#Hacking defined

When I started programming, over thirty years ago, a hack, to the people we followed, was a custom-written code snippet that would either fix a program, or add a new feature. It had a positive connotation to me as a six-year-old as my father and I hacked our Interact with our homemade binary input panel. I understood the simplicity of the machine, even then. While we could easily destroy, there was an art and a challenge in improving and improvising. Hacking had become, in effect, the act of creatively engineering, and testing repeatedly for the goal of success. We learned from our failed attempts and improvised. This process has always existed, given the act of hacking has created complex technologies like aviation, aerospace, advanced medicine, and personal computers to name a few.

Mainstream media portrayals of hacking however are almost always negative, so society believes hacking is inherently malevolent; this contradicts everything I have ever learned. Misunderstood by the masses due to the mainstream media's portrayal, the cultural wide-felt concept of hacking has evolved beyond computers to simply attempting non-standard methods of creative problem solving to derive a solution to a complex or often seemingly impossible issue or situation.

I had a physics professor who, profoundly, stated, “Everything is either directly or indirectly applicable to everything else.” This observation supports a core belief: if you engage in hacking, if you look at something in a different light or from a different perspective than everyone else, then new potential exists in understanding, simply by applying new insight or applicable knowledge. If your motives are good and you are ethically sound, this is never a bad practice. It is a practice however, and without practice and creativity, it's simply a monotonous routine without insight.

For example, bicycle engineers hacking their craft took to the skies on a whim, and brought the future of travel to new heights, quite literally. Scientists sent animals into space, not knowing what would happen, and yet they opened the door to an intellectual laboratory free of the limitations of our gravity-bound existence. When present-day doctors engineer viruses to use as delivery systems for cures, a definitely fear-instilling non-standard approach, amazing new discoveries in medicine are developed that have the potential to save billions of lives.  When a couple of college dropouts in a garage in California threw together a few electronic components to make a new kind of computer, they started a revolution that put computing power in billions of homes and schools worldwide. Their company, Apple, now puts computers in everyone’s hands, and most people can’t fathom what they’re holding, nor would they believe that it was created as a result of hacking.

My client for the current late night project I mentioned makes machines for a variety of applications, including repairing offshore oil delivery systems and sensitive systems in nuclear power plants. Too look at this positively, by hacking their website, I am better understanding the shortcomings of the system I am to protect and improve. If my clients’ web applications can better recognize and target their customers, this will ultimately allow them to improve usage of their machines, which in their industries, are safer than the alternative; not only for the operators, but also the environment. This means hacking can, by extension, do things like lead to fewer petroleum pollutants in seafood and connect equipment with operators enabling faster repairs in failing nuclear plants. There are definitely positive benefits to hacking that are overlooked; benefits that are often buried by negative stories. If we share the positive aspects of our efforts, we can cumulatively drown out the negative.

For most hackers, people who embody the concept of hacking, it is the way of life. By providing innovation through experimentation, ethical hackers are doing a positive service for humanity. Hacking is no more intrinsically mischievous than curiosity itself, and instead, it affords the hacker an unorthodox perspective in complicated, sometimes seemingly impossible situations. While people can do malicious things on computers, it doesn’t mean we should quash curiosity, nor should we resign a word embraced by many to a meaning that has long been denigrated. We should incorporate the art of hacking into our workflows, redefine the word hacking itself to mean something positive, and excel in observing from outside perspectives. It is our creativity and insight that improves the system.

What types of things happen when a web server gets hacked.

These are just some of the things, and it really depends on the server, the type of data being stored, whether it’s in a server farm, or if it’s actually at a facility like an office. The outcome for each of these can be massively bad depending on a variety of factors, because after all, a server being hacked is never really a good thing, unless you’re the one doing the hacking, and that’s only if you’re a black hat.

