You’ve likely heard something about net neutrality at some point in the past few weeks; if not, it is, simply, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally, that no one entity, however large or small, should have more or less access to data transfer than another. This is so intrinsic to the way we expect the Internet to work that it’s difficult to imagine the opposite, an Internet in which data transfer speed – Internet speed – is bought into instead of de facto had. Imagine that a favorite site, ran by an entity of lesser, say, economic stature, is many times slower, takes many more seconds just to load than a site ran by an economically superior entity. Imagine that your favorite political blog, written by an intelligent, responsible person from their desk, has to match what Huffington Post pays to have their data load just as quickly. Of course, the favorite blogger could never compete with this buy-in “fast lane”, as it’s been called. This, a version of non-neutral net, is what the FCC’s new regulations would institute, and it’s going to dramatically change the way the Internet works. As Lawrence Lessig and Robert W. McChesney, co-founders of the media reform group Free Press, describe in their 2006 (yup, this has been around for a while) Washington Post article “No Tolls on the Internet”:

Without net neutrality, the Internet would start to look like cable TV. A handful of massive companies would control access and distribution of content, deciding what you get to see and how much it costs. Major industries such as health care, finance, retailing and gambling would face huge tariffs for fast, secure Internet use—all subject to discriminatory and exclusive deal making with telephone and cable giants.[1]

Almost two weeks ago the world was made aware of the worst internet security breach
known to man—Heartbleed. What makes this the worst security breach? Well the answers is that Heartbleed has been infecting numerous websites and laptops of major companies, as well as known websites, and you—the end user. This has been going on for the past two years. HeartBleed created a weakness that allowed the stealing of information protected under normal conditions.  Heartbleed was able to accomplish all of this by overriding the encryption code used by many websites and was virtually undetected. The websites that were (or are) most likely to be victims use open-source tools called Open SSL—which provides most of the modern web of  SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and Transport Layer Security  (TLS) functionality. SSL/TLS are a set of protocols that provide security for internet communication—it encrypts the data being communicated between two (or more) internet users.

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when you hear the word “hacker”? Is it fraud, or identity thief, Anonymous, or The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo?  Well any of the answers above are probably correct; perhaps except for the last one. Now what’s the thing that pops into your head when you hear “endangered species”? Is it elephants, rhinos, tigers, poachers, or the black market? Once again all of the above are correct!

Now, based on the answers above for hackers
and endangered species, it can be inferred that there is no relationship between the two. Endangered species and hackers are two completely different things in two separate worlds. Unfortunately, that assumption is wrong -- in today’s world of advance technology there is a connection between the two, more specifically hackers and poachers have created an asymmetric warfare.