Antonio Salas, pseudonym of spanish journalist researcher, has
published his new book “Los hombres que susurraban a las Máquinas”. Due
to threats received from terrorist groups and Neo-nazis he keeps his
identity secret and his voice distorted in the following interview of
the program “Las Mañanas de RNE.”
Interview with Antonio Salas:
Interviewer: They can break any code and enter any system. In the
most impenetrable and secure places in the world. They are the hackers,
spies and intruders of any computer, protagonist of many great films.
They had very bad press. They are present to us like evil, dark and
unbalance beings. An image that Antonio Salas tries to dismantle in his
last book.
Antonio Salas: Good morning.
Interview: Antonio Salas is already well-known becauses he is an
expert jornalist on false indentities who lives death threats from
terrorist, Neo-nacis groups and organized crime. Antonio, How are the
hackers? Why there are son much misinformation about them?
Antonio Salas: In a big part the fault belongs to us, the media,
cinema literatura which has created such a bad press. The RAE ,the
dictionary of the Spanish lengage, makes a mistake of including several
voices of technology as Twitter, blog or Hacker, the last one making
synonymous of “computer expert pirated” and this is the opposite, hacker
is a scientis, a scholar a passionate for technoogy who decicates his
life to analyze the performance of electronic devices and to look for
their vulnerabilities to warn providers. When hackers discover a
vulnerability or a failure in the communication system, or program
Facebook product, Apple… warn the manufatures to protect, while the
cybercriminal attemps to exploit this vulnerability on their profit.
Interviewer: To write this book you have been infiltrated in the
world of cybercrime for two years. You have meet online activists, many
of the best hackersand, cyber-police and even victims. How did ou
prepare your role?
Antonio Salas: I would not say infiltration because the object of the
research was everyone of our digital life. Initiating the investigation
with all prejudice I realized who the hakers are. They speak of white
hat hackers (security consultants, computer secrity company) black hat
(cybercriminals) and the intermediate figure grey hat (hacktivist) but
they are persons who believes in technology for social change.
Interviewer: After this investigation, are you quieter or more
restless than before starting it? After meeting everyone in this world,
are you calmer or worried about your own safety?
Antonio Salas: You’re deeply sorry, because ahead about 10 or 15 very
dark years, and our whole life is online. Not only in terms of
relationships, friendships, but we shop online, we delegate security
companies, booked our trips … Internet is very vulnerable, what makes us
so we are. We are now living in a digital migration phenomenon, called
digital natives, a generation that has grown up living with technology
in their daily lives. We, the digital immigrants, who only know how to
do a search and little else, are terribly vulnerable. With only unburden
an application, nobody reads the contract and we do not realize that
the provider of that application is asking us access to our contacts,
social networks … Until we get to understand this world, we remain
extremely vulnerable.
Interviewer: You talk of the Islamic state, what moves the Daesh Internet?
Antonio Salas: We’ve never seen anything like it. In other research I
was infiltrated international terrorism. He controlled by Carlos “The
Jackal” on the Internet, so any terrorist who contact him, contacted me.
Accessed much information, and we find episodes of ETA in Internet
management. Even Spanich hackers created anti virus ETA. The
relationship of journalism and the web is very old. Even Al Qaeda
created their web pages or forums. But what is making Daesh not we have
never seen as many hackers who are in the Daesh they are graduates of
the best IT powers of England, France or Germany, and when they came to
Syria put its expertise at the service of ISIS. Hidden messages, create
their own social networks, a move that had never seen. He even allowed
them to cyber attacks against Western intelligence objectives of the
Central Bank of Defense, accessing multitude of names, phone numbers,
identities …
Interviewer: Finally, is there a solution? How do you fight?
Antonio Salas: Learning to know is fighting to control our security
information. We have some of the best experts on Internet security. The
problem is that Google, Apple, Facebook … it’s being carried. It is
they, the large providers, which should give us the tools to protect our
browsers. Use common sense: your best antivirus is you, but also your
greatest vulnerability. You must navigate carefully with what appears in
your URL and in the direction of your browser, so you can avoid errors
in your bank account or social networks.
Article: Pablo Martínez.
Translate: Celia Calderón.
