Not long ago, the annual "World Hacker Conference" was held in Las Vegas, USA, showing the new characteristics of the hacker community being intelligent and younger. On the one hand, the United States condemns and punishes hacking, and insinuates that other countries deliberately organize cyber attacks. On the one hand, he secretly intervened in the "World Hacker Conference", conducted in-depth research on hacking techniques, recruited hackers on the Internet, and strengthened cyber warfare against other countries. There is an undercurrent hidden in the United States' two-faced approach to hackers, which requires us to be vigilant and take it seriously.

Younger age is more intelligent, more hidden, and more utilitarian.

"Hackers" pose a growing threat to human society

The "World Hacker Conference", which was born in 1992, is held in Las Vegas, USA in July and August every year, which can be called a "hacker" military parade. The Hackath Contest is the most attractive theme of the conference, and the top hackers will win a lot of prize money. At this year's "World Hacker Conference," which was held not long ago, there were some new developments that attracted attention.

Hacker "Children's Class"

According to a recent report by CNN, at the "World Hacker Conference", the organizers opened a children's class for the first time, planning to enroll children between the ages of eight and 16. Most of the applicants were children or relatives of the hackers themselves.

It is reported that the initiator and organizer of the hacker conference turned out to be a 30-year-old young man named Jeff Moss. As a teenager, he was already a computer technologist and a master at hacking into telephone systems and university campus networks. Later, he was co-opted by a large computer network security company as a special consultant.

Some U.S. media have noticed that there will be some new characteristics of hacking behavior at this hacker conference: First, it will be more intelligent. Hackers are often carefully planned before committing crimes, and they are wits with the government's anti-hacking forces; Second, it is more hidden. Hacking crimes are carried out in a virtual space of programs and data, which is not limited by time and place, and it is more difficult to track and monitor. Third, the harm to society has increased. A large number of facts have proved that hacking crimes have increased further than in the past, and the losses caused are also increasing.

Not long ago, a Reuters report said that the World Hacker Conference in Las Vegas unveiled some startling research that found weaknesses in the aging computer systems used in power stations, chemical plants, water distribution systems and other facilities around the world.

In view of the tendency of hackers to become younger, some experts pointed out that in the future, it is very important to strengthen education on cyber ethics, and it is necessary to let those who have computer talent, especially young people, give full play to their talents through legitimate channels, so as to prevent them from entering the camp of hackers or even degenerating into cybercriminals.

Recruiting "Cyber Warriors"

According to international media disclosures, in addition to hackers from all over the world, the participants in the annual "World Hacker Conference" and "Black Hat Conference" also include representatives of many large companies around the world, as well as officials from government agencies such as the US Department of Defense, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency. The former is mostly for commercial gain, while the latter is for the needs of the U.S. cyber strategy.

For many years, the United States has restricted and punished cyber attacks by hackers, and on the other hand, it has conducted in-depth research on hacking techniques and recruited hackers to strengthen cyber warfare against other countries. The world's two major hacker gatherings -- the "World Hacker Conference" and the "Black Hat Conference" -- are the key targets of the United States' patronage and attention. Today, the United States is becoming more and more open about its two-faced approach to hackers.

U.S. officials have proudly claimed that their attendance and involvement in the "World Hacker Conference" is an opportunity to uncover clues and fight crime, and to lock down cyber suspects. For example, after the World Hacker Conference in 2001, the FBI arrested Dmitry Skiyarov, a 26-year-old Russian computer programmer, for designing software that converts the format of Adubi's e-books into a common format, a crime that violates U.S. digital copyright law.

However, according to US media disclosures, the US Department of Defense has repeatedly snare and recruited "cyber warriors" from some US hackers who have been detained for serious criminal offenses.

It has been learned that at the "hacker conference" held not long ago, US Assistant Secretary of Defense and Pentagon chief intelligence officer in charge of command, communications, and intelligence, who led the Pentagon delegation, said to the hackers: "I invite you to join the work of government departments or private enterprises, but you must not forget the Department of Defense."

Hacking techniques are allowed to spread

The U.S. federal government also has a special relationship with hackers. Every year, the federal government invests heavily in research to develop network technology and other cutting-edge technologies.

