Hacker 10 – Security Hacker

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Other computing tips

  • Self-erasing chat conversations with OTR browser extension

    Self-erasing chat conversations with OTR browser extension

    Off The Record messaging is a browser addon for Chrome (Firefox and Internet Explorer coming soon), to automatically erase messages you send to your friends or co-workers after they have been viewed. When someone receives or views a photo sent with OTR they have five seconds before it self-destructs, this default setting can be changed to a longer period of time if you wish so. You have to register your email address and a password to install the plugin, then you will see a bright OTR button on the top right corner of the browser, you need to add contacts or send invites by email before you can communicate, only other OTR users in your contact list and with he same plugin installed will be able to read the messages.

    A small window opens when you click on the OTR button, big enough to write a few hundred words, photos can not be attached, they have to be taken with the computer camera.

    Off The Record browser plugin self-erasing messages
    Off The Record browser plugin self-erasing messages

    This is a very basic plugin in features and security, not suitable for high privacy, anyone can take a screenshot or photo of the message and preserve it, it will only be of real benefit to avoid exposing personal messages by accident by keeping them off email services that archive all conversations, e.g. Gmail. Off The Record browser plugin target public are company workers who don’t want the boss to learn what they are gossiping about in the office, it could do the trick for that purpose, but it will not keep a very determined boss or IT administrator from learning what messages are being exchanged, a packet sniffer is all someone would need to spy on you since there is no mention of encryption anywhere in OTR specifications.

    You should not confuse this plugin with the excellent Pidgin OTR plugin for Instant Messenger, they both have the same name but are very different.

    Visit Off-The-Record homepage

  • Learn cyberwar skills online playing CTF365

    Learn cyberwar skills online playing CTF365

    Capture The Flag CTF365 is a realistic cyberwar game built for hackers, system administrators, security specialists, programmers and anyone with an interest in computer security

    After signing up for the game you will be named a Combatant and asked to join the country you wish to fight for, each country can have many teams comprised of in between a minimum of five hackers and no more than ten. Teams can ally with each other to defend and attack a Fortress, members of the hacking team will have to safeguard their server while being on the offensive, when a user breaches another team Fortress the points go to the whole team. There will be a Hall of Fame with prizes for the most skilled hackers.

    In this Capture The Flag contest the team’s server will run all major Internet services like SMTP, IMAP, FTP, one Content Management System with plugins for social media, embedded video and others, two different Internet browsers, three web applications and two different databases, part of your job will be to secure all of them.

    Hacking game Capture The Flag CTF365
    Hacking game Capture The Flag CTF365

    The game first campaign will mimic a National Agency network where you can play offensive security attacking their servers, as part of the attack strategy, you can DDoS another players virtual servers if you wish so, just like in real life. There is a CTF365 IRC server accessible from within the game, you can use it to find other players and start building your team or join others. There are only two rules, one, do not use the infrastructure to carry out real hacking attacks against non players, and rule two is do not launch a distributed denial of service against the game servers, if you break any of those rules your account might be terminated.

    Capture The Flag is a superb way to get real hands on experience for penetration testers and sys admins defending their network, anyone with interest in computer security will benefit of this game emulating real life hacking scenarios, the aim is to have hundreds of targets in virtual machines that can be attacked at any time and for Capture The Flag to last a full year, there are future plans to offer Infosec companies the possibility to set up their own CTF contest to train students.

    Visit Capture The Flag CTF365

  • Encrypted Disk Detector for live computer forensics

    Encrypted Disk Detector for live computer forensics

    Encrypted Disk Detector is a free Windows command line tool for computer forensics that can detect Truecrypt, PGP, Bitlocker, Safeboot, Sophos Safeguard, Endpoint Security FDE, Symantec Endpoint FDE and Bestcrypt encrypted volumes. The software checks for encryption signatures in the Master Boot Record and Volume Boot Records, where encryption tools store the authentication hashing mechanism that decrypt data, it also displays OEM ID and volume label partition where applicable, when the encryption software hasn’t got any identifiable signature Encrypted Disk Detector scans for running processes indicative of disk encryption.

