends I pretty much just figured out on my own. So early on I knew that hacking would make me way more money than flipping burgers at Mickey D’s, earning a college diploma, or even scoring a high-paying job on Wall Street. And with a lot less of the mess and stress that usually accompanies your average 9-5 gig. But it was never about money, and things have changed since then – which was why I’d retired.

For obvious reasons, I can’t tell you my name. And after you read this you won’t be able to trace it back to my I.P. address it was sent from since I’ve developed and used a multilevel super encryption masking and scrubbing device to send this screed. So, why am I taking the risk of getting back into the game, stepping out of the shadows and into the grid by divulging this secret to the New York Times? Because of the way they’ve ruined it for all of us. I’ve had enough and just can’t stomach it anymore. Who’re they, you ask? In two words: Today’s Hackers.

These hackers today! They’ve no respect and are almost always in it only for the money. When I was in the hacking game it was all about changing the world and making a difference. Sure, every now and then we’d line our own pockets a bit with enough to cover expenses and then some. But for me, unlike them, it wasn’t about the money. Maybe it’s just the lone wolf vs. mob mentality.

Today’s hackers are not only creating chaos but they make no distinction of who it is directed toward. For them, there are no good or bad guys; only easy pickings. And because they do that, it reflects poorly upon our past and present hacker communities as a whole. It’s their ransomware attacks that really piss off most of us legit hackers. Nowadays, the bigger their haul the more likely these greed-fueled Robin Hoodish banditos will invest it in specialization and franchising. They’ve certainly gotten better at it over the years.

Remember the Colonial Pipeline assault? It may have not been the most costly hack attack from 2021 – 2022 (only 4.4 million was made from that hack), but the downtime caused by lost business and revenue was far more financially damaging to them than the ransom size. The WannaCry virus was far bigger in the number of computers it infected (300,000+) and resulted in 6 billion USD of damage, albeit the blackmail payout dollar size wasn’t the top dollar in brides for that period. Well, I for one want to put a stop to it now!

Here’s a short list of today’s greatest hacker hits. Coming in hot at #1 for 2021 is the insurance company, CAN Financial Corp., for a whopping 40 million dollars which was a record liberation money amount paid up to that point. The second was meat producer JBS’s payment of 11 million USD. Followed by GPS system manufacturer Garmin for 10 million, an unidentified Austrian organization (4.7 million), CWT Global travel services (4.5), Brenntag, a chemical distributor (4.4), Travelex (2.3, resulting in the corporation’s declared bankruptcy), fashion company FatFace Ltd. (2.0), and then, 1.14 million extorted from San Francisco’s University of California. Do the math and tally it up, that’s a grand total of nearly 85 million USD.

As 2022 began, so did more digital assaults, beginning with the Flexbooker data breach on January 3. The Red Cross charity organization was the next innocent victim, then came Crypto.com, multiple Credit Suisse banks, universities, hospitals, and even the Costa Rican government. Now, with nearly 3 dozen other major thefts occurring thus far in a year with still 3 months to go, it’s really getting out of hand, isn’t it?

When today’s hackers set their sights on specific ransom amounts they normally take into account several factors: 1) The size of the infected network, 2) The target’s overall net worth (including revenue and client’s accounts held in escrow) 3) The plane of data sensitivity being breached. And that’s the way they do it (uh-ha-uh-ha!) It not only hurts organizations and businesses out there that put good into the world but even reputable hackers such as me. Therefore, this really has to stop, and there’s only one way to paralyze today’s hackers dead in their tracks to halt them from fermenting further mischief.

So, what’s a respectable hacker of yesteryear ever to do these days? Basically, the way I’d decided to deal with it is not stooping to their level. That was up until the day when I had this idea. We, the good guy hackers of yesterday, need to band together and go after all the bad guy hackers of today to fight fire with fire. In other words, globally the good must unite with one another to go after these nefarious computer criminals to hit them where it’ll hurt the most: we hack the bad guys.

I’ve been developing a unique virus that’ll infect their devices and which would A) Identify offenders so the rest of the world could detect them, and out these blackmailers, B) Temporarily lockdown their software until the threat’s resolved, and C) Permanently disable and damage beyond repair any hardware used by chronic repeat offenders to stop them and wipe out their access to easy cash flow. With every day that’s passed, I got closer to my goal; to halt and hurt today’s malicious hackers. And now, I feel I may have cracked that code to allow me access via a backdoor in all computers that’ll leave those greedy bastards defenseless. I’m almost there, and come tomorrow my friends, sweet revenge!

Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in “The Terminator”, I’m’ back…