On most web servers there is code, acres and acres of code. If the server is using a dynamic language for page creation, like PHP or ASP, then there are likely database connections at play. These databases likely contain the information someone would normally expect to find on such a server. There are the usual types of information, username, password, name, e-mail address, etc. If the server hosts a medical site, it might have personal information, all of which should be encrypted where it is stored. If the server were for controlling something else, then it would likely have access to that something, like a web-controlled automation system for instance.

Why would it be hacked?

Different information has different values on the black market. Most of the usernames and passwords, and e-mail addresses have value because they can be used on other servers in order to gain access to something else (example): Website A is compromised, Twitter account is hacked with the same credentials. Things like Social Security numbers can be used to not only try to impersonate someone’s identity, but they can also be used to defraud the Social Security system with new fake accounts. Medical information is probably only beneficial to someone who would care about it, depending on the target. So if it contained medical info about a person who was in politics it might have a value if they had certain medical conditions that weren't disclosed to the public, but if it’s about Grandma’s arthritis, probably not; unless they’re going to use it for spamming or phishing Grandma for pain meds which could theoretically happen.

If the server’s housed in a server farm, it’s likely on a restricted network. Likely it doesn’t talk to anything else on that restricted network. While it could be used to pivot if the attacker gained access to things outside of the web server, or the website, it’s likely not going to happen. Usually what happens with a web server in a place like a server farm is hacked, it’s immediately used for its bandwidth in that prominent place: new databases are created, new websites hosted, traffic diverted, data and server farms have something everyone wants, real estate. If the server is locked down to prevent those things, then only the website is hacked, and this could allow an attacker to use the website to collect information on the users for forwarding to the attacker's own servers, or they could serve malware or viruses from the compromised server to infect workstations. If the website has write access for the web server, then files can be injected and a back door created. Then the user can read the databases with the site's permitted database connections. If the account the website runs under on the computer has enough permissions, then the user can do other things to the server like make more servers, turn on services on the server that aren't currently running and install things like proxy servers, VPN systems, and host other things on the box like voice communications, video hosting, a lot of possible options. 

If the server is in an office there are a variety of other things that can become compromised. If the site itself is only compromised, then the system would have the same things that could happen as in a server farm. If the user gains access to the server itself, and that server is also a domain controller and the admins use the same username “admin” with the same password, then the users can try to login to that server to control the domain, the e-mail accounts, the domain routing, and the website. On a domain controller, now they can collect anything within the network as traffic that's not encrypted. If they setup a man-in-the-middle attack they can actually steal the encrypted data too. They can also leech information from the server as well as try to use it to pivot attack other systems on the same network if it's not a domain controller. With enough access they can install applications and still perform the data mining, then spoof packets and routes and still take traffic meant for elsewhere. It really depends on where the box is on the network infrastructure.

If the server is locked down so that the user is restricted to the website and database by itself, the user can still create new websites and databases. There is also the issue of the external IP for the network being blocked if the server is used to send spam or phishing e-mails; e-mails can be sent from web servers. Also there is the issue of bandwidth as more access to the server can bring down a network.

How to prevent a hack?
Management need to contact their IT people and ask them about the permissions, restrictions, and infrastructures in place on the network; make sure they're familiar with all of the risks at hand. Web designers need to contact the webmasters if they think there is an issue. If a different company hosts the website, then check their procedures, if they don't seem "secure" then move the site to a better host.

Web Form Security: Reasons behind online attacks

Why am I being hacked?

To really know what you're dealing with you have to get inside the head of a script kiddie or a hacker if you want to actually "secure" your systems. Since there are so many factors, many of which that are usually out of the control of most individuals, I'm using the phrase "secure" loosely. From a web or online security standpoint I've worked with several companies over the years, usually in a post-attack analysis, trying to determine what happened, how to recover (if possible) and how to harden against the attack again. Companies often do not spend money on security before an attack and say things like "It's never happened before." or "Why would they target us?" or "No we haven't been hacked." when in actuality they have.

There are several reasons why someone or a group might want to take over a webpage, a blog, a webserver, or a MySQL database server. Here are a few of the reasons I've experienced myself for why someone would exploit a site or page.

