What's with all the hackers in the news today?

11 years ago

MissTerrak,

There ARE a lot of reasons to follow. Maybe they REALLY want to put that plan into place so THEY get rich and control the internet. Their driving CLAIM is that it is for security. The TRUTH is power and control.

Steve

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MissTerraK

11 years ago

Steve,

Is your response regarding this sentence?

But now the government is less comfortable with that silence because the hackers are targeting firms responsible for the American power grid, water supply, and other pieces of critical infrastructure.

If so, I hadn't thought about it that way. Hmm...

Terra

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seasoned

11 years ago

Originally Posted by MissTerraK

Steve,

Is your response regarding this sentence?
If so, I hadn't thought about it that way. Hmm...

Terra

Well, various groups and concerns have recently popped up and the ******ALL****** have ONE thing in common. Tied to some stupid proposal! I saw this type of pattern long ago, but always just described it. It turns out IT HAS A NAME! What is the Hegelian Dialectic?

Steve

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Cyber war. This isn't new, but the extent to which it permeates nearly everything that's connected to the network is.

Here's the fun part: You may be a weapon of the enemy and not even know.

One of the biggest threats, outside of truly covert hacking, is the botnet. If your computer is infected with a bot, you never know who's at the other end. It could be some script kiddie in Pakistan, or a Russian criminal gang, or a member of Anonymous, or a terrorist group, a foreign government, or potentially even your own government. (If state-sponsored botnets aren't already a reality, which I suspect is the case, they will be very soon.)

Infected computers are often called "zombies," which gives new, and very real, meaning to the phrase "zombie apocalypse."

When one of the bigger ones was taken out (allegedly) this past summer, it was believed to infect several hundred thousand machines and able to send something like 40 BILLION spams per day. Those same resources could be used for all sorts of other malicious purposes.

Cutwail is still around, I believe, and can supposedly do over 70 billion spams a day. I forget what other capabilities that one has.

You can even hire the use of illegal botnets for harassment or revenge, or create your own simple ones fairly easily.

The designers of these things are smart. And they're moving toward server-based infiltrations, so that Linux systems with direct, high-bandwidth connections are now the preferred targets for infection. More power, more access, and more speed.

Nasty stuff. Truly dangerous.

Paul

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MissTerraK

11 years ago

Wow Paul!

Those are all things I've never even considered! Thank you for that info!

I'm beginning to think that being a techietard could be more than just an embarrassment, but could be downright dangerous!

All of a sudden, I'm feeling very vulnerable. Then on the other hand, it's not like I have valuable sensitive information.

Geez, my head is still swimming.

Terra

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seasoned

11 years ago

Originally Posted by MissTerraK

Wow Paul!

Those are all things I've never even considered! Thank you for that info!

I'm beginning to think that being a techietard could be more than just an embarrassment, but could be downright dangerous!

All of a sudden, I'm feeling very vulnerable. Then on the other hand, it's not like I have valuable sensitive information.

Geez, my head is still swimming.

Terra

Don't feel stupid(referring to the techietard reference). The REALLY scary part about this is that ANYONE can fall prey. I think even the movie wargames talked about it, and the terminator and "the net" certainly did, but a hacker can hack into ONE system and create a virus, or a neat little program(which could even be a video), and let the virus infect all, or publicize the little program. If the hacker plays his/her cards right nobody would be able to track them and they could set a disaster to happen at a certain time or event. They could even steal info, and use the whole net as a supercomputer. The terminator and the net BOTH did that. terminator with a virus, and the net with a trojan(Supposedly to INCREASE security, but it created a back door!). I just WISH that were really fiction. BTW The "neat little program" concept I spoke of is called a "TROJAN", from the story about the TROJAN HORSE.

One time, corporations all over the nation shut down their email, etc.... WHY? Because they got infected with a worm called the "SQL SLAMMER WORM". LUCKILY, it only affected people using M/S SQL server.

When I first got on the internet, I never downloaded a binary. I downloaded a trusted source from the original location and compiled it. I even often looked through it. Of course, today, that is just a fond memory.

steve

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Josh Monroe

11 years ago

The Burger King hacking was related to the recent "horse meat scandal" where big food chains/supermarkets etc were found to have in some cases 100% horse meat in beef related products.

