We know that hackers aren’t really a bunch of black-leather-clad badasses who look like supermodels and sneak into government buildings to steal information on thumb drives, but there are a lot of subtle myths that people tend to believe about hacking.Any Website is a Valid Entry Point for Hackers
In movies and television, a hacker only needs access to a public-facing website to break into any system. If you can figure out the password to an ex-FBI agent’s personal blog, you can break into the government’s mainframe and shut the whole system down. Truth is, there’s not much to hack on most websites. If you can figure out somebody’s Paypal password or bank account information, you can do some damage, but the vast majority of websites aren’t connected to any sort of “mainframe.” It’s just some code, text and images hosted on a server somewhere.
Hacking is Heavily Skill-Oriented
Hacking is based on luck more than anything. The only talent any con-artist really possesses is the ability to not worry about the damage that they’re doing when they rip people off. When you find someone’s ATM card in the machine, you take it to the tellers so they can give it back to its rightful owner. A hacker pockets it. Even the rudimentary computer skills that can make it easy to crack passwords can be learned in about a week’s time.
Hacking is Highly Illegal
Stealing is illegal, blackmail is illegal, there are a lot of crimes that can be facilitated by hacking, but hacking itself isn’t illegal. In fact, Google regularly pays hackers bounties for discovering gaps in their security. In other words, hacking is not only legal, it’s actually encouraged by the biggest website on the internet.
Most hacking myths can be dispelled with one simple question: If data-thieves are so talented, why don’t they make more money and take less of a risk putting those skills to use working for Microsoft?
