Showing posts with label Penetration Testing. Show all posts
7 Types of Hackers You Should Know
“A 15-year-old boy sits
behind a glowing black monitor, typing furiously. The green text streams across
his screen like a waterfall. His nervousness escalates dramatically as he sends
rapid-fire commands to the strained computer. Suddenly, he lets out a triumphant
laugh and proceeds to steal money.”
Such is the stereotypical view of a hacker.
Yet, there’s so much more to this fine art than Hollywood or the media
describes. Hackers are varied creatures and include these 7 types:
1.
Script Kiddie – Script Kiddies normally don’t care about hacking (if
they did, they’d be Green Hats. See below.). They copy code and use it for a
virus or an SQLi or something else. Script Kiddies will never hack for
themselves; they’ll just download overused software (LOIC or Metasploit, for
example) and watch a YouTube video on how to use it. A common Script Kiddie
attack is DoSing or DDoSing (Denial of Service and Distributed Denial of
Service), in which they flood an IP with so much information it collapses under
the strain. This attack is frequently used by the “hacker” group Anonymous, which doesn’t help anyone’s reputation.
2.
White Hat – Also known as ethical hackers, White Hat hackers are the
good guys of the hacker world. They’ll help you remove a virus or PenTest a
company. Most White Hat hackers hold a college degree in IT security or
computer science and must be certified to pursue a career in hacking.
3.
Black Hat – Also known as crackers, these are the men and women you
hear about in the news. They find banks or other companies with weak security
and steal money or credit card information. The surprising truth about their
methods of attack is that they often use common hacking practices they learned
early on.
4. Gray Hat – Nothing is ever just black or white; the same is true in
the world of hacking. Gray Hat hackers don’t steal money or information
(although, sometimes they deface a website or two), yet they don’t help people
for good (but, they could if they wanted to). These hackers comprise most of
the hacking world, even though Black Hat hackers garner most (if not all) of
the media’s attention.
5. Green Hat – These are the hacker “n00bz,” but unlike Script Kiddies,
they care about hacking and strive to become full-blown hackers. They’re often
flamed by the hacker community for asking many basic questions. When their
questions are answered, they’ll listen with the intent and curiosity of a child
listening to family stories.
6.
Red Hat – These are the vigilantes of the hacker world. They’re
like White Hats in that they halt Black Hats, but these folks are downright
SCARY to those who have ever tried so much as PenTest. Instead of reporting the
malicious hacker, they shut him/her down by uploading viruses, DoSing and
accessing his/her computer to destroy it from the inside out. They leverage
multiple aggressive methods that might force a cracker to need a new computer.
7.
Blue Hat – If a Script Kiddie took revenge, he/she might become a
Blue Hat. Blue Hat hackers will seek vengeance on those who’ve them angry. Most
Blue Hats are n00bz, but like the Script Kiddies, they have no desire to learn.
What is Penetration Testing and Why is It Important?
Penetration testing (otherwise known as pen testing, or the more general security testing) is the process of testing your applications for vulnerabilities, and answering a simple question: "What could a hacker do to harm my application, or organisation, out in the real world?".
An effective penetration test will usually involve a skilled hacker, or team of hackers. You purposefully ensure that the hacker(s) don't have access to any source code, and ask them to try to gain access to your systems. Penetration tests can be carried out on IP address ranges, individual applications, or even as little information as a company name.The level of access you give an attacker depends on what you are trying to test.
To give a few examples of penetration tests you could run:
1.You could give a team of penetration testers a company's office address, and tell them to try and gain access to their systems. The team could employ a huge range of differing techniques to try and break into the organisation, ranging from social engineering (e.g. asking a receptionist if they can take a look in a computer room to run safety checks, and installing USB keyloggers) through to complex application specific attacks.
2.A penetration tester could be given access to a version of a web application you haven't deployed yet, and told to try and gain access or cause damage by any means possible. The penetration tester will then employ a variety of different attacks against various parts of the application in an attempt to break in.
One thing which is common amongst all penetration tests, is that they should always have findings. There is no perfect system, and all organisations can take additional steps to improve their security. The purpose of a penetration test is to identify key weaknesses in your systems and applications, to determine how to best allocate resource to improve the security of your application, or organisation as a whole.
Why Are Penetration Tests Important?
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1.They can give security personnel real experience in dealing with an intrusion. A penetration test should be done without informing staff, and will allow an organisation to test whether its security policies are truly effective. A penetration test can be imagined much like a fire drill.
2.It can uncover aspects of security policy that are lacking. For example, many security policies give a lot of focus to preventing and detecting an attack on an organisation's systems, but neglect the process of evicting an attacker. You may uncover during a penetration test that whilst your organisation detected attacks, that security personnel could not effectively remove the attacker from the system in an efficient way before they caused damage.
3.They provide feedback on the most at risk routes into your company or application. Penetration testers think outside of the box, and will try to get into your system by any means possible, like a real world attacker would. This could reveal lots of major vulnerabilities your security or development team never considered. The reports generated by penetration tests provide you with feedback on prioritising any future security investment.
4.Penetration testing reports can be used to help train developers to make fewer mistakes. If developers can see how an outside attacker broke into an application or part of an application they helped develop, they will be more motivated to improve their security education, and avoid making similar errors in the future.
