The Confessions of Marcus Hutchins, the Hacker Who Saved the Internet
At 22, he single-handedly put a stop to the worst cyberattack the world had ever seen. Then he was arrested by the FBI. This is his untold story.
At around 7 am on a quiet Wednesday in August 2017, Marcus Hutchins walked out the front door of the Airbnb mansion in Las Vegas where he had been partying for the past week and a half. A gangly, 6’4″, 23-year-old hacker with an explosion of blond-brown curls, Hutchins had emerged to retrieve his order of a Big Mac and fries from an Uber Eats deliveryman. But as he stood barefoot on the mansion’s driveway wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, Hutchins noticed a black SUV parked on the street—one that looked very much like an FBI stakeout.
He stared at the vehicle blankly, his mind still hazed from sleep deprivation and stoned from the legalized Nevada weed he’d been smoking all night. For a fleeting moment, he wondered: Is this finally it?
But as soon as the thought surfaced, he dismissed it. The FBI would never be so obvious, he told himself. His feet had begun to scald on the griddle of the driveway. So he grabbed the McDonald’s bag and headed back inside, through the mansion’s courtyard, and into the pool house he’d been using as a bedroom. With the specter of the SUV fully exorcised from his mind, he rolled another spliff with the last of his weed, smoked it as he ate his burger, and then packed his bags for the airport, where he was scheduled for a first-class flight home to the UK.
Hutchins was coming off of an epic, exhausting week at Defcon, one of the world’s largest hacker conferences, where he had been celebrated as a hero. Less than three months earlier, Hutchins had saved the internet from what was, at the time, the worst cyberattack in history: a piece of malware called WannaCry. Just as that self-propagating software had begun exploding across the planet, destroying data on hundreds of thousands of computers, it was Hutchins who had found and triggered the secret kill switch contained in its code, neutering WannaCry’s global threat immediately.
This legendary feat of whitehat hacking had essentially earned Hutchins free drinks for life among the Defcon crowd. He and his entourage had been invited to every VIP hacker party on the strip, taken out to dinner by journalists, and accosted by fans seeking selfies. The story, after all, was irresistible: Hutchins was the shy geek who had single-handedly slain a monster threatening the entire digital world, all while sitting in front of a keyboard in a bedroom in his parents’ house in remote western England.
Still reeling from the whirlwind of adulation, Hutchins was in no state to dwell on concerns about the FBI, even after he emerged from the mansion a few hours later and once again saw the same black SUV parked across the street. He hopped into an Uber to the airport, his mind still floating through a cannabis-induced cloud. Court documents would later reveal that the SUV followed him along the way—that law enforcement had, in fact, been tracking his location periodically throughout his time in Vegas.
When Hutchins arrived at the airport and made his way through the security checkpoint, he was surprised when TSA agents told him not to bother taking any of his three laptops out of his backpack before putting it through the scanner. Instead, as they waved him through, he remembers thinking that they seemed to be making a special effort not to delay him.
He wandered leisurely to an airport lounge, grabbed a Coke, and settled into an armchair. He was still hours early for his flight back to the UK, so he killed time posting from his phone to Twitter, writing how excited he was to get back to his job analyzing malware when he got home. “Haven’t touched a debugger in over a month now,” he tweeted. He humblebragged about some very expensive shoes his boss had bought him in Vegas and retweeted a compliment from a fan of his reverse-engineering work.
Hutchins was composing another tweet when he noticed that three men had walked up to him, a burly redhead with a goatee flanked by two others in Customs and Border Protection uniforms. “Are you Marcus Hutchins?” asked the red-haired man. When Hutchins confirmed that he was, the man asked in a neutral tone for Hutchins to come with them, and led him through a door into a private stairwell.
Then they put him in handcuffs.
In a state of shock, feeling as if he were watching himself from a distance, Hutchins asked what was going on. “We’ll get to that,” the man said.
Hutchins remembers mentally racing through every possible illegal thing he’d done that might have interested Customs. Surely, he thought, it couldn’t be the thing, that years-old, unmentionable crime. Was it that he might have left marijuana in his bag? Were these bored agents overreacting to petty drug possession?