Web Real Estate

Mission critical systems that rely on a database need to be secured. Not only is there the risk of someone data mining a database of personal data, but there are also risks for the database server that contains the database and/or the website servers that host the site receiving or displaying the data. One of the ways people can cause havoc on a server is by using an SQL Injection Attack. In November of last year I wrote a post about SQL Injection Attack Precautions. It talks about who's ultimately responsible in terms of securing a system since usually in most cases the blame for an attack is spread across several people.

How could web real estate be at risk? If someone looks at a form for a search, they can assume that it is connected to some sort of database. Blindly hacking at the form, they will not be able to tell if the database is a PHP array, an SQL database, or an XML file until they receive an [un]intended response. Through passing unexpected characters into the form they can potentially break the form, cause a stack overflow on the server (effectively crashing it), or break the application that is handling the form. Something like putting a server into an endless loop can bring a server to its digital knees. This usually involves  passing escape characters to add extra slashes, closing quotes (single and double), programming language terminations, or by passing HTML code into the form. Passing empty form fields can break some forms, while others can be broken by simply disabling Javascript.

When a web form is broken it returns valuable information to an attacker about the structure of the system, the type of server services running, and the quality of the code on the system itself. In my experience most websites with easily hackable code are frequented more heavily by would-be attackers and script kiddies than sites that return no errors or information to an attacker. Since most modern web servers are hosted in server farms with high bandwidth connections, to outside attackers it will more than likely be the same payoff for hacking a sophisticated site versus a simple site. They both offer the similar  bandwidth and server resources and they are usually designed to be managed remotely so there is little chance the Administrator will spot the attack. If an attacker sees an increased level of security, they're less likely to attack a server simply because their efforts will be undone much more quickly or they'll be caught because they will have to try harder.

Web "Street Cred"

Just like the real world, online hackers need notoriety. That being said, there are individuals in the hacking community who love a challenge. Some websites such as tech blogs, newspapers, social media accounts, video streaming websites and social networks are going to be more at risk for someone trying to replace content or services simply to make a name for themselves. There are far more people looking to become famous from a hacking attempt than there are people looking to steal information and sell it on some black market. The skill sets required for guessing a password to take over a page vs. actually deriving unencrypted usable data that can be sold are night and day different. There are quite a few apps in the open that will crack or guess a password. There aren't very many individuals that can successfully write a root kit. Sometimes an attacker can simply guess the password to get in and look at the code. The guys who do it for a living will not be bragging about it unless they're making a sales pitch for paying work behind closed doors. You will see script kiddies doing it so they can make a name for themselves (think Anonymous).

Political Reasons

Some "groups" like Anonymous take pride in bringing down sites and exploiting pages and accounts with opposing views or showing companies and corporate conglomerates that they have glaringly open holes in their security. Search for "Anonymous Hacks Burger King Twitter" on Google. While there likely are real hackers that operate under the "Anonymous" moniker, most of the exploits I've seen are pretty amateurish. If Anonymous were really a serious group there would more than likely be now more online trading (or stock market for that matter).

Bad SEO

Some people just want more links for their own sites. These people can be spammers and sometimes they're legitimate businesses that have paid for a service that they themselves weren't quite sure on. In the past there was a practice of spamdexing where a website listed in major directories or topics pertaining to the contents of the site would be picked up and rewarded by the search engines. Fake sites and phishing sites soon caught onto this. The search engines changed their policies, but sometimes in countries throughout the world word doesn't travel so fast through translation. Many "SEO specialists" mention that they can get a site listed through link sharing. This is more than likely how if they are overseas.

An example of spam-dexing from the Search Engine Journal (3/12/2013)

"There are many sites with spam on their sites that can’t see the links that they are showing where you couldn’t see unless you went into the code.  Google bot shows that a Top 50 University has “cheap viagra pills” on their main page."

To find out which one you can search for University Viagra on Google.

