Voices for Voices®

From Governments to Individuals: Why Everyone Is a Target for Cyber Criminals | Ep 270

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 270

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From Governments to Individuals: Why Everyone Is a Target for Cyber Criminals (Ep 270)

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Behind every cyber attack lies intentional efforts to steal, expose, alter, or destroy data through unauthorized access to networks, computers, or digital devices. The average cost of a data breach is $4.88 million, including discovery, response, downtime, and long-term reputational damage.

• Criminal motivations include monetary theft, data theft, and business disruption
• Political motivations target government agencies and critical infrastructure
• Personal motivations range from intellectual challenges to revenge
• Cyber attackers include criminal organizations, professional hackers, state-sponsored actors, and insiders
• Targets include financial data, customer information, intellectual property, and critical systems
• The FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating cyber attacks and intrusions
• Protecting yourself requires updated software, strong antivirus programs, and careful online behavior
• Multi-factor authentication, strong unique passwords, and scrutiny of messages are essential defenses
• A recent cyberstalking case resulted in federal charges with penalties up to 5 years imprisonment

Help us continue providing information on public safety concerns by subscribing, liking, and sharing our content. As a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, your donations are 100% federally tax-deductible and support our mission to help 3 billion people.

Chapter Marker

0:04 Welcome to Voices for VoicesⓇ

2:37 What Is a Cyber Attack?

7:29 Motivations Behind Cyber Attacks

15:23 Types of Cyber Threats

20:29 Protecting Yourself Online

27:37 FBI's Role in Cyber Security

37:37 Real-World Consequences of Cyberstalking

41:13 Episode Closing and Resources

#CyberSecurity #CyberCrime #OnlineSafety #DigitalThreats #DataProtection #IdentityTheft #GovernmentHacking #PhishingScams #PersonalSecurity #InternetSafetyTips #CyberAwareness #MalwareProtection #SecureYourData #ThreatIntelligence #TechSavvy #TikTok #Instagram #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion

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Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I'm your host. Founder of Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for being a part of the Voices for Voices movement, helping people step out of the shadows, share their story, inspire others, educate and just be a light for those that may not think that anybody is feeling like they do or has had an experience like they have had. And so Voices for Voices has been and continues to be a huge proponent of no matter how regular an individual is or celebrity, we're all human beings. We've all gone through a lot of things in our lives and the best thing we can do is to talk about them, listen to others and and try the best that we can and just be ourselves and try not to get hung up on labels and classifications and comparisons and judgments and all that. I know it's easier said than done. I'm speaking from experience, so I'm right there with you. So I'm right there with you.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So today's episode is going to be on a very important topic, like all the topics we cover. It is important not only for you and for me, and for organizations and universities and governments. It's important for everybody, all of those. So from the biggest organization, government, all the way down to a single person like you or I, and so we're going to hop right in and the topic is going to be cyber attacks, and they're very, they're interesting to talk about. So we're going to talk about, you know, the definition, what a cyber attack is, some examples, what a cyber attack is, some examples and some ways to prepare and defend against those, because there's good in the world and there's not so good in the world, and part of the not so good in the world are people trying to take things that aren't theirs. Take work, take intellectual property, take maybe a screenplay, maybe a playbook for a football team. There can be many reasons war, plans for government, and so from again, that top level of governments and large organizations, all the way down to individuals like you and I, and so we're going to quote here quite a bit, because I want to get the information correct when we're talking about definitions, and so we are going to be quoting quite a lot and paraphrasing from IBM, and this is at wwwibmcom forward slash think, forward slash topics, forward slash cyber, which is C-Y-B-E-R, dash attack A-T-T-A-C-K.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So first we're going to start out on what is a cyber attack, and so, according to IBM, a cyber attack is any intentional effort to steal, expose, alter, disable or destroy data, applications or other assets through unauthorized access to a network, computer system or digital device. So, basically, the way I think of it is we have, let's say, information on our phones where we have photos. Or again, maybe, if we're a coach for a sporting team, maybe we have photos. Or again, maybe, uh, if we're a coach for a sporting team, maybe we have a playbook and we don't want, you know, the competitors and others to find out about that, or this is an example and, and so there's information, again at the highest level, the simplest form. There's information that you and I have that we haven't and we aren't giving consent to another person, another organization, to access that information. So, again, it's basically stealing. But since we're talking about the cyberspace, cyber know, threat actors, which are basically the people that are trying to do the bad things and steal things that aren't theirs, uh, they do this for all types of reasons and, you know, ranging from petty theft, uh, again, all the way up to, uh, I mentioned governments and uh, governments and having maybe war plans and so that, again, at the highest level that an individual or individuals could do, that the cyber attacks can not only disrupt, they can damage and even destroy businesses. And so when we talk about the cause of a data breach, which is when a cyber attack is successful, which is what we don't want, the average is $4.88 million, and that includes, you know, the cost for discovering and responding to the cyber attack violation, the downtime, because you usually have to take your systems down to put preventative measures in, and a lot of times that ends up in lost revenue. And then there's also the image, the long-term reputation, damage to that particular business and their brand.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And so we look at why do they happen? Ibm gives us really three main categories. Motivations can vary, but they're limited here at a high level. One can be criminal, so they could be doing it for criminal reasons. Two, they could be doing it for political reasons. Three, they could be doing it for criminal reasons. Two, they could be doing it for political reasons. And three, they could be doing it for personal reasons. So if we look at the first one, criminally motivated cyber attack, where the attackers are seeking some form of financial gain through monetary theft, data theft disrupting a business, and so an example would be a cyber criminal may hack into a bank account to steal money, either directly or to use other tools. You know, like social engineering scams, where you know a message is sent, there's a link there, you click the link, it takes you to the cyber attacker's website and once you enter your personal information, that gives them access to do that. So one important thing to think about is not all of these cyber attacks are going to, you know, be flashing. Hey, this is a cyber attack. Hey, this is a cyber attack. Watch out, there's different ways that these cyber attacks happen.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And these criminals, these individuals that's basically their job. Their job is to find ways to cyber attack you and I, businesses, governments, and so that's what they spend their time on, and so they could be again. They could do it for tricking people into sending money to them. We've talked about on a previous show a sex pain instance that tragically ended with a local high schooler passing away from suicide, where this individual was being targeted. Somehow they got into conversation with this person. The individual ended up sending nude photos and things escalated where the person was telling this high schooler hey, I'm going to expose these pictures if you don't send me money. So he sent money, he's doing all these things, and then I can only imagine that he was just like oh my gosh, my family people are going to find out about this, out about this, and so one of the unfortunate things about these people are, a lot of them they don't really care who they hurt and how they hurt people. And that that guest that we had on well, we had the parents because the child had passed away and they were talking about that.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And the attacker, the person who's involved. They come into the office and they do their cyber attacks and that, and then they go home at the end of the day and that's just their job. They go home at the end of the day and that's just, that's just their job. If we move down to, you know, extortion, so again, that's that, that's that's the real word. I was getting at the you know, the sexting, the sextortion, uh, you know, to basically hold, or, in the case I mentioned, holding photos hostage until you know the individual pays. Or if this is a company, you know, until a company pays. So hey, we've accessed this particular information, the particular information, and so that's an area to think about. Then we get into politically the same thing holding information, a past video, a past interview where a candidate was talking about a very sensitive, controversial topic, and the attackers, again, they look for money, they look for all kinds of things, and then they threaten that they'll put this particular video or an audio recording or pictures of them out with somebody other than their significant other, and so that can definitely put a big thing on politics. You know political candidates, politics, you know.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

And then we also think about, you know, cyberterrorism we're talking about politically motivated, where these individuals from other countries, other nation states, they target their enemies' government agencies or critical infrastructure. And so the example IBM gives is since the Russia Ukraine war, both countries have experienced a big uptick of cyber attacks against vital institutions. You know these activists, hackers, you know. There always seems to be a nickname or something that goes along with them. These activist hackers are called hacktivists and they may not cause extensive damage to their targets. Instead, they may be looking for attention for their causes by making their attacks known to the public.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Less common is cyber attack motivations of corporate espionage, in which hackers will steal intellectual property to gain an unfair advantage over competitors. So maybe a new product that's in the works in research and development, that information could be targeted, and if stolen, then it would not give just that particular organization not give just that particular organization a leg up on a new product that that information could be shared with competitors. And some cyber attackers they hack for sport, savoring the intellectual challenge. They say, hey, I've done this, I was able to extort $10 million. Oh, I can do better. I can extort $11 million. And so there's that competitive drive that can also be there.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Who's behind these cyberattacks? It can be criminal organizations, again, people from different countries, a private person. They can all start cyberattacks, whether the biggest organization, the biggest government or an individual like you and I. We all can be attacked for various reasons. You know outsider threats. They aren't authorized, they don't like work for the company, they're outsiders and they use a network or device and break in anyways. And so this includes organized criminal groups, professional hackers, state-sponsored hackers, amateur hackers and, as we mentioned, that hacktivist. Then we also have the inside threat, and so these are individuals who have authorized and legitimate access to a company's assets and misuse those privileges, deliberately or accidentally. Deliberately or accidentally. This can include employees, business partners, clients, contractors, suppliers with system access. Now, while the negligent users can put the companies at risk, it's only a cyber attack if the user intentionally uses their privileges to carry out that malicious activity. So an employee who carelessly stores sensitive information in an unsecured drive like a flash drive or a drive, isn't committing a cyber attack, but it is a grown-up employee who knowingly makes copies of confidential data. Their personal gain is.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