At the 2008 World Hacker Conference, three undergraduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) developed a technology that could "ride the subway for free" in view of the technical loopholes in the Boston subway card billing system. The technology involves buying a magnetic stripe card with a five-cent denomination, then using a reader to change its amount to $99, stuffing the card into a ticket vending machine, pressing the "top-up" button on the ticket machine, and stuffing a one-dollar bill. As a result, the ticket machine retrieved the "fake card" and spit out a legal magnetic stripe card with a $100 amount. It is said that this technology is also applicable to the subway card billing system in many countries around the world. After the technology was demonstrated at the "World Hacker Conference", it was strongly opposed by the Boston subway management in the United States. Despite this, the relevant departments of the US government have opened up the net and allowed the spread of hacking techniques that are harmful to the international community.

Some media confirmed that in April 2006, at a two-day "hacker competition" held in Seoul, South Korea, there were people in the US military waiting to "poach people" at the scene. Thirty-six contestants from Sweden, Spain, the United States, Italy, South Korea, etc., formed eight "top hacker" teams, each showing superb hacking skills. Among them, only the world's top hackers, who have been included in the list of "key surveillance targets" by the security services of various countries, will be among the finalists. The person in charge of the organizer said, "The purpose of holding this contest is to unearth hackers who have not been discovered before, and after confirming their strength, they can be trained to become experts." ”

It is reported that Marco Tobias, a "hacker" who once published a monograph on unlocking, successfully demonstrated the use of a "special key" made of paper clips and plastic sheets at a "World Hacker Conference" to open the door locks produced by Medico, a well-known American lock-making company. Because the Pentagon in the United States and the British royal family use this product, this "hacker" is known as an "expert hacker" who can use a piece of paper to get to the Pentagon without "picking locks".

In August 2010, a U.S. network called Vigilance claimed at the World Hacker Conference in Las Vegas that it had been secretly cooperating with the government as a civil society organization with the mission of "searching for clues through the Internet to combat cyber attacks, terrorism, and drug trafficking groups." Vigilance also claims that it has intelligence gatherers in 22 countries and is ready to recruit 1,750 "vetted volunteers" who "do what the government can't do."

The United States: "Hiring Black" on the One Side and "Anti-Black" on the Other

Recently, the United States has taken a two-faced approach to two of the largest cyber attacks, and some new developments are particularly noteworthy.

According to a number of foreign media reports, McAfee, an American security software company, recently released a report saying that cybersecurity experts have found "the world's largest cyber attack so far". In the past five years, 72 institutions around the world, including the United Nations, the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, have been targeted by hackers, the report said. McAfee found that the scale of these hacking attacks was "huge", and government units and enterprises in the United States, India, South Korea, Vietnam, and Canada were all targeted by hackers, targeting 14 countries and regions around the world, 49 of which were located in the United States. The targets of hackers are national defense, foreign affairs, economy, high-tech data, etc.

The McAfee report said that the hackers were interested in non-commercial information, including think tanks and sports organizations, and that "the government was behind it." Foreign media paid particular attention to this point in the report, and spread remarks such as "experts suspect that this country is China" in the headline or lead.

A report by the U.S. Computer Network Security Corporation said that during the investigation in March this year, a series of cyber attacks were discovered, and it is believed that a certain "country" is behind this series of cyber attacks. Some media reported that although it did not specify which country, all the "evidence" pointed to China. After the publication of the US Cyber Security Corporation report, some Western scholars pointed the finger at China and Russia. Jim Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, said that some of the hackers contained information that Beijing was interested in, and that China was the most suspicious. "The evidence is all about China," he said. Russia may do the same, but there is more evidence pointing to China than Russia. ”

It can be seen from this that the United States controls and cracks down on "hackers" in other countries while using and recruiting "hackers", and this two-faced method will blame others for becoming more and more subtle and diverse, such as changing and hiding the attack addresses of network hackers. bribing or hiring hackers abroad to carry out cyberattacks on targets; The individual cyber attacks of hackers in some countries are framed as state acts, acts of war, and so on.

In today's increasingly fragile cyber security and increasingly fierce cyber warfare, China should formulate corresponding and necessary countermeasures, in addition to strengthening cyber defense against sensitive key targets, it is also advisable to make other preparations, such as establishing corresponding handling agencies, formulating corresponding emergency response plans, actively participating in international cyber security construction, and jointly cracking down on transnational cyber criminal activities.

At the same time, the departments concerned should also actively investigate and grasp hacker organizations at home and abroad and their trends, establish basic policies and guidelines for dealing with hacker organizations, and promptly guide individual hackers to maintain a rational mind and avoid excesses when major incidents and emergencies occur at home and abroad, especially to avoid the spontaneous, collective, and concentrated excesses of hackers, so as not to leave an excuse for hostile forces. (Yang Minqing, researcher at the Center for World Studies, Xinhua News Agency)