Data Capturing including Credit Cards and Social Security Numbers

Some people are a little more secretive about their exploits and they will hide code on a system to take advantage of web visitors and traffic. This may take the form of database copying or replication (if the site is storing e-mail addresses, credit card numbers, or sensitive data). The attackers may send copies of the real submissions to their own server. They may monitor statistics from the site (for a competitor). Some attackers inject malware into the code so they can infect user computers. In a previous post I talk about the hacking of clothing manufacturer Calvin Klein and how I started receiving SPAM from the newly created e-mail address I used for them the day I signed up. Calvin Klein of course denied any knowledge of this or interest in rectifying the issue.

Additionally when someone is actually capturing all information to a system on the system itself, any information passed is vulnerable. This includes Social Security Numbers, Credit Card numbers, and anything else that may be submitted (student ID numbers). Depending on the type of site, this is a huge risk to clients, customers, and worse... the brand in terms of PR backlash.

Bot Net  

Web servers can be powerful, plentiful machines just ripe for harvesting. Located on massive connections there is very little that can be done to track multiple machines requesting orders from the controlling system (the requests can look like normal web traffic in a packet filter). In numbers, compromised machines can become a powerful collective. Why not run an application in the background on someone else's web server to make it control countless drones while it goes on serving a webpage? This does actually happen. Usually the attacker will install something called a "root kit" which is an app or framework that is undetectable that runs in the background. This allows them to control the server and exploit the bandwidth and resources available to the server. The web page may be up and running and unchanged, so the owner usually won't find out until there is a knock at the door because the machine was used to exploit someone else's, it was controlling countless other machines or worse the website goes down because the ISP pulled the plug at the request of a government or after their own inspection and determination of high traffic. Once a root kit is installed it is easier to use a new machine than it is to clean off the root kit. Without examination the exploit the attacker used may still be in place. It would only be a matter of time before the attack exploited the machine again.

So what are the real risks?

Most of the time the attacks come down to bad password management policies, or use of an unsafe network by someone to log into a website control panel or administration panel (think Starbucks). Every once in a while someone is hit with an XSS attack or a/an [My]SQL injection attack, but this requires someone actually trying to hack the server. Passwords can be captured in open places like airports, coffee shops, hotels, vacation resorts, cruise ships, and on any other unsecured WiFi networks with free applications on the web. Be smart and use strong passwords longer than 10 characters in safe / secure locations and more than likely there will be no issues.

Information Sharing - A Double-Edged Sword

This posting was sparked by a few new exploits on the rise, a Java exploit and a couple of Ruby-on-Rails vulnerabilities. I found out about both of them from Dark Reading.

I've been using computers for a very long time (31 years) by technology standards. One thing I've become accustomed to is regular updates and patches to systems, programs, and apps. Sometimes the systems that need to be patched aren't the systems that people themselves might have access to, but they may be a web server, a mail server, a programming interface, or even a server-side plugin.


The good
The reason these things need to be patched and fixed isn't because the companies who are making the patches are making money off of them. It's actually kind of counter that. It's a huge issue for a company's brand (yes, PR and Marketing) when their software is the main reason most of the Internet or Corporate America goes down. Think of the damage control a company like Microsoft has to do when there is a massive worm spreading around the Internet like CodeRed or the Melissa Virus. It's huge. People change platforms, they decide they can no longer trust a company with such glaring vulnerabilities. They "switch." I myself started using Macs simply because I trust Unix way more than I do Microsoft's ability to protect my system e-mails and webpages.

Here's the problem though, those vulnerabilities usually aren't because some crazy hacker on a mission has decided they're going to ruin one of these worldwide brands. It's usually because the company themselves have someone, either on their payroll or contracted who has provided the notification of the exploit initially (internally or through a provider channel), either when they were working on the code, they crashed their own systems, or they had a hunch and tested their theory. They notify the company who in-turn rolls out a patch... these people are paid to provide this service.

