Spanish journalist and writer

sábado, 19 de diciembre de 2015

Antonio Salas in new book "The machines whisperers": “Hackers laundered EI`s money trough social networks”


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.