What does cyber attacks target? We've really talked about this, but we'll just run through the list quick. One is money. One is business financial data, client list, customer data Including personally identifiable information or other personal data, social security number, email address, email addresses and login credentials. And intellectual property like trade secrets or, like I mentioned, new product designs. And in some cases, cyber attackers don't want to steal anything at all. They just merely want to disrupt information systems or an information technology or IT infrastructure to damage a business, government agency or other targets. Some of the attacks, the effects it could be, cause the server to crash, and then there's that downtime. There's the preventive measures that have to be put in place. There can be a loss of revenue and money and all that.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Phishing attacks are not like F-I-S-H-I-N-G, these are P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G. These phishing attacks allow the hackers to trick people into sending money or sensitive information. About that, let's see. So they use some bigger words malware, trojan horses, ransomware, scareware, spyware, rootkits, worms, social engineering, phishing, denial of service, man in the middle attacks, account compromise, supply chain attacks, and so there's quite a few. And so I want to thank IBMcom forward slash thing, forward slash topic, forward slash cyber DAF attack for providing this very, very detailed information on cyber attacks.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

What we want to think about here is knowingly, unknowingly to a cyber attack, so we want to think twice before we post anything. So this is referring to the uniceforg. Forward slash stories, forward slash how, dash, two, dash, stop dash. Cyberbullying number eight. So we want to think twice about what we post. It could be online forever and harm us later, trying to give out our personal details, such as our address, our phone number, the name of our school.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Learn about the privacy settings about our favorite social media apps. Decide who can see our profiles, who can send us direct messages or comment on our posts. By adjusting our account privacy settings, you can report hurtful comments, messages, photos and videos and request they be removed. And in the United States, the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is who. We would want to be reporting this to you know, our local authorities, but in the end because more than likely we're looking at not just one state or one city that these attacks are coming from other cities, other states, which means it's an interstate crime and that usually falls under federal crime. And so that's where the FBI comes in. We can unfriend people. We can block people to stop them from seeing our profile or contacting us. We can choose to have comments by certain people appear only to them without completely blocking them. We can delete posts on our profile or hide them from specific people, and on most of our favorite social media platforms, people aren't notified when we block, restrict or report them.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So again, thanks again to uniceforg for that, and I did mention that the FBI is who. We'd want to be sharing this information, these cyber attacks, if something's happened or whether we have proof that something may be coming. We want to get a hold of the FBI. Something may be coming. We want to get a hold of the FBI. So now we're moving to the last part of our episode today, which is FBIgov, and so this is under the cyber threat, and so the title is Malicious Cyber Attack. Malicious cyber activity threatens the public safety and our national and economic security.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

The FBI's cyber strategy is to impose risk and consequences on cyber adversaries. They're looking at trying to have penalties in place so people will think twice or three times before they do something. And again, I'll be quoting some direct pieces from this FBI webpage and I'll be also summarizing at times, so I'm not plagiarizing is what we're getting to, and so the goal is to change the behavior of criminals and nation states who believe that they can compromise. And so we're talking about the United States here. The United States here, and in these cases our US networks steal financial intellectual property, put critical infrastructure at risk without facing risk themselves. Like that, they can do something and they can get a benefit, but there's no risk imposed on them. That's where the FBI comes in, and they want to impose those risks, and so the way they do that is the FBI uses. They have a unique mix of authorities, capabilities and partnerships to actually impose the consequences against our cyber adversaries.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Again, the FBI is the lead federal agency for investigating cyber attacks and intrusion. They collect and share intelligence and engage with victims while working to unmask those committing malicious cyber activities, wherever they are. We know people can hide behind screen names and the like, and so that's a key area of finding who's actually doing this. We can learn more about how to protect ourselves from cyber criminals, how we can report cybercrime and the Bureau's efforts in combating the involving cyber threat. And so cyber threats they're complex and that's a global concern, not just here in the United States. But if you're watching, listening somewhere outside the United States, this could also be a threat for you and your nation as well, and so you know.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

