Sunday, October 27, 2013

Hacking: Understanding Hacking

Hacking can be termed as use of a computer to gain unauthorized access to data in a system.Hacking can be either good or bad depending on the intent with which the hacking was carried out. 

In this blog post we will be looking at hacking on computers systems.

Along with the usual intent of harm there is also another breed of hackers called the “Ethical Hacker / White Hat Hacker” who tries to hack into the system to ensure that there are indeed no security flaws in the system that can be used by the harmful hackers to compromise the integrity of the data and / or cause the system to behave in an errant way.

The recent hacking of various important websites, like the nsa.gov, the defacement of public sites show hacking can also serve as a means to protest.
There are a few basic steps that are taken when trying to hack into a system –
1. Recon – Gather information about the intended target.
2. Analysis – Analysis of the gathered information for possible ways to hack the system.  Then a decision on using one or more vulnerabilities is made and a plan is chalked out.
3. Attack – The plan is actually put into action.

Edit : The hacking process
All of the above was from the view point of a system. However individual users can also be hacked.
Today individuals have a lot of online accounts like email accounts, Facebook etc. If individually targets and if the user has not taken precautions then an account can be easily hacked.

Moreover these accounts are often linked to each other and sometimes what is public information on one account forms the basis of identification for another account as this post (very interesting read) over here shows. The hacker gained control of his Amazon, Apple and Gmail accounts and wiped all the data on the users HDD. All of this possible because Amazon shows the last four digits of the credit card number to the account holder. Apple considers these same four digits along with a few publicly available pieces of info to be sufficient information to reset the password.

Simple steps to prevent hacking are to have a good anti-virus installed and monitoring all the activities. Additionally things like creating a strong enough password can go a long way towards preventing dictionary attacks on account passwords.

References -
Honan, Mat. "How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking”, 8th June 2012. "http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/all/”

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2 comments:

  1. UnknownOctober 29, 2013 at 1:51 PM

    I like how you break the hacking process into three steps: recon, analysis, and attack. It shows how hacking is a process that requires planning and information and not necessarily something that can be done on a whim. Including email and Facebook is a good way of letting average users know that such threats and pertinent to them as well. The picture shows hacking-related words, though it may have been better to use the picture to actually visually show the hacking process. Finally you use a specific person as an example of someone who was hacked and had his Amazon account compromised.

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  2. Justin WalkerNovember 15, 2013 at 10:13 PM

    I too like the methodical approach. Your post is analytical, simply read, and creates a complete picture of the content with enough substance to gain interest. The links are then excellent in that it gives a way to learn more from like or related content. You obviously spend time in your posts and it's reminding me to reset my passwords. Thank you.

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