Hands on Hacking

Matthew Hickey, Jennifer Arcuri

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119561514
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Cyber Security
• Index: Computer Science

A fast, hands-on introduction to offensive hacking techniques

Hands-On Hacking teaches readers to see through the eyes of their adversary and apply hacking techniques to better understand real-world risks to computer networks and data. Readers will benefit from the author's years of experience in the field hacking into computer networks and ultimately training others in the art of cyber-attacks. This book holds no punches and explains the tools, tactics and procedures used by ethical hackers and criminal crackers alike.

We will take you on a journey through a hacker's perspective when focused on the computer infrastructure of a target company, exploring how to access the servers and data. Once the information gathering stage is complete, you'll look for flaws and their known exploits—including tools developed by real-world government financed state-actors.

• An introduction to the same hacking techniques that malicious hackers will use against an organization
• Written by infosec experts with proven history of publishing vulnerabilities and highlighting security flaws
• Based on the tried and tested material used to train hackers all over the world in the art of breaching networks
• Covers the fundamental basics of how computer networks are inherently vulnerable to attack, teaching the student how to apply hacking skills to uncover vulnerabilities

We cover topics of breaching a company from the external network perimeter, hacking internal enterprise systems and web application vulnerabilities. Delving into the basics of exploitation with real-world practical examples, you won't find any hypothetical academic only attacks here. From start to finish this book will take the student through the steps necessary to breach an organization to improve its security.

Written by world-renowned cybersecurity experts and educators, Hands-On Hacking teaches entry-level professionals seeking to learn ethical hacking techniques. If you are looking to understand penetration testing and ethical hacking, this book takes you from basic methods to advanced techniques in a structured learning format.

Chapter 1
Hacking a Business Case

If you're communicating with a business owner, chief executive officer (CEO), chief information security officer (CISO), or just someone who needs to make a case to upper management on why hacking is beneficial to companies, then this chapter is for you. The chapter is not packed with practical hacking exercises like the remaining chapters are; rather, it focuses on the reasons why companies need hackers. We explain why we believe that the best route to improving an organization's cybersecurity is for you, your team, and your employer, to adopt a purple team mentality and begin thinking like malicious hackers. The purple team way of thinking is the amalgamation of traditional blue and red teams—the defenders and the attackers.

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If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

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To be a CISO is to lead an army. To be effective, that army needs to know itself and know its enemy. In other words, you need a team trained to think like hackers. You need a team that proactively works to identify all the ways that the enemy could attack and then build stronger infrastructures—from patching software vulnerabilities to creating security policies and cultures. Businesses need hackers, and that is the subject and focus of this chapter.

All Computers Are Broken

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At Hacker House, we have a saying: “All computers are broken.” A hacker does not “break” a computer, network, or software; rather, the computer was already broken to begin with, and the hacker shows you just how broken it is. Modern-day computing is built on a foundation of trust and naivety that predates modern commerce. Security simply wasn't there by design in the beginning, and (almost) everything since then had to be built on this unstable base.

Being accountable for the security of information within any organization today is a bold task. That job typically resides with an organization's CISO. The CISO is responsible for ensuring that an organization's IT infrastructure and data (including digital and nondigital data, such as paper records) are adequately protected from disaster, whether it be a system failure, natural phenomena, or malicious cyberattack. In smaller organizations, the official job title of CISO may not exist, in which case the business owner or CEO will probably take on this role. It is a huge responsibility to keep company assets safe from the relentless, invisible, and ubiquitous attacks that constitute cybercrime. If something goes wrong (which sadly it so often does), it can go badly wrong. A data breach can result in grave financial and reputational losses for businesses, and CISOs can lose their career or business—all from the click of a mouse and a few keystrokes of a tech-savvy attacker.

CISOs practice information security, often shortened to infosec, a term that is used to describe an entire industry sector. Infosec means protecting data and preventing access to computer systems from unauthorized entities. Infosec involves balancing the usability of computer systems and their software with security. A completely secure system, if such a thing could exist, would likely be totally unusable for most businesses and users. For example, imagine a computer unplugged from the Internet, locked in a vault, and buried beneath the surface of the earth in a faraday cage to prevent external interaction.

Since organizations must open themselves up and allow the public (and employees) to connect to their services, a completely secure system isn't a possibility except for extreme edge cases. Let's look at a few of the challenges that a CISO may face.

