Cybersecurity Ethical Hacking

Understanding Ethical Hacking

Hacking, But Ethically…

An Ethical Hacker is the good guy. He acts into powerful Internet Security Systems of Governments and large organizations, not to harm them but to find faults with their security cover, and provide the cures. The Ethical hacker, who is also, referred to as the ‘White Hat’, acts by locating weaknesses and vulnerabilities of very large information systems, much as Malicious Hackers would. But he does this to improve the strength of the shield of security cover. And in general, it is done with knowledge or awareness of his employers and paymasters, who are the owners of the security wall that he is investigating. In this review, we study this shadowy world of murky goings on, and dark deeds in the language of Cryptology. This is Ethical hacking Explained in our own layman’s language.

Types of Hacking

Just like Black and White, there are Malicious and Ethical Hackers. But there is so much more to this fine art than the media describes. By the latest classification, there are said to be 7 different types of Hackers. Of these 7, only the last hacker has a full name to himself (‘Script Kiddie’). The remaining 6 are referred to as ‘Hats’ of different colors. Here is the full list:

  • White Hat: These are the Good Guys, The Unsung Heroes of the hacker world. They are known as Ethical Hackers. Their in-depth knowledge and brilliance mark them out from the rest. They have the specialized skill-set to remove a Virus or Pen Test a company. White Hats are educated, experienced and at the forefront of Cryptology. Many of them hold college degrees in Computer Science or IT Security. They even have certification these days. It is called CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) and it is given out, though rarely, from the EC Council.
  • Black Hat: These are the actual predators we know about. They are the crooked masterminds behind Cyber Crimes. They ply their trade by hunting for banks, companies, individuals and governments with weak security, and proceed to crack their security systems. Then they proceed to steal money directly by transfer of accounts or Databases, to remove information about account holders, such as Credit Cards. Often their methods, while complex to the guardians of security, are not actually impenetrable, and are often the result of their activities as Wiz-kids when young.
  • Grey Hat: In this world of hacking, also, nothing is ever Black and White, just as in the real world. These malicious Hackers do not have money or information on their minds when hacking. Their aims are far more devious. Sometimes they deface websites, but there are many more things they do which are harmful for people, and sometimes these are done with malicious intent. Though Black Hackers attract most of the attention of the media, it is often the Grey Hat Hackers who cause the greatest damage silently. In-fact Law enforcement of all countries consider Grey Hat Hacking to constitute the majority of World Cyber Crime.
  • Green Hat: These Hackers are sincere about Hacking as an art form, and as a technology, and spend quality time perfecting their skills in hacking. Their extreme curiosity and urge for hacking knowledge is sometimes felt by the hacking community to put Malicious Hackers into real danger. These are the real experts in the hacking world, but often on the wrong side.
  • Red Hat: If Black Hats are the Killers of the hacking world, Red Hats are the hunters and vigilantes. They do not go crying to the Law Enforcement to report a Cyber Crime, but employ their destructive firepower to demolish the operations of the Malicious Black Hat, and try to destroy him permanently. They employ some of the Black Hat tools and turn them against Black Hats themselves, such as DoS (Denial of Service), upload viruses to the Black Hat’s computer, and even destroy the computer inside-out.
  • Blue Hat: Blue Hackers are vengeful hackers, who use often rusty techniques or overused Software to create virus situation. Their knowledge level is low, but their desire to harm people is high enough to cause real damage.
  • Script Kiddie: Script Kiddies are low-brow hackers who copy code and use it for a virus or a SQLi. DoS or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) are their two typical tactics, where an IP is loaded with so much information that it collapses.

Ethical Hacker Number One

An Ethical Hacker is on the side of the angels now, but he was perhaps a super Black Hat once. The world’s most famous hacker Kevin Mitnick served five years for hacking into 40 major corporations. He is now a super White Hat Hacker, a trusted Security Consultant to governments and Fortune 500 Companies worldwide, and a Bestselling Author. This completes our article on Ethical hacking Explained.… Continue Reading

darknet market
Cybersecurity Dark Web

What Are Darknet Markets?

