Essential Security Principles

0:01<v ->Cybersecurity.</v>

0:02Wow, what a topic.

0:03My name's James Conrad,

0:04and it's my pleasure to join you here

0:07in the Cisco Certified Support Technician certification

0:10for cybersecurity.

0:12Now, you can imagine how important this is.

0:14If you follow the news every week,

0:16there's some kind of major exploit that takes place

0:20where a major corporation, or a government,

0:23or nation state has lost lots of data,

0:26millions of records, sometimes social security numbers,

0:30credit card numbers,

0:31personally identifiable information,

0:33health information, all kinds of things can get stolen,

0:36even email.

0:38Did you know that email lists are really valuable?

0:41Yeah, I just saw some being advertised on the dark web.

0:43A list of millions of emails available for two Bitcoin.

0:48So yes, you can even buy those.

0:50And anyway, there's a lot of different kinds

0:52of things being stolen,

0:53and we need to really be sure

0:55what is involved in cybersecurity

0:58and understand how it works

1:00and how all the parts move together

1:02so that we can properly defend our systems

1:06against potential hacks.

1:08Yes, there's all kinds of hacks taking place.

1:10Just this year alone,

1:11AT&amp;T, the University of Minnesota, T-Mobile, who else?

1:15Twitter, the United States Government.

1:18All of these organizations have had significant hacks

1:22that have taken place.

1:23So we're gonna be taking a look at

1:24what they are and how we can protect ourselves

1:28and others against these hacks.

1:31Alright, I'll see you in the next nugget

1:32where we'll start taking a look at vulnerabilities.

0:00<v ->All right, let's take a look here at vulnerabilities.</v>

0:03This is really kind of the starting point for hackers.

0:06In order to be able to exploit something,

0:08they have to know of a vulnerability first.

0:11So they either look for those vulnerabilities,

0:13or they'll take a known vulnerability

0:15and then they'll write some kind

0:16of programming code against it.

0:18That's very often how it happens.

0:19Or some kind of a script or something like this.

0:22So what happens here?

0:23Well, first of all, again,

0:24there has to be a vulnerability for them to exploit.

0:27And what is a vulnerability?

0:29Kind of as the name implies, it's a weakness.

0:31It's a defect in operating systems, in software.

0:36It could be in a driver. It could be in hardware.

0:40So even hardware has software that's written into it, right?

0:44Normally, hardware will have circuits on it,

0:47and on those circuits

0:49is very often embedded code of some type, okay?

0:52Now, anyway, these defects are ultimately security loopholes

0:57that hackers can then exploit.

1:00And it's to be expected

1:01that there's gonna be vulnerabilities.

1:04All of this stuff's written by humans.

1:06But some of it's so huge, it's very difficult to manage.

1:09So for example, Windows 11.

1:12Windows 11. I'll put that up there.

1:15That has about 50 million lines of code in it.

1:19Now, even though Microsoft has

1:20a well-paid army of programmers, that's a lot of code.

1:24Something's gonna slip through the cracks.

1:26And it does, and then Microsoft will have

1:28to issue a patch for it or something.

1:30Another example. Well, Google.

1:32Google itself. I'll just put Goog.

1:34Google itself has about 2 billion lines of code

1:39across all of their various services

1:41and systems that they offer.

1:43So that's just way too much for anybody

1:46to be able to go through,

1:47even using artificial intelligence and other methods.

1:50There's gonna be a weakness there eventually

1:52that's gonna be found.

1:53And then once a hacker finds that weakness,

1:56then they will exploit it.

1:58Let's take a look here at some hardware examples.

2:01Yes, vulnerabilities exist on hardware. Why is that?

2:04Well, if you take a look at it,

2:06you'll have embedded circuits on hardware

2:10that a programmer has written something for.

2:12A good example would be maybe an internet of things device.

2:16IoT, internet of things.

2:18So for example, I've got on my wall right behind me

2:21over here somewhere a thermostat.

2:23That thermostat's connected to the internet,

2:26and I can control it here from my iPhone.

2:29So let's say, you know, here in Phoenix,

2:30it gets quite hot in the summer,

2:32and we might like to keep our air conditioning set

2:34at 72 degrees, which means it runs constantly.

2:37'Cause even at midnight, it can be 100 degrees here.

2:39So anyway.

2:40But somewhere in there is a chip

2:43or a circuit of some kind that contains, that is,

2:48that contains code on it that controls all that stuff,

2:51that allows it to interoperate with the internet

2:53and my phone and all that kind of stuff, right?

2:55Well, there could be a weakness on there.

2:57And so an evil hacker person out here on the internet,

3:00they might find that weakness through the internet,

3:03find their way onto that code or onto that programming,

3:07and then from there they might be able

3:08to leapfrog to other systems.

3:10Maybe my laptop here. It's supposed to be a laptop.

3:14One thing you'll find out quickly

3:15as you join me in this course

3:17is I have very unique artistic skills,

3:20which is another way of saying that they're terrible.

3:22Anyway, there's my laptop.

3:23Maybe they could leapfrog over to that

3:25and exploit this thing.

3:26Maybe they could leap over to my phone

3:29or over to, you know, an iPad or something like this.

3:33So you see, very often a hacker only needs

3:35to find one little thing that's got a weakness in it,

3:38and then they can kind of leapfrog

3:40from one thing to the next and escalate privileges

3:43and lots of other kinds of things.

3:44Let's take a look at some hardware examples there as well.

3:48Rowhammer is one of those.

3:49It's kind of pretty well known,

3:50and it's been out for a little while now.

3:53But if you take a look at a memory module,

3:55this would be like a memory module.

3:57You've seen those probably in computers.

3:59I don't know where that came from. Let's get rid of that.

4:01You've probably seen that in various computers,

4:04like personal computers,

4:05where this will get inserted into the motherboard.

4:09And on these memory modules are various cells, okay?

4:14They actually appear on the little black chips

4:16that you see on there, those circuits,

4:18those little chips that are on there.

4:20And in those chips are cells.

4:23And the way that memory works

4:25is there's an electrical charge that gets written to these.

4:29Okay, I'll make a little different color here

4:30so it'll make it a little bit more clear.

4:31So there's electrical charges

4:32that might get written to that one.

4:34It's all binary, so something's turned on or turned off.

4:36And in computing,

4:38a combination of items that are turned on

4:40and off ultimately results in something.

4:42It might be the letter A

4:43or it might be a graphic or a photograph

4:46or something like this.

4:47Any different kinds of things.

4:48Anyway, it's all done by turning on

4:51or off one of these cells.

4:53Well, hackers have figured out a way using

4:56this rowhammer thing to be able to corrupt data.

4:59Maybe I've got valid data here that checks out,

5:01that's good data, but they might be able

5:03to exploit a cell next to it and hammer it.

5:07That's why it's called rowhammer.

5:09Hammer it with signals so fast and so hard

5:12that it can corrupt this data next to it.

5:15So anyway, that's an example

5:17of one of the hardware exploits.

5:18There's another one called Meltdown and Spectre.

5:21That's why I kind of got these graphics up here.

5:24They're so famous that they even allow you

5:26to download graphics advertising these particular exploits.

5:30And it's so famous, it even has a webpage.

5:32And here it is. I'll bring it over.

5:33Here it is.

5:34So you can see what happens here is

5:36that it exploits vulnerabilities in modern processors.

5:39Now, these are hardware vulnerabilities

5:42that could allow programs to steal data,

5:45which is currently processed on the computer.

5:48What happens here is

5:49that normally you'll have an application that's running,

5:52and that application has data that it works with.

5:55Let's say you have, I don't know,

5:56an open spreadsheet, okay?

5:58That spreadsheet is accessed by, say, Microsoft Excel,

6:01and it should be the only program

6:03that properly accesses that data.