The agents walked him through a security area full of monitors and then sat him down in an interrogation room, where they left him alone. When the red-headed man returned, he was accompanied by a small blonde woman. The two agents flashed their badges: They were with the FBI.
For the next few minutes, the agents struck a friendly tone, asking Hutchins about his education and Kryptos Logic, the security firm where he worked. For those minutes, Hutchins allowed himself to believe that perhaps the agents wanted only to learn more about his work on WannaCry, that this was just a particularly aggressive way to get his cooperation into their investigation of that world-shaking cyberattack. Then, 11 minutes into the interview, his interrogators asked him about a program called Kronos.
“Kronos,” Hutchins said. “I know that name.” And it began to dawn on him, with a sort of numbness, that he was not going home after all.
Read the whole story on Wired
Large chunks of a Chinese rocket missed New York City by about 15 minutes
A week ago, China launched the newest version of its largest rocket, the Long March 5B, from its southernmost spaceport. The launch proceeded normally and represented another success for China as it seeks to build a robust human spaceflight program. Over the next few years, this rocket will launch components of a modular space station.
Notably, because of this rocket’s design, its large core stage reached orbit after the launch. Typically during a launch, a rocket’s large first stage will provide the majority of thrust during the first minutes of launch and then drop away before reaching an orbital velocity, falling back into the ocean. Then, a smaller second stage takes over and pushes the rocket’s payload into orbit.
However, the Long March 5B rocket has no second stage. For last week’s launch, then, four liquid-fueled strap-on boosters generated most of the thrust off the launch pad. After this, the core stage with two YF-77 main engines pushed an experimental spacecraft into orbit before the payload separated.
This left the large core stage, with a mass slightly in excess of 20 tons, in an orbit with an average altitude of about 260km above the Earth. Because the perigee of this orbit was only about 160km above the planet, the core stage was slowly drawn back toward the planet as it interacted with the planet’s upper atmosphere.
This is a rather large object to make an uncontrolled return to Earth. According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and keen observer of satellites, this is the largest vehicle to make an uncontrolled reentry into Earth’s atmosphere since 1991, when the Soviet Salyut 7 space station broke up over Argentina.
Engines likely survived
The core stage is estimated to have a mass of about 21 tons, including extra fuel on board, but it’s not clear how much of the rocket survived its interaction with the atmosphere. Although he did not have access to a detailed model of debris, McDowell estimated that at the very least, dense components of the rocket’s engines would have survived.
“I would not be surprised if several bits with masses of the order of 100 to 300kg hit the surface,” he told Ars. “I would be a bit surprised if anything as big as 1 metric ton did.”
The US Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron confirmed that the core stage re-entered Earth’s atmosphere at 11:33am ET (15:33 UTC) on Monday at a location over the Atlantic Ocean. At this point, the core stage would have been at an altitude of 80km and rapidly descending toward Earth. McDowell said there were some reports emerging about possible debris found downrange in Cote d’Ivoire.
It is perhaps worth noting that before it entered Earth’s atmosphere, the core stage track passed directly over New York City. Had it reentered the atmosphere only a little bit earlier, perhaps 15 to 20 minutes, the rocket’s debris could have rained down on the largest metro area in the United States.
China has previously shown a disregard for debris from its rocket launches, however. It frequently launches rockets from pads surrounded by land. This has led to debris from first and second stages falling on villages in the country.
It is not clear whether future launches of the Long March 5B rocket will continue to send its core stage into an unstable orbit or if this was a one-off instance during the rocket’s test flight. Certainly this will be discouraged, at the very least, by other nations.
Article via Arstechnica
Twitter employees can work from home forever, CEO says
Twitter’s new policy comes as businesses across the nation are struggling to adapt to social distancing guidelines.
Twitter will allow employees to work from home for as long as they want.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees Tuesday that many of them will be allowed to work from home in perpetuity, even after the coronavirus pandemic ends, according to a company spokesperson.
