Certified: The Security+ Prepcast

Cyber threats aren’t always driven by stealth or sophistication—sometimes they are fueled by money, ideology, or ethics. In this episode, we continue our exploration of attacker motivations by examining financial gain, political activism, and the blurred lines between ethical and unethical hacking. Financially motivated attackers may use ransomware, banking Trojans, phishing scams, or e-commerce skimming to extract immediate monetary value, often laundering funds through cryptocurrency. Hacktivists, by contrast, may deface websites, leak information, or disrupt services in pursuit of political or social causes, often seeing themselves as digital protestors rather than criminals. We also touch on gray-hat and white-hat hacking—where ethical hackers test systems for flaws, sometimes without authorization, leading to legal and ethical questions. Understanding these diverse motives helps organizations prepare not just for advanced persistent threats, but for impulsive, disruptive, or idealistic ones as well.