6:06But Meltdown and Spectre are able to use other methods

6:10so that they could kind of hop over and access that data,

6:14even though they're not supposed to be able to access it.

6:17They actually have some good examples of how this works,

6:19by the way.

6:21These were actually discovered

6:23by some really smart people over at Google, actually.

6:26Google has something called Project Zero.

6:30There it is.

6:30So Jann Horn did this, and he's with Google Project Zero.

6:34They're the ones that look

6:35for a lot of security vulnerabilities and things like this.

6:38But anyway, you can see here there's

6:39a lot of pretty good FAQ there.

6:41And this is pretty interesting.

6:43If you look at this, it actually shows Meltdown in action.

6:46This is a screenshot of it.

6:48But this is all the registers within memory, a memory dump,

6:51and it's able to actually pull data out of it.

6:54You can see kind of somewhat readable data over here.

6:56It's able to pull that out of it.

6:58This is a good example right over here.

6:59Actually, let's just take a look at this.

7:01This is an exploit against a password manager.

7:03So we'll talk more about those later on.

7:06But a password manager is really actually a pretty good way

7:08to take a lot of complicated passwords

7:10that no human can really remember.

7:12And, you know, these big, long, complicated passwords

7:14that we're supposed to have

7:15for every different website we go to and all this stuff,

7:18it can be stored in a password manager,

7:20which is normally a good idea.

7:21But using Meltdown, they're demonstrating here

7:25how that someone could enter in,

7:28see they're entering in their password

7:30to unlock their password manager,

7:32and it actually shows up down here in this exploit.

7:36Okay?

7:37Here, in this other example,

7:38they're able to actually reconstruct an image

7:41that someone's using, okay?

7:42I won't go through it here,

7:43but you can see it also reconstructing a photo.

7:45So in other words, it's able to access data

7:48that it's not supposed to be able to access.

7:50And like I said before, it's such a famous vulnerability,

7:53they even have logos and stuff like that

7:55that you can download.

7:57Now, let's take a look at another vulnerability.

7:59I mentioned earlier that there might be something embedded

8:01in hardware, like an internet of things device.

8:04That would just be a vulnerability there.

8:06But there's some times

8:07when there's actually malicious code embedded in hardware.

8:11I first became aware of this, oh, a few years back.

8:14There's a news program here called "60 Minutes"

8:17in the United States, and they run a special on this

8:20where there's a company called Huawei.

8:23It's got a weird spelling,

8:24I'll show it to you here in a minute.

8:25It's a Chinese company,

8:27and they're actually embedding malware

8:29into their own hardware that they then sell

8:32to the unsuspecting American public

8:34and United States military.

8:36As a result, it's able to pull out data

8:41while it's going across the wire,

8:43while it's going across routers and things like this,

8:45because they build network equipment.

8:47So in other words,

8:48they put on their network equipment spyware

8:51that is able to siphon off data

8:54as it's transiting their networks,

8:56send it to China or whatever target

8:58that they have designated there.

9:00Here's how you spell Huawei that I was mentioning earlier.

9:03And I'll link this down below for you

9:05beneath this video somewhere so that you can see it.

9:07But Huawei has circuitry and embedded spyware, apparently,

9:13that they've put on mobile devices,

9:15network equipment, all kinds of things.

9:17And you can see, if you wanna read through this, you can.

9:19It's actually pretty interesting.

9:21The United States government

9:21is trying to ban the products from Huawei, in fact.

9:26Although, it's been going on for years, in my view,

9:29it's kind of a little bit too little, too late.

9:31Here's another example.

9:32I almost forgot to show you this one.

9:33Vodafone found hidden back doors in Huawei equipment.

9:37Now, this happened a little while ago,

9:39but a lot of that equipment is still out there.

9:41This article is dated 2019.

9:43And even though they've been called out many times,

9:46they still have a lot of this equipment out there.

9:49Here's another one, relating to Australia.

9:51With this one, Huawei installed malicious code

9:54on an Australian network,

9:56and it's in their telephone network,

9:58that recorded all communications

10:00and transmitted it to China.

10:01So without beating this dead horse,

10:04I just wanted to point out,

10:05I'm not just against Huawei on this,

10:07although they've been doing some dastardly deeds,

10:09I'm just saying that there are either weaknesses

10:12or outright exploits directly on some hardware devices

10:16that could also be exploited.

10:18Now, most of the exploits will take place against software,

10:22and I think we're kind of very well aware of that, probably.

10:24That's why you have, probably on a weekly basis,

10:28updates to your Windows machines,

10:30because they'll have security patches

10:31that address some of their weaknesses.

10:34Same would be true of your iOS devices,

10:36your Android phones, your tablets, all that kind of stuff.

10:40So the operating systems there

10:42or software on those devices will have a weakness

10:46that will then get a patch.

10:48Now, there's something else here as well,

10:50the SYNful Knock.

10:51SYN is a network communication

10:53where we'll send out communication

10:56to a destination right over here.

10:59And the destination normally replies with an acknowledgement

11:03that they received that network communication.

11:05Talk more about that possibly well into the future here.

11:09But this kind of an exploit right here

11:11is against the Internetwork Operating System.

11:14That's not Apple's iOS.

11:16That's Internetwork Operating System of Cisco.

11:19Now, how did this kind of thing get released?

11:22What happens here is

11:24if you download your updates from Cisco,

11:27you're gonna be fine, okay?

11:29There was an update that was supposed to be from Cisco

11:32that was masquerading as an authentic update

11:34from Cisco for their operating system,

11:37which controls their various network devices.

11:40And apparently, it wasn't actually from them.

11:42I don't know if somebody got an email

11:45that purported to be from Cisco.

11:47There was a fake email that said,

11:49"Click here to download the latest update for your router."

11:52And someone might have clicked on it,

11:54and instead they got this vulnerability

11:56that would then exploit that operating system.

11:59And then from there, they can, again,

12:01scoop out your data and all that kind of stuff.

0:00<v ->In our last nugget, we took a look</v>

0:01at vulnerabilities and what they are.

0:03Now let's take a look at some examples

0:06of software vulnerabilities.

0:08There's actually quite a lot more

0:09than what you'll see on this particular slide,

0:12but some of them kind of branch off of what we see here,

0:15and they're various forms of what we see here.

0:17And some of them are also a little bit more obscure.

0:20But these are the main categories of the types

0:23of software vulnerabilities that you'll see,

0:24such as non-validated input.

0:27What does that mean?

0:28Well, this is the incorrect type of data

0:31that's being entered into something, okay?

0:33And it can take a lot of different forms,

0:35but very often you'll see this in maybe in a database form.

0:38So maybe, you know, you filled out a form

0:40that wants your, you know, your first name here,

0:43your last name here.

0:45Maybe you're ordering something on the internet or whatever.

0:48And maybe right here is where they want your address, okay?

0:53But what if you were to enter in something

0:55different there in the address field?

0:56Now these examples that I'm gonna show you

1:00are kind of examples where if a programmer

1:04were to write something like this

1:05or a database administrator were to write something

1:08like what I'm showing you,

1:08there'd be a pretty bad administrator, okay?

1:11They're very obvious weaknesses,

1:14but they do happen and they have happened.

1:16But you're not gonna find this kind of an example

1:18I'm about to show you on Amazon or eBay

1:21or something like that.

1:22So anyway, get back to the address field.

1:24So normally that'd be 123 Main Street

1:26or something like this, right?

1:27And that field is designed

1:30to accept alpha numeric characters.

1:33So because of that, I could possibly exploit that,

1:37depending on how this field has been configured.

1:40So what if I were, instead of putting an address in there,

1:43were to put in some kind of a path to a network script

1:47or something like that, like a Python script here

1:49or something like this.

