Hacking: The Next Generation

451 Pages·2009·12.64 MB·English

by  Nitesh Dhanjani

Hacking: The Next Generation
Nitesh Dhanjani
Billy Rios
Brett Hardin
Editor
Mike Loukides
Copyright © 2009 Nitesh Dhanjani
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Preface
Attack vectors that seemed fantastical in the past are now a
reality. The reasons for this are twofold. First, the need for
mobility and agility in technology has made the traditional
perimeter-based defense model invalid and ineffective. The
consumption of services in the cloud, the use of wireless access
points and mobile devices, and the access granted to
contingent workers have made the concept of the perimeter
irrelevant and meaningless. This issue is further amplified by
the increased complexity of and trust placed on web browsers,
which when successfully exploited can turn the perimeter
inside out. Second, the emergence of Generation Y culture in
the workforce is facilitating the use of social media and
communication platforms to the point where citizens are
sharing critical data about themselves that has been nearly
impossible to capture remotely in the past.
The new generation of attackers is aware of risks in emerging
technologies and knows how to exploit the latest platforms to
the fullest extent. This book will expose the skill set and
mindset that today’s sophisticated attackers employ to abuse
technology and people so that you can learn how to protect
yourself from them.
Audience
This book is for anyone interested in learning the techniques
that the more sophisticated attackers are using today. Other
books on the topic have the habit of rehashing legacy attack
and penetration methodologies that are no longer of any use to
criminals. If you want to learn how the techniques criminals
use today have evolved to contain crafty tools and procedures
that can compromise a targeted individual or an enterprise,
this book is for you.
Assumptions This Book Makes
This book assumes you are familiar with and can graduate
beyond elementary attack and penetration techniques, such as
the use of port scanners and network analyzers. A basic
understanding of common web application flaws will be an
added plus.
Contents of This Book
This book is divided into 10 chapters. Here’s a summary of
what we cover:
Chapter 1, Intelligence Gathering: Peering Through the
Windows to Your Organization
To successfully execute an attack against any given
organization, the attacker must first perform reconnaissance
to gather as much intelligence about the organization as
possible. In this chapter, we look at traditional attack
methods as well as how the new generation of attackers is
able to leverage new technologies for information gathering.
Chapter 2, Inside-Out Attacks: The Attacker Is the Insider
Not only does the popular perimeter-based approach to
security provide little risk reduction today, but it is in fact
contributing to an increased attack surface that criminals
are using to launch potentially devastating attacks. The
impact of the attacks illustrated in this chapter can be
extremely devastating to businesses that approach security
with a perimeter mindset where the insiders are generally
trusted with information that is confidential and critical to
the organization.
Chapter 3, The Way It Works: There Is No Patch
The protocols that support network communication, which
are relied upon for the Internet to work, were not
specifically designed with security in mind. In this chapter,
we study why these protocols are weak and how attackers
have and will continue to exploit them.
Chapter 4, Blended Threats: When Applications Exploit Each
Other
The amount of software installed on a modern computer
system is staggering. With so many different software
packages on a single machine, the complexity of managing
the interactions between these software packages becomes
increasingly complex. Complexity is the friend of the next-
generation hacker. This chapter exposes the techniques
used to pit software against software. We present the
various blended threats and blended attacks so that you can
gain some insight as to how these attacks are executed and
the thought process behind blended exploitation.
Chapter 5, Cloud Insecurity: Sharing the Cloud with Your
Enemy
Cloud computing is seen as the next generation of
computing. The benefits, cost savings, and business
justifications for moving to a cloud-based environment are
compelling. This chapter illustrates how next-generation
hackers are positioning themselves to take advantage of and
abuse cloud platforms, and includes tangible examples of
vulnerabilities we have discovered in today’s popular cloud
platforms.
Chapter 6, Abusing Mobile Devices: Targeting Your Mobile
Workforce
Today’s workforce is a mobile army, traveling to the
customer and making business happen. The explosion of
laptops, wireless networks, and powerful cell phones,
coupled with the need to “get things done,” creates a
perfect storm for the next-generation attacker. This chapter
walks through some scenarios showing how the mobile
workforce can be a prime target of attacks.
Chapter 7, Infiltrating the Phishing Underground: Learning
from Online Criminals?
Phishers are a unique bunch. They are a nuisance to
businesses and legal authorities and can cause a significant
amount of damage to a person’s financial reputation. In this
chapter, we infiltrate and uncover this ecosystem so that we
can shed some light on and advance our quest toward
understanding this popular subset of the new generation of
criminals.
Chapter 8, Influencing Your Victims: Do What We Tell You,
Please
The new generation of attackers doesn’t want to target only
networks, operating systems, and applications. These
attackers also want to target the people who have access to
the data they want to get a hold of. It is sometimes easier
for an attacker to get what she wants by influencing and
manipulating a human being than it is to invest a lot of time
finding and exploiting a technical vulnerability. In this
chapter, we look at the crafty techniques attackers employ
to discover information about people to influence them.
Chapter 9, Hacking Executives: Can Your CEO Spot a Targeted
Attack?
When attackers begin to focus their attacks on specific
corporate individuals, executives often become the prime
target. These are the “C Team” members of the company—
for instance, chief executive officers, chief financial officers,
and chief operating officers. Not only are these executives in
higher income brackets than other potential targets, but
also the value of the information on their laptops can rival
the value of information in the corporation’s databases. This
chapter walks through scenarios an attacker may use to
target executives of large corporations.
Chapter 10, Case Studies: Different Perspectives
This chapter presents two scenarios on how a determined
hacker can cross-pollinate vulnerabilities from different
processes, systems, and applications to compromise
businesses and steal confidential data.
In addition to these 10 chapters, the book also includes two
appendixes. Appendix A provides the source code samples from
Chapter 2, and Appendix B provides the complete Cache_snoop.pl
script, which is designed to aid in exploiting DNS servers that
are susceptible to DNS cache snooping.
Conventions Used in This Book
The following typographical conventions are used in this book:
Italic
Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, file
extensions, pathnames, directories, and Unix utilities
Constant width
Indicates commands, options, switches, variables, attributes,
keys, functions, types, classes, namespaces, methods,
modules, properties, parameters, values, objects, events,
event handlers, XML tags, HTML tags, macros, the contents
of files, and the output from commands
Constant width bold
Shows commands and other text that should be typed
literally by the user
Constant width italic
Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied
values
Note ✎
This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note.
Warning ☠
This icon indicates a warning or caution.
Using Code Examples
This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you
may use the code in this book in your own configurations and
documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission
unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the material.
For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of
code from this book does not require permission. Selling or
distributing a CD-ROM of examples from this book does require
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We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution
usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For
example: “Hacking: The Next Generation, by Nitesh Dhanjani, Billy
Rios, and Brett Hardin. Copyright 2009, Nitesh Dhanjani, 978-
0-596-15457-8.”
If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or
the permission given here, feel free to contact us at
[email protected].