As the name denotes darknet market resembles to black market. Black marketing involves buying or selling of unlicensed goods or the unauthorized materials like weapons, guns, drugs or medicines which are stolen or not government listed. Money which is used in these markets is also black money as stolen cards or crypto currency as this does not involve any proof or paper regarding these transactions. It includes illegal drugs and steroids supplied with the help of counterfeit currency. These markets also include hackers for financial benefits and all types of cyber crimes like bank or private data leaking or hacking their personal accounts for blackmailing, financial frauds and cyber crimes for illegal activities. Brokers use stolen credit cards or unofficial accounts for their transactions in these markets and they also sell bank details and important documents like cards or key codes to other buyers and get a high price for it. So the darknet market involves all the illegal and unlicensed fraud events investing black money all over the world in these black markets.

You can see suppliers and buyers of drugs and steroids like cocaine, modafinil and many more in these markets at a very vast level as well as they sell alcoholic beverages too illegally. There is also sex trafficking that occurs on darknet markets. Popular adult sites like PornHub and some of the best hookup apps including Tinder and Fuckbook (seen here) have funded and supported efforts to fight these illegal activities and promote safe and consensual casual sex via their platforms. This is especially important for these adult companies to separate themselves from these illegal and unethical darknet markets. As they are not centralized so many frauds and scam cases are being reported on darknet markets.

Payments and Scams:

When people search for these markets, they get a referral link to register with them and then they can log in with some initial information and browse the material list. If they are making any trading transactions or buying something then they have to enter a PIN for making payments online so that they can get secured transactions. Most of the markets are using their forums and working procedure in English language but nowadays there are markets which are also working in Russian and Chinese languages. Some darknet markets also allow direct registration without any reference link or log in ID. Some of the news and media services sites give active information about these sites. These markets have transactions in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin etc for making decentralized transmissions because they don’t need any proof or legal authentication. When a user is interested in buying something via these markets then first after login and browsing he can send the money in the form of cryptocurrency to these online sites of black marketing. After that the vendor from which the good is being sold to the buyer can take his payment from these sites. So in short both buyer and vendor do the money transfer via the site. These transactions may be receipt or may be non receipt, according to the terms of the vendors. But there are many fraud cases being reported as per by the vendors and buyers too and due to minimal law actions they continue to make non secured trading business because if they are dealing in drugs, alcohol or weapons supplying then legally they can not do these transactions so instant and conveniently and that’s why with the help of cryptocurrency they make these decentralized tradings very instantly. Often vendors sell stolen goods and cyber data too by adding double or triple profit for them and people whose data is being stolen, have to buy that from the vendors for securing their personal information to be leaked and this leads into making scams and frauds to the buyers.

Safety:

They are not safe at all as many legal authorities have a keen eye on these markets and most of the transactions are unauthorized. When the illegal activities with some of the unlicensed materials are being held at a place, then it would be never safe to make money transactions in these markets. Most of the drug and alcohol mafias make money transfers in these markets to hide their black money and make the money investments unauthorized to remain safe from the eyes of the government and crime branch or FBI like legal agencies. So most of the illegal communities invest in them which don’t have a good background. As these transactions are anonymized, they are being done by Bitcoin mostly, via which buyers and vendors save it into the dark wallet to make it a safe and protective deal, however these deals mostly encourage scams that are not legally protected.

So, these markets are mostly involved in cryptomarketing of illegal and illicit products.… Continue Reading

Cybersecurity Web Security

INTRODUCTION TO WEB SECURITY: STAY SECURED FROM CYBER CRIMES

The internet is a pool of resources and stakeholders and there exist a connection between them called a network. When you are sharing something from one end to another, you would obviously like to keep it private. Ever since the evolution of communication over the internet has begun, attackers who have a strong knowledge over this field have emerged and harm people by spreading malware, ransomware, intruding in P2P conversations and much more. Due to this, websites, emails, messengers of different apps, social media accounts are in great threats. However, technologies have been implemented to get rid of these attacks by a lot of research and development. The administrators of web servers have to constantly maintain the infrastructure and software in order to stay protected. Web security consists of 2 main parts: internal and public. This is a relative type of security which is high when only a few resources are present. Web security is the one where security for web applications and sites are applied.