I think the hacking was related to one of the protests about that (at least thats what's being reported by the news)

But mainly, the recent surge in hacking being reported by the media is to "scare" the general public so that when the time comes for the government to pass the new "privacy laws" instead of people really seeing what they are about, they will use the "privacy laws" as a way of "protecting" the general public against these hacking threats, thus the public who are maybe mis-informed, or don't really understand how the internet and such work, will welcome them with open arms.

Basically, in short - propaganda.

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John Durham

11 years ago

What do you call a Whopper in Britain?

"Trigger"

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Khemosabi

11 years ago

Originally Posted by John Durham

What do you call a Whopper in Britain?

"Trigger"

Gosh John, thanks for not saying "Khemosabi"!!

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Josh,

But mainly, the recent surge in hacking being reported by the media is to "scare" the general public so that when the time comes for the government to pass the new "privacy laws" instead of people really seeing what they are about, they will use the "privacy laws" as a way of "protecting" the general public against these hacking threats, thus the public who are maybe mis-informed, or don't really understand how the internet and such work, will welcome them with open arms.

Basically, in short - propaganda.

While I don't deny that some pols will use things like this for action that's too broad, pretending this isn't a deadly serious problem is extremely unhelpful.

Do you have even an inkling of the potential damage that can be caused by these botnets?

Paul

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John Durham

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Paul Myers

Josh,While I don't deny that some pols will use things like this for action that's too broad, pretending this isn't a deadly serious problem is extremely unhelpful.

Do you have even an inkling of the potential damage that can be caused by these botnets?

Paul

Im sure that many of us are already victims... the only thing one can do is try to work on, in full knowledge that others are onlooking...or buy a new PC every few months. I wish I knew an answer for this sort of thing.

Is there a list of things we can do to avoid being victimized Paul?

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SandraLarkin

Banned 11 years ago

The government along with it's propaganda arm "the media" want to censor and have full control over the internet so that is where it is coming from.

It's so transparent anymore.

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KingRoyal

11 years ago

World War Three, think about this, twenty bucks it happens over Cyberspace.

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linkmetro

11 years ago

Yep, I feel the pain. My sites just got hacked through my host. Interesting they hacked in to sites which domains have large cities name in it( like ny, lv etc...)

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John Durham

11 years ago

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Im sure that many of us are already victims... the only thing one can do is try to work on, in full knowledge that others are onlooking...or buy a new PC every few months. I wish I knew an answer for this sort of thing.

There is no answer, other than disconnecting critical systems from the network, and making sure they're not connected to anything that's ever connected to the network.

I'm not talking about stuff like identity or data theft, nasty as those can be on a personal level. I'm talking mass damage.

As a really simple example, consider what would happen if these botnets were used to flood or overwhelm the 911 systems in a major city on a bad weather day. Or maybe in several large cities at once.

Hot day in Chicago. No fire, police, or ambulance service for two days. What happens when word gets out? And what if they manage to take down the water system controls at the same time?

Tiniest tip of a very large iceberg.

Is there a list of things we can do to avoid being victimized Paul?

Practice safe hex.

You can reduce the odds of being used by these creeps, but never completely guarantee you won't have one or more computers zombied. And, in situations like those mentioned above, it doesn't matter if your machine isn't affected, because there are hundreds of millions of people out there who don't even know this is a potential problem.

Paul

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Patrician

11 years ago

What I see is a connection to terrorism.

Bin Laden spoke it out loud, while I am sure many governments, fanatics etc covet the same dream - one of his declared intentions was to bring the USA financial system to its knees - I hate to give him the satisfaction but he had 'success' to a degree in that regard -

... and beyond all the costs directly associated with 9/11 and all the other murderous Al Quaida stunts - look at what has happened to everything as a direct or indirect result of us waking up one day and realizing - Omigod - we are not invincible - and we are vulnerable from the inside (the most dangerous place). It cost us big money all the way around, no matter what perspective you have.

Decades ago the "Nigerian Conspiracy" prior to it being called the '419 Conspiracy' (419 is their judicial code for fraud) - way before the Internet, working in corporate banking when the Bank Secrecy Act (anti-money laundering) was born, we were notified with booklets about the conspirators - and their public 'mission statement' was/is to 'collapse the US financial system'. (even photographs of this at that time 'small' band of crooks).

