L5 understanding hacking

Rushdi Shams, Lecturer, Dept of CSE, KUET, Bangladesh
1

 the term hacker simply referred to an adept
computer user, and gurus still use the term to
refer to themselves in that original sense.
 when breaking into computer systems
(technically known as cracking) became popular,
the media used the hacker to refer only to
computer criminals
Rushdi Shams, Lecturer, Dept of CSE, KUET, Bangladesh 2

 Hacking is illegal. Title 18, United States Code,
Section 1030, by Congress in 1984
 the perpetrator must “knowingly” commit the
crime
 notification that unauthorized access is illegal be
posted
 For a computer-related crime to become a
federal crime, the attacker must be shown to
have caused at least $5,000 worth of damage.

 2004 CANSPAM Act specifically criminalizes the
transmission of unsolicited commercial e-mail
without an existing business relationship.
 Before that, spamming was not a crime! 

 Because of the time it takes, there are only two
serious types of hackers:
› the underemployed and
› those hackers being paid by someone to hack.

 Hackers fall quite specifically into these
categories, in order of increasing threat:
› Security experts
› Script kiddies
› Underemployed adults
› Ideological hackers
› Criminal hackers
› Corporate spies
› Disgruntled employees

 Most security experts are capable of hacking but
decline to do so for moral or economic reasons.
 Computer security experts have found that
there’s more money in preventing hacking than
in perpetrating it
 hundreds of former hackers now consult
independently as security experts to medium-
sized businesses.

 Script kiddies are students who hack
 These hackers may use their own computers, or
(especially at colleges) they may use the more
powerful resources of the school to perpetrate
their hacks.
 joyride through cyberspace looking for targets of
opportunity
 concerned mostly with impressing their peers
and not getting caught.

 in most instances, you’ll never know they were
there unless you have software that detects
unusual activity or unless they make a mistake.
 These hackers constitute about 90 percent of
the total manual hacking activity on the Internet.
 They use the tools produced by others,
 script kiddies hack primarily to get free stuff
 They share pirated software and serial numbers

 Underemployed adults are former script kiddies
 either dropped out of school or failed to achieve
full-time employment and family commitments
 Many of the tools script kiddies use are created
by these adult hackers
 Adult hackers often create the “crackz” applied
by other hackers to unlock commercial software.
 This group also writes the majority of the
software viruses.

 Ideological hackers are those who hack to further
some political purpose.
 Since the year 2000, ideological hacking has gone
from just a few verified cases to an information war
 They deface websites or perpetrate DoS attacks
against their ideological enemies.
 looking for mass media coverage of their exploits
 have the implicit support of their home government

 Criminal hackers hack for revenge, to perpetrate
theft, or for the sheer satisfaction of causing
damage.
 exceedingly rare because the intelligence
required to hack usually also provides ample
opportunity for the individual to find some
socially acceptable means of support
 little risk to institutions that do not deal in large
volumes of computer-based financial
transactions

 very rare because it’s extremely costly and
legally very risky to employ illegal hacking tactics
against competing companies
 Many high technology businesses are young and
naïve about security
 Nearly all high-level military spy cases involve
individuals who have incredible access to
information but as public servants don’t make
much money

 Disgruntled employees are the most dangerous
—and most likely—security problem of all
 Attacks range from the complex (a network
administrator who spends time reading other
people’s e-mail) to the simple (a frustrated clerk
who takes a fire axe to your database server).

 There are only four ways for a hacker to access
your network:
1. By connecting over the Internet
2. By using a computer on your network directly
3. By dialing in via a Remote Access Service (RAS)
server
4. By connecting via a nonsecure wireless network

 Solving the direct intrusion problem is easy:
 Employ strong physical security at your premises
 treat any cable or connection that leaves the
building as a security concern.
 putting firewalls between your WAN links and
your internal network or behind wireless links

 Put your RAS servers outside your firewall in the
public security zone,
 force legitimate users to authenticate with your
firewall first to gain access to private network
resources.
 Allow no device to answer a telephone line
behind your firewall.

 802.11b came with a much-touted built-in
encryption scheme called the Wired-Equivalent
Privacy (WEP) that promised to allow secure
networking with the same security as wired
networks have.
 It sounded great.
 Too bad it took less than 11 hours for security
experts to hack it

 newer 128-bit WEP service is more secure, but it
should still not be considered actually equivalent
to wired security

 Target selection
 Information gathering
 Attack

 To pass this stage, some vector of attack must
be available, so the machine must have either
advertised its presence or have been found
through some search activity.
› DNS Look-up
› Network Address Scanning
› Port Address Scanning
› Service Scanning

› SNMP Data gathering
› Architecture probes
› Directory service look-up

 Phishing
 Automated password guessing
 Buffer overflow
 MiM
 Session Hijacking
 Source Routing
 Trojan horse
 Forged e-mails
 Floods

L5 understanding hacking

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