July-2016
TO: The Hacker Community (Dark Web, Cypto-Authors, etc.)
Dear Hacker Community:
Let me explain this open letter and why I am writing the letter.
I love my technical life which I began fighting off the Monkey B virus in the very early days of desktop computers; where computers were moving from government offices to home offices. I had only had one attempt to be hacked in 30+ years, until 2016. I practice what I preach so I lost NOTHING! They didn’t get in! They locked me out but could not Locky me in.
What this letter will attempt to make clear to Hackers is that your life’s need to take or see something that isn’t yours is still stealing. No different than your community doing a physical home invasion at gun point!!!!! Only you use our own computer as the weapon, seemingly nonviolent.
In the 30 years I have used a computer I have also removed the viruses you write, take off Malware, Adware, reset units that have ransom encryptions on various machines over this 30-year span, where lately you feel ransoms are the way to stop end-users. To the hundreds of folks, if not a thousand people I have serviced over the years with computer training or help with getting off malicious content, this letter is your voice, and my granddaughter’s.
Hackers!...don’t think you are hurting anyone? Let’s see…in my computer life I seek to solve issues like helping the blind, wheel-chaired, non-speaking granddaughter I love so dearly, find the best things in her life where all the solutions are on these computers I use. I am constructing a data pattern (with a cluster computer bank) with lots of data to use in the hopes I can develop great apps that not only my granddaughter can use but parents can implement for their special needs children or loved ones, to enhance the life they have been handed.
In turn, this may make the caregivers life easier, encouraging learning on both ends, in a way that is specific to my granddaughter and customized to every other individual I seek to help. Hacker’s locking me out of my accounts, only slowed me down, you and your community do bodily harm when you impede the medical steps in this world by non-medical individuals like myself that tend to make a mark on our own, so things change for the good with the use of a personal computer. In my eyes you basically attacked my granddaughter. You barred me for a time; I did regain access to all my accounts. You initiate harm in the space of nothingness and expect NO repercussions, you feel nothing!
What I am trying to do for someone, (as well many, many people like me) who I saw be born with these limitations, seconds from the womb… I knew her life would not be what we expected or anticipated.
Some would say disabled, but we say enabled because she is IN THERE! She wants to enjoy life!
Currently I help her enjoy life by using computer keyboards set up specifically for each function-play piano/spell/ and talk with her fingers as cerebral palsy mostly keeps her movements and fingers limited where she can erratically play on the keys…and absolutely loves it. Seizures control her functions and the medicines I hate giving her keep her brain from attacking her severely but come at a price with side effects. Her only joys will be engaging in these daily activities we do with the use of a computer!
Our progress with her can be applied to those children and loved ones with disabilities for family’s that want to do this themselves. Hackers can stop me in some ways by locking up this PC…some can try and hit my bank with “never” any money in it…so HACKERS pay the federal government for me of the college loans I have because round one, "I win." You may have gotten me locked out-and you may do it again…but I didn’t get as messed up as the guy from Wired.
Increased is the intensity that this “irks” me to no end that someone would do this to anyone let alone tens of thousands of people; ransomed back the very data we need to function in a technical environment, that is our proprietary information to do with as we see fit; not a hacker’s to hold against us, and hold us at bay!
I will have no remorse either when I learn how to reverse engineer these attacks, and I will learn my criminal friends…and why do I want to learn more? I want to know WHY they do this to our “Information Highway,” this isn’t supposed to be Highway Robbery. What do you think you can accomplish by hacking people that make way less money than you think Hackers? Wasting all that energy to attack little people, how petty you all are! Use your knowledge to help the world! Not attack it!
It will only take one good set of tools to help my granddaughter’s and people like her, isn’t that MORE worthwhile than stealing people’s pictures, documents, and a financial life? Petty change compared to the value of one human life that is disrupted by other humans causing physical damage in the first place and then hackers at every turn.
The Insurance Company was hacked; that left myself, husband and then youngest daughter all compromised. Oldest child’s bank account hacked by a college scam, as well as the SAME insurance company leaking their information too, my daughter was skimmed somewhere and off the criminal went. The VA allowed an off premise Laptop and there were over 50,000 names that we were among that had our SSN leaked. So who knows which one of those hackers you are today?
Since I have kept up with the human “race,” within the technology world, where we are all headed somewhere for something and too busy to protect the things we claim we want to be safe…that phone you are holding is the next and most likely-easier target than the computers.
While the Federal Government is narrowing the field between hackers and the solutions to FREE the WEB of hackers, botters, spoofs, spammers, where being safe is the goal, we can only help ourselves!
I feel that hackers are the graduates of virus writing since the inception of PC’s; where HACKERS toyed with HTML(X) and sought to disturb websites with embedded content in the pictures; and make it so (porn) can take over computers, launching email scams, bank hacks, mirror sites to initiate identity theft-this all falls under the same IT umbrella. In my newest experiences with Crypto and Locky only they exploit what they know to harm and disembowel end users so they pay ransoms, which will in turn get them hacked over and over.
Secure up those accounts with multiple layer acknowledgements for anything that you have accounts under. That is what kept them out of my accounts even though they fiddled around too much and it locked me out too. I am grateful for my knowledge base and I am grateful they got none of my hard sought after research to help my granddaughter.
We humans that use PC’s in daily life for nearly everything there is to do in this world, our days begin and end with a computer. What we can advance with applications to make a person who has been born speechless or has become a person that can't speak, (Steven Hawking) technology can forever change that person’s life and the person that creates those moments of joy though the use of computers, is equally changed.
A person that must use a wheelchair-that may be blind as well can use a computer guided system to allow a person in a wheelchair to have a navigation system built within the mechanics of the chair being ran by an operating system; this can enhance the quality of life for tens of thousands of people currently at some limitation due to the inability to function in a mobile world as a mobile person.
Naysayers would tell us that it is too expensive to make devices that would put a person that can’t walk, or talk or see-right up there with an able-bodied person. It is in our best interest as a collective to want to make those that have less abilities allow them to have access.
Hackers only slowed down my ability to deliver dreams to those that need that them! Hackers only prevail when we as a collective allow the ransom’s and refuse to use best practices and backup to un-tethered devices, and password protection. Hackers can only gain access to YOUR life when you don’t guard your obvious personal data with a chain and a lock. Because locks keep honest people honest! Locks keep terrorist from accessing your personal information and using it against you.
I vow to die (physically and metaphorically) only when the evolving of the current computer world of hackers is gone, laid to rest, where no others can rise and no others want to rise up against a world of non-hackers that reverse engineered the hack, to hack the hacker!
We are the Phoenix’s of the world! Who wants to join me? Are you BRAVE? You must have nerves of steel and must remain a constant advocate of change!!!!!
Signed:
Theroo!
