Softpedia Introduces: Hackers Around the World

Hackers, may they be white, black, or gray, have become an important part of today’s society, many of their actions influencing the evolution of security and communication systems in general. Taking this into consideration, I’ve decided to begin a series of interviews with hackers from all around the world to see what actually makes them tick.

Since a previous interview, The life of a hacktivist, turned out more fascinating than initially expected, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at both the real and the virtual lives of those who shape the Internet.

In the next weeks, I will interview hacktivist, gray hats and even retired hackers who will explain why they started hacking, what influenced them to embark on this journey and we’ll try to find out if cyber criminal and non-criminal operations can really cause addiction.

Baring in mind that hacking is illegal in most countries of the world, these interviews will not be conducted with the purpose of encouraging criminal activities, instead their role will be to get inside the head of the hacker, to see things with his eyes and maybe even learn about what drives them to do what they do.

Each week or so, I will try to contact a hacker, but to make everything as relevant as possible, most of the interviews will target individuals who made a difference, instead of all the Script Kiddiez that only want their names on the Internet.

In most of the situations you won’t hear of big names like Anonymous or TeaMp0isoN, but rest assured that they all did something that influenced the way cybersecurity is currently seen in their countries.

In some scenarios we won’t even learn their names, but the IT staffers that administrate their country’s government computers go to sleep every night thinking about what they should do to stop waking up to the defaced website of another minister.

The first hacker that accepted to have a chat with me was a Nepali hacktivist that revealed some interesting things about the laziness of those who should have tracked him down. In the meantime, while I put that one together, you can take a look at the article entitled The life of a hacktivist to see what’s about to come.