    This tool is useful to incident response practitioners to quickly determine if encryption is being used in any of the company or network computers before deciding what steps to take next, e.g. mirror drives, prior to pulling the plug. Encrypted Disk Detector runs in read mode and does not make any file changes, its intuitive coloured notification arrangement makes it effortless to interpret the results.

    Encrypted Disk Detector finds BestCrypt volume
    Encrypted Disk Detector finds BestCrypt volume

    Encrypted Disk Detector is not a threat to home users, the software does not attempt to guess what drives are encrypted, it only checks for volumes that are already mounted on live systems, it will not detect encryption in unmounted disks, TCHunt is more appropriate for that task, this is a time saving tool that can be deployed in a matter of seconds in a large network.

    Visit Encrypted Disk Detector homepage

  • Post self-destructing Twitter messages with Efemr

    Post self-destructing Twitter messages with Efemr

    Efemr is a free web and mobile app to post time limited messages on Twitter, it works by adding a timestamp hashtag at the end of your message, for example adding #8m at the end of a post would erase your Twitter message in eight minutes, time can be set to a few hours too but no more than that. The app backups all messages keepimng a private list of deleted posts next to a retweet button in case you change your mind and to remember you what you have posted in the past even if it is no longer visible.

    Efemr self-destructing Twitter messages
    Efemr self-destructing Twitter messages

    Being able to limit how long for something will remain on the Internet it is a step in the right direction to protect people’s privacy but it will not replace common sense, there is still the possibility of someone taking a screenshot of the Tweet, the time frame is not perfect either, Twitter feeds take longer than the specified limit to be erased and anyone could copy and paste or retweet your message, if you truly want to keep your Tweets private then encrypt them with AnonTwi  or any text encryption utility and make them only available to people you know, if anyone takes a screenshot it will only show cihphered text.

    Another way to achieve Twitter privacy is by never using your real name when opening an account, never post personal identifying data when posting and always use Tor or a VPN to log into Twitter.

    Visit Efemr homepage

  • Get paid for ethical hacking at HackaServer

    Get paid for ethical hacking at HackaServer

    HackaServer is a security testing platform where companies can send their applications and apps for skilled hackers to find bugs and exploits, when a server vulnerability is found the hacker gets paid a reward. Big companies like Google and Facebook have their own security team to test code and online applications before they are released to the public, small companies can not afford the thousands of dollars that this costs, HackaServer crowd sources hundreds of hackers looking at code vulnerabilities and misconfiguration testing security and only paying if something is found, with a confidentiality clause protecting the company reputation and real production infrastructure.

    Any system administrator can deploy a custom testing server with the most popular operating systems hosting apps in just a few minutes, before you start hacking a virtual server there is a sandbox called “Training Arena” where people can get a feel of the platform and test their pen testing skills.

    HackaServer account creation
    HackaServer account creation

    There are two kind of hacking challenges, one called “Capture the Flag” where the hacker has to penetrate the server and capture all the details as evidence that he was inside, and another challenge where the hacker finds a flaw or vulnerability rating it as critical, medium or low and getting paid by the company for a full report with all the details. The report is the most important part and it will have to comply with standard penetration test reports, HackaServer only grants hacking rights to the “Playground Arena” after you have passed an IT test showing skills equivalent to a Certified Expert Penetration Tester (CEPT) exam but without being charged for it.

    A good way for penetration testing students to improve their skills on HackaServer and increase their income while learning as well as way for black hat hackers to make some money the legal way.

    Visit HackaServer homepage

  • The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution

    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution

    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution is a security Linux distribution based on Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support, Ubuntu LTS has 5 years support from Ubuntu developers Canonical, it is useful for enterprises and those who don’t need to run cutting edge software and are more interested in an stable operating system that will be supported for a long time without the need to constantly upgrade to another version to patch up security holes.

