On Hacking and Prevention

This week, I learned more about key-loggers, which can be legitimately used to identify suspicious activity (such as unauthorized users or use of a computer) as well as be used illegitimately to steal credentials to users' accounts or other data, such as Social Security Numbers, bank account details, etc.  Some popular key-loggers include Refog ( http://refog.com ) and Revealer from Logixoft ( https://www.logixoft.com/en-us/index ).  A related development, but in the opposite direction, is the USB Rubber Ducky, which is a simple nano-computer disguised as an ordinary flash drive which pretends to be a keyboard to the operating system and therefore can do anything a keyboard can do, but automated and potentially very quickly.  It can be used for automated testing, brute force attacks by plugging in to a computer, or even simple pranks (deliberately typing random letters at intervals to make a user think that they have a hardware problem), or for anything else which keyboar...

This week, one of the things I learned about is Hyena, which is system management software for Microsoft Windows, available from  https://www.systemtools.com/hyena/index.html .  It is compatible with all versions of Windows since Windows NT (2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8/8.1, 10) and server editions as well.  It is a bit expensive at $329 each for one or two administrators (the price per license decreases for each additional administrator added, with each administrator needing a separate license), although it is cheaper than many alternative commercial solutions.  I also learned that it is possible to find out quite a bit of information about a web server or networked computer, such as what software it is running, simply by asking it in the right way.  I learned that it is possible to find out what e-mail addresses (by username) are valid for a particular SMTP e-mail server by simply asking it.  As I've previously mentioned, I've used Zenmap before to map my LAN fo...

This week, I learned more about port scanning and firewalls. I have used Zenmap, a GUI for Nmap, before, to help identify the IP address assigned to a router that I was using as an access point so I could manage it.  Both can be downloaded from http://nmap.org .  I consulted the appropriate pages from the Nmap manual ( https://nmap.org/book/ ) as well. Once again, I used http://alternativeto.net  (which I rather like) and http://softpedia.com to compare different software products and find out more about them.  I am fairly certain that I'd previous read about XMAS tree scans (scans packets that have the FIN, URG, and Push flags set) when I last researched port scanning for personal use.  I also checked out the http://DistroWatch.com  page for Kali Linux ( https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kali ) for fun. I researched a bunch of security tools, including the Angry IP scanner ( http://www.angryip.org/ ), Retina Network Security Scanner ( h...

This week, I learned more about data mining.  I learned about how it is possible to guess people's e-mail addresses, using tools such as http://emailgenerat or.io , for any purpose. I also learned about useful website mirroring tools such as http://www.httrack.com , in addition to my pre-existing knowledge of the WayBack Machine of the Internet Archive at http://archive.org . http://DownDetector.com , https://www.isitdownrightnow.com , http://down.com , https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com , and https://status.ws are all free web monitoring services.  Monitority at http://montastic.com is another one, which can e-mail you if a website goes down.  Additionally, I learned about something called FISMA ( https://www.dhs.gov/fisma ), or the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, which changed the way organizations report on their information handling practices (and data breaches) to the government and public.  While I'd used nslookup to diagnose problems before...