The FBI states that the adversary, the people looking to do the bad things, are looking to exploit gaps in intelligence and information security networks. The FBI is committed to working with all federal counterparts, foreign partners and private sector to close those gaps, and so the partnerships that the FBI has and are forging allows them to defend networks, attribute malicious activity to certain people, certain organizations again that unmasking, sanction bad behavior and take the fight to our adversaries overseas. So it's not just our adversaries and people doing this activity, or not just here in the United States. Some of them could be in other countries, and the way the FBI likes to look at it is a team approach where they have hubs, where government, industry, academics from long-trusted relationships and they combine those efforts against cyber threats. The hub, and so what the big term is, is the NCIJTF, which is the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, and it talks about how they work, that they have special trained squads, they have 55 field offices, they work together, that they have a rapid response cyber action team that can respond within hours of major incidents, they have assistant legal attachés, which just means they have individuals and embassies across the globe, and that they work closely with the international counterparts. The Internet Crime Complaint Center is where or actually collects reports of the Internet crime from the public. You know, using the complaints, the IC3's Internet Crime Complaint Center recovery asset team has assisted in freezing hundreds of thousands of dollars for victims of cybercrime where they've been victim and they've given money to individuals that making that money not available to those adversaries. The cyber threat landscape is the PsyWatch, which is the FBI's 24-7 operation center and watch floor, and so they provide around-the-clock support, they track incidents and communicate with field offices across the country, and so we talked about earlier protecting ourselves.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Take the right security measures of being alert and aware when connected are key ways to prevent cyber intrusion. Getting an antivirus, maybe a VPN, which is a virtual private network, they can help combat these. Nothing's foolproof, but it can help, and I would say maybe 10, 15, 20 years ago an antivirus program was thought of kind of as a luxury. Well, now it's a necessity. So if you don't have one, you should get one.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

There's business email compromises, where scams exploit the fact that so many of us rely on email to do business, both personal and professional, and it's one of the most damaging online crimes Identity theft just what it says when someone steals our personal information, like our social security number, and uses it to commit theft or fraud. Ransomware we heard that before is a type of malicious software they call it malware and that prevents us from accessing our own computer files, systems or networks and demands you pay a ransom for their return and then they'll let you back. Or you can use your own programs you can't double-click on a program and it come up when you back or you can use your your own programs, like you can't double click on a program and it come up when you're under attack, like this. Spoofing and fishing the ph fishing their schemes. They're aimed at tricking us into providing sensitive information to scammers. Online predators talk about that sexortion. Unfortunately, uh, it's a growing threat to young people. Uh, you know, they receive a message. They're getting phones earlier and earlier, younger and younger, and the brain hasn't fully developed and, and so when they get messages from people, they're like oh wow, they're interested in me and, uh, and some of these people, some of these nefarious people, they prey on that.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

We talk about different tips. Again. Internet-enabled crimes and cyber intrusions are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and preventing them requires each of us that has a connected device to be aware and on guard. And so here's a few cyber safety tips in addition to what we mentioned, and some of them may overlap Keep systems and software up to date and install a strong, reputable antivirus program. There's Norton, there's all kinds of different names AVG that are out there. It's easy, when we're in the middle of doing things, that we don't want to update the software.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Well, we need to, and that's part of helping keeping us safe. We want to be careful when we're connecting to public Wi-Fi, like if we're going to a Starbucks or somewhere, and we want to have a mindset that we're not conducting any sensitive transactions, including purchases, looking up our bank accounts when we're on a public network, because that can be viewed by nice people. We get the password, so create a strong and unique passphrase for each online account. I know it's a pain in the butt something that's a necessity now. Set up multi-factor authentication on all accounts to allow it, which basically is we log in using a password and then we're given a message sent to maybe our phone or a different email address to verify that it's actually us and we have a certain amount of time, like a minute or two or three seconds, to enter that information. So that's that's where you get the multi-factor authentication, which is more than one.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

