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Hacker Secrets… Exposed!
By Calum Macleod,
European Director of Cyber-Ark Software
As a leader at a security
software company, I'm often asked: what's the most common type of
hacker and attack? Over time I've discovered that the general public
holds a somewhat romantic image of hackers. One mental picture involves
an emaciated young man in a poverty-stricken corner of the world.
Greasy-haired and red-eyed, he types late into the night on an old
TRS-80 workstation, trying desperately to get your American Express
account number for nefarious purposes.
Another favorite image
is of a cherub-faced pre-teen with extreme computer skills and little
knowledge of law and order. Thanks to too much hardware and too
little parental supervision, she creates a new virus that brings
down every business on the Eastern seaboard.
Both images couldn't
be more wrong.
According to the FBI,
the most common hacker is probably sitting in the cubicle next to
you, right now. This is someone who gets to work early, takes his
or her turn cleaning out the office fridge, tells funny stories
at lunch and, at some point, makes a very dumb move. It often starts
when this hacker-next-door sees a file directory or workstation
that's just too juicy to pass by, like one named "Salary Comparison."
It's simply too tempting NOT to peek inside.
In other words, curiosity
is one scenario motivating the most common hacker. Another is revenge.
These situations take place when a web-savvy employee gets ticked
off. Maybe their Christmas raise didn't make them too merry. Perhaps
their boss just handed them a Work Improvement Plan and a reason
to cause trouble. This same hacker-next-door spends some time on
the network and wonders… what if I could get into the email
server files? What if I could open a few financial statements?
Finally, another common
reason is industrial espionage. What organization has time to do
professional, in-depth background checks on every temporary IT consultant?
Often this part-time help is called upon when times are roughest,
and corners are most easily cut. The result are people who get easy
access to the most sensitive and impenetrable systems (more on that
later.)
However, no matter what
the reason, internal hacker attacks make up 70% of all security
breaches according to the FBI. The next question is… how do
these attackers get access to critical systems?
The answer is: all too
easily. Once that hacker-next-door decides to break into a target
system, their next stop is a search engine. A few key words later,
and anyone can discover that the most common - and effective - type
of hack into a target system is to become what's called a "script
kiddie." Script kiddies use default lists of privileged passwords,
or the super-user/administrative codes built into every piece of
hardware and software. Have you ever noticed the "Administrator"
ID next to your name when you login to your workstation? That's
a privileged user and password, a backdoor into your system built
by the manufacturer. It can not be disabled or destroyed.
Let's turn back to our
hacker-next-door who wants into the "Salary Comparison"
workstation. They don't know who owns this workstation, but they
can search to find what the default Administrator passwords are
for a Dell Latitude D600. According to a recent survey, 20% of all
workstations have an Administrator ID that's still set to the default
password (Cyber-Ark Enterprise Privileged Password Survey 2006,
www.cyber-ark.com/survey.asp). If the built-in default doesn't work,
the would-be hacker may try some simple passwords like CompanyName123.
You'd be stunned how often these basic password scenarios -- also
available as mini computer programs on the web - are the fastest
way into any organization's data.
Once the hacker enters
a target system with a privileged password, the evil-doer now has
more access to data than the system's legitimate users. I know of
one company, for example, where a disgruntled IT professional changed
every password on the network. All software had to be reloaded.
The company was basically shut down for days. Meanwhile, the angry
ex-employee denied all knowledge of the incident. And who could
prosecute him? The deed was done under an anonymous identity, the
Administrator.
Another recent example
of a script kiddie in action took place at the FBI (see "Consultant
Breached FBI's Computers" by Eric Weiss, Washington Post, 7/6/2006.)
In this case, the hacker-next-door was a paid consultant. The suspect
used "computer programs easily found on the Internet"
to go snooping into passwords and files throughout the FBI's organization,
including data related to the Witness Protection Program. In no
time, the suspect gained access to the passwords of 38,000 employees,
including that of FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
So there you have it:
the most common hacker is actually someone working in your organization
today, a non-professional trouble-maker who -- when tempted -- can
easily find his or her way into your organization's most sensitive
data.
This lead to another
question I am commonly asked: why do most enterprises leave their
privileged passwords, the keys to their kingdom, open and unmanaged?
The reason is simple: manually changing these codes is extremely
time-consuming, so these back doors generally stay open. Visit professional
hacker sites, and their biggest complaint about script kiddies is
not that they exist... but that once these amateurs do something
flagrant and dumb with privileged passwords, these wonderful secret
passages into a company's data get closed to the professionals.
Of course there are automated
ways to securely change privileged passwords, and to tie an individual
ID to a shared one - this very software is now being used by many
security savvy enterprises around the world. However until these
solutions become standard tools in most enterprises, I'd keep a
close eye on the folks around you. You never know who is privileged
to YOUR information!
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