Hacksy is a chatbot that teaches you two simple things:
Hacksy keeps jargon to a minimum, keeps it light, and steers a long way past the grand traditions of cyber security: no green writing on a black screen, no dark basements and no hooded figures.
We're all about people coming together who have a shared interest in getting (and staying) secure. We also want to make sure we always have fun playing with the tools used by hackers and cyber security professionals — that way they're never going to be scary.
Hacking is part of life now.
Not so long ago there were no smart phones, the internet was the preserve of a select few academics, and the only people who had to worry about hacking were major banks.
Then we all got computers in our pockets, the internet became ubiquitous, and we started to live our lives online. Everyone had to worry about criminals, curious hobbyists, stalkers, and nation-states spying on them, stealing their identities, or generally making life suck.
How do you respond in the face of that?
The only way to protect yourself is to understand what you're dealing with. To do that, you need experience — you need to acquire the knowledge that hackers have by getting hands-on with tools, setting up proper protections for yourself. And not feel like you're doing something negative or silly while you learn.
You need to learn to hack.
We fundamentally believe cyber security and hacking should be accessible to everyone. Each member of the Hacksy team has taught individuals and organisations all over the world about hacking and cyber security. We've seen first hand that even those with no technical knowledge can pick up tools and attacks like nmap, xss and SQL injection, in minutes. The power that gives to people is enormous.
We also believe that in order for us to have a meaningful impact on the world, we need to teach everyone. Teaching 10 people at a time isn't going to get the job done. We'd be old and grey by the time we got through the population of East London, let alone the UK. And we want to teach the world, so that's that out of the window.
We needed something scalable, accessible, and quick to use.
We needed it so we built it.
The Hacksy team is a combination of Product Owners, writers, designers, and developers. We all have experience with cyber security and hacking, but we also acknowledge that no one is protected or knowledgeable about all of cyber security. It's just too vast.
We consulted with a wide range of organisations from the public, private, and third sectors to ensure Hacksy aligned with current best practice.
Hacksy was in fact launched as part of the National Cyber Security Alliance, White House-backed 'National Cyber Security Month' in the United States in October 2016. As part of President Obama's final few months in office, the initiative aimed to rapidly increase the number of American citizens using two-factor authentication.
We also advocate for a series of third-party tools throughout Hacksy.
And finally, while Hacksy was built security-first and we were confident of our ability to protect customer data, we brought in an external penetration testing firm to test ourselves. You can never really check your own work.
At Decoded, we aim to simplify the complex, thereby making the impossible possible. The backgrounds of the team vary from MBAs to PhDs, cyber security experts, data scientists, Shakespearean poets, nanotechnologists, developers, actors, creative technologists and playwrights.