Computer security, cyber security, digital security or information technology security is the protection of computer systems and networks from attacks by malicious actors that may result in unauthorized information disclosure, theft of, or damage to hardware, software, or data, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial, and sentence along with the associated journalism, books, and films were all controversial. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
Cybercrime is a type of crime involving a computer or a computer network. The computer may have been used in committing the crime, or it may be the target. Cybercrime may harm someone's security or finances.
Cyberterrorism is the use of the Internet to conduct violent acts that result in, or threaten, the loss of life or significant bodily harm, in order to achieve political or ideological gains through threat or intimidation. Acts of deliberate, large-scale disruption of computer networks, especially of personal computers attached to the Internet by means of tools such as computer viruses, computer worms, phishing, malicious software, hardware methods, programming scripts can all be forms of internet terrorism. Cyberterrorism is a controversial term. Some authors opt for a very narrow definition, relating to deployment by known terrorist organizations of disruption attacks against information systems for the primary purpose of creating alarm, panic, or physical disruption. Other authors prefer a broader definition, which includes cybercrime. Participating in a cyberattack affects the terror threat perception, even if it isn't done with a violent approach. By some definitions, it might be difficult to distinguish which instances of online activities are cyberterrorism or cybercrime.
Peiter C. Zatko, better known as Mudge, is an American network security expert, open source programmer, writer, and hacker. He was the most prominent member of the high-profile hacker think tank the L0pht as well as the computer and culture hacking cooperative the Cult of the Dead Cow.
Brian Krebs is an American journalist and investigative reporter. He is best known for his coverage of profit-seeking cybercriminals. Krebs is the author of a daily blog, KrebsOnSecurity.com, covering computer security and cybercrime. From 1995 to 2009, Krebs was a reporter for The Washington Post and covered tech policy, privacy and computer security as well as authoring the Security Fix blog.
Barrett Gibson Lyon is an American Internet entrepreneur, security researcher, and a former hacker.
Kaspersky Lab is a Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider headquartered in Moscow, Russia, and operated by a holding company in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, Natalya Kaspersky, and Alexey De-Monderik; Eugene Kaspersky is currently the CEO. Kaspersky Lab develops and sells antivirus, internet security, password management, endpoint security, and other cybersecurity products and services.
Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and professional Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, the Southern Poverty Law Center has described him as being a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist. He has used many aliases when he has contacted the media, but most sources state that his real first name is Andrew.
The United States has often accused the government of China of attempting unlawfully to acquire U.S. military technology and classified information as well as trade secrets of U.S. companies in order to support China's long-term military and commercial development. Chinese government agencies and affiliated personnel have been accused of using a number of methods to obtain U.S. technology, including espionage, exploitation of commercial entities, and a network of scientific, academic and business contacts. Prominent espionage cases include Larry Wu-tai Chin, Katrina Leung, Gwo-Bao Min, Chi Mak and Peter Lee. The Ministry of State Security (MSS) maintains a bureau dedicated to espionage against the United States, the United States Bureau.
Jart Armin is an investigator, analyst and writer on cybercrime and computer security, and researcher of cybercrime mechanisms and assessment.
Cyberwarfare by China is the aggregate of all combative activities in the cyberspace which are taken by organs of the People's Republic of China, including affiliated advanced persistent threat groups, against other countries.
Phineas Fisher is an unidentified hacktivist and self-proclaimed anarchist revolutionary. Notable hacks include the surveillance company Gamma International, Hacking Team, the Sindicat De Mossos d'Esquadra and the ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party three of which were later made searchable by WikiLeaks.
DarkMatter Group is a computer security company founded in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2014 or 2015. The company describes itself as a purely defensive company.
Kimberly Zenz is a cybersecurity research with an emphasis on the RuNet. Her work experience includes RuNet researcher at Verisign iDefense and Head of Threat Intelligence at the Deutsche Cyber-Sicherheitsorganisation. In 2019, a Moscow court reportedly accused her of passing along information of interest to the Russian government to U.S. intelligence officials. Zenz refuted these accusations and repeatedly requested to testify. The court ignored her request and did not permit her to testify.
Ruslan Stoyanov is a Russian computer scientist. In December 2016, he was arrested on charges of treason as part of the Mikhailov case. In 2019, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
In 2020, a major cyberattack suspected to have been committed by a group backed by the Russian government penetrated thousands of organizations globally including multiple parts of the United States federal government, leading to a series of data breaches. The cyberattack and data breach were reported to be among the worst cyber-espionage incidents ever suffered by the U.S., due to the sensitivity and high profile of the targets and the long duration in which the hackers had access. Within days of its discovery, at least 200 organizations around the world had been reported to be affected by the attack, and some of these may also have suffered data breaches. Affected organizations worldwide included NATO, the U.K. government, the European Parliament, Microsoft and others.
Joe Sullivan is an American Internet security expert. Having served as a federal prosecutor with the United States Department of Justice, he worked as a CSO at Facebook, Uber and Cloudflare. For his role in covering up the 2016 data breaches at Uber, he was convicted in October 2022 on federal felony charges of obstruction and misprision. In January 2023, he took on the role of CEO of Ukraine Friends, a nonprofit focused on humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
