Hello There!
Welcome to my blog! My name is Ashley Torres and I am a 22-year old college student. I am currently working on my Bachelors in Criminology at the University of South Florida. I was born in New York City but, then moved to Florida about 8 years ago. I think I can say I’m officially a Floridian, Lol.
On this blog I will be writing about the cybercrime world as well as reflecting on podcasts and articles about this issue. As a criminology student I feel like it is my job to inform you of all these things going on.
You might be thinking about how I am the person informing you of cyber crimes yet here I am in the internet world giving out my information like my age, name, state I live in, and my school; how ironic. But, whats a blog that doesn’t include an about me section with personal information, which took me three days to put together because I couldn’t figure out what to write.
Quick Facts:
“Facebook concedes that roughly 600,000 user accounts are illegally hacked by “outsiders” every day during user’s log-on protocols.”
Jaccarino, M. (2011)
“Cybersecurity ventures, a leading researcher and publisher covering the global cyber economy, predicts that cybercrime will continue to rise and cost businesses globally more than $6 trillion annually by 2021.”
Cybersecurity Ventures (2017)
Viruses vs Worms
Virus: A piece of code that attaches itself to other pieces of computer software like an application or email attachments.
Taylor, R., Fritsch, E., Liederbach, J., Saylor, J., Tafoya, W. (2017)
Worm: A program that reproduces itself over a computer network by breaking into computers like a virtual hacker.
Entry 1: 03/09/2020
Hello Everyone welcome to my blog.
While at work I am able to listen to my music but, instead I spend my time listening to podcasts. One podcast that really interest me is, Darknet Diaries. On Friday I was listening to Episode 60, and let me just say this episode had to be the best one yet because it took a twist I did not expect. This episode was about a hacker named dawgyg. Dawgyg “accidentally” as I call it, got into the hacking business. When he was young he accidentally joined a random group chat that was put together by hackers. He kept asking questions which made them suspicious so they kicked him out the chat but, he kept finding other ways to get back in. One day he asked to be a part of the group and he kept asking until they finally agreed to let this newbie in. As the chat continued they taught him how to hack, this group would go into other websites and webpages as well as computers. At first he started out hacking these websites but then, it became more serious and he started hacking webcams and using a black hat over his head so people wouldn’t recognize him. When in school he would hack into the school computers to shut them off and be able to go out and play. If I remember correctly he was around 13 years old, as a 13 year old he felt powerful and he continued doing it. When he got caught the first time he was suspended, the second time he was expelled. After that was when it stated getting serious and the federal agencies got involved. He was arrested and spent a couple months in jail then was put onto probation. During his probation all technology was confiscated if he was to touch any of it he would end up back in jail. During his probation he could not have a phone, he could not attend college because it was surrounded by technology and when at work someone needed to clock him in. After a few months he got that itch again to hack and so he would use his computer and when his probationary officer came he would pull it apart and hide everything everywhere. One day he left the keyboard on his bed and was caught so he was sent to jail. They let him out on probation again after a few months in jail after a few he felt the itch again, but he held back he straightened up because every-time he got caught he had the same judge and the last time the judge told him if he came into jail again for hacking he would give him life in prison. He made it through and was able to get out of probation. After his probation he started using a computer and was looking for jibs that dealt with computers so he wouldn’t have an itch but jobs would not hire him. One day while surfing the web he found a program that lets you hack websites for money to see how secure it is. This was completely LEGAL, so he started with yahoo and then google and started seeing money he was happy because he was doing what he liked to do but legally he could no longer get into trouble it was a job. One day he found over 10 ways to enter into a website which means it wasn’t secure, I do not recall the website name but they were giving him $10,000 per entry if I remember correctly. He made over $100,000 in a single day from just hacking this one website. Till this day he is still doing that as a job as well as going to school. As they said in the podcast “he is no longer wearing a black hat it is a white hat”.
Information received from Darknet Diaries, Episode 60.
Entry 2: 03/12/2020
Hello my gorgeous/handsome readers, welcome back…
Let me start by saying that I work for a law firm and I want to tell you about something interesting that occurred a few days ago. But, let me let you know that I will not be disclosing any personal / confidential information. Now that we got that out of the way a few weeks ago the managers decided they wanted to test how many people would click on a random link sent to their e-mail. The purpose of this was to show how many people would have been “hacked” if this was real. In the morning a link was sent out to all the employees in that office including the IT department. The result was that out of 200 people 30 clicked on that link, you may be thinking ‘that’s not too bad’ well it is because all they need is for one person to click that link for the hacker to get all of the information in that law firm. Not to mention that out of the 30 people one of them was part of the IT department, that is disappointing they are expected to know better. Especially since they are the ones who make sure our e-mails are set-up to receive in office e-mail ONLY. This was a very interesting project and they plan on doing it again I’m excited to see the results.
Ashley's Cyberworld Blog 