(originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press)
My first reaction to the hacking attempts on my website was to wonder about the motivation behind it. Were the multiple failed login attempts related to the emails I just sent out announcing an upcoming event about “Serving our Diverse Communities”? The event’s purpose is to highlight and honor those who serve and have them share their expertise. So, given its diversity element, could the motivation behind these attempts to mess with the back end of my website be at least partly political?
How could I not ponder that possibility? I’ve lost count of the number of articles I’ve read either complaining and rejoicing in the death of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Their titles flashed through my mind as the politics around DEI ramps up: “Is DEI Officially Dead?” and “DEI is dead. Long live DEI”. It’s well known that job postings for DEI are down, DEI programs are being slashed in universities, and new anti-DEI bills are passing in statehouses across the country. Yes, I know that the trend isn’t new. The number of companies with budgets directed toward DEI programs has been on decline for awhile dropping from 58% in 2022 to 54% in 2023. And companies that have a DEI strategy went from 60% to 51% in 2023. But it gets more intense daily and that’s why I suspected that attempts to shut me down were related to my diversity focus.
Looking more closely at the login attempts, I was astonished to see that many of the attempts were by people I know. They’d tried multiple times and got locked out by website security. I called one of them, a long-time Chattanooga friend, and asked, “What on Earth were you thinking?”. When he said that he hadn’t been on the internet all day, we were both stunned, and on high alert. Not sure what to be alert for, I called my cousin Bob who’s an IT specialist in security.
Bob explained that “…a bad actor could have received your email, seen your domain, and attempted to break in using a bot script, running it from a server overseas and testing login access for the behind-the-scenes administration page. This person must have used AI (Artificial Intelligence) to search your site to capture one of its usernames to help hide his own identity.”
While it’s possible that the hack was political, Bob’s response that this was a common and popular technique was truly disturbing. He said, “The sad truth is that bad guys are everywhere, they’ll look for vulnerabilities on any site, and many do it just for fun”. Bob deals with it all the time and even has a sense of humor about it. Chuckling, he added, “Just another day on the internet.”
Maybe it was just a having-fun hacking, but I still wondered if there could also be political motivation behind the hacking. How do I, and so many of us, deal with this new cyberspace world? What can we do about this mix of internet vulnerability, AI use, political hack jobs and bad actors? A good question given that this is just the beginning of an historically rough political season where the merge of all of the above is inevitable.
First, if you have an email list, be wary of allowing anyone to register. It could be an invitation for bad actors. Then, if you’ve got a website, upgrade its security yesterday!. Even if you have neither an email list or website, you are vulnerable. Just look at your email inbox or the messages on your phone and you’ll know what I mean. My buddies are going to stay alert, and so should you.
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