“Opening offices will be our decision,” the spokesperson said. “When and if our employees come back, will be theirs.”
In an email, first obtained by BuzzFeed News, Dorsey said it was unlikely that Twitter would open its offices before September and that all in-person events would be canceled for the remainder of the year.
The company will assess its plans for 2021 events later this year.
“We were uniquely positioned to respond quickly and allow folks to work from home given our emphasis on decentralization and supporting a distributed workforce capable of working from anywhere,” the spokesperson said.
“The past few months have proven we can make that work,” she said. “So if our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return.”
Twitter’s new policy comes as businesses across the nation are struggling to adapt to social distancing guidelines and rethinking how they will operate in a post-pandemic world.
Workers weigh safety and their job in early reopen states
Major tech companies such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft were early to move to a work-from-home model and have also been the most cautious in planning for moving employees back into the office.
Google has told employees that the vast majority of them will work from home until 2021, though some will return in the early summer. Facebook will similarly start to reopen offices after the July 4 weekend but will let employees who are able to work from home do so until next year.
The long-term work-from-home policies of these companies stand in stark contrast to much of the rest of the country, where states are slowly easing lockdown restrictions. Governors in several states, including California, where Twitter, Facebook and Google are based, have already started a phased reopening of their economies.
Article via NBCNews
5 exercises to offset too much sitting
Article via CNN
It’s another day of self-isolating, which means it’s potentially another day of sitting indoors restlessly taking yet another Zoom meeting.Prolonged sitting is an unavoidable reality for many. And with lots of us spending more time inside, as the pandemic continues, it’s inevitable that we’re spending even more time being sedentary. The irony is that we’re staying home to protect our health, but all that added sitting is putting our health at risk in other ways.In addition to being a risk factor for many life-threatening cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, excessive sitting can lead to depression, chronic pain and increased risk of physical injury, according toresearch. That’s why it’s important for us to become aware of our sitting habits and do what we can to counteract them.
The poor posture problem
Poor posture is the most recognized, tangible problem associated with too much sitting. Many of us know, all too well, how our sitting posture contributes to neck and back pain while limiting our ability to move our shoulders and spine. Simple, passive stretches, like standing and raising your arms overhead, can provide immediate relief of tension and help break up long bouts of sitting, but they don’t create long-term posture changes. Only exercises that address the muscular dysfunction from poor sitting posture will strengthen weakened muscles and inhibit overactive ones to truly counteract the impact of too much sitting.
The two most common posture issues associated with sitting are Upper-Crossed Syndrome and Lower-Crossed Syndrome. Upper-Crossed Syndrome is characterized by slumping shoulders due to a dysfunctional combination of over- and underactive muscles in your chest, neck and shoulders. Lower-Crossed Syndrome, which usually goes hand in hand with its upper-body counterpart, creates issues of tension and weakness in your core, back and hips. To provide both instant relief and restore muscle function, the five exercises below include a combination of instant-gratification, feel-good stretches with posture-correcting exercises.
No more aches and pains
Practice the first three stretching and mobilizing exercises throughout your day to break up long bouts of sitting. Ideally, try to get up from sitting at least once per hour to stretch. Do the last two strengthening and mobilizing exercises daily to make lasting, positive changes to your overall posture. Many of my professional athlete clients do them as part of their daily warm-ups.You’ll notice that specific breathing instructions are included with all the exercises. That’s because your diaphragm, your primary muscle of respiration, attaches to both your rib cage and your spine. Consequently, how you breathe has a significant impact on the overall position of your ribcage and spine, which, in turn, creates your body posture. Important note: Consult your physician before starting any new exercise program. Use caution and stop if you feel any pain, weakness or lightheadedness.
Supported warrior one with hip flexor release
This move stretches out tight hip flexors and compressed side waist muscles from too much sitting.Place your left hand lightly on top of a chair or desk, and move your right foot back so that your left leg is in a short lunge position. Drop your back heel and point your toes out slightly. Bend your front knee to align above your ankle, keeping your back leg straight. Inhale as you lift your right arm up and over your head. Exhale as you side bend to the left, feeling your left lower ribs rotate inward. Avoid arching your lower back. Press the front of your right hip forward to release your right hip flexors. Hold for three long, deep breaths. Repeat on the other side.