1:50And again, you know, this is not gonna be happening

1:52every day, but there are certain weaknesses

1:54that could be accidentally left open here.

1:57So now if I'm malicious, I could go into this field

2:01and enter in a script, which could do just about anything,

2:04depending upon the level of privilege

2:06that I've elevated myself to.

2:08It could run system functions, it could crash the system,

2:11it could corrupt a database or corrupt a record at least.

2:15So any different number of things that could happen

2:18with this script.

2:20It just depends on how nefarious I am

2:22when I write that script.

2:23Another example of this would be, you know,

2:25there's the street address.

2:26You know, maybe I've got a field down here

2:29for postal code or zip code right here.

2:32Now, in terms of the non-validated input,

2:36what kind of data goes in a zip code?

2:38Do letters go in a zip code?

2:40No, it's only going to be numbers.

2:43So whoever created the form and manages the database,

2:47they should configure that field so that if someone tries

2:49to put in letters like this, it won't work.

2:53It should give a message to the user saying,

2:55only accepts numbers, or something like that.

2:57Or only accepts, I dunno, five digits

3:00or only accepts five digits dash,

3:02and then four digits for a more specific zip code.

3:06But again, with the non-validated input in the zip code.

3:08So my zip code here, maybe it's 85032.

3:13What if instead of a zero there I put an O.

3:16Okay, the letter O instead of a zero.

3:19What would that do?

3:20Would it cause something to freeze up?

3:22Would it cause some other kind of a problem? Who knows?

3:25There's a lot of different things that could happen

3:27as a result of this, but that's what the non-validated input

3:30is about, is where the incorrect type of data

3:33is put into a field.

3:34And that can then exploit that poorly designed form

3:38or that poorly designed database.

3:40How about looking at race conditions here?

3:42This is where there are two or more actions

3:45that are supposed to take place in a sequence.

3:47So it's supposed to be, you know, action number one,

3:49and then action number two, and then action number three

3:51and four and five and so forth.

3:54So what if we could force some of those to go out of order?

3:57What if we made it go action number one,

3:59and then action number three,

4:00and then number two and four and five.

4:03Well, we've obviously switched a couple of those right here.

4:07What would happen if we did that?

4:08It kind of depends on what the data is.

4:10So for example, you could see here I said, you know,

4:13in e-commerce multiple uses of of a coupon code,

4:17for example.

4:17Maybe we were trying to exploit a 50% off coupon code

4:21and it was one time use only per customer.

4:24Well, if we could rearrange the order of these,

4:26so it checks to see whether I've used that coupon code

4:29at a later point in time, and then I've actually

4:32been able to enter in that coupon code, I dunno,

4:34five different times, then by changing the order of this,

4:39the check that it makes to see if the coupon's been used

4:42or not yet, well, I might be able to use that code

4:44multiple times there before it gets checked

4:47to see whether it's been used only once.

4:49There's also processing the order before the payment.

4:52You know, maybe I could do something like that.

4:54These are simple examples,

4:56but maybe I am, I don't know, buying a big screen TV

4:58or something like this in a particular form.

5:01And you know, again, I've entered in my name here,

5:02my address, you know, whatever else it is.

5:05And normally after you enter all this in

5:06and you've selected the item that you want to buy,

5:09maybe the next page will have the payment processing

5:12that takes place there.

5:13But maybe in a race condition, I figured out a way

5:16to go ahead and send the order to processing

5:19before the payment page.

5:21So now it's in their order processing system

5:23and I'm able to cancel it

5:25before I actually get to the payment.

5:26Well, too late that ship has sailed.

5:28Now it's already in their order fulfillment.

5:30And someone's gonna send me a TV.

5:32I say that as if I've done it before.

5:34I assure you I haven't.

5:36Anyway, how about this next one, buffer overflow.

5:40Wow, this one's a common one that can take

5:42a lot of different forms and be used

5:44in a lot of different kinds of exploits.

5:46But what happens here, it's gonna shove more data

5:48into memory than it was designed to hold.

5:50So let's say I have an application here,

5:53and this is the application's memory allotment right here.

5:57Maybe it's designed to hold, I don't know,

6:00one megabyte of data, and that's for the executable program,

6:04maybe any temporary files that it needs to load,

6:06all that kind of stuff.

6:07But it's only designed to use one megabyte of this data.

6:10Well, a hacker, what they might be able to do,

6:12is to shove up some more data into this,

6:15which might cause some data to overflow

6:18outside of the bounds of this memory.

6:20And then from that point,

6:21a few different things could happen.

6:23Number one, I might shove that data out,

6:26but I might shove in code of some kind

6:29or something malicious here, malware, whatever it is.

6:33And now that code could operate under the same privileges

6:37of whatever this application is.

6:39What if this was a privileged application

6:41that had access to confidential data or something like that?

6:45Well now, my malicious code could potentially access

6:48that same kind of data or those same resources

6:51that the user who launched this application could access.

6:55Or another thing that could happen

6:56is what shoots outta the top of this.

6:58I might be able to figure out a way

7:00to shoot out code into this data

7:04that's been shot outta the top of this memory allocation.

7:07And that might be executable code

7:09or otherwise malicious as well.

7:11Now, notice that here, it's outside of the bounds

7:13of the memory.

7:15Well, what controls it then?

7:16I actually don't know.

7:18It could be anything.

7:19It could be the operating system.

7:21Now it might be operating underneath the privileges

7:23of the operating system itself, which can do anything.

7:26There's no limits to what it can touch,

7:28what it could destroy, what it could access.

7:30And from there it could go to a lot of other places.

7:32It might be able to hopscotch into other applications,

7:35access certain kinds of data,

7:37or very often this kind of thing right here

7:39is also very unstable and it could just crash the system

7:43or terminate the application

7:45where that buffer overflow happened.

7:46And that might be another reason why a hacker would do it,

7:49is they just want to vandalize the application

7:52or be a nuisance.

7:53When this kind of thing happens by the way,

7:55even though this whole thing crashes,

7:57the original data that it was using, this one megabyte,

8:00I know it's getting messy here, but that original

8:02one megabyte of data memory,

8:04that could now potentially become a memory leak.

8:07What does that mean?

8:08It means that it's being used

8:09by the operating system and it's being accounted for

8:12because the operating system thinks the application

8:14needs it, even though the application's already crashed

8:17and it just leaves that one megabyte open.

8:19Now, hacker might figure out a way in a buffer overflow

8:23to cause this to happen dozens or hundreds of times.

8:25And pretty soon you're out of memory

8:27and hence they've crashed a server,

8:29because it has no memory usage anymore.

8:32Or they really slow it down because it's forcing it

8:34to use what we call a swap file instead,

8:37which is much slower than using actual ram.

8:39There's also weak security practices

8:41that could be occurring here as well.

8:43So for example, when a developer's

8:45first creating an application, you know,

8:48in their mind they're thinking, okay, we're in a kind of a,

8:50what we call a sandbox environment very often.

8:53And this is an environment where since the program

8:55that we're developing is new and not yet stable

8:58and we haven't gotten all the bugs fixed

8:59and all that kind of stuff, it could crash stuff.

9:02So in this sandboxed environment, since it's already

9:05kind of protecting itself from the rest

9:06of the operating system and any other important systems,

9:10sometimes it's easy to get a little bit careless with that,

9:12because maybe they'll just run it at a higher level

9:14of privilege than it really needs.

9:16One time I saw a webpage, okay, webpage here

9:20and the source code, which is just HTML and XML data

9:25actually, it actually had the admin password here,

9:30that's supposed to be ADM admin password

9:33because I guess a few of the developers

9:35that were working on this wanted to make sure

9:38that that password was available

9:39so that other administrators could log in

9:41and do whatever they needed to do

9:43while they were developing this code.