Maybe they are not terrorists in the same sense as Al Quida and hackers, but the result is the same - billions lost if not by individuals, by the credit card and insurance that protects the money from fraud, etc. We see now after the recent 'economic' farce (buyouts etc) - it is possible to actually collapse a huge financial institution - so we can't keep thumbing our nose thinking - we got more where that came from - we are bleeding money to keep one step ahead of all forms of terrorism -

... and (a small army of warriors) here know and express freely, at least in an abstract sense their awareness of the power of the 'agent provocateur' - to incite hysteria so that more oppressive laws will be applied - of course impeding nobody but the innocent in many cases -

While 'in spirit' I can 'empathize' with groups like Anonymous who target the bullies - because they can - of course I do not condone anything that for whatever it may demonstrate, costs even more money to mitigate.

... oh I remember fondly when hackers did stunts to show us where we have breaches in security - as a kind of 'Scout' to help us protect ourselves. I thought they were so smart in those days - just great examples of intelligence -

Now of course they are bent - and smart on steroids is possible as we see with the level of attack we are under now. Nothing is safe. Not even the DOD/pentagon -

Sleep tight tonight!

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John Durham

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Patrician

While 'in spirit' I can 'empathize' with groups like Anonymous who target the bullies - because they can - of course I do not condone anything that for whatever it may demonstrate, costs even more money to mitigate.

The problem is that people call out bullies based on what I heard Paul refer to once as "Imagined Slights", and not on sound judgement or thorough understanding of the facts...

You have very immature minds with too much power. The internet is like a loaded machine gun in a serial killers hands in those cases.

It's like giving a person power over a group of people, who is full of resentment and wants to act it out. The acts are not always carried out with noble intentions.

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seasoned

11 years ago

Well, as some of you know, I am AGAINST copyprotection. The main reason being that it limits innocent access and just helps encourage others. Others always find a way. Frankly, for the internet, I would prefer a kind of logical firewall. That IS the way it was supposed to be, the way it was imagined, the way it was originally, etc....

Microsoft eventually at least TRIED, in a half %^&* way to take care of it with XP SP2. They carried that onto vista and 7 and probably 8. I doubt 8 is any better though.

Ironically, Windows has something designed to have no security, and they decided to have even browsers use it.

Anyway, my point is simply that whatever anti virus program you use, they will always work around it. ALSO, if you go onto an internet site, they may use existing windows software to load viruses. And EVEN if windows catches them, the vague messages will give you only about a 50/50 chance of preventing the infection.

So, as paul said, there isn't much you can do.

Steve

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ZephyrIon

11 years ago

Some lucky ******* was probably packet sniffing and got a hold of the user account by accident at a coffee shop or something and went nuts with it. Lol.

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Originally Posted by ZephyrIon

Some lucky ******* was probably packet sniffing and got a hold of the user account by accident at a coffee shop or something and went nuts with it. Lol.

The BK info? Unlikely, but certainly possible. Setting your social networking accounts to always log in securely is the most basic security recommendation for those, but most people don't know it's even an option, much less a near-requirement.

Paul

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seasoned

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Paul Myers

The BK info? Unlikely, but certainly possible. Setting your social networking accounts to always log in securely is the most basic security recommendation for those, but most people don't know it's even an option, much less a near-requirement.

Paul

Yeah, google and their services have the same option.

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Steve,

Yeah, google and their services have the same option.

Great point. I have one project that involves a lot of wi-fi, and I only use Gmail for that. I use it for almost nothing else that's outbound, but the secure connection option is huge there.

Want to see something genuinely scary? Go to any crowded place with wi-fi and spy on the users. A coffee shop, public library, or (hold on to your hats) a conference for online marketers.

Paul

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seasoned

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Paul Myers

Want to see something genuinely scary? Go to any crowded place with wi-fi and spy on the users. A coffee shop, public library, or (hold on to your hats) a conference for online marketers.

Paul

Do you mean sniff, or just watch? What exactly are you talking about there?

As for online marketers, some were talking HERE about accepting cards WITHOUT SSL! That really is illegal by the letter of the law, and hopefully people are aware of the risks now so a lack of SSL on the cc entry could SEVERELY cut back on business. There IS a reason why every bank I have ever seen, clickbank, CCBILL, paypal, amazon, etc... use it.

There is actually open source software, even on sourceforge, to sniff lines. You don't use SSL, and people can see every character!

Steve

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Paul Myers 11 years ago

Steve,

Do you mean sniff, or just watch?

Sniffing. Try it at lunchtime or in the early evening at a downtown Starbucks if you really want a shock.

