Hackers are People Too

It has been a busy couple of months which has kept me from writing up some thoughts on the amazing Gabriella "Biella" Coleman 's presentation and discussion for Beyond Cyber. On the plus side, it has given me lots of time to reflect on what Gabriella was saying about hacktivisim and development of the strategic use of leaks.

Beyond Cyber is all about trying to provoke the community to think differently about cyber security; to try and break the technological primacy view. Gabriella did this with considered insight and a wealth of experience in understanding those who are part of the community who are often considered to be on the other side of the fence. Gabriella is a full professor in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, a renowned author and broadcaster as well as being an amazing human being, exploring the politics, cultures and ethics of hacking. Gabriella’s talk focused on her research into “The Provenance and the many lives of the hack-and-leak” how it developed as a tactic, and the symbiotic, and transformative relationship with the hacking community.

This event followed the beyond cyber format with Gabriella kicking us off with a 30 min talk on her research. I was then joined by Adele Every (Managing Director for Public Sector at Cisco) and Jonny Burr CBE (Director at CGI) to quiz Gabriella on aspects of her presentation à la Radio 4's the Moral Maze, before going out to the audience for wider questions.

When did “Hack-and-Leak” become a thing?

“When did hackers start using this tactic?” Gabriella asked the room. Guesses ranged from the 1970s to the 1980s, and Gabriella’s research highlights it is an incredible recent tactic. Gabriella used this realisation to take us on a journey through the decades to discuss her exploration of the origins and evolution of hacktivism, its cultural significance, consequences, and global impact.

It might be surprising to hear that before 2010 the hack and leak tactic was not being used significantly. There was a lot of hacking and a lot of leaking, but not in the way that Gabriella sees and talks about it. Prior to this time period leaks were an unintended by-product of the hacks. Since 2010 the coincidence of hacking and leaking has risen exponentially, with the hacks clearly intending to gather material to leak.

She explained the rise of Anonymous in the era of WikiLeaks and how this was a key tipping point. There were hack-and-leak instances before, but Anonymous got to this tactic independently, they were all over the news, and subsequent cultural alignment of Anonymous, with their publicity created the necessary visibility of the tactic to embed culturally within the hacking community.

Gabriella traced some of the earliest roots of Hack-and-Leak back to AntiSec community. During the 80s and 90s, the hacking community found their skills were increasing demand as cyber security became important to companies. AntiSec was founded as a counter culture movement against this professionalisation and they used their skills to hack professional hackers in an attempt to find material that could embarrass those seeking to professionalise their skills.

The research conducted by Gabriella included interviews with key players in all the important hacking groups from the 1980’s up to now. This helped her to chart the evolution of the hacking scene and hack-and-leak as a tactic. Her work afforded her a rich evidence base to discuss with us the hacker history, its impact on culture, politics and nation states. Gabriella explored with us how this had led to profound effects on voting, climate change, legal cases, and through to 2010 where it could be seen that hackers and hacktivists became part of the geopolitical landscape.

Finally, Gabriella shared with us that from her perspective the hack-and-leak tactic is here to stay, as everything is hackable and the tactic has delivered - and is perceived to deliver - cultural, political and societal change!

I am not able to do justice to the depth and richness of Gabriella’s fascinating work. I also apologise if I misinterpreted some of the points discussed with her. If you are interested I would strongly recommend you check out her books Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking and Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, and her 2022 BBC4 radio and podcast series, The Hackers.

Questions, Questions Everywhere

Through a series of questions, the panel expertly started to develop some of the themes covered in Gabriella’s presentation. Opening by asking “Does the provenance and genres of the hack and leak matter? Does it matter if it comes from nation states or a hacktivist?”, a lively discussion on misinformation, credibility, ethics, and the fog of hacking was created.

The conversation continued on to the emergence of the tactic and whether there were specific drivers or things that were happening in society that were underpinning the development of the tactic. They also held an engaging discussion on what personality traits makes a hacker – what are their motivations and what kind of characteristics do they tend to have? What’s their typical background and would they have become familiar with the world of cyber in a time when academic programmes in Cyber Security weren’t readily available?!

This neatly led onto an exploration around how organisations recruit for like-minded individuals on topics that they’re passionate about. The panel discussed characteristics of individuals recruited, marketing methods deployed to find these people, and the process of how they recruit.

Our speakers moved onto talking about the current political landscape. Discussions ranged from whether this might drive adaptation of the hack and leak to the global political turmoil and what we might see next.

Finally, they challenged Gabriella with the question of whether there is an opportunity for hack and leak for good. Gabriella’s response was a resounding “Yes, it’s all about handling leaks responsibly”!?

For the final session of the day, questions from the floor would take centre stage! It was clear to see that there wasn’t going to be a shortage of questions from the delegates, so it was just as well that the event was closing with a networking reception where conversations could carry on flowing.

Questions and comments ranged from the quality of AI and how the hacking community will deal with this, to whether there has ever been a collaboration that has been state sponsored through to the rise of disinformation and how much this has affected the potency and impact on the hack and leak. Delegates were also keen to understand the staffing structures for organisations like Anonymous – do they have typical roles such as CEOs or Marketing Managers, and who makes/how do they make decisions?

A final question was posed to Gabriella to find out on a personal level how she became interested in this side of study, and to hear her views on what the open-source community is like. To this final question, she responded that they’re very welcoming and open to outsiders who are interested in them.

A fitting answer to this event which brought us full circle to the start of the event where Gabriella stated the importance of events like Beyond Cyber which bring people together in a welcoming way to share ideas, knowledge and break down the barriers of topics and conversations ‘normally’ covered in cyber events.

Then it was time to hand out the sought-after challenge coins and continue the conversations in the post-event reception.

In the End

As with our previous speaker Ben Owen, Gabriella was focusing on people, their relationships and societies. However, what was provocative was Gabriella’s view from the other side of the fence. Helping us to understand the hackers and hacker community as individuals and a society, complete with its own complex and messy rules, ethics, relationships and politics. Just like the one we consider ourselves to be part of. Hackers are people after all, and it is easy to forget this if we only look through the technology lens at the problems of Cyber Security. It is important to remember that People attack People and their motives shape their approaches to their use of technology to achieve their intended outcomes.

Thanks to the Team!!!

As always events like this could not have been delivered without the support of some amazing people. As always Anna Dyson did an amazing job in organising and running the event and ensuring everything went smoothly – including wrangling the rest of the team. Our Dish team of Jon Lomas , James Livsey and James Darwent for logistics, hosting and making sure we had a lovely audience to engage with. And finally to Rebecca Chan for supporting and writing down all the cool things everyone said as my memory is pretty bad these days, #OldProfessor!

Finally, a big thank you to Mark Gillow for his excellent videography on the day and to ''Eddy'' Goshtasb Pour ?? for capturing the essence of Beyond Cyber through his photography.