9:45You know, it's a little bit kind of a weakness,

9:48not ideal to do it that way, but an isolated environment,

9:51I guess you know, they thought they could get away with it.

9:53The thing is, they forgot that they had that in there.

9:55And so when they then put the webpage into production,

10:01that admin password was still there

10:03and anybody that would analyze that webpage

10:05could then find the admin password.

10:07So that's just a weak security practice.

10:08There's lots of other, you know, weak security practices

10:11that could occur there.

10:12But other things that are involved in that are

10:14what kind of authentication you use,

10:18and authorization and encryption,

10:20all of those different kinds of things

10:22can protect your data

10:23and protect your applications and operating system.

10:26Generally, you don't wanna recreate the wheel.

10:27There's lots of good methods that are already in place

10:31to encrypt things.

10:32So you might use Windows encryption, for example,

10:35to encrypt hard drives, to encrypt data.

10:38Those are good security practices.

10:40So for example, on a laptop, you might want

10:42to use encryption on that hard drive

10:45in case that laptop gets stolen or something like that.

10:47Then that data might be useless to anybody.

10:50So that would be a good security practice

10:52on something like a mobile device, for example.

10:55And then there's also things such as access control.

10:57This largely relates to things like permissions.

11:00So for example, in a certain form, for example,

11:03depending upon who you've logged on as,

11:05you might have permission

11:06to enter in certain data into forms.

11:08If you're a supervisor, then you might have

11:11a different level of permission to enter into a form

11:14on your web application, for example.

11:16On simpler terms, and very common,

11:19would be in our file system.

11:20So you know, here I've just got, you know,

11:23an empty drive almost empty anyway,

11:25so let's just create a new folder here.

11:26I'll just call this, you know, secrets.

11:28And we wanna make sure that that gets protected.

11:31We don't want just anybody to be able to access

11:33any files that I might put in there.

11:35So this is just a simple example

11:37of working with the permissions there.

11:39But I could go to properties right here

11:40and then go down here to sharing.

11:42And once I'm in this, I can go to, in my case,

11:44advanced sharing and then share this folder.

11:47Then I want to go to permissions

11:49and specify who can access it.

11:50Right now everyone can read what's in there, as you can see.

11:55That's probably not ideal.

11:56I really would rather not have everyone

11:59reading whatever secrets I put in that particular folder.

12:02So what am I do instead would be to remove everyone

12:05and then add in a specific person.

12:07So I'm trying to think of another account I have.

12:09Lab admin is one I have.

12:11There we go, lab admin right here.

12:13And that's just an account that I created

12:16for a different course and everything,

12:17but I'm just using it as an example, all right.

12:19Maybe I want that account to have full control

12:21and that's the only account that I want

12:23to be able to have any access over this particular folder

12:27and any of the contents that get created in it.

12:29And now, anybody else that everyone,

12:32which is literally just that, everyone.

12:34or any other user accounts or groups

12:35will not be able to access this.

0:00<v ->Now here I just want to kind of mention</v>

0:02that I'm taking a lot of our material, of course,

0:05from the Cisco Certified Support Technician

0:08Cybersecurity Objective Domains.

0:10This is available from Cisco's website.

0:12If you're interested in this certification,

0:14you've probably already seen the website

0:17where you can go for this.

0:18I'll put a link down below

0:20in case you haven't already seen this.

0:22But one of the things you can get from there

0:23is this PDF file of all of the exam objectives

0:27if you're interested in the exam,

0:29even if you're not a test taker,

0:31these are all good things to know.

0:32So reason why I'm going over this right now is

0:34because I'm about to cover additional terms

0:38and things like that that appear

0:39kind of throughout this area right here,

0:42and I'm just kind of putting them up on a slide

0:44so that we can make sure that we have kind of common terms

0:47that we understand right through here.

0:50So we're gonna address some of those

0:51additional security terms.

0:53One of those terms here would be simply an exploit.

0:56And we've kind of already addressed that a little bit

0:58because we talked about vulnerabilities earlier.

1:02Vulnerabilities really just kind of are weaknesses

1:05that sit there by themselves until someone exploits them.

1:08And then when they perform the exploit,

1:10then they access your data

1:11or they log in to your network

1:14when they shouldn't be able to or that kind of stuff.

1:16So basically the exploit is the software that's written

1:19to exploit a vulnerability.

1:22In other words, that's the attack,

1:23when they actually run that exploit software,

1:26that exploit script against a vulnerability.

1:29There's also risks.

1:31Now, one thing you have

1:33to understand right from the beginning

1:34with cybersecurity is we're all at risk.

1:37No matter how well you lock down your systems,

1:40remember there's millions

1:42and billions of lines of code

1:43that there's gonna be a weakness in there somewhere.

1:46Eventually somebody will find it.

1:47So in terms of cybersecurity from a professional viewpoint,

1:51we're kind of always on the defensive.

1:53There's gonna be something that gets exploited eventually,

1:56but you want to try to reduce that risk as much as possible.

2:00So just wanna make sure

2:01that we understand every organization's at risk.

2:03Doesn't matter if you have good firewalls

2:05and inner malware protections in place.

2:09All kinds of other things that we'll be

2:11discussing throughout this course.

2:13Our responsibility though, professionally,

2:15is to secure as best as we can

2:18and to, we do what we call reducing the attack surface

2:21or hardening ourselves as a target here.

2:24So let's say that you became a new cybersecurity specialist

2:29or an IT admin at an organization

2:32where you inherited somebody else's infrastructure

2:35and their mess, so to speak.

2:37So maybe when you get there,

2:39this is the size of the attack surface.

2:42It could be a,

2:43maybe it was originally a small family run business

2:46and aunt Judy kinda was pretty good with computers

2:48so she set up all of our computers and everything like that.

2:51But then it grew and now we have, I don't know,

2:53a couple hundred employees here.

2:55And as time went by, we realized,

2:57or they realized that it wasn't very secure.

2:59So they hired you to come take a look at things.

3:02All the folders were open to everybody,

3:04all the file resources were open,

3:06anybody could access them at any time.

3:08You could be a warehouse worker

3:10and gain access to the tax records of the organization

3:13or the bank account numbers or any of that kind of stuff.

3:17So that's a very large attack surface (laughing)

3:20because anybody can access anything

3:23and probably including people from the internet

3:26that we don't want to access it.

3:27So that's pretty big.

3:28What we want to do is to reduce that attack surface.

3:31So maybe we start to apply passwords

3:34or a better yet, access controls.

3:38So like I showed you in the last nugget,

3:39when you could put permissions on a folder

3:42to control who can access it, maybe we,

3:45or shrink that circle,

3:46we shrink that attack surface inwards here

3:49to make it smaller and smaller.

3:51What other kind of things could we do?

3:52Well, maybe we don't really have any network firewalls

3:56to protect us from the internet.

3:57That's a big one.

3:58So we put in some firewalls here,

4:00one or more firewalls to shrink the attack surface

4:03or the target a little bit more.

4:06We're hardening our security profile here.

4:09What else do we do, well maybe we didn't have

4:11all the updates we need on all our software.

4:13So we make ourselves even a smaller target here, okay?

4:17We keep shrinking the size of our target.

4:20What else can we, maybe we have user accounts

4:23with easy passwords that some people

4:25have never changed their passwords

4:27in the 10 years they've worked at this company

4:29and their real simple passwords, like password.

4:31So we shrink our target here a little bit more,

4:34forcing everyone to change their passwords

4:36to complicated passwords.

4:38So anyway, that's a little bit of what's going on there.

