Why Hackers Attack – The Motivations of a Hacker

Your website has gone down.  You’ve been flooded with nonsense emails.  Your company emails are completely down.  You’ll be crying ‘Why Me?!’, questioning the motivations of these online bullies, and you’ll just want your website back.
We’re going to try and show you the motivations of a Hacker, the trademarks of their work, and how you can protect yourself from these online nuisances.

What Motivates The Hackers?

So, there are two main motivators that influence Hackers; reputation and financial gain.
A Hacker earns his or her reputation through overcoming the considerable security measures which websites put up against them.  The hacker group Lulzec aimed to ridicule website security, gain attention, and embarrass website owners.  They hacked into The Sun’s website security and moved onto many other media groups, such as PBS.  Ostensibly they were not working for profit – they claim to enjoy the challenge of violating websites and the reputation they gain from it.
If a Hacker is motivated by cash, they would usually focus on e-commerce websites, and specialist financial groups.  Gaining the personal detaails of customers is a big aim of these kinds of Hackers.  These personal details could then be translated into credit card fraud.  Millions could be made by high profile Hackers by accessing and exchanging credit card details online.
In some cases the hacked third-party accounts are used to send spam and phishing emails to unsuspecting customers and clients. The hackers might even request the disclosure of passwords and the details of accounts, which could be used to fund their illegal operations.
No matter what your business is, if there is any personal data stored on your website about yourselves or your customers, that would be incentive enough for Hackers to give it a crack.

How Will You Know If Your Website Is Hacked?

– Your website might completely stop working.  You might realise this yourself, or you might receive emails from worrying or irrate customers asking where your company has gone.  To tell them the truth would probably shake anybodies confidence in your website. If your website goes down at any point it’s bad news for your business.
– Your search engine results might take a particularly low dive, for example Google might flag your website up as harmful.  If this happens, people are not going to enter your site.  This will cause a tangible decline in your search engine rankings.  Even once your website is back on the right track, you’ll have fallen in the rankings.  A fall in your ranking will result in a fall in your visitors.  It is not worth the risk.
– Your email address might stop working.  The email systems connected to most companies are hosted on the same server as their website.  If your email goes down, check out your website.  If a server is hacked, all company email addresses usually break down immediately.

How Can You Stop The Hackers?

Being hacked is a concern for everyone on the internet.  But if you are especially concerned we’d recommend regularly checking your web files, and staying on top of your online security, and updating your websites Content Management system.
If you’re particularly concerned about the prospect of being hacked then it would be a good idea to regularly check your web files and install the latest online security software. It would also be sensible to register with a reliable web hosting company. The most reliable companies will provide comprehensive support and 24 hour security monitoring.
Unfortunately the security specialists and law enforcers are facing a real struggle when it comes to fighting the hackers. It seems that there will always be technological masterminds who are focused on abusing the online system. However, it is still possible to stop the majority of hackers by taking these simple precautions:

If you are worried about the security of your website then please don’t hesitate to give us a call. We offer dedicated server packages, full expert support, Service Level Agreements and we also take many other extra measures to make sure that our customers are as protected as they possibly can be.
By Angus Findlay

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