Defining hacker goals

Previous chapters have discussed various kinds of hacker goals in specific scenarios. Chapter 4, in particular, pays attention to the hacker as part of the threat environment. So, you already know that hackers have goals such as stealing money or credentials, causing mayhem seemingly for the sheer joy of doing so, and working for others to perform espionage, sabotage, or forms of political maneuvering. These are all effects of the hacker’s personal goals; the outcome after a hacker chooses a target and an attack vector. However, they don’t really look at why the hacker would perform an attack in the first place. Obviously, hackers are relatively smart, so they could earn a legitimate living doing something else, so why be a hacker? The sections that follow look at hacker goals from a more behavioral stance than previous chapters have done and assess the ability of ML to help you ascertain those behavioral goals.

Is the hacker smart, or are people...