In 2019, there were many high-profile cases of large organizations getting hacked.

• Whatsapp, an instant messaging application, was found to be vulnerable to an attack that would allow the attacker to take control of a victim's smartphone and negate the effects of Whatsapp's end-to-end encryption. This encryption allowed users to send private messages to one another (Whatsapp's greatest selling point).
• Security company Trend Micro had customer records stolen by its own employee. Those records were used to make scam calls to customers to defraud them. This case highlights the importance of internal security controls and not just the protection of public-facing services.
• Credit card provider Capital One had the personal details of more than 100 million customers stolen by a malicious hacker who supposedly exploited a misconfigured web application firewall—a technology designed to protect websites from attack! The stolen records consisted of names, physical addresses, Social Security numbers, and bank details. After the news hit in July 2019, Capital One projected attack-related costs of up to $150 million.
• In December 2019, UK company Travelex hit the headlines when it was affected by a ransomware attack. In a ransomware attack, attackers effectively steal data and demand a ransom for its return. The ransom in this case was $6 million, although it appears that Travelex was able to recover its data without paying the criminals. This cannot be said of all organizations and individuals that have been affected by ransomware.

These are just a tiny fraction of the breaches that take place all the time. If you think the frequency and impact of these hacks is scary, then consider that this situation is only projected to become worse. The number of potential vulnerabilities within companies and the volume of data, as well as our legal and moral responsibilities to that data, are increasing at exponential rates.

Moreover, these threats are increasing much faster than traditional infosec's ability to handle them, with its reliance on expensive external penetration testers— that is, those with specialized skills designed to find and report an organization's computer security vulnerabilities. Consequently, CISOs find themselves in an almost impossible position—trying to protect more with diminishing resources. Something has to change.

Thankfully, it has. You're about to discover how purple teaming—the act of developing highly skilled internal security teams and strong corporate security cultures—is not only possible but also practical, simple, and cost-effective.

Purple teaming is the modern and efficient approach to corporate cybersecurity, and it is desperately needed in every business, whether small corporate outfits or multinational conglomerates. To put it another way, purple teams are essential for every company as they provide you with insight to how attackers operate and guidance on how to prevent attacks from succeeding.

The Stakes

Before we dive in to find out what purple teaming is and how it works, let's take a closer look at the hazardous context in which most CISOs and businesses currently operate.

What's Stolen and Why It's Valuable

Data is valuable. Data can be used to manipulate perceptions, transfer exorbitant amounts of money, win elections, take down competitors, get executives hired or fired, hold people and assets hostage, perhaps even start wars … the list goes on and on. To put it briefly, data is the new wealth generation for businesses. It's a big business.

Unfortunately, many companies (except the CIOs and CISOs in them, of course) do not realize the value of their data. “Why would anyone want to steal our photos or the login details used by receptionists?” Does this sound familiar? A better question to ask today is, “Why wouldn't they want to steal this data?” It really is best not to presume which data is or isn't valuable—it all is to an attacker. Malicious hackers value data because it can easily be traded on the black market for a quick buck if need be. Often, that's the only motivation an individual or group needs to steal data.

Data is defined as information in raw format that can be manipulated into usable information. Data is everywhere: payroll, sales figures, bank and credit card details, personal identification, emails, analytics, passwords, surveillance, statistics, government files, medical records, scientific reports, legal documents, subscription information, competitor websites, financial records … the list goes on, and on, and on. Of course, the “smarter” we get (smartphones, smartwatches, virtual assistants, smart plugs, smart thermostats, smart refrigerators, video doorbells, electric cars, smart door locks … again, it's a long list), the more data there is, or rather, the more unsecured data there is.

The Internet of Vulnerable Things

Unfortunately, as smart as devices have become, when it comes to security, the majority are not smart at all. Whether it's because manufacturers are unaware of or overwhelmed by the risks, or simply because they choose to ignore them (security investment impacts profit margins after all), millions of smart devices are being churned out every year absent of effective built-in security. These devices—billions of them—are used in homes and businesses every single day, and most of them put our valuable data at risk.

The reality, which CISOs know all too well, is that we do not have an Internet of Things (IoT)—we have an “Internet of Vulnerable Things.” CISOs now have to think twice before agreeing to the installation of smart thermostats throughout the company's property portfolio or whether board members should be wearing smartwatches (and that's if anyone even thinks to run those decisions by them first).

To top it off, companies are becoming increasingly ...