People read everything with their own filter on the world. If they are a good person, when they see a patch, they probably think to themselves... I need to apply this because I don't want any downtime... but what if the people are bad? Okay, let's not say "good" and "bad" because that's not necessarily the case at all (and part of a larger discussion). Let's say they are users and then those other people who have "too much time on their hands" at the moment. I say this because at one point or another in a white hat hacker's life they have more than likely infected something or spread something on accident. They're not bad people, but if it's uncontrolled it could do just as much damage. Always test on an offline machine if you're going to open Pandora's Box.

The bad
So back to my point about the people filtering what they see. When someone who 1.) wants to experiment, 2.) has downtime, and 3.) a need of an idea for something to hack, they have this great expanse of information (the Internet)... I know it's pretty obvious right? Although [most] people think that most hackers all go to secret websites and have a secret handshake, that's really just the people who go to Defcon or who have friends who are hackers because they do it for a living, or they want to pretend they're hackers. Most of the other hackers I've met happened by accident because someone else mentioned that I hacked, then we talked about the level of what we were into.

Usually self-proclaimed "hackers" in my experience are in actuality script kiddies (people who use a program or a tool in a way they've read about to purposely cause chaos), so often when I'm confronted with the questions of what I do, I kind of go the other way and don't share what I'm into unless they let me know that they're "cool," A.K.A. not a script kiddie. Just like the branding issues companies have with being exploited, "hackers" white, black, and gray.... all hats, also have a branding issue because somewhere some [insert expletive here] is writing a virus that will cause harm and it says the same thing on my nametag to society that his says... I'm a creative professional with the means and ability. Society doesn't care whether I would do it or not or about my moral compass, but you have to think like a "bad guy" to outsmart a bad guy... it doesn't make me "bad." But it makes the unknowing populous marvel and wonder (in a bad way).

On with the Internet reference... when I say they have the Internet at their fingertips, they don't need to go to one of the heavily monitored websites for script kiddies or the IRC channels, all they have to do is browse through a company's patches. In the patches that most people install there is usually some bit of information that says what exploit or vulnerability is being patched. Apple doesn't share a lot of detail about this, but Microsoft usually tells you what they're patching if you follow enough links from Windows Update. Java, Ruby, PHP, and most other opensource languages will release it in a bugfix that you can read about. When it happened to Microsoft's brand before, Microsoft had already provided patches for the exploits for CodeRed and Melissa long before they were in the wild and running rampant. Most people however do not like applying patches because, just like going to the doctor, "If it ain't broke don't fix it."

I've heard all sorts of reasons why someone shouldn't patch something... "because if they don't know I'm running an older version I'm safe" or "it might bring down my machine so I wait a couple of months to test it." Zero-day patches just like zero-day exploits can also bring your machine to its knees. I wait about a week to make sure that a patch has been thoroughly tested by the masses. It takes most companies a couple of days to clean up after a failed patch, so that should be enough time to cover myself. (I can't afford to have downtime.)

The incurable
When an idle mind sees a patch and decides to take it upon themselves to figure out how to exploit it, then that's where the problems arise. The problems where there is a vulnerability that a company doesn't know about the day it's unleashed are called a zero-day exploits or holes and they're usually compromised in a zero-day attack... because the company has had zero days to prepare for the aftermath from a technical and marketing standpoint. These can be people purposely writing a virus or altering code and spreading it. Because a company has little or no warning then it can be catastrophic for the brand.

How is information sharing bad?
The problem is with the channels where information is shared. Most of the highly technical details about a vulnerability do not need to be out in the wild so a passing bot or web crawling search-engine can find them. They need to be behind at least one level of authentication. This makes is more like a deterrent because only the people who would really need to know about something would take the time and effort to go in and look at all of the specifics. Potentially harmful individuals might go in and still compromise a machine or series of systems, but a casual passer-by wouldn't see the info to get any ideas.

Really observant individuals might actually take the time to find a pattern in [poor] programming. For instance Microsoft has been pretty bad about securing Internet Explorer and the way it is interconnected with their operating systems. In the past, when someone logged in with the default Administrator account they could open an e-mail or a webpage and take down their machine with full privileges. Luckily it's a little more difficult for most users now.