One-arm doorframe stretch
This stretch provides relief of tension in your chest muscles and the front of your shoulders that come from slumping in a seated position.Standing and facing an open doorway, place a forearm on the doorframe with your elbow bent to 90 degrees at shoulder height. Your upper arm should be parallel with the floor. Rotate your body away from your arm until you feel a stretch in the front of your chest. Hold for three long, deep breaths, keeping your back neutral and lower ribs down. Repeat on the other side.As a variation, if you have a narrow enough doorway, you can stretch both sides at once by placing both forearms on either side of the doorframe. Instead of rotating your body, step one foot through the doorway until you feel a stretch.
Supported windmill twist
This exercise relieves the upper-body rigidity caused by a static sitting posture. The twisting motion, coordinated with your breathing, promotes mobility of your rib cage and thoracic spine while opening up the chest, side waist muscles and low back.Standing and facing a desk or counter, sit back slightly into a shallow squat position, then hinge from your hips to bend over and place your left forearm down on the desk or countertop.
Keeping your knees bent with your hips and low-back neutral, inhale as you reach your right arm forward and rotate from your shoulder, mid-back and rib cage to twist open to the right, reaching your hand upward. Hold for three breaths, using your respiration to facilitate the twist. Focus your inhalations on the open side of your rib cage (the side you’re turning to) and exhalations on the opposite side, where you can use side waist muscles to internally rotate your ribs and enable further rotation of your rib cage and mid back. Unwind and practice the rotation to the left from the same starting position with your right forearm down.
Wall angels
Wall Angels, also known as scapula (shoulder blade) wall slides work to strengthen your back muscles to counteract the overactive muscles in the front of your body that pull you into a slouched position while seated.Stand with your back against a wall, keeping your feet hip distance about 6 to 8 inches from the wall. Bend your knees slightly to use some leverage from your legs and core to help push your entire back into the wall with your lower back as flat as possible. Rest the back of your head against the wall, directing your gaze forward.
Raise your arms up to shoulder height, bending your elbows to 90 degrees with your shoulders, elbows and backs of your hands against the wall. Inhale as you slide your hands and elbows up the wall until you start to feel like it’s difficult to maintain the touch points of your back, head, shoulders, elbows and hands against the wall. Exhale as you slide your arms back to 90 degrees.Repeat this motion through five long, deep breaths. With every exhale, concentrate on moving your lower ribs in, back and down while also pulling the base of your shoulder blades down. Even though this exercise may feel difficult and awkward to hold, making you think you aren’t accomplishing much, you should find that when you move away from the wall you’ll notice an increased freedom of shoulder movement, reduced thorax stiffness and increased rib mobility.
Breathing bridge
This positional breathing exercise strengthens your diaphragm, core and glutes while releasing your hip flexors to establish an optimal rib cage and pelvis position for better overall posture.This is the starting position all of my athletes use to train their breathing and set their posture. Begin on your back with your knees bent and feet on the floor, hip distance apart. Place a foam yoga block, foam roller or rolled towel between your legs to engage your inner thighs and avoid your hips externally rotating and knees splaying out. Place your hands on your lower ribs so you can feel them moving in and out horizontally with each phase of your breath. You want to avoid upward movement of your rib cage while breathing, and you shouldn’t feel any stress or tension in your jaw, neck or shoulders.
Exhale fully, drawing your lower ribs in toward each other, feeling your core turn on and your ribcage move downward. At the end of that exhale, without breathing in yet, tuck your tailbone, flattening your low back and lifting your hips approximately 3 or 4 inches off the floor. Avoid arching your low back. Maintaining the bridge posture, inhale, trying to expand your ribs out to the sides.Hold this position using the strength of your core and glutes, taking five long, deep breaths, focused on horizontal rib movement. Repeat for a total of two sets of five breaths.Adding these five simple exercises to your daily routine will help improve your posture, reduce neck pain and backaches and boost your overall health and wellness.