4:40When we reduce our attack surface

4:42or harden our attack surface,

4:44we're just making it harder

4:46and harder and harder for an unauthorized party

4:49to be able to access our resources.

4:52There's also threats.

4:53There's a couple of different kinds of threats here

4:54that you should be aware of.

4:55One of those would be external.

4:57So remember when I said we might implement firewalls

5:00to protect ourselves from the evil internet?

5:03Well, the internet at large is the external source there.

5:07Someone that's not part of our organization

5:10trying to gain access inwards to our organization.

5:13They might do this by a number of different methods.

5:16So let's say for example, we have a firewall here,

5:18and this is our internal network

5:20and this is the evil internet out here.

5:23Boy, that's an awful diagram. Anyway, that's the internet.

5:26This is our work organization.

5:28And firewalls are generally designed to do a lot

5:31of different things, but one of the things they do is

5:33to close all ports except for what's actually necessary.

5:37So maybe I had a web server in here, www server,

5:43well, that uses something called TCP port 80,

5:46so that port's gonna be open on the firewall.

5:48But maybe a long time ago we used to use, I don't know, FTP,

5:52which is file transfer protocol, notoriously insecure.

5:56So maybe we decide we don't need to use that anymore.

5:58We're gonna close that down.

5:59We're not gonna use FTP anymore.

6:01We'll use other secure methods to transfer our files,

6:04but someone forgot

6:06and left port 21,

6:07which is what FTP uses, open on the firewall.

6:10So an evil internet person here, a hacker,

6:13might be able to figure out that, oh, they can,

6:15there's ways of probing this.

6:17They figured out that we got port 21 open

6:19and now maybe they can find their way to punch through that

6:22or to use that open port

6:23to access their way into our organization

6:26or to repurpose that particular port, for example,

6:29for some other nefarious purpose.

6:31So those are kinda external threats where someone's trying

6:34to find their way into our organization.

6:37So another kind of a threat we might have would be in terms

6:39of external threats would be maybe we have

6:41an evil hacker person out here

6:43and they're trying to social engineer.

6:47That's another thing that we use here in hacker world,

6:49social engineering.

6:52And this is where, really, it's just a con job.

6:55Normally that's gonna be some kind of an impersonation,

6:57for example, where we might call someone

6:59and say, hey, I need your help,

7:02I'm working for the COO

7:04and I'm their administrative assistant.

7:06They told me to gain access to this folder.

7:09I realized I don't have access to it.

7:10They're on a plane on the way to Philadelphia

7:12for an important meeting.

7:14Can you tell me the credentials I need

7:16or a password that gains me access to specific resources?

7:20Or can I use your password to access this particular folder?

7:24I gotta do it before the boss lands,

7:26or I'm gonna be in big trouble.

7:27I'm gonna get fired, okay.

7:29Well, people like to help other people, generally speaking,

7:31that's just the good part of humanity.

7:34So they say, oh man, I don't wanna,

7:36I don't want you to get fired, here's my password.

7:39So that's just kind of a social engineering,

7:41simple kind of a thing that could happen.

7:43Lots of other vectors that that can spring off of.

7:47But anyway, there's also internal attacks, okay?

7:50And with this kind of thing, it might be perfectly innocent.

7:54It might be just a mistake.

7:56So maybe our company invented some hot new gadget.

7:59It's gonna be the, this generation's fidget spinners

8:02and we're gonna make billions of dollars off of this thing.

8:05And I'm so excited about it that I took a picture

8:08of our new gadget and I posted it on social media.

8:12Well, that's an internal threat

8:13because I had access to those pictures of that product.

8:16Maybe I could even take a picture of it with my phone.

8:19And I'm really happy to work for my company,

8:22but I might not work for my company anymore if I release

8:25that kind of information ahead of schedule

8:27or without authorization.

8:29Again, I'm an internal employee,

8:31I mishandled our internal data.

8:34And these things are another threat folks.

8:36Yes, these ubiquitous USB flash drives.

8:39Now I use 'em all the time.

8:40We probably all do, might be an external drive of some kind

8:44or a flash drive like this,

8:45but they're easy to store data on.

8:47And so we just plug 'em into a USB

8:48and we can access the data on them.

8:51But those can be abused as an internal threat.

8:55So we might have brought one of these from home

8:57and we plug it into our computer at work

8:59because I wanna take some of these files home

9:00so I can work on 'em there.

9:02Well, that might not be an appropriate use of data.

9:04It might be against the rules, so to speak,

9:07or against our practices, security practices,

9:10to copy that data to a thumb drive like this.

9:14So that's an internal threat.

9:15We bring it home

9:16and it turns out our home computer's not secure.

9:18It's already got a virus on it,

9:20and then it can steal that data and send it to somebody.

9:23So that's an internal threat.

9:24I had authorization to access the data,

9:27but I did not have permission to take it home.

9:30Another internal threat might be simply, emails.

9:34We might have gotten a spam email from somebody

9:38that looked like they were one of our internal users,

9:41or maybe they were even, maybe they even,

9:42email even talked about projects

9:44that we work on or something.

9:46And it said, hey, please click this link

9:48to download the latest manual

9:50about this product or whatever,

9:51and we click on it and maybe it's actually malware.

9:53So that could be, again, an internal threat

9:56where really it came from external

9:58'cause someone from outside our organization sent it to us,

10:01but it became an internal threat.

10:02Once I clicked on that email as an employee

10:05and I released this malware into our organization,

10:08that happens a lot.

10:09There's also internal threats

10:11of things like disgruntled employees.

10:13They're very upset.

10:14Maybe I'm very upset that I didn't get that promotion.

10:17I've been working here longer than that guy

10:18that he got the promotion,

10:20he doesn't even know as much as I do.

10:21How did he get this promotion?

10:22Well then they can start going in

10:24and deleting files and vandalizing things

10:27or kind of throwing a wrench in the works.

10:29That's an internal threat as well.

10:31I gotta say, the internal threats

10:33are at least as significant as the external threats

10:35because we already have access to files,

10:38we already have access to resources.

10:40We already know how the organization works,

10:42and we're in many ways, much more of a threat

10:45than some external hacker.

10:46So those are a few more of the security principles

10:49to take a look at.

10:50In our next nugget, we're gonna be addressing several more.

10:53Stick around for that.

0:00<v ->All right, let's continue our discussion</v>

0:01of essential security principles,

0:03and here, we're gonna take a look

0:04at a couple of different terms, such as attack vectors.

0:07Now, in a certain way,

0:08we've kind of already discussed this a bit,

0:10because really, it's what happens

0:12when there's a vulnerability

0:14and then an attacker wants to use an exploit

0:17against that vulnerability.

0:18Whatever that vulnerability is, that's their entry point.

0:21That's their attack vector.

0:23That's what they're going to vector on, or focus on,

0:26with their technique to exploit that weakness, okay?

0:29So that's just really all that is.

0:33The defense in depth approach to security

0:36is another topic we should discuss.

0:38We also did see that a little bit

0:40as we were going in our previous nugget.

0:42I think I might have put a note

0:43at the bottom of my last video on a certain area there,

0:47where we were talking about concentric circles,

0:49where we make our attack surface smaller

0:52and smaller and smaller.

0:53and so that we become a very small target

0:56for someone to be able to attack.

0:58Well, what we do there is we implement a layered approach.

1:01We might use network equipment

1:03with certain security settings on it.

1:05We might use updates, we might use antivirus software,

1:09we might use company training to train our employees

1:11to know what to look for and stuff like that.

1:13So all that layered approach will be used

1:16to help cover attack vectors

1:17and to minimize this as much as possible.

1:21And one of the weakest attack vectors

1:24that are out there is the human factor, okay?

1:28Humans will probably give up more than technology will

1:32because of a number of different reasons.

