Hacker

From Saferpedia

A hacker is a person who reaches into computers (without owner's permission) usually by accessing administrative controls. Subculture developed around hackers is often mentioned as underground computer area. This culture supporters claim to be motivated by artistic or politic purposes and are often preoccupied to use illegal means to achieve their purposes.

Contents 1 Habits 2 Hackers' attitude 2.1 White Hat 2.2 Gray Hat 2.3 Black Hat 2.4 Script kiddie 2.5 Hacktivist 3 Common methods of hacking 3.1 Exploiting security 3.2 Scanning vulnerabilities 3.3 Breaking passwords 3.4 Sniffing packages 3.5 Spoofing attack 3.6 Social engineering 3.7 Trojans 3.8 Viruses 3.9 Worms 3.10 Key loggers

Habits

Computers' suburb is strongly addicted to technology. It produced its own slang and unusual forms of using alphabet, for example the 1337 speak (leet). The use of pseudonyms is often practiced by hackers to hide their identity.

Hackers' attitude

There are several subgroups of computers suburb with different attitude and purposes using as definition various terms to distinguish themselves from others or to exclude themselves from certain groups they don't agree with.

Eric S. Raymond sustains that members of the computers suburb should be called crackers.

White Hat

A white hat hacker breaks security for reasons not bad intentioned. For example to test its own security system. This kind of hacker it's glad to learn by working so having a better understanding of computer systems. Such people use their knowledge legitimately for example to became security consultants.

Gray Hat

A gray hat hacker uses its knowledge and abilities at the limit of legality.

Black Hat

A black hat hacker also called cracker breaks computers security without any authorization or use technology for vandalism, frauds, identity theft, piracy or other illegal activities.

Script kiddie

A script kiddie is a not experienced person with a lower level of understanding, breaking computers security using tools written by other people. These are the outcasts of hackers community.

Hacktivist

A hacktivist is a hacker using technology to announce a social, ideological, religious or politic message. There are extreme cases when a hacktivist was used as tools for cyberterrorism. They are also known as Neo Hackers.

Common methods of hacking

A typical approach to attack a system is:

1. Network enumeration. Discover information about the target.
2. Vulnerability analyzes. Identifying potential attack routes.
3. Exploiting. Trying to compromise the system by exploiting found vulnerabilities.

To do that there are several tools used by hackers.

Exploiting security

A security exploit is a preparatory action that takes advantage of a known weakness. For example an SQL injection abusing security gaps resulted from substandard programming. Other exploiting may be done trough FTP, HTTP, PHP, SSH, Telnet and some web pages.

Scanning vulnerabilities

Scanning vulnerabilities is a tool used to quickly check a computer for vulnerable spots. Usually hackers use port scanning checking which ports are open or available to access the computer. To remember that firewalls protect computers by intrusions limiting the access to ports/machines internal and external.

Breaking passwords

Breaking passwords is the process of recovering passwords from data stored or sent by a computer system. An usual approach is the repeated try to guess the password.

Sniffing packages

A sniffer or a package analyzer is a software or a device able to intercept and register the traffic flow from a network or a segment of a network. As the data flow passes trough the network it catches each package and if necessary will decrypt it and analyze its content.

Spoofing attack

In a secure network a spoofing attack is if a person or a software manages to disguise itself by faking data, so winning an illegal advantage.

Social engineering

Social engineering is the art of making people to reveal sensible information about a system.

Trojans

A Trojan is a software that makes users think it does a certain thing but in reality it does something else. A Trojan may be used to configure a back door in a system so the intruder may access it later.

Viruses

A virus is a software able to auto replicate and it spreads by inserting copies of itself in other executable or documents.

Worms

Similar to a virus, a worm is a software able to auto-replicate. But a worm is different from a virus in that it propagates over the network without users' intervention. It doesn't need to attach itself to an existent software.

Key loggers

Key loggers are tools designed to register each key pressed on the infected computer for a later extraction. Usually its purpose is to allow its user access to private information like passwords or others.