You’ve likely seen a big increase in articles about security breaches in recent years. That’s not great news, but the images that come with these posts have been somewhat entertaining. I was reading an article on CIO yesterday, and it was the image below that sparked this post today:
Credit: ThinkStock
The classic ‘cat burglar meets laptop thief’ look, with a furtive backward glance through perfectly cut eyeholes he offsets the all-black get up with a nice pair of oversized grey gloves.
But back to hackers, those scary, hoodie and glove toting, men-only it seems, usually sitting in the dark, typing furiously on keyboards while simultaneously sporting a cat burglar or V for Vendetta mask. When you take a look at what a real hacker actually looks like you really start to wonder who had all the fun coming up with the hacker stereotype!
Top 6 overused hacker images
1. Easily the most used – the faceless, front-on, hoodie wearing, no-brand-laptop hacking, no glove wearing hacker. Who are you?
Courtesy of Lifehacker
2. One of my personal favourites, because every hacker has time to bare their evil teeth and take a selfie while they’re hacking the system (with no gloves again!). Note: he has actually typed HACKED just in case the victim doesn’t notice. Nothing sneaky about that!
3. Faceless, hoodie-wearing, green and black, all ones and zeros, staunch – pretty stock standard pic. It’s like he has his blinds open and there is a giant old school green screen computer outside his window running matrix code.
Credit to Computerworld
4. I don’t know about you but this balaclava looks itchy and those leather gloves have got to be hot. I feel like this guy is going to overheat before he gets his hack done, and then there is the fat finger problem when typing with gloves. Honestly he’s going to make so many mistakes!
5. So this guy has taken all the precautions to dress the part – hoodie, balaclava, and even sunglasses indoors – but he forgot to wear gloves! But gloves are a pre requisite so what can ya do? Perhaps 3d printed finger prints would work?
Computerworld (credit to ThinkStock)
6. And finally, the hacker who’s all about the money. Gloves – check. Hoodie – check. Sun glasses indoors – check. Unbranded laptop – check. One eye peeping over handfuls of Benjamins – check. Because laptops spit out real cash!
Courtesy of Canva
Embarrassingly, if you look back through our blog then you will see that I’m guilty of using one of these sorts of images once too. I typed in ‘hacker’ to Canva and there it was. However, I remember that we decided it was ok to use because we liked the cool hoodie he’s wearing – grey wool with a zip and oversized buttons with loops! (If anyone knows where I can get one like this, please leave a comment. I know two guys in here who would love one!)
And all this dressing up to hack, is it really necessary? I guess these guys must have broken into an office and be carrying out the hack onsite, but really most hacks happen remotely these days so they probably could have dropped the elaborate disguises and just gone with a piece of tape over their laptop camera.