Thursday, February 27, 2020

WiFi Attacks

What is Wireless? There are masses of standards, protocols, and techniques that can be considered ‘Wireless.’ Like, Cell Phones, Bluetooth, Wireless Networking, and even Cordless Phones (Remember those)? Wireless communications grow and expand at light speed, (like my learning curve) 😉. Considering that it’s the year 2020, most businesses if not all have some sort of Wireless infrastructure deployed, even if its just a WiFi Router at a Nail Salon.

Ugh I want a pedicure now. Anywho, I’m not going to delve deep into T1 Circuits, ISPS, WAN Communication, and other explanations about how wireless signals communicate. Rather, I figured I’d just let you in on a few small WiFi Attacks that have existed in the past, present, and future. Have a home security system on the internet? Use Snapchat or TikTok daily? I know you’re on Instagram. Enjoy yourself, but do ensure you are protected while you scroll. Let’s get started.

Have you ever heard of the legacy attack ‘War Dialing?’ It’s pretty straightforward, all of the numbers in a prefix are dialed in your area code, which results in a number of active computer modems. The act of War Driving is very similar. War Driving is an attack where a person seeks to find WiFi Networks that they are not permitted to access. Once the Hacker finds your WiFi network, he/she will verify whether or not you’re using Encryption, the Encryption Type, and whether or not it can be compromised. Once said Hacker has made that determination, he/she uses cracking tools to force an entry into the connection to conduct MITM attacks. Watch my Webinar to learn exactly how these Hackers (who drive around in vans all day looking for your WiFi signals…) HACK.

While we are on the topic of War, I thought I would introduce another Attack, War Chalking. War Chalking is an area that is physically marked with info about a WiFi signal being present. Yes, this sounds prehistoric, because it is. This method was used from about ’97 to ’02 (hey that was the year before I started High School). Hackers would mark a closed circle to indicate a closed/secured WiFi network, and to back-to-back half circles would stand for an open network. Obvi, this is not necessary anymore, since all we need to do to find a WiFi signal is check our mobile phones.

Next up, Replay Attacks. Replay attacks mainly focus on the abuse of authentication at initial setup. When a new connection request comes in, client server, the Hacker will capture the request and then replay that connection by fooling the server and making it believe that it is a kosher connection. Lol, its like dating. You meet someone new and you think he’s the man, but then later on you learn that he provided false pretenses at initial authentication.

Monday, February 10, 2020

Injection Attacks | Remote Code Execution


First and foremost, let’s get straight to the point. Microsoft has identified a vulnerability that exists in their Excel application. This information comes to us (the general public) courtesy of MITRE’s CVE (common vulnerability and exposures). Essentially, the way the attack works is a hacker who has exploited the vulnerability running malicious code as if he or she were the current user. Also, say that user had admin rights – the hacker could completely take control of the system that’s been affected. Once the hacker is in, he or she is in control. There is an array of stuff for him/her to do, but most likely he will install programs, modify or delete important data, even create new accounts with full admin creds (user rights) - which would allow him to grant himself access to the system under a seemingly appropriate alias. If you are an Excel user, I encourage you to install Microsoft’s latest update to ensure that you are protected.

The title of this specific vulnerability is Remote Code Execution, but this is AKA an Injection Attack, and there are many of these types of attacks that exists. An Injection Attack is an exploitation where an attacker can send code to a target system with the aim of altering its processes, and/or corrupting its data set. Many exist, but one of the most common is a SQL Injection, which is an attack that stays in business by relying on SQL query statements and gathering information about your system’s database structure from those errors. 

This is actually one of the most common web-based hacking practices. Not to mention, that code inject could potentially destroy your entire database. Me specifically, I like to respond to spam texts with SQL Injections – because you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Among other injection attacks we have XSS (Cross Site Scripting) which is not as much of a risk as SQL Injections because XSS targets customers and visitors to websites, whereas SQL injections target organizational assets. 

Join my next Webinar to learn more about Code Injections including SQL Injection in more detail, XSS Cross Site Scripting, Command injections, HTML Injections, Code Injections and File Injections! And remember to patch your systems!