Stranger Things Takes Focus on The Changing Face of Evil (Hackers)


Posted on by Michelle Adams-Dixon

Season four’s final episodes of Netflix’s smash hit Stranger Things debuted over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, leaving fans with yet another cliffhanger going into the fifth (and final) season likely airing in 2024. This season proved once again to center around a new, changing face of evil. That has been a theme throughout the series, a new threat emerging. While new for this season, all the threats throughout the show have been linked together. The same can be said for hackers in the cybersecurity realm.

Season Four of Stranger Things saw the band (or, in this case, group of teenagers seeking to save everyone from inevitable doom) get back together after going their separate ways following season three (Recall, a primary character sacrificed themselves—or so we thought—and stripped Eleven, the superhero teenager and protagonist, of her supernatural powers.) Everything changes when a series of unexplained teenage murders surfaces back in Hawkins, Indiana, the apparent portal to hell.

Eleven goes back through rigorous mind training in a military installation in rural Nevada to recover her superpowers while her friends in Hawkins frantically try to stay alive. Eventually, the evil threat is revealed to be a part of Eleven’s difficult past and is now hellbent on destroying everyone and everything in Hawkins and beyond. Season four concludes with a temporary reprieve from danger for the teenage world-savers, yet the fight of their lives is still to come in the fifth and final season.

Hackers often take on the persona of that changing face of evil that we see in Stranger Things. What might be a threat today and even tomorrow likely won’t be in a year or two. Because a new threat and form of evil, in this case, will have surfaced by then. And yet, in the end, they are all tied together. Hackers are trying to gain access to your information and use it in some form—such as ransom or fraud.

The hacker threat is constant and requires 24/7 vigilance in today’s world. Companies have used resources and dollars to combat the hacker threat—some with success, some without. Companies are even paying hackers to see if they can break in, as Apple did this week when offering $2M to any hacker who could break its new lockdown mode.

From schools and universities to healthcare and financial institutions to critical infrastructure entities, the victims of hackers are limitless, it seems, so having a proper plan in place remains critical. Been hit by a cyberattack? There’s a good chance that hackers will come for you again within a year.

Take a look at a few of the hackers and threats sessions from last month’s RSA Conference here. Many of these sessions looked at threat actor trends, as well as proper security posture. So, remember, whether it’s cybersecurity or science fiction, vanquishing evil threats is never a one-and-done job. It requires constant and consistent perseverance, persistence, and vigilance.
Contributors
Michelle Adams-Dixon

Senior Vice President, Marketing, PR & Communications, RSAC

Hackers & Threats RSAC Insights

fraud ransomware

Blogs posted to the RSAConference.com website are intended for educational purposes only and do not replace independent professional judgment. Statements of fact and opinions expressed are those of the blog author individually and, unless expressly stated to the contrary, are not the opinion or position of RSA Conference™, or any other co-sponsors. RSA Conference does not endorse or approve, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, accuracy or completeness of the information presented in this blog.


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