L.A. County jail inmates try to get COVID-19 to be set free
A group of L.A. County jail inmates intentionally tried to infect themselves with the novel coronavirus, hoping that they would then be set free. The scheme was discovered by a trustee inmate and recorded on video that was released by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. Read the full article: https://lat.ms/3cmufeE
Dancing while social distancing: Misty Copeland presents virtual ballet for charity
A ballerina in Australia floats across the dining room floor in a hijab. Another leaps in the air on a rooftop in the Philippines, while still another showcases her intricate footwork in her backyard in the United States.
Wearing tutus or tank tops, bowing to kitchen stoves or trees blowing in the wind, 32 dancers from 14 countries strapped on their toe shoes to perform a dance for a virtual audience to benefit the struggling dance community.
“It really felt like an opportunity to bring the dance world together and to really bring our forces together. And I felt like we could have more impact that way,” said Misty Copeland, who is the first dancer featured in the video and came up with the initiative with her former colleague, Joseph Phillips.
“Swans for Relief ” is designed to raise funds for dancers all over the world who have lost their jobs after ballet performances, like most public events, were shut down due to social distancing requirements to stem the spread of COVID-19.
“Once you’re let go of a company, it’s really difficult to find work again within that company or another company. So… I started reaching out to my friends,” she told The Associated Press in a Zoom interview Tuesday from her New York City home. “And it was just incredible that everyone I was reaching out to, I was just shocked that it was like: ‘Yes! I’m in!’”
Copeland partnered with the Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF), with seed funding provided by K Period Media, to launch the program. A $500,000 goal has been set to help ballet dancers maintain their living expenses, since so many ballet companies and venues are closed.
The 32 ballerinas in the compilation video represent companies from all over the globe, including China, Russia, Europe, Cuba, Mexico, Philippines, South Africa, Canada, and the United States. The video, released Wednesday, shows each dancer at home performing the iconic steps from “Dying Swan,” set to “Le Cygne (The Swan),” performed by cellist Wade Davis.
Having a diverse group for the video was a top priority for Copeland, a trailblazer who is the first black female principal dancer at her company, American Ballet Theatre.
“I think that’s something that I’ve been fighting for my entire career, is to truly show the representation of what the world looks like within the ballet community,” she said. “You’ll see the diversity within this film. But it was also important for me to not just go for the biggest ballet stars, but to look within these companies and see talent, see up-and-coming talent and see diversity.”
For Copeland, the video also represents an opportunity for the ballet world to rethink how it interacts with fans.
“We’ve needed this reset, to kind of step back and reassess how we do things, especially for an art form that doesn’t really rely on media as much,” Copeland said. “It’s about time that we learn how to exist in this virtual world for the ballet community. So I do think there’s some positives in there and maybe just figuring out, you know, new ways of bringing theater to people so that it reaches more people.”
She added: “There are more ways than just stepping into a theater, that may be a bit scary for people, you know, for some time to come.”
Article via USAToday
Miley Cyrus has ‘no idea’ what the coronavirus pandemic is like
Miley Cyrus admitted her privilege as a celebrity has sheltered her from how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting everyday people.
“I know I’m in a unique position, and my experience with this pandemic is not like most everyone else’s in my country and around the world,” she told WSJ. magazine. “My life has been pushed pause on, but really I have no idea what this pandemic is like. I am comfortable in my space and able to put food on my table and [I am] financially stable, and that’s just not the story for a lot of people.”
Cyrus, 27, speculated that some celebrities have said no to appearing on her Instagram Live show, “Bright Minded,” because of their privilege.
“I’m sure a lot of the hesitation for other people saying yes to doing the show is because it almost doesn’t feel right for celebrities to share our experience,” she said. “Because it just doesn’t compare.”
The “Malibu” singer launched the program to connect with people while they’re stuck at home and said she’s continuously surprised by who responds to her Instagram DMs and who ignores her.