1:34But anyway, some of those would be social engineering,

1:36which we looked at in our last nugget.

1:38Defense in depth, you might be working with the network,

1:40you might have a firewall,

1:41or another thing we haven't discussed yet

1:43would be an intrusion detection system

1:45or an intrusion prevention system.

1:47They're very similar, and what they do

1:49is they sit somewhere on your network,

1:51usually at an entry point to your network,

1:53such as in from the internet,

1:54and they will look for patterns of attack.

1:57So they'll look for the kind of behavior

1:59that an attacker would use

2:01to try to gain entry into your network,

2:03and once they detect that,

2:04they can either just send an alert to it

2:06or they can actually prevent the attack from happening.

2:09There's also firewalls, which those primarily

2:12will also prevent inbound traffic that's uninvited,

2:17so just a bold attack coming in

2:21from the external network, usually the internet.

2:24And again, firewalls generally will have ports open

2:27so that services can be available in that port,

2:30such as a website or something like this.

2:33Software, we wanna make sure

2:34that we have up-to-date software

2:36that does not have known security vulnerabilities,

2:38and related to that would be getting the proper updates,

2:40which we can often do for either our operating system itself

2:45or also for the software that we're running

2:47on those systems.

2:48Anti-malware products really should be in place.

2:51It's kind of easier now with Windows,

2:53because Windows machines generally already have it.

2:56Microsoft Defender is already there,

2:58and that's their anti-malware product,

3:01and it does a number of other things as well.

3:03It can integrate also a client firewall

3:05on the actual computer

3:06in addition to maybe your hardware firewalls that exist

3:10on your network infrastructure.

3:12And there's policies and training.

3:13This is so important, because employees need to know

3:16what they're allowed to do and not allowed to do.

3:20Can they share that there's a new product announcement?

3:24Can they put that on social media?

3:26Very often, they can't,

3:28because they might not be aware of the timing.

3:31They might not be aware of that

3:32it's not supposed to be released yet

3:34or we gotta wait another quarter to release that product.

3:36So if they make that known too early,

3:38then that could potentially be a problem.

3:40Other policies would be whether they're allowed

3:42to bring in external storage from home

3:44or some other location into work, okay?

3:47Sometimes those can be brought in,

3:49but they have to be scanned first or something like that,

3:51or the company will provide these

3:53that have already been pre-scanned

3:55if they really need to use something like a thumb drive.

3:58That's a couple of policies that might exist there.

4:01Other policies in a company would be,

4:03what are the users allowed to gain physical access?

4:06Are they allowed to go into the server room?

4:08Probably not.

4:09Usually, that's just IT,

4:11and usually, that's even a higher level of IT

4:12that's allowed to go in there.

4:14Training, this is really critical.

4:16Again, humans are usually the weakest part

4:18of a defense in depth approach,

4:22because they're more likely to give out secrets,

4:25either accidentally or on purpose.

4:27Either way, but we need to train them

4:29so that they can do things

4:30like spot a social engineering attack,

4:33so that they can spot a spam or a phishing attempt,

4:37which is gonna try to get information from those users

4:41or use those users to gain access

4:44to our systems and resources.

4:46CIA is another part of this as well,

4:48and that's not the three-letter acronym

4:50for the government agency.

4:51That's just confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

4:55Most of what we're trying to protect

4:57will be somewhere underneath one

4:59of those three domains of CIA.

5:02So confidentiality is so that we can prevent people

5:06from seeing data that they're not supposed

5:08to be able to see.

5:09If it's confidential, it stays that way, right?

5:12One of the ways that that can be done

5:13would be through encryption, for example,

5:14so we could encrypt files.

5:17Maybe we have a website that we run out here somewhere.

5:21This is our WWW server, and it runs HTTPS,

5:26and that means there's a certificate involved,

5:28and that certificate can be used

5:29with complex mathematical algorithms

5:33to encrypt any data that comes in.

5:35So if a user's here, they're trying to place an order

5:38on our secured website here,

5:41then their credit card information should be confidential.

5:44It should be encrypted in this transmission.

5:47Maybe they had to put other personal information,

5:49I don't know, date of birth, address,

5:50anything else like that, all that should be confidential

5:53because we're using encryption to do that.

5:57There's also integrity.

5:58By the way, the same certificate

6:00that provides this encryption here

6:02can also be used to provide integrity.

6:04But very often, what happens there is,

6:06lemme start over here.

6:08We have a document, let's say,

6:09that we want to send to somebody else

6:11or put on a file server or just transmit somewhere

6:14to a destination.

6:15So this is the source, this is the destination.

6:17Doesn't matter what the destination is right now,

6:20but we have a specific copy of the data.

6:23and when it arrives at the destination,

6:25we wanna make sure that it's exactly the same

6:29and that it has not been tampered with.

6:31This could prevent something such as

6:34what we call a man-in-the-middle attack,

6:36where someone can take that data en route,

6:39modify it for their own purposes

6:41to get some different version of it,

6:43and then send it on its way.

6:44It could be program code, it could be something related

6:47to our applications or software,

6:49or it could just be a document,

6:51even a Word document or something like that,

6:53that they have modified for their own purpose.

6:56Well, with integrity, what happens there is,

7:00again, there's a mathematical algorithm called a hash,

7:02and it runs this document through a hash,

7:06and out of the hash, there will be a result here,

7:09and it's a long, complex result,

7:10but it'll be, ABC123, something like that,

7:15and then on the destination, that hash should match

7:18when it runs against the same mathematical algorithm.

7:21So if this matches both the source and destination,

7:24then at the destination, we know that that document

7:26has not been tampered with or corrupted.

7:29It could just be accidental.

7:30Might've just gotten corrupt on the way,

7:31but if it doesn't match, if there's been any change to it,

7:35this hash will change to something else.

7:37You know, XYX987, something like that, anything.

7:42And again, it's a longer number.

7:43I'm just making a short representation here,

7:45but if it's changed, then it'll be apparent

7:47that has been modified in transit somehow.

7:51Now, do users have to know

7:52how to do the hash and all that stuff?

7:54No, and we really don't either.

7:56A lot of systems that are in place

7:58will apply the hash automatically,

8:01and we'll be able to determine

8:02if there has been any change in the data.

8:04But from an IT perspective, we have to make sure

8:07that those preventions are in place already.

8:10Then there's also availability.

8:12We really need to make sure that,

8:14when we're trying to tighten down everything

8:17and making sure that our systems are secure

8:19and there are no weaknesses in it,

8:21that we don't tighten it down so much

8:22that nobody can do their jobs,

8:24nobody can access the files they're supposed to access.

8:27So we need to be able to prevent

8:29that sort of thing from happening as well, and again,

8:31that happens through things such as permissions

8:34on various files and folders, permissions on databases,

8:38to make sure that certain departments

8:39have the level of access that they need

8:41and they're not being restricted in their job performance.

8:44On the other hand, people that are not supposed to access it

8:47don't have an elevated privilege so that they can access it

8:50when they really should not be.

0:00<v ->All right now when it comes to</v>

0:01the types of a hacker that's out there,

0:03there's a lot of different types,

0:04and this is not gonna be an exhaustive list, by any means,

0:07but generally speaking, they'll fall

0:09into certain kind of categories, if you will.

0:11So one of those would be what we call a script kiddie,

0:15also known as just an amateur.

0:16And this is where someone will take, you know,

0:19preexisting scripts, preexisting programs,

0:23and just use that to attack a target

0:26without ever writing anything on their own.

0:28Now this is not always entirely bad.

0:30I mean, most hackers will use preexisting tools,

0:34but they don't always come up with their own original code.

0:38And a good example of what I'm talking about

0:40is right here behind me, it's Kali Linux.

0:43Now Linux has long been kind of

0:45a favored platform for hackers.

