Brief Insight into the life of a convicted...

[CowGirl]

Hacker. I found this an interesting read.

http://mashable.com/2009/09/15/insight-hacker/

[Darren Dirt]

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/9kdlx/i_am_a_convicted_hacker_ama/

WOW... this sums up the kind of thinking that Just Makes Sense when you read it, but most folks (especially "suits") would never even consider [...before it's too late...]

1) Find a custom admin interface.

2) Get read access to a db from an SQL-injection.

3) Find tables corresponding to the custom admin interface.

4) Crack the admin password.

5) Log in and upload a new picture, containing PHP.

6) Exploit buggy custom cron-scripts that delete directories in /tmp once a day.

7) Wait for exploit to trigger..

8 ) Infect a binary on an NFS-share.

9) Wait for someone to use the binary..

10) Enjoy access to the main servers.

Something like that

Moral: don't offer a "custom" admin interface unless it's completely hard-coded with ... well, what kind of admin authorization stuff would you want to put deep inside code to make it easy to mess with but still secure? dang...



Also, this really is disturbing:

johntheripper 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago
I have found its best to have a team member who works specifically with social engineering. That way, he focuses on the boring (sociology) aspect of hacking, while the rest of us all have our own strengths and weaknesses. I work with a team member who is exclusively a social hacker, and I have never seen any like him. He was able to walk into a microsoft building by approaching the elevator at the same time as an entering employee, stopping, pretending to search for his wallet, getting on his phone and pretending to phone someone in the office, asking them to come down to let him in. He hung up, engaged in some small-talk with the employee who was about to enter the building, and the guy was able to determine (incorrectly) that he was a legitimate employee. Unlocked the door and let him in. Of course, once he was in, the rest of us were in.

^ No wonder most M$ bloatware is so buggy... it's not real M$ staff doing the coding! It's teh hackerz!

[Lazybones]

Tempted to find a copy of ?Hacking Exposed? and give it a good read.

However as a dev trained net admin I think I already know many security weaknesses.

[Thorin]

What's funny is that in the chattering he mentions how many sites are vulnerable to SQL injection attacks...  It seems weird to me, but there are lots of developers who don't seem to know the basics of security.  And that's scary!

[Lazybones]

What's funny is that in the chattering he mentions how many sites are vulnerable to SQL injection attacks...  It seems weird to me, but there are lots of developers who don't seem to know the basics of security.  And that's scary!

I would actually say most don't make time, know or care.

[Darren Dirt]

Here's a fascinating blog of a real-life hacker... one of the white-hat guys, by the look of it... really gives some insight into the typical job he is contracted to do (if you read between the lines)

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50




and he's not afraid to vocalize viewpoints unpopular in the world of free software, Linux, etc...
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2009/08/sins-of-fsf.html
http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2009/09/no-downloads-barred-net-neutrality.html

[Thorin]

Interesting reading, that.  He's got an older article where he notices there's a wifi hotspot on a plan in the air, and decides to check the security.