“I am the ultimate slide-into-the-DMs! This is the way that I have communicated and actually gotten things done for years,” Cyrus explained. “I ended up thinking, ‘S–t, I might as well send one to Reese Witherspoon. She’s probably not going to answer, but OK.’ And then she answered and said she would love to give me a couple minutes.
Article via PageSix
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DMX Wants Jay-Z to Face Off Against Him in Instagram Music Battle
A trend started with the inaugural “Verzuz” music challenges that pits two artists in a virtual Instagram Live ring for a friendly back-and-forth with their hits.
It’s less of a battle and more of celebration, but the popularity of the event has spawned discussions about who should be squaring up in these one-on-one sessions. Some names aren’t in the running, and others—such as Ray J—have been shut down by fans.
But there are artists who have the catalogs to step into the arena and a fan base who would show up. The latest to toss his own hat into the ring is Yonkers-bred rapper DMX, and he wants Jay-Z to get at him (pun intended).
DMX named Jay-Z for his hip-hop match
As mentioned, people are having spirited talks about which artists they’d like to see next for the Verzuz series. When DMX was a guest on NORE’s hot podcast, Drink Champs, he was asked who he would face off with, and his answer was Jay-Z.
As DJ EFN said, it would be epic for hip-hop culture. Both of their debut albums dropped in 1996, and it just so happens that Verzuz co-creator Swizz Beatz has produced songs for both of them too.
DMX and Jay-Z have a history
DMX said it would be battle number three for them, and for those out of the loop, the two rappers have a history of duking it out with freestyles. Would you like to hear the story of how it all got started way back when?
DMX was a known battle rapper in his early days, and it’s a mantle he still carries. Back in the ‘90s, the two met up in the Bronx (some say Harlem) for what became a legendary battle.
Damon Dash says it went on for hours and though it was a gentleman’s game, Murder Inc. CEO Irv Gotti implied that DMX never liked Jay-Z.
During an interview with The Breakfast Club in 2016, DMX said he was over his anger toward his rap frenemy, Jay-Z. As it stands, people still argue over who won that battle.
Another one happened during Jay-Z’s Hard Knock Life Tour in 1999, but it was still a friendly backstage contest. You can find footage on YouTube. It wasn’t all bad blood, as the two rap legends have even collaborated on a few tracks over the years.
Fans think DMX is a formidable ‘opponent’ for Jay-Z
While the likelihood of Jay-Z returning to the scene in an intimate internet format like Verzuz low, fans can still hope. Many believe DMX is one of the only rappers in the game today who can rock at the same table as Hov. On Instagram, comments were rolling in.
One person wrote, “DMX got hits and street anthems. Let’s not forget.” Another said, “I already knew who X was gonna pick. That was and still is his peer.”
And one noted, “Everyone forgot that DMX beat Jay in a rap battle.” Ultimately, people agree that this would be epic and fun for hip-hop fans to watch. But don’t count on it happening.
Article via CheatSheet
23 Signs You’re Secretly a Narcissist Masquerading as a Sensitive Introvert
Article via GetPocket
If I see one more listicle about introversion, I’m going to cry.
It started out with the fairly reasonable “31 Unmistakable Signs That You’re An Introvert.” Sure, many of the items on the list offered an exaggerated version of introversion, but there were some real gems that had a large grain of truth. Like this one:
But then this happened:
22 Signs Your Dog’s An Introvert
“He often wears headphones with no music playing, in the hopes no one will try and talk to him.”
You’d think that’d be enough for a lifetime of listicles. But no… they kept coming, mixing together many different traits under the general umbrella “introversion.” For instance, some lists include shyness-reated behaviors, but it’s well documented that shyness is not the same thing as introversion. Shyness is more related to being anxious and neurotic. There are plenty of introverts who prefer alone time but really aren’t anxious or shy when interacting with other people.
Another common misconception perpetuated by these listicles is that introversion and sensory processing sensitivity are the same thing. From “23 Signs You’re Secretly An Introvert“:
“While extroverts tend to get bored easily when they don’t have enough to do, introverts have the opposite problem — they get easily distracted and overwhelmed in environments with an excess of stimulation.”