0:48A big part of that would be the flexibility of it.

0:51It's kind of not limited, if you will,

0:54by a specific organization like Microsoft or Apple.

0:58So in terms of a lot of the liberties

1:00that come just inherently with the operating system,

1:03a lot of hackers just like Linux.

1:05The other thing here is what we call Kali Linux.

1:08This is just a flavor of Linux.

1:10There's lots of different flavors out there.

1:12They're not all governed by one company,

1:15so a lot of different ones.

1:16But the Kali Linux flavor of it, if you will,

1:19is designed for hackers, what does that mean?

1:21Well, you can see here that if I click

1:23into the menu system, notice that there's

1:25all these various applications that have been added on.

1:29Now, you might see something like calculator

1:31that's just there as part of Linux here,

1:34the help system, some of the utilities,

1:36you know, this videos thing.

1:38But a lot of these other things

1:40that we see here really are hackers tools like, you know,

1:43you can kind of tell that that's a hacker's tool, I think.

1:46Most hackers are very familiar with Kali Linux

1:49and most hackers will use a lot of these different tools.

1:52So just using them alone does not

1:54make somebody a script kiddie.

1:57You can see there's several different pages of this.

1:59Most of these things are not just the default part of Linux.

2:03But anyway, you can use these things

2:05and not necessarily be a script kiddie per se.

2:09A lot of times the use of the term script kiddie

2:12is just to insult another hacker.

2:14So if a hacker thinks that someone else is,

2:17you know, an amateur, or not very good,

2:19it doesn't matter if they actually are very good

2:21as a hacker, you just call 'em a script kiddie

2:23in some chat room and you're likely

2:25to start some kind of fight.

2:26So this is definitely an insult, but we all kind of do it

2:30at the same time, we use preexisting tools.

2:32So then, there's just the hacker themselves.

2:35This would be somebody that is a little bit,

2:36usually, more skilled.

2:38This is someone that could potentially write their own code,

2:41or write their own scripts, exploit weaknesses

2:44on their own, stuff like that.

2:46Does take quite a lot of time and research, by the way.

2:49So hackers are, generally, very highly skilled,

2:53usually very highly intelligent

2:55and also have a lot of patience

2:57'cause it takes some time to find

2:58some of the weaknesses sometimes,

3:00especially if you're looking for,

3:01what we call, an O day or a 0 day vulnerability,

3:06and that equivocates to a new vulnerability

3:08that nobody's discovered yet.

3:10And also for which there are no longer...

3:13there are no patches yet, okay?

3:15No patches, or updates, or anything like that.

3:17Someone that comes up with this kind of stuff

3:19is usually a highly skilled hacker

3:22and it might even be an organization

3:24of hackers all working as a team.

3:26There's also organized hackers

3:29that have various reasons for attacks.

3:31And I'll go over that right here.

3:33First of all might be just cyber criminal rings, okay?

3:36There are criminal rings out there

3:38that are just a group of very talented hackers.

3:42Some of them even have an office

3:43and office hours that they keep, okay?

3:45So they're very highly organized.

3:47Most of them are gonna be also very well compensated

3:51and a lot of times they'll participate

3:53in some kind of a split of any profits that they get.

3:56A lot of times, this is coming right now

3:58in the form of ransomware, okay,

4:00we'll probably discuss this a little more later on.

4:02But the basic idea there is they'll reach out,

4:05and they'll find somebody's files,

4:08and they'll encrypt them all so that they can

4:10no longer read those files or all the data's locked up

4:13and they will not allow you to see

4:15your own data unless you pay them,

4:17usually, some Bitcoin or some kind of an alt coin.

4:21And a lot of times it adds up to millions of dollars, okay?

4:24So we'll get into that a little bit more

4:26at a future point in time.

4:27But that's very often what they're doing right now.

4:29There's also hacktivists, these are organizations

4:34that have a specific social, or political objective in mind.

4:38So maybe they, I dunno, hate a specific government.

4:42And so, they might attack those government systems

4:45and the government servers, or military targets,

4:49or something like this, something that they stand against.

4:51Or maybe they're hardcore environmentalists

4:54and so they might attack an oil company's resources

4:58and stuff like that so that's just an example of that.

5:01This symbol above my head here,

5:04you might not recognize that maybe,

5:06it comes from actually a movie called "V for Vendetta."

5:09I think it was actually based on a book,

5:10by the way, or actually a graphic novel.

5:12But anyway, there was somebody in that film that wore a mask

5:16and it was kind of a rage against the machine,

5:19or a rage against the system kind of a movie.

5:22Well, so the hackers group Anonymous kind of adopted that.

5:25And Anonymous is a group of,

5:28I would primarily call them kind of hacktivists

5:30because I don't know that they never do anything for profit.

5:33But in general they will hack organizations

5:36that they disagree with politically or socially.

5:38They are very highly skilled.

5:40And then, there's also another kind of

5:41a hacker here known as just a terrorist.

5:44Very often they're closely aligned

5:45with a state sponsored hacker.

5:48So these kind of go hand in hand sometimes,

5:50but it might be a nation state, a specific country

5:54that has an enemy in another country

5:58and they will just hack that country.

6:00They will try to steal their military secrets,

6:02try to steal infrastructure secrets, all that kind of stuff.

6:06Now then, there are also several different kinds

6:08of hackers in terms of a code of ethics.

6:11Now, you might think that hackers don't have any ethics.

6:13Well, sometimes they do, especially if they're, you know,

6:16hacktivists because they have various principles

6:18that they're trying to support

6:20as opposed to just financial gain.

6:22But there's also a level of ethic

6:25within each group of hackers.

6:26So for example, first of all there's the black hat hacker.

6:30These are hackers, just go after what

6:33we would normally consider unethical gain,

6:36such as stealing money, stealing credit cards,

6:39that sort of thing, taking down critical infrastructure

6:42just for fun, for example, sometimes a black hat hacker

6:46will disrupt something just because they think it's fun

6:48and they wanna see if they can do.

6:49It might be some kind of utility

6:51that they deny or something like that.

6:54Much of the time these are gonna be just for profit.

6:56Then there's also a white hat hacker,

6:58that's actually what I am, by the way.

7:01This is, lemme see if I still have it open.

7:04Here it is, I am actually a certified ethical hacker.

7:08There's an organization called the EC Council,

7:10and you can see that I got

7:12a Certified Ethical Hacker Certification back

7:14in November 11th, 2005 so it's been

7:17a while now since I originally got this.

7:19When you get this, you have to demonstrate

7:22a certain level, a certain competency as a hacker,

7:25but you also commit to not using your powers for evil.

7:29They have to only be used for good.

7:30And generally speaking, we will only agree

7:33to attack organizations with their permission.

7:37It's usually just called a penetration test,

7:40to kind of suss out any weaknesses

7:42that might exist there and not to steal anything,

7:45not to deliberately disrupt anything, anything like that.

7:48That would be a white hat hacker.

7:51And then, there's also a gray hat.

7:54Now that's exactly what it sounds like.

7:55It's probably a combination of these two.

7:58So by day, somebody might be a white hat hacker

8:02and maybe they work for a penetration testing company,

8:04or a security organization of some type.

8:07But by night, when they go home,

8:09and after they put the kids to bed,

8:10they get involved in black hat hacking.

8:13Maybe they kind of wear two hats depending upon,

8:15you know, what their motives are

8:17and what mood they're in or something.

8:18But they could go either way is what the gray hat is.

0:00<v ->Alright. Now we know about some of the types of hackers,</v>

0:02black hat, white hat, hacktivists,

0:04all those sorts of things.

0:05Now let's take a look at some of the

0:06motives for the hacking.

