A welcome/unwelcome visit - Unit 9

C1 Advanced · Gapped Text · Complete Advanced, Cambridge University Press

You are going to read an article about ethical hacking. Six paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (1–6). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

A welcome/unwelcome visit

There are thousands of these cybercriminals at work, and the world is facing a severe shortage of technicians with the skills needed to mount an effective defence against them. People like Lucia – brilliant, clever, studious and principled, dedicated to doing the right thing – are filling those gaps.

Fluent in dozens of programming languages, Lucia can already negotiate her way past vastly complex security systems. Within a few short years, she’ll be commanding huge fees by helping organisations protect themselves from hostile cyber-attacks, when she begins her career as an ethical hacker.

Data hacks like these, on home Wi-Fi systems, are just one cause for concern, and the number of cyber-attacks on the digital infrastructure within utilities or telecommunications companies, even governments, is growing. Thankfully, so is the number of good guys who’ve come to rescue us: hackers known as ‘white hats’.

I asked her once if there was a more suitable alternative that she’d prefer to be known by. ‘Cybersecurity professional’, apparently, is the best title for anyone operating in this role. It summarises what they do on the front foot, battling the bad guys from anonymous offices, rather than clandestine basements.

I pretended to be able to call Lucia my friend. What might that amount have been, were it not for the intervention of her, and of people like her? Ten, fifty, a hundred times higher? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

When paying top dollar to keep your data safe and constantly backing up your files isn’t enough to stop these attacks happening, being consumed with anger is a perfectly logical reaction. I curse the unexpected knock at my front door, distracting me from figuring out what to do next.

As Lucia and I sit down with our coffee, chatting to one another about this and that, I can’t help but be reminded that, while she might be young, any other similarities to such self-assured, glamorous characters do not apply.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon. I open an email from my journalism tutor. I blink, slowly, as I realise I’m staring at an exhaustive list of all my bank details, passwords, usernames, everything. Someone, somehow, has managed to get past my supposedly bullet-proof internet security system and hacked their way around into all of my accounts. Then, an instant message pops up on my screen: ‘£10,000 or I lock you out of everything you own – forever’. I’m almost shaking with fury. What sort of person would do such a thing?

‘Don’t panic, it was only me,’ my friend Lucia declares breezily, inviting herself into my apartment. ‘Your accounts took about thirty seconds to hack into, and I sent you the email via your tutor’s account to make sure you opened it when you logged on,’ she explains. My brain stops screaming at itself and I start to calm down. ‘Just – please – update your passwords more often, like I keep telling you. Shall I make coffee?’

For many people, the term is an oxymoron: one word associated with admirable morality, the other with shameful activity. But be in no doubt, these ingenious people are the cyberheroes we will increasingly be relying on to protect us in our ever more connected world. Lucia will be paid to hack into the vast computer networks of businesses and governments and identify those systems’ vulnerabilities so they can have greater protection should they receive a visit from hackers with far less honourable intentions.

While some of them might recognise elements of their past selves in the stereotype of a hoodie-wearing teenager, tapping away at a laptop in the dark of their parents’ basement, full of fury at the injustices of the world, Lucia most certainly does not. Nor would she identify with the Hollywood cliché of hackers as fresh-faced, wonderfully stylish, but utterly dishonest-like characters who take under thirty seconds to crack entire national defence systems just for fun.

She even seems a little embarrassed to confess that, with the ‘£10,000 ransom’ stint, part of her had wanted to show off her ever-expanding skill set to her friend. This reluctance to boast about her considerable talent is entirely typical. Generally speaking, ethical hackers refer to themselves as such purely and simply because it’s the accepted, industry-wide job title – not because it sounds mysterious or cool.

Perhaps, given the ordinariness of their working environment, you’d be forgiven for being surprised at the eye-watering sums they earn. But the cost of all this illegal activity to the worldwide economy is startling. Some estimates suggest the figure could be as high as