Actually, sensory processing sensitivity is not the same thing as introversion. There are plenty of socially introverted folks who can deal with loud sounds and bright lights, even though they may get emotionally drained from too many superficial social interactions. Vice versa, there are plenty of socially extraverted individuals who get overstimulated by sensory input. A number of studies support that idea that sensory processing sensitivity is much more strongly linked to anxiety (neuroticism) and openness to experience than introversion.
But when I saw this listicle, I just about flipped my lid:
7 Signs Kanye West Is Secretly An Introvert
Really? Let’s clarify something here: Narcissism is definitely not the same thing as introversion.
Have you ever met someone who constantly tells you how “sensitive” and “introverted” they are, but all you actually see is selfishness and egocentricity? I’m sure you have, because these people exist in spades.
When most people think of narcissism, they think of the public face of narcissism: extraversion, aggression, self-assuredness, grandiosity, vanity, and the need to be admired by others (see “How to Spot a Narcissist“). But as far back as 1938, Harvard psychologist Henry Murray noticed another breed of narcissist among his undergraduates: the covert narcissist. While the “overt” narcissists tended to be aggressive, self-aggrandizing, exploitative, and have extreme delusions of grandeur and a need for attention, “covert” narcissists were more prone to feelings of neglect or belittlement, hypersensitivity, anxiety, and delusions of persecution.
In the ’90s, psychologist Paul Wink analyzed a variety of narcissism scales and confirmed that there are indeed two distinct faces of narcissism, which they labeled “Grandiosity-Exhibitonism” and “Vulnerability-Sensitivity”. He found that both shades of narcissism shared a common core of conceit, arrogance, and the tendency to give in to one’s own needs and disregard others. But that’s where the similarities ended.
While Grandiosity-Exhibitionism was associated with extraversion, aggressiveness, self-assuredness, and the need to be admired by others, Vulnerability-Sensitivity was associated with introversion, hypersensitivity, defensiveness, anxiety, and vulnerability. Further research by Jonathan Cheek and Jennifer Odessa Grimes at Wellesley College found a moderate correlation between covert narcissism and the Highly Sensitive Person Scale developed by Elaine Aron.
In other words, while introversion, sensitivity, and narcissism are all partially separate traits, hypersensitive covert narcissists are more likely to report that they are introverted and sensitive.
Are You a Covert Narcissist?
By this point, you’re probably wondering if you’re secretly a hypersensitive covert narcissist masquerading as a sensitive introvert. Without further ado, here are 23 items that will allow you to gain greater insight into your personality. In a recent study conducted on a group of 420 undergraduates, Jonathan Cheek and colleagues found that higher scorers on this “Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale” tended to also score higher on tests of entitlement, shame, and neuroticism, and tended to display lower levels of self esteem, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. In contrast, maladaptive overt narcissism wasn’t related to shame, self esteem, or neuroticism, even though overt narcissists reported feeling just as entitled as covert narcissists. It seems if you have to be a narcissist, it’s better to be an overt narcissist than a covert narcissist!
So here’s the test. Be honest with yourself!
Maladaptive Covert Narcissism Scale (MCNS)*
Please answer the following questions by deciding to what extent each item is characteristic of your feelings and behavior. Fill in the blank next to each item by choosing a number from this scale:
1 = very uncharacteristic or untrue, strongly disagree
2 = uncharacteristic
3 = neutral
4 = characteristic
5 = very characteristic or true, strongly agree
- ___ I can become entirely absorbed in thinking about my personal affairs, my health, my cares or my relations to others.
- ___ My feelings are easily hurt by ridicule or the slighting remarks of others.
- ___ When I enter a room I often become self-conscious and feel that the eyes of others are upon me.
- ___ I dislike sharing the credit of an achievement with others.
- ___ I feel that I have enough on my hand without worrying about other people’s troubles.
- ___ I feel that I am temperamentally different from most people.
- ___ I often interpret the remarks of others in a personal way.