On another note Whitepapers can be something of a major problem as well. I downloaded yet another Whitepaper on SQL Injection attacks again today. Nothing new or earth shattering, but it always pays to look to see what I might be up against. I'm always interested in new perspectives.

A thief who can see a whole building and examine it in full detail, might realize it's much easier for them to drive through the wall and bypass the door and window sensors on the alarm system altogether. The same thing applies to Whitepapers and Patch Descriptions on the web. Although much of the media clambers for information about the technical specifics of what happened, it's probably safer if all of that detail isn't on the record completely and in the open. PR and Marketing departments should be the main filter in brand protection. After all, too much self-provided information might actually help in destroying your brand. (Same goes for real hackers.)

Soap Box
If you have a person (or group of people) in your organization or company who really want to support some of the open-source platforms like Java, PHP, Ruby-on-Rails, and so forth they also need to understand the responsibilities that come with maintaining an effectively secure system. Everything needs to be patched and it needs to stay somewhat up-to-date. When companies invest in new ideas and those ideas fail the people who are working on the front lines and in the trenches are the ones that are hit. Most companies can reboot from a failed experiment, but most people can't.

That's all for now.

'Project Mayhem' Hacks Accounting Software - A Rebuttal

The more I read Dark Reading, the more and more I'm starting to notice certain aspects of the new market for hackers. In a recent post on the site - 'Project Mayhem' Hacks Accounting Software, No exploit required for defrauding Microsoft and other accounting systems, researchers at Black Hat Abu Dhabi reveal - they go into detail about this elaborate scheme to create a fake billing transaction in a database.

In my comment about this possible "threat" I mention:

Microsoft should probably use SSL between the client machines and the database and lock down the database so only clients with the appropriate credentials (IP addresses, SSL Keys, and login credentials) would be allowed to make database queries and injections. They might also look at splitting up the database logins, so you have one login for queries and one login for inserts. The tables per client should be named according to the actual company so they're not standardized within Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains across the board. Also the database itself needs to be encrypted (I'm not familiar with the Great Plains system myself) so it couldn't be updated somewhere else and replaced (after the end of business). (One of the things that used to be sort of a standard practice in the 90s was make a copy, hack it offsite, then return it to the system at a later date... so there is no trail.) They might also limit access to the terminal that is authorized to only being allow to make transactions during business hours (like banker's hours for the machine itself).

There are probably hundreds of ways to secure this particular issue. Also from an IT standpoint you would require that all communications to the accounting database come from an accounting computer on the network subnet.

It sounds more like a fail on the Information Technology or Information Systems department's part (or something they wouldn't consider as a possibility).

The problem is more of a human issue. The IT department thinks to themselves that the company only hires qualified people who don't have bad backgrounds. The admins are busy (probably under staffed or better yet outsourced) so they either aren't familiar with the system themselves, don't need to be familiar with the system, or don't have the time to think about all of the possible injections. The idea someone could gain access to the network, have a machine with the necessary tools to actually perform an attack, not have that attack be logged, and do this consistently is a little far-fetched?

Stepping back I see that it makes a great story, but it's just a company trying to get creative with ways of saying "There is no need for our services, but we can prove to you that you need us because we can show you a world of possibilities that are highly improbable, but capable given an enormous amount of funding, interest, and time in the realm of distant possibility."

Another thing, is the people who would have this skill set, the ability to pull off the job, and the ability to collectively network with other individuals and collaborate on something this illegal probably would only ever do this just to say it could be done as a proof of concept. It's unlikely these highly skilled professionals would be unemployed and outspoken enough to say to their other unemployed colleague, "I have a way we could make some money." A little too Hollywood for the real world.

I have a larger thought brewing about these particular "issues" and if given enough time will probably write more about it here and possible in some sort of thesis... unfortunately it's back to my day job for now. Just think, if I had gone to college someone might actually take me seriously.

Until later.