Paul
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- seasoned 11 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Paul Myers
  
  Steve,Sniffing. Try it at lunchtime or in the early evening at a downtown Starbucks if you really want a shock.
  
  Paul
  
  WOW. I'm going to have to get a sniffer and look.
  
  Steve
  
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KimW

11 years ago

as far as a couple of comments made further up,those people are called keyboard bullies.
They can do online what they would never have the courage to do irl.

Back in my younger days I remember when a hacker was someone that smoked too many cigarettes......

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John Durham

11 years ago

This is why I am always leary when someone PM's with "Hey will you click this link and check out my..." or whatever. Is it any less dangerous if you just go to the url manually Steve?

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seasoned

11 years ago

Originally Posted by John Durham

This is why I am always leary when someone PM's with "Hey will you click this link and check out my..." or whatever. Is it any less dangerous if you just go to the url manually Steve?

There is a nasty bug that at least IE had for YEARS!!!!!!!! It may STILL be there. Anyway, it allowed you to appear to go to one URL when it was really going to an entirely different URL. If you cut and paste, you can see the otherwise hidden part, and it is safer. ALSO, if a post is HTML, you can have a name TOTALLY different from the link. So cut and paste is the best.

You have a reason to be suspicious though. And within the last 14 months, I have gotten at least TWO emails that seemed to be from trusted people. One from a close friend, and one from my father. THEY were bad. They were both infected. Some viruses actually read outlook, and send emails to everyone in your contact list. Luckily, they were so vague, unrecognizable, and out of sorts, that I didn't click.

Steve

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Steve,

There is a nasty bug that at least IE had for YEARS!!!!!!!! It may STILL be there. Anyway, it allowed you to appear to go to one URL when it was really going to an entirely different URL

There's a name for that bug now. It's pretty obscure, but the cool kids all know it as hypertext markup language. It's particularly pernicious...

Paul

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seasoned

11 years ago

Originally Posted by Paul Myers

Steve,There's a name for that bug now. It's pretty obscure, but the cool kids all know it as hypertext markup language. It's particularly pernicious...

Paul

NO, as I recall, it uses an at sign(@). You click on the link, and it appears in the browser address bar like AMAZON.COM, but it is NOT amazon.com. BTW, it is ok to say HTML!

BTW you CAN'T do what I am talking about with normal HTML. You could EMULATE it with javascript, or create another site, and use IFRAME, so it looks like it is going to YOUR site, but goes to another. But to have the browser say that it is going to a site you do NOT own, and goes to another, that is another thing. There WAS a big stink about it YEARS ago.

BTW, ddn't you notice the line I had that said "ALSO, if a post is HTML, you can have a name TOTALLY different from the link."?

Steve

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kenmichaels

11 years ago

Originally Posted by seasoned

NO, as I recall, it uses an at sign(@).

Once upon a time you could do

httpS://www.google.com@somethngNefar...adpagetolandon

and the browsers would ignore the httpS://www.google.com@

and then send you to http://somethngNefariuose.com/badpagetolandon

no split frames OR iframes needed.

that bug died out at least 8 or 9 years ago.

but it was super dangerous while it lasted.

Until the browsers were patched, it was the responsibility of
the internal security to create patches and work a rounds. ie firewall scripts
and link blocking.

I remember this, because i was one of the guys who had to sit in discussion
meetings about this exact issue and then provide solutions for it.

another world ago. Feels like a life time.

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Paul Myers

11 years ago

Steve,

BTW, ddn't you notice the line I had that said "ALSO, if a post is HTML, you can have a name TOTALLY different from the link."?

Yeah, but I'm used to you being confusing.

That wasn't a bug. You're talking about the log-in protocol hack. It's a play off the system for including usernames and passwords in a URL. If memory serves, the format is like this:

http://username:password@talkbiz.com

Trying it now, Firefox brings up this warning:

You are about to log in to the site "talkbiz.com" with the username "username", but the website does not require authentication. This may be an attempt to trick you.

Is "talkbiz.com" the site you want to visit?

They do get sneaky. One that I had to admire, just for sheer alertness, was the gimmick of putting an image into a page using FTP as the linking protocol. Trickiest email "harvesting" technique I'd seen to that point. This was a long time back, and doesn't work now, AFAIK. It was quite popular, though, and almost unheard of among general users.

Paul