- ___ I easily become wrapped up in my own interests and forget the existence of others.
- ___ I dislike being with a group unless I know that I am appreciated by at least one of those present.
- ___ I am secretly “put out” or annoyed when other people come to me with their troubles, asking me for their time and sympathy.
- ___ I am jealous of good-looking people.
- ___ I tend to feel humiliated when criticized.
- ___ I wonder why other people aren’t more appreciative of my good qualities.
- ___ I tend to see other people as being either great or terrible.
- ___ I sometimes have fantasies about being violent without knowing why.
- ___ I am especially sensitive to success and failure.
- ___ I have problems that nobody else seems to understand.
- ___ I try to avoid rejection at all costs.
- ___ My secret thoughts, feelings, and actions would horrify some of my friends.
- ___ I tend to become involved in relationships in which I alternately adore and despise the other person.
- ___ Even when I am in a group of friends, I often feel very alone and uneasy.
- ___ I resent others who have what I lack.
- ___ Defeat or disappointment usually shame or anger me, but I try not to show it.
Done? Now add together all the numbers to come up with a total score.
How’d You Do?
If you thought on some each of these, “Oh dear lord, that’s sooooo me,” don’t panic. As I mentioned, there’s some overlap between this scale and other tests that measure introversion and sensitivity. In a recent study conducted on college students, the average score on this scale was in the mid-upper 60s. So if your score hovered around that range, you’re about average in covert narcissism. If your score was below 40, you scored very low in covert narcissism.
If, however, your score was 82 and above, you scored high in covert narcissism. And if your score was above 97, well, you might want to own yourself as a card-carrying covert narcissist, instead of constantly telling people to stop criticizing you because your sensitive, introverted soul can’t handle it.
Now, do genuinely introverted people exist? Absolutely. Are there genuinely sensitive people? For sure. There are even many individuals who are both sensitive and introverted.
But the latest research suggests that there is also a large selfish segment of the population who say they are introverted and sensitive when they really just can’t stand it that everyone doesn’t recognize their brilliance.
With that said, whoever bans the word “listicle” from the English lexicon is genuinely brilliant, regardless of their shade of narcissism.
The first 10 items of this scale are taken from the original Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale. The rest of the items were added to create a more reliable and valid scale. This new and improved 23-item scale was recently presented at the 2013 Association for Research in Personality conference by Jonathan Cheek, Holly Hendin, and Paul Wink.
Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He has taught courses on intelligence, creativity, and well-being at Columbia University, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. In addition to writing the column Beautiful Minds for Scientific American, he also hosts The Psychology Podcast, and is author and/or editor of 9 books, including Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind(with Carolyn Gregoire), and Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. In 2015, he was named one of “50 Groundbreaking Scientists who are changing the way we see the world” by Business Insider. Find out more at http://ScottBarryKaufman.com. © 2013 Scott Barry Kaufman, All Rights Reserved.
Note: Even though Kanye West sings songs such as “I Am A God,” I admit it’s possible that he is actually the reverse of the focus of my article: a sensitive introvert masquerading as a narcissist. I don’t know him personally.
Florida woman arrested after having virtual sex with incarcerated boyfriend
A Florida woman was arrested for allegedly having virtual sex with her incarcerated boyfriend during a video call with a young child in her room, a report said.
Noelle Rascati, 32, engaged in the “virtual visit” on March 25 with her 26-year-old partner Tathan Fields, who’s serving a 15-year sentence at Santa Rosa County jail, according to court documents obtained last week by The Smoking Gun.
In the video call, Rascati and Fields pleasure themselves on camera as a child walks around in Rascati’s bedroom at her Lake County residence, the report said.
Rascati even uses “an assortment of sex toys” during the virtual hook-up.
She was arrested on April 22 and charged with engaging in lewd and lascivious conduct in the presence of a minor. Her arraignment is scheduled for May 18.
It’s unclear if Fields faces charges from the incident.
But he has previously been in trouble while incarcerated, once charged for masturbating to the female instructor of a prison class, the report said.
Article via NYPost