Types of security threats:

  • Cross-site scripting– it is a kind of vulnerability that is applied by bypassing a client side script in a manner in which the scripts at the other end is manipulated or new scripts are induced into the victim’s site which is viewed by other users as though you scripted it.
  • SQL injection– is the one in which malicious code is sent as a query to the database with the intention to project malware and destroy the data present in it.
  • Denial of service (DOS) – it is the type of malware where the attacker hacks a system and makes it unavailable for the user to access the system.
  • Buffer overflow– it is a type of error in which the user adds the data more than the limit of the size of the buffer specified in the program. For example, if the minimum limit of adding inputs of a particular buffer is 100 and the user enters 200 inputs, instead of discarding the command, if the inputs are taken, the buffer overflow occurs.

How do we get rid of these threats?

Well, earlier, when the attackers and their strategies were investigated and found, many security engineers came up with few technological applications that could be applied to get rid of these threats as a remedy as well as a prevention measure. Firstly, black box testing and white box testing is recommended to keep track of changes happening in the application being developed and security measures have been added to test if the application built is secure. Other than these, there are other applications like firewall which acts as a barrier to let only the secure applications to enter into the system. Firewalls are being advanced by providing proxy firewalls (this type will have two firewalls) for extra security and management. One advantage of this web security measures is that the vulnerabilities will be stored for the admin to analyze the vulnerability and further improvise the security more and more.

Continue Reading

Cloud Security Cybersecurity Web Security

A Big Name In Cybersecurity- McAfee

Cybersecurity refers to a collection of practices and measures that are meant to protect the computers, networks, programs and systems against cyber-attacks. Suck kind of attacks can take the form of malware, theft of data, denial of service, tampering of data or even unauthorized access. With the ever-growing cyber threat being that of transforming the ecosystem and molding the functions of cybersecurity. The very core of cyber security always involves safeguarding information and systems from harmful cyber threats.

McAfee is one of the leading cyber security programs that is providing advanced security solutions to consumers, small and large business businesses, enterprises, governments. The security technologies from McAfee makes use of unique and predictive capability that is powered by McAfee global threat intelligence. There are a lot of benefits when you choose McAfee cyber security program which include:

Security and Anti-Virus for the Home

McAfee offers the simplest and most effective means of protecting your data as well as identity as you navigate through your digital life across your connected devices. The best thing about the anti-virus program is that it offers you a piece of mind. The award-winning virus protection prevents viruses, malware, ransomware from infecting your PC, Mac or other mobile devices. It also offers safe web browsing where side step attacks before they even happen along with clear warnings of risky websites, files and links. This is important for families especially as kids now often experiment on the internet and there may be cyber threats from adult sites they may stumble upon or you may want to keep the off of sites like fuck book or other sites that are populated with content meant strictly for adults. It also offers a place where you can securely store and manage your passwords in a single location. It will also keep your PC from running and block auto-playing of videos as well as minimize bandwidth usage.

Security for Enterprises

Security solutions with transformation in mind protects data and stops threats from device cloud using an open and proactive intelligence driven approach. It is an essential antivirus software that exploits prevention, firewall and web control. Its applications include limiting the impact of suspicious files and zero-day malware by blocking behaviors and containing them before they can infect or spread your environment with advanced security options.

Threat Intelligence Network

While securing your devices against viruses, malware, file-less attacks as well as other threats home and away. McAfee has built a rich and widespread global threat intelligence network that allows us to constantly analyze and gather data on threats of over 500 million end points across the globe.

Cloud Security

Cloud security enables your business to accelerate with total visibility and control hybrid cloud environments. The cloud security program offers solution of data workload and protection across the entire cloud spectrum.

Endpoint Security

End point security provides protection of the entire digital terrain while delivering a cohesive understanding of the posture and risk. The end point security solution enables one to combat fileless, zero-day, ransomware and nuisance attacks with advanced augmented defense as well as a unified management experience.

Cybersecurity in an Evolving Digital Landscape

Over the last few decades the cyberspace landscape has evolved tremendously paving way for real time, borderless exchange of information communication. The kind of technology that is being created is pervasive and has become the integral part of our daily activities. From just answering and email, sharing files over the cloud or even adjusting your thermostat with a mobile device. You are simply exploring a vast cyberspace with inestimable capabilities. Technology is rapidly expanding and so is the ever-growing link of cybercrime.

Cybersecurity Threat Landscape

Governments, commercial enterprises and nonprofit organizations around the world are facing data breaches from cyber-attacks and financially motivated actors who are looking to exploit illegally obtained data. Most of the attacks are committed using ransomware, data manipulation, wiper attacks, intellectual property, rogue software, phishing and identifiable data theft.