0:08Some of these are kind of implied

0:09in the various types of hackers they are,

0:11but there are various reasons for their attacks.

0:13One of those might be simply to gain an advantage.

0:16There is still corporate espionage that goes on,

0:19and companies do try to steal each other's secrets.

0:23A lot of times it's actually done by poaching employees.

0:25So I don't know that it actually happens this way,

0:28but you know, if Microsoft wanted somebody at Apple

0:31that was really smart,

0:32and they had a lot of things

0:34that Microsoft wanted,

0:35they might try to hire that employee.

0:37So it's that kind of thing.

0:39It's not always hacking,

0:40but there are various things that can be done

0:41to gain advantage.

0:43Now in an unethical way,

0:44they could try to hack into their systems

0:46and see what's there, and steal secrets.

0:49So they might try to steal various products that are there,

0:52or see how they're made,

0:54or someday I would really love to hack into KFC

0:58and find out the secret fried chicken recipe,

1:01or the Coca-Cola recipe,

1:02or anything else of those tasty things

1:04that are so addicting.

1:05Anyway, some, someday I may have to do it.

1:08Anyway, they may also hack defense secret.

1:11This is normally gonna be a state sponsored hacker,

1:14is trying to get, I don't know,

1:16missile designs, or nuclear secrets, or troop movements.

1:20All of those sorts of things could happen.

1:22And right now, actually in our current

1:25geopolitical landscape,

1:26there's a lot of that going on right now.

1:28And I'm embarrassed to say the United States government

1:31has had a lot of information leaked out of it.

1:33There's also maybe things like a proprietary formula,

1:37a new way to create a car battery, for example,

1:41or a new way to hand soft drinks at half the cost

1:45that we used to have in the past,

1:47or some new way to manufacture something.

1:49So a lot of those things could be involved there.

1:51And there's also, of course, blackmail.

1:54That just happens.

1:55A lot of times that actually comes out,

1:57by the way, in like phishing attacks or spam attacks,

2:01where they might send an email saying,

2:03"We turned on your video camera,

2:05and your microphone on your computer,

2:07and we know what you were doing last night at 11 o'clock.

2:11And unless you send us one Bitcoin,

2:14we're going to release what you were doing,

2:16the video recordings we have of you,

2:18to all of your friends and family."

2:20We also have things such as just general disruption.

2:23Sometimes hackers, they're kind of a proud bunch,

2:25and they wanna prove that they're better

2:27than the hacker next to them.

2:29And so it might just be kind of a contest, and they'll say,

2:32"Oh, bet I could hack into the power plant,

2:34and turn off a power grid."

2:35So they might turn off power,

2:36or some other kind of a utility.

2:38There was a water treatment plant

2:40that got hacked into not long ago,

2:42and the mix of chemicals

2:44that gets put into the water was modified by a hacker.

2:48They were able to gain control of their automated systems.

2:52Now, what was the motive for changing the water?

2:55Again, really not much of one,

2:57other than the pride of saying that they could do it.

3:00A lot of times it's gonna be commerce.

3:02They might try to interrupt,

3:04I don't know, a subway schedule,

3:06or mess with the automatic scheduling of buses

3:10or something like this.

3:12Shipping schedules, train schedules,

3:14all kinds of stuff that goes on there.

3:16Again, just to kind of cause

3:19some kind of a traffic jam or something like this.

3:21A lot of times it's also vengeance.

3:23Remember I said that hackers are kind of a proud bunch,

3:25and in a lot of ways they should be

3:27because they're very, very smart.

3:29But they might not like it

3:31that another hacker got the better of them,

3:33or proved them wrong about something.

3:35Or they were able to hack into something that

3:38the other hacker couldn't.

3:39So they might try to just take vengeance on somebody.

3:42And by the way, this might surprise you.

3:44Hackers actually hack each other quite a lot,

3:47because they just wanna prove that they can, I guess.

3:49It might also be more petty than that.

3:51It might be an an ex-boyfriend,

3:53an ex-girlfriend that someone's

3:55trying to get vengeance against.

3:57Or an ex-employer where maybe somebody got fired,

4:02and they want to say,

4:03"You shouldn't have done that.

4:03I'm gonna show you."

4:04And then they hack into something.

4:06So that's another motive.

4:07And then of course there's financial gain.

4:09That's gonna be the biggest advantage,

4:11the biggest reason probably amongst all of these reasons,

4:14is usually financial gain.

0:00<v ->Alright for this particular validation I had you take a</v>

0:02look at this article right here,

0:05and as you took a look at it, here's the article.

0:08It's from a website called Krebson Security.

0:11I have been referencing them for years.

0:13This is an excellent news site for hacks, hackers,

0:18you know, all that sort of thing.

0:20It's really good information here.

0:22This author here, he actually started this

0:24because someone hacked into his information once

0:27and he's a reporter.

0:28He was a reporter then and it really riled him up

0:32and so he thought he'd make a study of computer security

0:35and cybersecurity, so that's what he did here.

0:37Anyway, this article is about this person who

0:40apparently he's known for a couple of different things.

0:43One of those things is some involvement in a hack on

0:45Twitter, but most

0:46of the article really covers other things here such

0:49as SIM swapping,

0:51and that's one of the questions that we had right here.

0:53The first paragraph, describes sim swapping.

0:56What is that?

0:57I'm kind of using that as teaching something.

0:59I didn't really talk about sim swapping in the main course,

1:01but if you read the article, then you read

1:03that first paragraph and you can see this is

1:05where you can trick somebody, a mobile provider,

1:08into diverting a customer's phone calls

1:10and text messages to a device they control.

1:13So that would be this one right here, okay.

1:17Yours might be in a different order.

1:18The answers are randomized,

1:20so they don't always appear in the same order just FYI.

1:23But that is the correct answer there.

1:25What was the primary motive in the attack

1:27that this hacker Plugwalk Joe carried out in the sim

1:31swapping attack?

1:32Well, it was primarily financial gain.

1:35If you take a look at the article,

1:36because you can see in a couple of different places here,

1:39he stole cryptocurrency.

1:41It actually appears in several places in this.

1:44You can see here that he was charged with a theft

1:48of cryptocurrency at the time, valued at about $800,000.

1:53So obviously his main motive there would've been

1:56financial gain.

1:58What kind of hacker is Plugwalk Joe?

2:01Is he a black hat, gray hat, cowboy hat, or white hat?

2:05Well, he is certainly not a white hat hacker.

2:06He's not doing this for altruistic purposes

2:10or to just do penetration tests to help companies out

2:13and help them be more secure.

2:15He's clearly a black hat hacker doing things just

2:18for his own personal selfish gain.

2:21Okay, what did he steal?

2:22Credit card numbers, lottery tickets,

2:24social security numbers, cryptocurrency, or bank account.

2:27We talked about that a moment ago.

2:28It was cryptocurrency.

2:30Plugwalk Joe also threatened certain people.

2:32Just a wonderful guy, apparently.

2:34True or false?

2:35Well, if you look at this, this is really,

2:37I hate to even bring it up.

2:38He sim swapped his way into Snapchat accounts

2:43of female celebrities

2:45and threatened to release nude photos found on their phones.

2:48And then this one's even more awful.

2:50Threatened and cyber stalked a 16-year-old girl.

2:53Let you read the rest, I don't even want to get into

2:54that one, so this guy's in jail, thankfully all right.

2:58But anyway, he did also threaten certain people,

3:01and there's another one by the way,

3:03other indication of that as well.

3:05Right up in here remarked that some people in a circle

3:08of friends had been known to hire others

3:10to deliver physical beatings on people they didn't like.

3:14There you have it, there's some information about hacking

3:17and a hacker and some of the methods that they used.

3:20Hopefully we all stay on the white hat side of things here.