Examine all email addresses and our correspondences and scrutinize website URLs before responding to a message or visiting a site. Email addresses are misspelled. If it would have a name and it would say at gmailcom, but it would, instead of it being gmailcom, it could be at gmailcom, and so the littlest thing could catch up with us and lead us down a path, and so we want to. Again, if we're not expecting something, it doesn't look right you just delete it, report it as spam and move on with our day. Don't click on anything unsolicited or text messages. Again, if we're not expecting something, don't click it, and be cautious about the information we share in our online profiles, social media accounts we already talked about that. Try not to share things like pet names, school family members and that can give scammers hints they need for our passwords if we're on vacation, all that stuff and don't send payments to unknown people or organizations that are seeking monetary support and urge immediate action. Okay, I would think that either you or somebody you know has received a message like that in the past. I know I received many where it's urgent. They know we help people and can we wire them $500 or $1,000 and that'll help them get out of jail in another country, or or something like that. Again, if it's unsolicited, then we just delete it, move it to spam or just don't even respond.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

We talk about additional resources and priorities, lawful access to law enforcement agencies. All over the country are bumping up against warrant proof encryption, which means that even with a warrant, law enforcement cannot obtain the electronic evidence needed to investigate and prosecute crimes or security threats, threats and then the Iran threat. Threats from the Iranian regime and its terrorist partners are far-reaching. The FBI is committed to identifying and disrupting all Iranian intelligence and military operations that threaten American citizens or our nation's security and critical infrastructure. And, last but not least, on June 27th. So we talked about some of the penalties that could come along with this people that are doing these nefarious things, and so this was an FBI press release on Friday, june 27th 2025, titled Jury Finds Oregon man Guilty of Stalking so case number CR-24-1182-TUC-AMM-MAA in Tucson, arizona and so I'm going to continue quoting quite a bit of this.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

On June 13th 2025, in Tucson Arizona, a federal jury found Brian Thomas Balda, 52, of Oregon, guilty of one count of cyberstalking and one count of interstate stalking. So again, that's when we talk about the different states where he could have been in Oregon and the person that was being stalked could have been in Washington or New York, and so that's when we talk about interstate. So there's more than one state, and so he was found guilty of one count of cyber-stalking and one count of interstate stalking. The guilty verdict followed a four-day trial before000, and not more than three years supervised release, and he's going to be sentenced on September 4th 2025. So how did this come about?

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

In 2023 and 2024, balda engaged in a campaign to intimidate and harass a former United States government official. For approximately 10 months, balda sent abusive and profane text messages and voicemails to the victim, bauda ultimately drove from Oregon to Arizona to confront the victim and was arrested by law enforcement near the victim's home. Four knives, binoculars and a replica handgun were found in Bauda. This matter, with the assistance of Pima County Sheriff's Department and the University of Arizona Police Department. The United States Attorney's Office District of Arizona, tucson, handled the prosecution to prosecution. For more information on the US Attorney's Office District of Arizona, visit wwwjusticegov. Forward slash USAO. Forward slash, az. Forward slash.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

So it's been a pretty informative episode today. We value it. We think it's very important to share, to talk about real things that are happening, like we always do, and so this was a learning experience for me, and it goes to show that if individuals are thinking about a cyber attack, cyber stalking, maybe this will be a reason or something to think twice about or three times about before going forward with that. So thank you for joining us, thank you for being with us. Check out our over 260 episodes. I believe this might be episode 270, in which case, check out all of our 269 plus this episode.

Voices for VoicesⓇ, Justin Alan Hayes:

All 270 episodes you can watch, you can listen at your convenience, and we can't do this without your love and support. If you can give us a big thumbs up, subscribe like, share, follow. Those are all free things and all ways we can continue to help and provide information like these, public safety concerns and public safety issues and to hopefully help at least one person, and we know we have actually helped at least one person, probably a lot more. We don't always get those numbers because a lot of them remain anonymous, and that's quite okay with us. But thank you for tuning in and if you can help us in any way, shape or form, no matter how small or big. We are a nonprofit organization, 501c3. All donations are 100% federally tax deductible and we are on that mission to help 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond and I can't do that without your help. And thank you for tuning in and, like always, please be a voice for you or somebody in need. We'll see you next time.

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