    ADHD announces itself as an active defence distribution with preconfigured strike back tools, able to interfere with an attacker’s system fingerprinting, the first reconnaissance stage previous to a hacking attack. Just like Ubuntu, you can run ADHD as a live DVD or install it in your computer, when you first boot you will be given the choice of logging in as adhd user or guest user, the login password is adhd. The default window manager is the lightweight XFCE, you could change it using Synaptic package manager, a package management tool for Debian that can be used to install, remove and upgrade software packages.

    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution (ADHD)
    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution (ADHD)

    On the surface you will not appreciate too many differences in between The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution and any other end user Linux distribution, it comes with The Gimp and gThumb for image editing, the full LibreOffice suite to work with documents, Thunderbird and Firefox, Catfish to search documents, basic network tools to ping, traceroute, port scan, finger and whois computer IPs, Xchat for IRC, Zenmap scanner, Gigolo, a front end to connect to remote file system, Parole Media player to watch videos, gmusic browser and Gwibber, an open source microblogging tool with access to the most popular social networking services like Twitter and Flickr. The most geeky tool included in ADHD is pgAdmin to edit PostgreSQL databases you will not find any hacking or penetration testing software on the list.

    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution protects you deploying honeypots that waste an attacker’s time, alert the administrator of the attack while still harmless and gathers information on the sources of the attack.

    One of ADHD main defences is The Network Obfuscation and Virtualized Anti-Reconnaissance (Nova), it doesn’t use signature based detection for malware, instead it creates decoy systems for an attacker to interact with and alert the system administrator via email or logs that someone is attacking a dummy folder, port, etc. You can have infinite recursive directories so the attacker never really gets to his target or you can instruct Nova to automatically shut down a port when someone touches it.

    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution system monitor
    The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution system monitor

    ADHD also comes with Honeybadger, able to create a webpage that looks like a Cisco administration interface or something interesting for an attacker to access, the dummy page can run a Java app on the attacker’s machine, gather his IP address and add it to a report page with Google API showing approximate information about an attacker’s computer IP location in the world.

    The best thing of The Active Defense Harbinger Distribution is that you should not notice it is there until something happens, on the minus side there are no offensive tools other than gathering attacker’s information but you could add more aggressive digital tools with the package manager.

    Visit ADHD homepage

  • Penetrate Voice over IP servers with Viproy

    Penetrate Voice over IP servers with Viproy

    Viproy is a tool for testing SIP servers security, the Session Initiation Protocol is widely used for voice and video calls over IP, the software comes with different modules performing specific tasks, all of the modules support debugging and verbose mode, this is a Linux only command line tool, instructions are included and it should not be difficult for a Linux beginner to understand them.

    Software modules consist of options, register, invite, enumerator, brute force, trust analyzer and SIP proxy, you can set target networks and port numbers. Before carrying out any attack you should fingerprint and enumerate SIP services first, after that you should register with the server and start intercepting, making calls or create havoc at will.

    Viproy VoIP penetration tests include targeting a local client address and port, discovering SIP services with valid credentials, setting username and password in Asterisk PBX, issuing direct invites and spoofing without credentials, enumerating all users, launching a denial of service to all valid users so that nobody can accept calls and brute forcing a target account or numeric range using a dictionary list to test users password strength.

    Viproy VoIP penetration testing and hacking tool
    Viproy VoIP penetration testing and hacking tool

    Viproy homepage lists a vulnerable VoIP server where you can evaluate your hacking skills without harming anybody, in a real life scenario after successful hacking a VoIP server you can listen in or record inbound and outbound calls as well as setting up usernames and passwords, the damage that can be done will depend no how many vulnerabilities exist, not all of the modules will be necessary successful penetrating the server.

    Another tool you might want to add to your VoIP hacking arsenal is SIPVicious suite you can use it to audit VoIP systems scanning SIP devices IP range and cracking SIP PBX. VPN services protect VoIP calls in transit but the first and last point remain vulnerable, it is possible to listen in to a VoIP encrypted call by hacking into a server before encryption takes place or when the call is decrypted at the end of the line.

    Visit Viproy homepage