Cyber attacks can be deployed using a combination of multiple reasons and carrying varying degree of damage severity. There exist three categories of cyber threats. Cyber espionage which involves attacks being committed to acquire illicit access to secret information stored in digital formats or computer networks. Cyberwarfare is often politically motivated and involves nation-states penetrating other nations to cause disruption and severe damage. This kind of attacks are often committed by hackers for strategic and military purposes. Cyber-terrorism entails the disruptive use of information technology in order to further the ideological or political agenda of the terrorist group.

Continue Reading

Cloud Security Cybersecurity

What is Cloud Security?

Most of the organizations these days have started using cloud technology. But when it comes to security, organizations are still afraid that whether cloud security is safe enough for them or not. All the organizations want the cloud systems which they are using should be safe and there should be no glitch in it. So, now we can understand how essential cloud security is. But before you judge it, it is important to know about it in a better way.

Cloud Security

It is a kind of technology that is been designed for the protection of the resources that are stored on the cloud or online. The control-based safeguards help in protecting the data and resources from any kind of data loss, data leakage, and theft. There are different ways in which security is being managed in the cloud systems. It, not just safeguards and protect the data but it also safeguards the applications, websites, and cloud infrastructure. No matter whether it is a public cloud or a private cloud or a hybrid cloud, there are various tools available that help in protecting and securing the data.

For those who are already using the cloud systems and cloud security, they must be aware that cloud security also includes data backup plan. Because, if any kind of security breach or data loss occurs, it will help retain that data. Not just this, but cloud security is also helpful in providing information or warning regarding any kind of threat to data, or potential attackers. It helps in detecting any such data threat issues, and try to resolve it using its protection technology. Cloud Security keeps improvising its processes and security control system so that it can strengthen and make the cloud system better.

Why use Cloud Security?

There are many small organizations that are not making use of cloud security. But there are some which are worried about the data they have stored in the cloud. It is completely on the organization, whether they want to make use of cloud security or not. But you should know that there can be security risks as there are shared resources on cloud computing. This can lead to different data security problems like data loss, data theft, and a few others. But if you will use the data security, you will be able to minimize these risks. By doing so you will be able to use cloud computing without any problem. As cloud computing continues to move towards personal use rather than mainly business, cloud security will become more important to individuals as well. Web security for a family currently is focused on antivirus and web privacy services. However, the consequence of unwanted eyes browsing adult content like a meet n fuck site are much less impactful than say an entire family’s data being stolen and misused. If you maintain a home computer system that utilizes cloud technology there are threats you need to consider. So, if you do not want any such data threat issues, you should get a cloud security plan.

How security is managed with the help of Cloud Security?

Those who are making use of Cloud Security or are planning to use the Cloud Security system should also know how it works or how it helps in keeping the data, websites, and web applications safe and secure. Different methods are being used for protecting the data, which we have mentioned here. Such as:

  • Access Control – You can restrict the access using the access control system. This is very helpful, especially for organizations that do not want to share all their data with the employees or with every department in their organization. With the help of this data security tool, the organization can provide access to only those files or data to the employees which are required. This helps in keeping the important data away from being stolen or from hackers.
  • Firewalls – Another and the most important part of cloud security is the firewalls. It helps in protecting the traffic on web applications and websites. It also helps in safeguarding the network perimeter.
  • Threat Intelligence – This helps in spotting or detecting security threats. It helps in safeguarding your critical and essential assets from data threats.
  • Disaster Recovery – As we already mentioned above that cloud security also provides one with the data backup plan. So, Disaster Recovery helps in doing that only by recovering the stolen or lost data.

Importance of Cloud Security

We have already told you above how essential cloud security is for all the organizations, businesses, and individuals who are making use of it. Now, let’s know how cloud security is important for us in different ways. 

  • Cloud security is important as it provides with the centralized security. There are different types of data and files present on the cloud. It is very important to manage all of these in a better way, and that is when the cloud security helps.
  • Cloud security also helps in reducing costs. It provides protection to the data 24 by 7. Human intervention is not required when cloud security is there. This reduces the cost by saving the cost that would have gone into investing in hardware for saving and storing important and critical data files.
  • No manual security is required when you are making use of cloud security. So, do not worry about the configuration and up-gradation of the software for safeguarding the data.

Continue Reading