Black hats is what people would often think about when they hear the term hacker. They can inflict massive amount of damage with the wide variety of techniques at their disposal. One form of an attack that a black hat could use is called DDos or distributed-denial-of-service attack. Which is basically where a hacker would take control of a computer by exploiting its weaknesses and making it the head command point. From there, the hacker would then begin to exploit many other computers which would then be referred to as a zombie. All the intruder has to do is send the command, and all of the compromised systems will send flood attacks to the targeted computer. The flood attacks would overwhelm the target with packets or little bits of information, denying the user of any access. This is just one of the many tricks a black hat has under their sleeves.
On the other hand, white hats or ethical hackers, have the intention to exploit but in order to improve flaws and weakness. A technique that a white hat can use is DNS poisoning. In this attack, the victim is redirected to a different site that looks exactly the same as the intended website. For example, Bob wants to access his bank account and decides to do it online. Little did Bob know, he was re-directed to the hacker's version of bob's bank account. And as he typed in his information, he was simply sending it to the hacker. In order to achieve this attack, the hacker would have had to have changed the IP address or the address that leads to bob's bank account.
One thing that should be kept in mind is that either of these techniques can be implemented for both good and bad intentions. One can only hope that it is an actual white hat and not a black hat in disguise.
Works Cited
"365 Computer Security Training." 365 Computer Security Training RSS. Computer-network-security-training,22 Aug. 2010. Web. 30 Jan. 2013.
Rouse, Margaret."White Hat". What Is ? SearchSecurity,June 2007. Web. 30 Jan 2013.
Rouse, Margaret."Black Hat". What Is ? SearchSecurity,June 2007. Web. 30 Jan 2013.
Rouse, Margaret."Distributed Denial-Of-Service Attack(DDos)". What Is ? SearchSecurity,Nov 2010. Web. 30 Jan 2013.
"What Is a Packet? HowStuffWorks.HowStuffWorks,nd. Web.30 Jan 2013
I think that this post was really interesting. We wrote a paper in English last semester on cyber security but it was mostly on specific people who were known hackers and some of the things they've done. It was fascinating learning two different type of "hacking" that hackers could use.
ReplyDeleteI understand the importance of the expanse with technology. People are given opportunities in which, depending on what they do for a living, may perform either malicious or ethical activities on the internet. I am interested with the development of newer technology and whether the population would abuse the power of it or not.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your post. Cyber security is a very important job. Seeing as we are today fighting a bigger war. The Cyber War. I know that this is a growing field. I look forward to hearing more of your blogs about it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading this post because this just reminds me why my husband has so many security features and firewalls on our computer set-up at home. Cyber security is more necessary now than ever: just look at the recent hack of the New York Times by Chinese hackers. That's pretty bold. And we do it in war, too (I agree with Carol!). Didn't the U.S. use "gray hats" (my term) for someone doing good work for one country while destabilizing computer systems in another (think the work U.S. hackers did on Iran's nuclear program).
ReplyDeleteCan you plump the post up a bit more by describing the ways hackers actually get into a computer system? How can a hacker make the head command point "boss around" other computers?
Finally--you have good hyperlinks here, but make each one clearly attach to the corresponding works cited entry.