Under the Wire

We hear a lot about hacking these days. It seems everyone is either a hacker or a hackee. From the President down to a bagger at the local grocery store, everyone has a hacking story to tell. Every electronic device that connects to the internet evidently can be broken into by someone with more skills than morals.

I must admit to not really knowing much, in fact, really nothing about how this is done. Just heard lots of stories about it. As do many of you, I use a computer. Those seem to be the most common targets. I don’t think mine has ever been broken in to. My secret? Unless you care about the price of a 600 pound steer or value of a bred heifer, anyone wandering around electronically in my computer is going to be pretty disappointed or flat out bored. I get a few emails. Most are about … you guessed it, the price of cattle or weather conditions that might affect the markets, etc.

Phones are popular targets for hackers I am told. These not so small devices once used to talk to one another have become open doors for criminals with certain talents to wander around in innocent lives. I also have a phone. It doesn’t face, tweet, slither, toot or hop. I am told it can do all that. I don’t want it to. Fits in my shirt pocket. Falls out a lot. I’ve drowned a few in an irrigation ditch, ran over one with a tractor and rode around a pasture horseback with a friends phone trying to hear mine ring as I called it because I didn’t want to tell Sue I’d lost another one.

I hear hackers can even turn on the tiny cameras built into phones. This has given me an idea I just have to try one of these days. We will be calving soon. Eventually, I will have to pull a calf from a first calf heifer unable to get the job done by herself. When I finish, I just might put my waterproof, shockproof phone with built in camera, back where the calf used to be, then hope it gets hacked.

Let that criminal genius on the other end of the line try and figure out what he’s hooked up to. It will cost me a phone but so what. I think it will be fun. Plus it just might cause some hacker to change his line of work. Hope so.