These Hackers Were Never Brought To Justice

To most people, the term "hacker" is synonymous with a "cyber villain" or "bad guy who has computer," but that's not exactly right. A hacker can be a cyber villain or the person who protects you from cyber villains. Hackers, in and of themselves, are neither malevolent nor benevolent. A person who alters code for their own work or builds personal computer devices is also considered a hacker. What the majority of people are referring to when they say "hacker" is a black hat hacker, the cyber villains who wreck stuff and steal things via digital means. White hat hackers are the tech people who typically work in cyber security, while grey hat hackers are usually content to mess around in their basements.

Black hat hackers have caused immense damage over the years and have stolen billions of dollars. They fish for passwords, distribute malware, exploit software to gain access to bank accounts and credit cards, find and sell personal information, and so on. It's these hackers who will ransom your devices and have your social media accounts posting uncouth links without your permission.

Malicious hackers have become such a danger to the digital world that the FBI has created the Cyber Most Wanted List, featuring the worlds most destructive hackers who are still at large. There are thousands, if not millions, of black hat hackers out in the world, and we're going to tell you about the ones who've done the most damage and remain at large.

A new army emerged in 2011, but these folks weren't driving Humvees and toting rifles. Instead, they were armed with keyboards and a fair number of bad intentions. We're talking about the Syrian Electronic Army. This group of hackers, given they're vocally in support of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, are believed to have ties to the Syrian government. It probably doesn't help that Assad has vocally supported the hacker group in return, reports CNN. Having ties doesn't mean they actually work for the government, however, and no one seems to be certain one way or the other.

The Syrian Electronic Army seems to have one primary target: the media. They've hacked the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press. They used the latter's twitter to make a false announcement that the White House was being attacked in 2013. What reason would Syrian hackers have to go after the U.S. media? According to the Syrian Electronic Army (found via CNN), the hacker group claims to be "a group of enthusiastic Syrian youths who could not stay passive towards the massive distortion of facts about the recent uprising in Syria."

Their attack on the New York Times shut the news outlet down for roughly 20 hours, but the group claims that wasn't exactly what they were going for. Instead, they were attempting to broadcast an antiwar message that their servers weren't able to keep running.