• Using the list above (or researching on your own), find one concrete example of “bad behavior” in the online space.

One type of bad behavior online is stealing personal information. This is theft, and hackers online steal personal information such as credit card and ATM numbers.

• In your blog post for this week, briefly summarize what happened… Who was involved, and what was the outcome? Was there financial loss or damage to someone’s reputation? Were the criminals held accountable?

Albert Gonzalez is attributed to one of the largest credit card thefts in history. He used a sniffer to steal personal information such as credit cards and ATM numbers, and resold them. There was definitely financial loss towards the victims, and Gonzalez served roughly twenty years in prison.

Gonzalez learned to hack in high school, when he worked with people in Shadowcrew, an illegal website. When he got arrested, he switched sides and started working with the government to implicate a lot of his associates. As an informant, he stole from nearly 200 million accounted, most of which were from major corporations.

Although he was a black hat hacker, his achievements were rather impressive for the age of 22. He stole over $250 million from TJX alone! While it is ironic, I don’t think his reputation was damaged, but rather improved..? He became popular for the wrong reasons, some even admiring his skills. Admiring or not, the damage he has done to innocent people cannot be undone, and he was imprisoned in 2015.

Hurting or stealing from people is wrong, and should ever be admiring or considered so.

(https://christianespinosa.com/blog/6-famous-hackers-that-got-caught/)

• What practical lessons can we learn as a result of this example (i.e., what will you do to avoid being similarly victimized?)

Be careful which websites you enter your credit card information in, and which WiFi networks you connect to. It would also help to keep your systems up-to-date, and install a good antivirus program. It is highly unrecommended you leave your devices unattended in public as well. People could place things such as trackers on your phone and find out your personal information. They could also download things onto your phone or transfer files to and from their own phone, all while you’re not looking. Make sure you watch which WiFi networks you connect to, don’t click on any links random numbers send you, and don’t send personal information to people you don’t know.

(https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber)