Tech Guides - Cybersecurity

Proxy servers are used as intermediaries between a client and a website or online service. By routing traffic through a proxy server, users can disguise their geographic location and their IP address. Reverse proxies, in particular, can be configured to provide a greater level of control and abstraction, thereby ensuring the flow of traffic between clients and servers remains smooth. This makes them a popular tool for individuals who want to stay hidden online, but they are also widely used in enterprise settings, where they can improve security, allow tasks to be carried out anonymously, and control the way employees are able to use the internet. What is a Reverse Proxy? A reverse proxy server is a type of proxy server that usually exists behind the firewall of a private network. It directs any client requests to the appropriate server on the backend. Reverse proxies are also used as a means of caching common content and compressing inbound and outbound data, resulting in a faster and smoother flow of traffic between clients and servers. Furthermore, the reverse proxy can handle other tasks, such as SSL encryption, further reducing the load on web servers. There is a multitude of scenarios and use cases in which having a reverse proxy can make all the difference to the speed and security of your corporate network. By providing you with a point at which you can inspect traffic and route it to the appropriate server, or even transform the request, a reverse proxy can be used to achieve a variety of different goals. Load Balancing to route incoming HTTP requests This is probably the most familiar use of reverse proxies for many users. Load balancing involves the proxy server being configured to route incoming HTTP requests to a set of identical servers. By spreading incoming requests across these servers, the reverse proxies are able to balance out the load, therefore sharing it amongst them equally. The most common scenario in which load balancing is employed is when you have a website that requires multiple servers. This happens due to the volume of requests, which are too much for one server to handle efficiently. By balancing the load across multiple servers, you can also move away from an architecture that features a single point of failure. Usually, the servers will all be hosting the same content, but there are also situations in which the reverse proxy will also be retrieving specific information from one of a number of different servers. Provide security by monitoring and logging traffic By acting as the mediator between clients and your system’s backend, a reverse proxy server can hide the overall structure of your backend servers. This is because the reverse proxy will capture any requests that would otherwise go to those servers and handle them securely. A reverse proxy can also improve security by providing businesses with a point at which they can monitor and log traffic flowing through their network. A common use case in which a reverse proxy is used to bolster the security of a network would be the use of a reverse proxy as an SSL gateway. This allows you to communicate using HTTP behind the firewall without compromising your security. It also saves you the trouble of having to configure security for each server behind the firewall individually. A rotating residential proxy, also known as a backconnect proxy, is a type of proxy that frequently changes the IP addresses and connections that the user uses. This allows users to hide their identity and generate a large number of requests without setting alarms off. A reverse rotating residential proxy can be used to improve the security of a corporate network or website. This is because the servers in question will display the information for the proxy server while keeping their own information hidden from potential attackers. No need to install certificates on your backend servers with SSL Termination SSL termination process occurs when an SSL connection server ends, or when the traffic shifts between encrypted and unencrypted requests. By using a reverse proxy to handle any incoming HTTPS connections, you can have the proxy server decrypt the request, and then pass on the unencrypted request to the appropriate server. Taking this approach offers practical benefits. For example, it eliminates the need to install certificates on your backend servers. It also provides you with a single configuration point for managing SSL/TLS. Removing the need for your web servers to undertake this decryption means that you are also reducing the processing load on the server. Serve static content on behalf of backend servers Some reverse proxy servers can be configured to also act as web servers. Websites contain a mixture of dynamic content, which changes over time, and static content, which always remains the same. If you can configure your reverse proxy server to serve up static content on behalf of backend servers, you can greatly reduce the load, freeing up more power for dynamic content rendering. Alternatively, a reverse proxy can be configured to behave like a cache. This allows it to store and serve content that is frequently requested, thereby further reducing the load on backend servers. URL Rewriting before they go on to the backend servers Anything that a business can do to easily to improve their SEO score is worth considering. Without an investment in your SEO, your business or website will remain invisible to search engine users. With URL rewriting, you can compensate for any legacy systems you use, which produce URLs that are less than ideal for SEO. With a reverse proxy server, the URLs can be automatically reformatted before they are passed on to the backend servers. Combine Different Websites into a Single URL Space It is often desirable for a business to adopt a distributed architecture whereby different functions are handled by different components. With a reverse proxy, it is easy to route a single URL to a multitude of components. To anyone who uses your URL, it will simply appear as if they are moving to another page on the website. In fact, each page within that URL might actually be connecting to a completely different backend service. This is an approach that is widely used for web service APIs. To sum up, the primary function of a reverse proxy is load balancing, ensuring that no individual backend server becomes inundated with more traffic or requests than it can handle. However, there are a number of other scenarios in which a reverse proxy can potentially offer enormous benefits. About the author Harold Kilpatrick is a cybersecurity consultant and a freelance blogger. He's currently working on a cybersecurity campaign to raise awareness around the threats that businesses can face online. Read Next HAProxy introduces stick tables for server persistence, threat detection, and collecting metrics How to Configure Squid Proxy Server Acting as a proxy (HttpProxyModule)

Everybody is facing a battle these days. Though it may not be immediately apparent, it is already affecting a majority of the global population. This battle is not fought with bombs, planes, or tanks or with any physical weapons for that matter. This battle is for our online privacy. A survey made last year discovered 69% of data breaches were related to identity theft. Another survey shows the number of cases of data breaches related to identity theft has steadily risen over the last 4 years worldwide. And it is likely to increase as hackers are gaining easy access more advanced tools. The EU’s GDPR may curb this trend by imposing stricter data protection standards on data controllers and processors. These entities have been collecting and storing our data for years through ads that track our online habits-- another reason to protect our online anonymity. However, this new regulation has only been in force for over a month and only within the EU. So, it's going to take some time before we feel its long-term effects. The question is, what should we do when hackers out there try to steal and maliciously use our personal information? Simple: We defend ourselves with tools at our disposal to keep ourselves completely anonymous online. So, here’s a list you may find useful. 1. VPNs A VPN helps you maintain anonymity by hiding your real IP and internet activity from prying eyes. Normally, your browser sends a query tagged with your IP every time you make an online search. Your ISP takes this query and sends it to a DNS server which then points you to the correct website. Of course, your ISP (and all the servers your query had to go through) can, and will likely, view and monitor all the data you course through them-- including your personal information and IP address. This allows them to keep a tab on all your internet activity. A VPN protects your identity by assigning you an anonymous IP and encrypting your data. This means that any query you send to your ISP will be encrypted and no longer display your real IP. This is why using a VPN is one of the best ways to keeping anonymous online. However, not all VPNs are created equal. You have to choose the best one if you want airtight security. Also, beware of free VPNs. Most of them make money by selling your data to advertisers. You’ll want to compare and contrast several VPNs to find the best one for you. But, that’s sooner said than done with so many different VPNs out there. Look for reviews on trustworthy sites to find the best vpn for your needs. 2. TOR Browser The Onion Router (TOR) is a browser that strengthens your online anonymity even more by using different layers of encryption-- thereby protecting your internet activity which includes “visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms”. It works by first encasing your data in three layers of encryption. Your data is then bounced three times-- each bounce taking off one layer of encryption. Once your data gets to the right server, it “puts back on” each layer it has shed as it successively bounces back to your device. You can even improve TOR by using it in combination with a compatible VPN. It is important to note, though, that using TOR won’t hide the fact that you’re using it. Some sites may restrict allowances made through TOR. 3. Virtual machine A Virtual machine is basically a second computer within your computer. It lets you emulate another device through an application. This emulated computer can then be set according to your preferences. The best use for this tool, however, is for tasks that don’t involve an internet connection. It is best used for when you want to open a file and want to make sure no one is watching over your shoulder. After opening the file, you then simply delete the virtual machine. You can try VirtualBox which is available on Windows, Linux, and Mac. 4. Proxy servers A proxy server is an intermediary between your device and the internet. It’s basically another computer that you use to process internet requests. It’s similar to a virtual machine in concept but it’s an entirely separate physical machine. It protects your anonymity in a similar way a VPN does (by hiding your IP) but it can also send a different user agent to keep your browser unidentifiable and block or accept cookies but keep them from passing to your device. Most VPN companies also offer proxy servers so they’re a good place to look for a reliable one. 5. Fake emails A fake email is exactly what the name suggests: an email that isn’t linked to your real identity. Fake emails aid your online anonymity by not only hiding your real identity but by making sure to keep you safe from phishing emails or malware-- which can be easily sent to you via email. Making a fake email can be as easy as signing up for an email without using your real information or by using a fake email service. 6. Incognito mode “Going incognito” is the easiest anonymity tool to come by. Your device will not store any data at all while in this mode including: your browsing history, cookies, site data, and information entered in forms. Most browsers have a privacy mode that you can easily use to hide your online activity from other users of the same device. 7. Ad blockers Ads are everywhere these days. Advertising has and always will be a lucrative business. That said, there is a difference between good ads and bad ads. Good ads are those that target a population as a whole. Bad ads (interest-based advertising, as their companies like to call it) target each of us individually by tracking our online activity and location-- which compromises our online privacy. Tracking algorithms aren’t illegal, though, and have even been considered “clever”. But, the worst ads are those that contain malware that can infect your device and prevent you from using it. You can use ad blockers to combat these threats to your anonymity and security. Ad blockers usually come in the form of browser extensions which instantly work with no additional configuration needed. For Google Chrome, you can choose either Adblock Plus, uBlock Origin, or AdBlock. For Opera, you can choose either Opera Ad Blocker, Adblock Plus, or uBlock Origin. 8. Secure messaging apps If you need to use an online messaging app, you should know that the popular ones aren’t as secure as you’d like them to be. True, Facebook messenger does have a “secret conversation” feature but Facebook hasn’t exactly been the most secure social network to begin with. Instead, use tools like Signal or Telegram. These apps use end-to-end encryption and can even be used to make voice calls. 9. File shredder The right to be forgotten has surfaced in mainstream media with the onset of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. This right basically requires data collecting or processing entities to completely remove a data subject’s PII from their records. You can practice this same right on your own device by using a “file shredding” tool. But the the thing is: Completely removing sensitive files from your device is hard. Simply deleting it and emptying your device’s recycle bin doesn’t actually remove the file-- your device just treats the space it filled up as empty and available space. These “dead” files can still haunt you when they are found by someone who knows where to look. You can use software like Dr. Cleaner (for Mac) or Eraser (for Win) to “shred” your sensitive files by overwriting them several times with random patterns of random sets of data. 10. DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo is a search engine that doesn’t track your behaviour (like Google and Bing that use behavioural trackers to target you with ads). It emphasizes your privacy and avoids the filter bubble of personalized search results. It offers useful features like region-specific searching, Safe Search (to protect against explicit content), and an instant answer feature which shows an answer across the top of the screen apart from the search results. To sum it up: Our online privacy is being attacked from all sides. Ads legally track our online activities and hackers steal our personal information. The GDPR may help in the long run but that remains to be seen. What's important is what we do now. These tools will set you on the path to a more secure and private internet experience today. About the Author Dana Jackson, an U.S. expat living in Germany and the founder of PrivacyHub. She loves all things related to security and privacy. She holds a degree in Political Science, and loves to call herself a scientist. Dana also loves morning coffee and her dog Paw.   [divider style="normal" top="20" bottom="20"] Top 5 cybersecurity trends you should be aware of in 2018 Twitter allegedly deleted 70 million fake accounts in an attempt to curb fake news Top 5 cybersecurity myths debunked  

Recently, most of the organizations experienced severe downfall due to an undetected malware, Deeplocker, which secretly evaded even the stringent cyber security mechanisms. Deeplocker leverages the AI model to attack the target host by using indicators such as facial recognition, geolocation and voice recognition. This incidence speaks volumes about the big role AI plays in the cybersecurity domain. In fact, some may even go on to say that AI for cybersecurity is no longer a nice to have tech rather a necessity. Large and small organizations and even startups are hugely investing in building AI systems to analyze the huge data trove and in turn, help their cybersecurity professionals to identify possible threats and take precautions or immediate actions to solve it. If AI can be used in getting the systems protected, it can also harm it. How? The hackers and intruders can also use it to launch an attack--this would be a much smarter attack--which would be difficult to combat. Phishing, one of the most common and simple social engineering cyber attack is now easy for attackers to master. There are a plethora of tools on the dark web that can help anyone to get their hands on phishing. In such trying conditions, it is only imperative that organizations take necessary precautions to guard their information castles. What better than AI? How 6 tools are using artificial intelligence for cybersecurity Symantec’s Targeted attack analytics (TAA) tool This tool was developed by Symantec and is used to uncover stealthy and targeted attacks. It applies AI and machine learning on the processes, knowledge, and capabilities of the Symantec’s security experts and researchers. The TAA tool was used by Symantec to counter the Dragonfly 2.0 attack last year. This attack targeted multiple energy companies and tried to gain access to operational networks. Eric Chein, Technical Director of Symantec Security says, “ With TAA, we’re taking the intelligence generated from our leading research teams and uniting it with the power of advanced machine learning to help customers automatically identify these dangerous threats and take action.” The TAA tools analyze incidents within the network against the incidents found in their Symantec threat data lake. TAA unveils suspicious activity in individual endpoints and collates that information to determine whether each action indicate hidden malicious activity. The TAA tools are now available for Symantec Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) customers. Sophos’ Intercept X tool Sophos is a British security software and hardware company. Its tool, Intercept X, uses a deep learning neural network that works similar to a human brain. In 2010, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created their first Cyber Genome Program to uncover the ‘DNA’ of malware and other cyber threats, which led to the creation of algorithm present in the Intercept X. Before a file executes, the Intercept X is able to extract millions of features from a file, conduct a deep analysis, and determine if a file is benign or malicious in 20 milliseconds. The model is trained on real-world feedback and bi-directional sharing of threat intelligence via an access to millions of samples provided by the data scientists. This results in high accuracy rate for both existing and zero-day malware, and a lower false positive rate. Intercept X utilizes behavioral analysis to restrict new ransomware and boot-record attacks.  The Intercept X has been tested on several third parties such as NSS labs and received high-scores. It is also proven on VirusTotal since August of 2016. Maik Morgenstern, CTO, AV-TEST said, “One of the best performance scores we have ever seen in our tests.” Darktrace Antigena Darktrace Antigena is Darktrace’s active self-defense product. Antigena expands Darktrace’s core capabilities to detect and replicate the function of digital antibodies that identify and neutralize threats and viruses. Antigena makes use of Darktrace’s Enterprise Immune System to identify suspicious activity and responds to them in real-time, depending on the severity of the threat. With the help of underlying machine learning technology, Darktrace Antigena identifies and protects against unknown threats as they develop. It does this without the need for human intervention, prior knowledge of attacks, rules or signatures. With such automated response capability, organizations can respond to threats quickly, without disrupting the normal pattern of business activity. Darktrace Antigena modules help to regulate user and machine access to the internet, message protocols and machine and network connectivity via various products such as Antigena Internet, Antigena Communication, and Antigena network. IBM QRadar Advisor IBM’s QRadar Advisor uses the IBM Watson technology to fight against cyber attacks. It uses AI to auto-investigate indicators of any compromise or exploit. QRadar Advisor uses cognitive reasoning to give critical insights and further accelerates the response cycle. With the help of IBM’s QRadar Advisor, security analysts can assess threat incidents and reduce the risk of missing them. Features of the IBM QRadar Advisor Automatic investigations of incidents QRadar Advisor with Watson investigates threat incidents by mining local data using observables in the incident to gather broader local context. It later quickly assesses the threats regarding whether they have bypassed layered defenses or were blocked. Provides Intelligent reasoning QRadar identifies the likely threat by applying cognitive reasoning. It connects threat entities related to the original incident such as malicious files, suspicious IP addresses, and rogue entities to draw relationships among these entities. Identifies high priority risks With this tool, one can get critical insights on an incident, such as whether or not a malware has executed, with supporting evidence to focus your time on the higher risk threats. Then make a decision quickly on the best response method for your business. Key insights on users and critical assets IBM’s QRadar can detect suspicious behavior from insiders through integration with the User Behavior Analytics (UBA) App and understands how certain activities or profiles impact systems. Vectra’s Cognito Vectra’s Cognito platform uses AI to detect attackers in real-time. It automates threat detection and hunts for covert attackers. Cognito uses behavioral detection algorithms to collect network metadata, logs and cloud events. It further analyzes these events and stores them to reveal hidden attackers in workloads and user/IoT devices. Cognito platform consists of Cognito Detect and Cognito Recall. Cognito Detect reveals hidden attackers in real time using machine learning, data science, and behavioral analytics. It automatically triggers responses from existing security enforcement points by driving dynamic incident response rules. Cognito Recall determines exploits that exist in historical data. It further speeds up detection of incident investigations with actionable context about compromised devices and workloads over time. It’s a quick and easy fix to find all devices or workloads accessed by compromised accounts and identify files involved in exfiltration. Just as diamond cuts diamond, AI cuts AI. By using AI to attack and to prevent on either side, AI systems will learn different and newer patterns and also identify unique deviations to security analysts. This provides organizations to resolve an attack on the way much before it reaches to the core. Given the rate at which AI and machine learning are expanding, the days when AI will redefine the entire cybersecurity ecosystem are not that far. DeepMind AI can spot over 50 sight-threatening eye diseases with expert accuracy IBM’s DeepLocker: The Artificial Intelligence powered sneaky new breed of Malware 7 Black Hat USA 2018 conference cybersecurity training highlights Top 5 cybersecurity trends you should be aware of in 2018  

Living in the digital age brings its own challenges. News of security breaches in well-known companies is becoming a normal thing. In the battle between those who want to secure the Internet and those who want to exploit its security vulnerabilities, here's a list of five significant security challenges that I think information security is/will be facing in 2017. Army of young developers Everyone's beloved celebrity is encouraging the population to learn how to code, and it's working. Learning to code is becoming easier every day. There are loads of apps and programs to help people learn to code. But not many of them care to teach how to write secure code. Security is usually left as an afterthought, an "advanced" topic to learn sometime in future. Even without the recent fame, software development is a lucrative career. It has attracted a lot of 9-to-5ers who just care about getting through the day and collecting their paycheck. This army of young developers who care little about the craft is most to blame when it comes to vulnerabilities in applications. It would astonish you to learn how many people simply don't care about the security of their applications. The pressure to ship and ever-slipping deadlines don't make it any better. Rise of the robots I mean IoT devices. Sorry, I couldn't resist the temptation. IoT devices are everywhere. "Internet of Things" they call it. As if Internet wasn't insecure enough already, it's on "things" now. Most of these things rarely have any concept of security. Your refrigerator can read your tweets, and so can your 13-year-old neighbor. We've already seen a lot of famous disclosures of cars getting hacked. It's one of the examples of how dangerous it can get. Routers and other such infrastructure devices are becoming smarter and smarter. The more power they get, the more lucrative they become for a hacker to attack them. Your computer may have a firewall and anti-virus and other fancy security software, but your router might not. Most people don't even change the default password for such devices. It's much easier for an attacker to simply control your means of connecting to the Internet than connecting to your device directly. On the other front, these devices can be (and have been) used as bots to launch attacks (like DDoS) elsewhere. Internet advertisements as malware The Internet economy is hugely dependent on advertisements. Advertisements is a big big business, but it is becoming uglier and uglier every day. As if tracking users all over the webs and breaching their privacy was not enough, advertisements are now used for spreading malware. Ads are very attractive to attackers as they can be used to distribute content on fully legitimate sites without actually compromising them. They've already been in the news for this very reason lately. So the Internet can potentially be used to do great damage. Mobile devices Mobile apps go everywhere you go. That cute little tap game you installed yesterday might result in the demise of your business. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Android will hopefully add essential features to limit permissions granted to installed apps. New exploits are emerging everyday for vulnerabilities in mobile operating systems and even in the processor chips. Your company might have a secure network with every box checked, but what about the laptop and mobile device that Cindy brought in? Organizations need to be ever more careful about the electronic devices their employees bring into the premises, or use to connect to the company network. The house of security cards crumbles fast if attackers get access to the network through a legitimate medium. The weakest links If you follow the show Mr. Robot (you should, it's brilliant), you might remember a scene from the first Season when they plan to attack the "impenetrable" Steel Mountain. Quoting Elliot: Nothing is actually impenetrable. A place like this says it is, and it’s close, but people still built this place, and if you can hack the right person, all of a sudden you have a piece of powerful malware. People always make the best exploits. People are the weakest links in many technically secure setups. They're easiest to hack. Social engineering is the most common (and probably easiest) way to get access to an otherwise secure system. With the rise in advanced social engineering techniques, it is becoming crucial everyday to teach the employees how to detect and prevent such attacks. Even if your developers are writing secure code, it's doesn’t matter if the customer care representative just gives the password away or grants access to an attacker. Here's a video of how someone can break into your phone account with a simple call to your phone company. Once your phone account is gone, all your two-factor authentications (that depend on SMS-based OTPs) are worth nothing. About the author Charanjit Singh is a freelance JavaScript (React/Express) developer. Being an avid fan of functional programming, he’s on his way to take on Haskell/Purescript as his main professional languages.

A history of cybercrime As computer systems have now become integral to the daily functioning of businesses, organizations, governments, and individuals we have learned to put a tremendous amount of trust in these systems. As a result, we have placed incredibly important and valuable information on them. History has shown, that things of value will always be a target for a criminal. Cybercrime is no different. As people flood their personal computers, phones, and so on with valuable data, they put a target on that information for the criminal to aim for, in order to gain some form of profit from the activity. In the past, in order for a criminal to gain access to an individual's valuables, they would have to conduct a robbery in some shape or form. In the case of data theft, the criminal would need to break into a building, sifting through files looking for the information of greatest value and profit. In our modern world, the criminal can attack their victims from a distance, and due to the nature of the internet, these acts would most likely never meet retribution. Cybercrime in the 70s and 80s In the 70s, we saw criminals taking advantage of the tone system used on phone networks. The attack was called phreaking, where the attacker reverse-engineered the tones used by the telephone companies to make long distance calls. In 1988, the first computer worm made its debut on the internet and caused a great deal of destruction to organizations. This first worm was called the Morris worm, after its creator Robert Morris. While this worm was not originally intended to be malicious it still caused a great deal of damage. The U.S. Government Accountability Office in 1980 estimated that the damage could have been as high as $10,000,000.00. 1989 brought us the first known ransomware attack, which targeted the healthcare industry. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that locks a user's data, until a small ransom is paid, which will result in the issuance of a cryptographic unlock key. In this attack, an evolutionary biologist named Joseph Popp distributed 20,000 floppy disks across 90 countries, and claimed the disk contained software that could be used to analyze an individual's risk factors for contracting the AIDS virus. The disk however contained a malware program that when executed, displayed a message requiring the user to pay for a software license. Ransomware attacks have evolved greatly over the years with the healthcare field still being a very large target. The birth of the web and a new dawn for cybercrime The 90s brought the web browser and email to the masses, which meant new tools for cybercriminals to exploit. This allowed the cybercriminal to greatly expand their reach. Up till this time, the cybercriminal needed to initiate a physical transaction, such as providing a floppy disk. Now cybercriminals could transmit virus code over the internet in these new, highly vulnerable web browsers. Cybercriminals took what they had learned previously and modified it to operate over the internet, with devastating results. Cybercriminals were also able to reach out and con people from a distance with phishing attacks. No longer was it necessary to engage with individuals directly. You could attempt to trick millions of users simultaneously. Even if only a small percentage of people took the bait you stood to make a lot of money as a cybercriminal. The 2000s brought us social media and saw the rise of identity theft. A bullseye was painted for cybercriminals with the creation of databases containing millions of users' personal identifiable information (PII), making identity theft the new financial piggy bank for criminal organizations around the world. This information coupled with a lack of cybersecurity awareness from the general public allowed cybercriminals to commit all types of financial fraud such as opening bank accounts and credit cards in the name of others. Cybercrime in a fast-paced technology landscape Today we see that cybercriminal activity has only gotten worse. As computer systems have gotten faster and more complex we see that the cybercriminal has become more sophisticated and harder to catch. Today we have botnets, which are a network of private computers that are infected with malicious software and allow the criminal element to control millions of infected computer systems across the globe. These botnets allow the criminal element to overload organizational networks and hide the origin of the criminals: We see constant ransomware attacks across all sectors of the economy People are constantly on the lookout for identity theft and financial fraud Continuous news reports regarding the latest point of sale attack against major retailers and hospitality organizations This is an extract from Information Security Handbook by Darren Death. Follow Darren on Twitter: @DarrenDeath. 

686 cybersecurity breaches were reported in the first three months of 2018 alone, with unauthorized intrusion accounting for 38.9% of incidents. And with high-profile data breaches dominating headlines, it’s clear that while modern, complex software architecture might be more adaptable and data-intensive than ever, securing that software is proving a real challenge. Penetration testing (or pentesting) is a vital component within the cybersecurity toolkit. In theory, it should be at the forefront of any robust security strategy. But it isn’t as simple as just rolling something out with a few emails and new software - it demands people with great skills, as well a culture where stress testing and hacking your own system is viewed as a necessity, not an optional extra. This is where artificial intelligence comes in - the automation that you can achieve through artificial intelligence could well help make pentesting much easier to do consistently and at scale. In turn, this would help organizations tackle both issues of skills and culture, and get serious about their cybersecurity strategies. But before we dive deeper into artificial intelligence and pentesting, let’s take a look at where we are now, and the shortcomings of established pentesting methods. The shortcomings of established methods of pentesting Typically, pentesting is carried out in 5 stages: Source: Incapsula Every one of these stages, when carried out by humans, opens up the chance of error. Yes, software is important, but contextual awareness and decisions are required.. This process, then, provides plenty of opportunities for error. From misinterpreting data - like thinking a system is secure, when actually it isn’t - to taking care of evidence and thoroughly and clearly recording the results of pentests, even the most experienced pentester will get things wrong. But even if you don’t make any mistakes, this whole process is hard to do well at scale. It requires a significant amount of time and energy to test a piece of software, which, given the pace of change created by modern processes, makes it much harder to maintain the levels of rigor you ultimately want from pentesting. This is where artificial intelligence comes in. The pentesting areas that artificial intelligence can impact Let’s dive into the different stages of pentesting that AI can impact. #1 Reconnaissance Stage The most important stage in pentesting is the Reconnaissance or information gathering stage. As rightly said by many in cybersecurity, "The more information gathered, the higher the likelihood of success." Therefore, a significant amount of time should be spent obtaining as much information as possible about the target. Using AI to automate this stage would provide accurate results as well as save a lot of time invested. Using a combination of Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and Artificial Intelligence, experts can identify a wide variety of details that can be used to build a profile of the company, its employees, the security posture, and even the software/hardware components of the network and computers. #2 Scanning Stage Comprehensive coverage is needed In the scanning phase. Manually scanning through thousands if systems in an organization is not ideal. NNor is it ideal to interpret the results returned by scanning tools. AI can be used to tweak the code of the scanning tools to scan systems as well as interpret the results of the scan. It can help save pentesters time and help in the overall efficiency of the pentesting process. AI can focus on test management and the creation of test cases automatically that will check if a particular program can be tagged having security flaw. They can also be used to check how a target system responds to an intrusion. #3 Gaining and Maintaining access stage Gaining access phase involves taking control of one or more network devices in order to either extract data from the target, or to use that device to then launch attacks on other targets. Once a system is scanned for vulnerabilities, the pentesters need to ensure that the system does not have any loopholes that attackers can exploit to get into the network devices. They need to check that the network devices are safely protected with strong passwords and other necessary credentials. AI-based algorithms can try out different combinations of passwords to check if the system is susceptible for a break-in. The algorithms can be trained to observe user data, look for trends or patterns to make inferences about possible passwords used. Maintaining access focuses on establishing other entry points to the target. This phase is expected to trigger mechanisms, to ensure that the penetration tester’s security when accessing the network. AI-based algorithms should be run at equal intervals to time to guarantee that the primary path to the device is closed. The algorithms should be able to discover backdoors, new administrator accounts, encrypted channels, new network access channels, and so on. #4 Covering Tracks And Reporting The last stage tests whether an attacker can actually remove all traces of his attack on the system. Evidence is most often stored in user logs, existing access channels, and in error messages caused by the infiltration process. AI-powered tools can assist in the discovery of hidden backdoors and multiple access points that haven't been left open on the target network; All of these findings should be automatically stored in a report with a proper timeline associated with every attack done. A great example of a tool that efficiently performs all these stages of pentesting is CloudSEK’s X-Vigil. This tool leverages AI to extract data, derive analysis and discover vulnerabilities in time to protect an organization from data breach. Manual vs automated vs AI-enabled pentesting Now that you have gone through the shortcomings of manual pen testing and the advantages of AI-based pentesting, let’s do a quick side-by-side comparison to understand the difference between the two.   Manual Testing Automated Testing AI enabled pentesting Manual testing is not accurate at all times due to human error This is more likely to return false positives AI enabled pentesting is accurate as compared to automated testing Manual testing is time-consuming and takes up human resources.   Automated testing is executed by software tools, so it is significantly faster than a manual approach.   AI enabled testing does not consume much time. The algorithms can be deployed for thousands of systems at a single instance. Investment is required for human resources.   Investment is required for testing tools. AI will save the investment for human resources in pentesting. Rather, the same employees can be used to perform less repetitive and more efficient tasks Manual testing is only practical when the test cases are run once or twice, and frequent repetition is not required..   Automated testing is practical when tools find test vulnerabilities out of programmable bounds AI-based pentesting is practical in organizations with thousands of systems that need to be tested at once to save time and resources.   AI-based pentesting tools Pentoma is an AI-powered penetration testing solution that allows software developers to conduct smart hacking attacks and efficiently pinpoint security vulnerabilities in web apps and servers. It identifies holes in web application security before hackers do, helping prevent any potential security damages. Pentoma analyzes web-based applications and servers to find unknown security risks.In Pentoma, with each hacking attempt, machine learning algorithms incorporate new vulnerability discoveries, thus continuously improving and expanding threat detection capability. Wallarm Security Testing is another AI based testing tool that discovers network assets, scans for common vulnerabilities, and monitors application responses for abnormal patterns. It discovers application-specific vulnerabilities via Automated Threat Verification. The content of a blocked malicious request is used to create a sanitized test with the same attack vector to see how the application or its copy in a sandbox would respond. With such AI based pentesting tools, pentesters can focus on the development process itself, confident that applications are secured against the latest hacking and reverse engineering attempts, thereby helping to streamline a product’s time to market. Perhaps it is the increase in the number of costly data breaches or the continually expanding attack and proliferation of sensitive data and the attempt to secure them with increasingly complex security technologies that businesses lack in-house expertise to properly manage. Whatever be the reason, more organizations are waking up to the fact that if vulnerabilities are not caught in time can be catastrophic for the business. These weaknesses, which can range from poorly coded web applications, to unpatched databases to exploitable passwords to an uneducated user population, can enable sophisticated adversaries to run amok across your business.  It would be interesting to see the growth of AI in this field to overcome all the aforementioned shortcomings. 5 ways artificial intelligence is upgrading software engineering Intelligent Edge Analytics: 7 ways machine learning is driving edge computing adoption in 2018 8 ways Artificial Intelligence can improve DevOps

In the process of rebuilding its Big Data platform, Uber created an open-source Spark library named Hadoop Upserts anD Incremental (Hudi). This library permits users to perform operations such as update, insert, and delete on existing Parquet data in Hadoop. It also allows data users to incrementally pull only the changed data, which significantly improves query efficiency. It is horizontally scalable, can be used from any Spark job, and the best part is that it only relies on HDFS to operate. Why is Hudi introduced? Uber studied its current data content, data access patterns, and user-specific requirements to identify problem areas. This research revealed the following four limitations: Scalability limitation in HDFS Many companies who use HDFS to scale their Big Data infrastructure face this issue. Storing large numbers of small files can affect the performance significantly as HDFS is bottlenecked by its NameNode capacity. This becomes a major issue when the data size grows above 50-100 petabytes. Need for faster data delivery in Hadoop Since Uber operates in real time, there was a need for providing services the latest data. It was important to make the data delivery much faster, as the 24-hour data latency was way too slow for many of their use cases. No direct support for updates and deletes for existing data Uber used snapshot-based ingestion of data, which means a fresh copy of source data was ingested every 24 hours. As Uber requires the latest data for its business, there was a need for a solution which supports update and delete operations for existing data. However, since their Big Data is stored in HDFS and Parquet, direct support for update operations on existing data is not available. Faster ETL and modeling ETL and modeling jobs were also snapshot-based, requiring their platform to rebuild derived tables in every run. ETL jobs also needed to become incremental to reduce data latency. How Hudi solves the aforementioned limitations? The following diagram shows Uber's Big Data platform after the incorporation of Hudi: Source: Uber Regardless of whether the data updates are new records added to recent date partitions or updates to older data, Hudi allows users to pass on their latest checkpoint timestamp and retrieve all the records that have been updated since. This data retrieval happens without running an expensive query that scans the entire source table. Using this library Uber has moved to an incremental ingestion model leaving behind the snapshot-based ingestion. As a result, the data latency was reduced from 24 hrs to less than one hour. To know about Hudi in detail, check out Uber’s official announcement. How can Artificial Intelligence support your Big Data architecture? Big data as a service (BDaaS) solutions: comparing IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Uber’s Marmaray, an Open Source Data Ingestion and Dispersal Framework for Apache Hadoop

Security is one of the major concerns while setting up data centers in the cloud. Although firewalls and managed networking components are deployed by most of the organizations for their data centers, they still fear being attacked by intruders. As such, organizations constantly seek tools that can assist them in gauging how vulnerable their network is and how they can secure their applications therein. Many confuse security assessment with penetration testing and also use it interchangeably. However, there is a notable difference between the two. Security assessment is a process of finding out the different vulnerabilities within a system and prioritize them based on severity and business criticality. On the other hand, penetration testing simulates a real-life attack and maps out paths that a real attacker would take to fulfill the attack. You can check out our article, Top 5 penetration testing tools for ethical hackers to know about some of the pentesting tools. Plethora of tools in the market exist and every tool claims to be the best. Here is our top 5 list of tools to secure your organization over the network. Wireshark Wireshark is one of the popular tools for packet analysis. It is open source under GNU General Public License. Wireshark has a user-friendly GUI  and supports Command Line Input (CLI). It is a great debugging tool for developers who wish to develop a network application. It runs on multiple platforms including Windows, Linux, Solaris, NetBSD, and so on. WireShark community also hosts SharkFest, launched in 2008, for WireShark developers and the user communities. The main aim of this conference is to support Wireshark development and to educate current and future generations of computer science and IT professionals on how to use this tool to manage, troubleshoot, diagnose, and secure traditional and modern networks. Some benefits of using this tool include: Wireshark features live real-time traffic analysis and also supports offline analysis. Depending on the platform, one can read live data from Ethernet, PPP/HDLC, USB, IEEE 802.11, Token Ring, and many others. Decryption support for several protocols such as IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2 Network captured by this tool can be browsed via a GUI, or via the TTY-mode TShark utility. Wireshark also has the most powerful display filters in whole industry It also provides users with Tshark, a network protocol analyzer, used to analyze packets from the hosts without a UI. Nmap Network Mapper, popularly known as Nmap is an open source licensed tool for conducting network discovery and security auditing.  It is also utilized for tasks such as network inventory management, monitoring host or service uptime, and much more. How Nmap works is, it uses raw IP packets in order to find out the available hosts on the network, the services they offer, the OS on which they are operating, the firewall that they are currently using and much more. Nmap is a quick essential to scan large networks and can also be used to scan single hosts. It runs on all major operating system. It also provides official binary packages for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It also includes Zenmap - An advanced security scanner GUI and a results viewer Ncat - This is a tool used for data transfer, redirection, and debugging. Ndiff - A utility tool for comparing scan results Nping - A packet generation and response analysis tool Nmap is traditionally a command-line tool run from a Unix shell or Windows Command prompt. This makes Nmap easy for scripting and allows easy sharing of useful commands within the user community. With this, experts do not have to move through different configuration panels and scattered option fields. Nessus Nessus, a product of the Tenable.io, is one of the popular vulnerability scanners specifically for UNIX systems. This tool remains constantly updated with 70k+ plugins. Nessus is available in both free and paid versions. The paid version costs around  $2,190 per year, whereas the free version, ‘Nessus Home’ offers limited usage and is licensed only for home network usage. Customers choose Nessus because It includes simple steps for policy creation and needs just a few clicks for scanning an entire corporate network. It offers vulnerability scanning at a low total cost of ownership (TCO) product One can carry out a quick and accurate scanning with lower false positives. It also has an embedded scripting language for users to write their own plugins and to understand the existing ones. QualysGuard QualysGuard is a famous SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) vulnerability management tool. It has a comprehensive vulnerability knowledge base, using which it is able to provide continuous protection against the latest worms and security threats. It proactively monitors all the network access points, due to which security managers can invest less time to research, scan, and fix network vulnerabilities. This helps organizations in avoiding network vulnerabilities before they could be exploited. It provides a detailed technical analysis of the threats via powerful and easy-to-read reports. The detailed report includes the security threat, the consequences faced if the vulnerability is exploited, and also a solution that recommends how the vulnerability can be fixed. One can get a summary of the overall security with QualysGuard’s executive dashboard. The dashboard displays a number of new, active, and re-opened vulnerabilities. It also displays a graph which showcases vulnerabilities based on severity level. Get to know more about QualysGuard on its official website. Core Impact Core Impact is widely used as a comprehensive tool to assess and test security vulnerability within any organization. It includes a large database of professional exploits and is regularly updated. It assists in cleanly exploiting one machine and later creating an encrypted tunnel through it to exploit other machines. Core Impact provides a controlled environment to mimic bad attacks. This helps one to secure their network before the occurrence of an actual attack. One interesting feature of Core Impact is that one can fully test their network, irrespective of the length, quickly and efficiently. These are five popular tools network security professionals use for assessing their networks. However, there are many other tools such as Netsparker, OpenVAS, Nikto, and many more for assessing the security of their network. Every security assessment tool is unique in its own way. However, it all boils down to one’s own expertise and the experience they have, and also the kind of project environment it is used in. Top 5 penetration testing tools for ethical hackers Intel’s Spectre variant 4 patch impacts CPU performance Pentest tool in focus: Metasploit

Spam email is a part of daily life on the internet. Even the best junk mail filters will still allow through certain suspicious looking messages. If an illegitimate email tries to persuade you to click a link and enter personal information, then it is classified as a phishing attack. Phishing attackers send out email blasts to large groups of people with the messages designed to look like they come from a reputable company, such as Google, Apple, or a banking or credit card firm. The emails will typically try to warn you about an error with your account and then urge you to click a link and log in with your credentials. Doing so will bring you to an imitation website where the attacker will attempt to steal your password, social security number, or other private data. These days phishing attacks are becoming more widespread. One of the primary reasons is because of easy access to cybercrime kits on the dark web. With the hacker community growing, internet users need to take privacy seriously and remain vigilant against spam and other threats. Read on to learn more about this trend and how to protect yourself. Dark Web Basics The dark web, sometimes referred to as the deep web, operates as a separate environment on the internet. Normal web browsers, like Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, connect to the world wide web using the HTTP protocol. The dark web requires a special browser tool known as the TOR browser, which is fully encrypted and anonymous. Image courtesy of Medium.com Sites on the dark web cannot be indexed by search engines, so you'll never stumble on that content through Google. When you connect through the TOR browser, all of your browsing traffic is sent through a global overlay network so that your location and identity cannot be tracked. Even IP addresses are masked on the dark web. Hacker Markets Much of what takes place in this cyber underworld is illegal or unethical in nature, and that includes the marketplaces that exist there. Think of these sites as blackmarket versions of eBay, where anonymous individuals can buy and sell illegal goods and services. Recently, dark web markets have seen a surge in demands for cybercrime tools and utilities. Entire phishing kits are sold to buyers, which include spoofed pages that imitate real companies and full guides on how to launch an email phishing scam. Image courtesy of Medium.com When a spam email is sent out as part of a phishing scam, the messages are typically delivered through dark web servers that make it hard for junk filters to identify. In addition, the "From" address in the emails may look legitimate and use a valid domain like @gmail.com. Phishing kits can be found for as less as two dollars, meaning that inexperienced hackers can launch a cybercrime effort with little funding or training. It’s interesting to note that personal data prices at the Dark Web supermarket range from a single dollar (Social Security card) to thousands (medical records). Cryptocurrency Scandal You should be on the lookout for phishing scandals related to any company or industry, but in particular, banking and financial attacks can be the most dangerous. If a hacker gains access to your credit card numbers or online banking password, then can commit fraud or even steal your identity. The growing popularity of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether have revolutionized the financial industry, but as a negative result of the trend, cybercriminals are now targeting these digital money systems. MyEtherWallet website, which allows users to store blockchain currency in a central location, has been victim to a number of phishing scams in recent months. Image courtesy ofMyEtherWallet.com Because cryptocurrencies do not operate with a central bank or financial authority, you may not know what a legitimate email alert for one looks like. Phishing messages for MyEtherWallet will usually claim that there is an issue with your cryptocurrency account, or sometimes even suggest that you have a payment pending that needs to be verified. Clicking on the link in the phishing email will launch your web browser and navigate to a spoofed page that looks like it is part of myetherwallet.com. However, the page is actually hosted on the hacker's network and will feed directly into their illegitimate database. If you enter your private wallet address, which is a unique string of letters and numbers, the hacker can gain access to all of the funds in your account. Preventative Measures Phishing attacks are a type of cybercrime that targets individuals, so it's up to you to be on guard for these messages and react appropriately. The first line of defense against phishing is to be skeptical of all emails that enter your inbox. Dark web hackers are getting better and better at imitating real companies with their spam and spoofing pages, so you need to look closely when examining the content. Always check the full URL of the links in email messages before you click one. If you do get tricked and end up navigating to a spoofed page in your web browser, you still have a chance to protect yourself. All browsers support secure sockets layer (SSL) functionality and will display a lock icon or a green status bar at the top of the window when a website has been confirmed as legitimate. If you navigate to a webpage from an email that does not have a valid SSL certificate, you should close the browser immediately and permanently delete the email message. The Bottom Line Keep this in mind. As prices for phishing kits drop and supply increases, the allure of engaging in this kind of bad behavior will be too much to resist for an increasing number of people. Expect incidents of phishing attempts will increase. The general internet-browsing public should stay on high alert at all times when navigating their email inbox. Think first, then click. Author Bio Gary Stevens is a front-end developer. He’s a full-time blockchain geek and a volunteer working for the Ethereum foundation as well as an active Github contributor. Packt has put together a new cybersecurity bundle for Humble Bundle Malicious code in npm ‘event-stream’ package targets a bitcoin wallet and causes 8 million downloads in two months Why scepticism is important in computer security: Watch James Mickens at USENIX 2018 argue for thinking over blindly shipping code

In 2017, the cybersecurity firm Darktrace reported a novel attack that used machine learning to observe and learn normal user behavior patterns inside a network. The malignant software began to mimic normal behavior thus blending it into the background and become difficult for security tools to spot. Many organizations are exploring the use of AI and machine learning to secure their systems against malware or cyber attacks. However, given their nature for self-learning, these AI systems have now reached a level where they can be trained to be a threat to systems i.e., go on the offensive. This brings us to a point where we should be aware of different threats that AI poses on cybersecurity and how we should be careful while dealing with it. What cybersecurity threats does AI pose? Hackers use AI as an effective weapon to intrude into organizations AI not only helps in defending against cyber attacks but can also facilitate cyber attacks. These AI-powered attacks can even bypass traditional means of countering attacks. Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at McAfee said, “AI, unfortunately, gives attackers the tools to get a much greater return on their investment.” A simple example where hackers are using AI to launch an attack is via spear phishing. AI systems with the help of machine learning models can easily mimic humans by crafting convincing fake messages. Using this art, hackers can use them to carry out increased phish attacks. Attackers can also use AI to create a malware for fooling sandboxes or programs that try to spot rogue code before it is deployed in companies' systems Machine learning poisoning Attackers can learn how the machine learning workflow processes function and once they spot any vulnerability, they can try to confuse these ML models. This is known as Machine learning poisoning. This process is simple. The attacker just needs to poison the data pool from which the algorithm is learning. Till date, we have trusted CNNs in areas such as image recognition and classification. Autonomous vehicles too use CNNs to interpret the street designs. The CNNs depend on training resources (which can come from cloud or third parties) to effectively function. Attackers can poison these sources by setting up backdoor images or via a man-in-the-middle attack where the attacker intercepts the data sent to the Cloud GPU service. Such cyber attacks are difficult to detect and can evade into the standard validation testing. Bot cyber-criminals We enjoy talking to chatbots without even realizing how much we are sharing with them. Also, chatbots can be programmed to keep up conversations with users in a way to sway them into revealing their personal or financial info, attachments and so on. A Facebook bot, in 2016, represented itself as a friend and tricked 10,000 Facebook users into installing a malware. Once the malware was compromised, it hijacked the victims’ Facebook account. AI-enabled botnets can exhaust human resources via online portals and phone support. Most of us using AI conversational bots such as Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa do not realize how much they know about us. Being an IoT driven tech, they have the ability to always listen, even the private conversations happening around them. Moreover, some chatbots are ill-equipped for secure data transmissions such as HTTPS protocols or Transport Level Authentication (TLA) and can be easily used by cybercriminals. Cybersecurity in the age of AI attacks As machine driven cyber threats are ever evolving, policymakers should closely work with technical researchers to investigate, prevent, and mitigate potential malicious uses of AI. Conducting deliberate red team exercises in the AI/cybersecurity domain similar to the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge but across a wider range of attacks (e.g. including social engineering, and vulnerability exploitation beyond memory attacks). This will help to better understand the skill levels required to carry out certain attacks and defenses and to understand how well they work in practice. Disclosing AI zero-day vulnerabilities: These software vulnerabilities are the ones that have not been made publicly known (and thus defenders have zero days to prepare for an attack making use of them). It is good to disclose these vulnerabilities to affected parties before publishing widely about them, in order to provide an opportunity for a patch to be developed. Testing security tools: Software development and deployment tools have evolved to include an increasing array of security-related capabilities (testing, fuzzing, anomaly detection, etc.). Researchers can envision tools to test and improve the security of AI components and systems integrated with AI components during development and deployment so that they are less amenable to attack. Use of central access licensing model: This model has been adopted in the industry for AI-based services such as sentiment analysis and image recognition. It can also place limits on the malicious use of the underlying AI technologies. For instance, it can impose limitations on the speed of use, and prevent some large-scale harmful applications. It also contains certain terms and conditions that can explicitly prohibit the malicious use, thus allowing clear legal recourse. Using Deep Machine learning systems to detect patterns of abnormal activity. By using these patterns, AI and Machine learning can be trained to track information and deliver predictive analysis. Self- learning AI systems or reinforcement learning systems can be used to learn the behavioral pattern of the opponent AI systems and adapt themselves in a way to combat malicious intrusion. Transfer learning can be applied to any new AI system which is to be trained to defend against AI. Here, the system can be used to detect novel cyber attacks by training it on the knowledge or data obtained from other labelled and unlabelled data sets, which contain different types of attacks and feed the representation to a supervised classifier. Conclusion AI is being used by hackers on a large scale and can soon turn unstoppable given its potential for finding patterns, a key to finding systemic vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity is such a domain where the availability of data is vast; be it personal, financial, or public data, all of which is easily accessible. Hackers find ways and means to obtain this information secretly. This threat can quickly escalate as an advanced AI can easily educate itself, learn the ways adopted by hackers and can, in turn, come back with a much devastating way of hacking. Skepticism welcomes Germany’s DARPA-like cybersecurity agency – The federal agency tasked with creating cutting-edge defense technology 6 artificial intelligence cybersecurity tools you need to know Defending Democracy Program: How Microsoft is taking steps to curb increasing cybersecurity threats to democracy  

Software systems are vulnerable. That's down to a range of things, from the constant changes our software systems undergo, to the extent of the opportunities for criminals to take advantage of the gaps and vulnerabilities within these systems. Fortunately, penetration testers - or ethical hackers - are a vital line of defence. Yes, you need to properly understand the nature of cyber security threats before you take steps to tackle them, but penetration testing tools are the next step towards securing your software. There's famous saying from Stephane Nappo that sums up cyber security today: It takes 20 years to build a reputation and few minutes of cyber-incident to ruin it. So, make sure you have the right people with the right penetration testing tools to protect not only your software but your reputation too.  The most popular penetration testing tools Kali Linux Kali linux is a Linux distro designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. The predecessor of BackTrack, it has grown in adoption to become one of the most widely used penetration testing tools. Kali Linux is  based on debian - most of its packages are imported from Debian repositories. Kali includes more than 500 preinstalled penetration testing programs that makes it possible to exploit wired, wireless, and ARM devices. The recent release of Kali Linux 2018.1 supports Cloud penetration testing. Kali has collaborated with some of the planet's leading cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure, helping to change the way we approach cloud security. Metasploit Metasploit is another popular penetration testing framework. It was created in 2003 using Perl and was acquired by Rapid7 in 2009 by which time it was completely rewritten in Ruby. It is a collaboration of the open source community and Rapid 7 with the outcome being the Metasploit Project well known for its anti-forensic and evasion tools. Metasploit is a concept of ‘exploit’ which is a code that is capable of surpassing any security measures entering vulnerable systems. Once through the security firewalls, it runs as a ‘payload’, a code that performs operations on a target machine, as a result creating the ideal framework for penetration testing. Wireshark WireShark is one of the world’s primary network protocol analyzers also popular as a packet analyzer. It was initially released as Ethereal back in 1998 and due to some trademark issues was renamed to WireShark in 2006. Users usually use WireShark for network analysis, troubleshooting, and software and communication protocol development. Wireshark basically functions in the second to seventh layer of network protocols, and the analysis made is presented in a human readable form. Security Operations Center analysts and network forensics investigators use this protocol analysis technique to analyze the amount of bits and bytes flowing through a network. The easy to use functionalities and the fact that it is open source makes Wireshark one of the most popular packet analyzers for security professionals and network administrators who want to quickly earn money as freelancers. Burp Suite Threats to web applications have grown in recent years. Ransomware and cryptojacking have become increased techniques used by cybercriminals to attack users in the browser. Burp or Burp Suite is one widely used graphical tool for testing web application security. Since it's about application security there are two versions to this tool: a paid version that include all the functionalities and the free version that comes with few important functionalities. This tool comes preinstalled with basic functionalities that will help you with web application security checks. If you are looking at getting into web penetration testing this should definitely be your first choice as it works with Linux, Mac and Windows as well. Nmap Nmap also known as Network Mapper is a security scanner. As the name suggests it builds a map of the network to discover hosts and services on a computer network. Nmap follows a set of protocols to function where it sends a crafted packet to the target host and then analyses the responses. It was initially released in 1997 and since then it has provided a variety of features to detect vulnerabilities and network glitches. The major reason why one should opt for Nmap is that it is capable of adapting to network conditions like network delay and network congestion during a scan. To keep your environment protected from security threats you should take necessary measures. There are n number of penetration testing tools out there with exceptional capabilities. The most important thing would be to choose the necessary tool based on your environment’s requirement. You can pick and choose from the above mentioned tools as they are shortlisted taking into consideration the fact that they are effective, well supported and easy to understand and most importantly they are open-source. Learn some of the most important penetration testing tools in cyber security Kali Linux - An Ethical Hacker's Cookbook, Metasploit Penetration Testing Cookbook - Third Edition Network Analysis using Wireshark 2 Cookbook - Second Edition For a complete list of books and videos on this topic, check out our penetration testing products.

We’re living in a world that’s more connected than we once ever thought possible. Even 10 years ago, the idea of our household appliances being connected to our Nokias was impossible to comprehend. But things have changed now and almost every week we seem to be seeing another day-to-day item now connected to the internet. Twitter accounts like @internetofShit are dedicated to pointing out every random item that is now connected to the internet; from smart wallets to video linked toothbrushes to DRM infused wine bottles, but the very real side to all the laughing and caution - For every connected device you connect to your network you’re giving attackers another potential hole to crawl through. This weekend, save 50% on some of our very best IoT titles - or, if ones not enough pick up any 5 features products for $50! Start exploring here. IoT security has simply not been given much attention by companies. Last year two security researchers managed to wirelessly hack into a Jeep Cherokee, first by taking control of the entertainment system and windshield wipers before moving on to disable the accelerator; just months earlier a security expert managed to take over and force a plane to fly sideways by making a single engine go into climb mode. In 2013 over 40 million credit card numbers were taken from US retailer Target after hackers managed to get into the network via the AC company that worked with the retailer. The reaction to these events was huge, along with the multitude of editorials wondering how this could happen… when security experts were wondering in turn how it took so long. The problem until recently was that the IoT was seen mostly as a curio – a phone apps that turns your light on or sets the kettle at the right time was seen as a quaint little toy to mess around with for a bit, it was hard for most to fully realize how it could tear a massive hole in your network security. Plus the speed of which these new gadgets are entering the market is becoming much faster, what used to take 3-4 years to reach the market is now taking a year or less to capitalize on the latest hype; Kickstarter projects by those new to business are being sent out into the world, homebrew is on the rise. To give an example of how this landscape could affect us the French technology institute Eurecom downloaded some 32,000 firmware images from potential IoT device manufacturers and discovered 38 vulnerabilities across 123 products. These products were found in at least 140K devices accessible over the internet. Now imagine what the total number of vulnerabilities across all IoT products on all networks is, the potential number is scarily huge. The wind is changing slowly. In October, the IoT Security Summit is taking place in Boston, with speakers from both the FBI and US Homeland Security playing prominent roles as Speakers. Experts are finally speaking up about the need to properly secure our interconnected devices. As the IoT becomes mainstream and interconnected devices become more affordable to the general public we need to do all we can to ensure that potential security cracks are filled as soon as possible; every new connection is a potential entrance for attackers to break in and many people simply have little to no knowledge of how to improve their computer security. While this will improve as time goes on companies and developers need to be proactive in their advancement of IoT security. Choosing not to do so will mean that the IoT will become less of a tech revolution and more of a failure left on the wayside.

Crypto ransomware is the worst threat at present. There are a lot of variants in crypto ransomware. Only some make it into the limelight, while others fade away. In this article, you will get to know about Crypto Ransomware and how one can code it easily in order to encrypt certain directories and important files. The reason for a possible increase in the use of crypto ransomware could be because coding it is quite easy compared to other malware. The malware just needs to browse through user directories to find relevant files that are likely to be personal and encrypt them. The malware author need not write complex code, such as writing hooks to steal data. Most crypto ransomwares don't care about hiding in the system, so most do not have rootkit components either. They only need to execute on the system once to encrypt all files. Some crypto ransomwares also check to see whether the system is already infected by other crypto ransomware. There is a huge list of crypto ransomware. Here are a few of them: Locky Cerber CryptoLocker Petya This article is an excerpt taken from the book, 'Preventing Ransomware' written by Abhijit Mohanta, Mounir Hahad, and Kumaraguru Velmurugan.  How does crypto ransomware work? Crypto ransomware technically does the following things: Finds files on the local system. On a Windows machine, it can use the FindFirstFile(), FindNextFile() APIs to enumerate files directories. A lot of ransomware also search for files present on shared drives It next checks for the file extension that it needs to encrypt. Most have a hardcoded list of file extensions that the ransomware should encrypt. Even if it encrypts executables, it should not encrypt any of the system executables. It makes sure that you should not be able to restore the files from backup by deleting the backup. Sometimes, this is done by using the vssadmin tool. A lot of crypto ransomwares use the vssadmin command, provided by Windows to delete shadow copies. Shadow copies are backups of files and volumes. The vssadmin (vss administration) tool is used to manage shadow copies. VSS in is the abbreviation of volume shadow copy also termed as Volume Snapshot Service. The following is a screenshot of the vssadmin tool: After encrypting the files ransomware leaves a note for the victim. It is often termed a ransom note and is a message from the ransomware to the victim. It usually informs the victim that the files on his system have been encrypted and to decrypt them, he needs to pay a ransom. The ransom note instructs the victim on how to pay the ransom. The ransomware uses a few cryptographic techniques to encrypt files, communicate with the C&C server, and so on. We will explain this in an example in the next section. But before that, it's important to take a look at the basics of cryptography. Overview of cryptography A lot of cryptographic algorithms are used by malware today. Cryptography is a huge subject in itself and this section just gives a brief overview of cryptography. Malware can use cryptography for the following purposes: To obfuscate its own code so that antivirus or security researchers cannot identify the actual code easily. To communicate with its own C&C server, sometimes to send hidden commands across the network and sometimes to infiltrate and steal data To encrypt the files on the victim machine A cryptographic system can have the following components: Plaintext Encryption key Ciphertext, which is the encrypted text Encryption algorithm, also called cipher Decryption algorithm There are two types of cryptographic algorithms based on the kind of key used: Symmetric Asymmetric A few assumptions before explaining the algorithm: the sender is the person who sends the data after encrypting it and the receiver is the person who decrypts the data with a key. Symmetric key In symmetric key encryption, the same key is used by both sender and receiver, which is also called the secret key. The sender uses the key to encrypt the data while the receiver uses the same key to decrypt. The following algorithms use a symmetric key: RC4 AES DES 3DES BlowFish Asymmetric key A symmetric key is simpler to implement but it faces the problem of exchanging the keys in a secure manner. A public or asymmetric key has overcome the problem of key exchange by using a pair of keys: public and private. A public key can be distributed in an unsecured manner, while the private key is always kept with the owner secretly. Any one of the keys can be used to encrypt and the other can be used to decrypt: Here, the most popular algorithms are: RSA Diffie Hellman ECC DSA Secure protocols such as SSH have been implemented using public keys. How does ransomware use cryptography? Crypto ransomware started with simple symmetric key cryptography. But soon, researchers could decode these keys easily. So, they started using an asymmetric key. Ransomware of the current generation has started using both symmetric and asymmetric keys in a smart manner. CryptoLocker is known to use both a symmetric key and an asymmetric key. Here is the encryption process used by CryptoLocker: When CryptoLocker infects a machine, it connects to its C&C and requests a public key. An RSA public and secret key pair is generated for that particular victim machine. The public key is sent to the victim machine but the secret key or private key is retained with the C&C server. The ransomware on the victim machine generates an AES symmetric key, which is used to encrypt files. After encrypting a file with AES key, CryptoLocker encrypts the AES key with the RSA public key obtained from C&C server. The encrypted AES key along with the encrypted file contents are written back to the original file in a specific format. So, in order to get the contents back, we need to decrypt the encrypted AES key, which can only be done using the private key present in the C&C server. This makes decryption close to impossible. Analyzing crypto ransomware The malware tools and concepts remain the same here too. Here are few observations while analyzing, specific to crypto ransomwares, that are different compared to other malware. Usually, crypto ransomware, if executed, does a large number of file modifications. You can see the changes in the filemon or procmon tools from Sysinternals File extensions are changed in a lot of cases. In this case, it is changed to .scl. The extension will vary with different crypto ransomware. A lot of the time, a file with a ransom note is present on the system. The following image shows a file with a ransom note: Ransom notes are different for different kinds of ransomware. Ransom notes can be in HTML, PDF, or text files. The ransom note's file usually has decrypt instructions in the filename. Prevention and removal techniques for crypto ransomware In this case, prevention is better than cure. It's hard to decrypt the encrypted files in most cases. Security vendors came up with decryption tool to decrypt the ransomware encrypted files. There was a large increase in the number of ransomware and an increase in complexity of the encryption algorithms used by them. Hence, the decryption tools created by the ransomware vendors failed to cope sometimes. http://www.thewindowsclub.com/list-ransomware-decryptor-tools gives you a list of tools meant to decrypt ransomware encrypted files. These tools may not work in all cases of ransomware encryption. If you've enjoyed reading this post, do check out  'Preventing Ransomware' to have an end-to-end knowledge of the trending malware in the tech industry at present. 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In large part, the security of an ecommerce company is the responsibility of its technical support team and ecommerce software vendors. In reality, cybercriminals often exploit the security illiteracy of the staff to hit a company. Of all the ecommerce team, web administrators are often targeted for hacker attacks as they control access to the admin panel with lots of sensitive data. Having broken into the admin panel, criminals can take over an online store, disrupt its operation, retrieve customer confidential data, steal credit card information, transfer payments to their own account, and do more harm to business owners and customers. Online retailers contribute to the security of their company greatly when they educate web administrators where security threats can come from and what measures they can take to prevent breaches. We have summarized some key lessons below. It’s time for a quick cybersecurity class! Lesson 1. Mind password policy Starting with the basis of cybersecurity, we will proceed to more sophisticated rules in the lessons that follow. The importance of secure password policy may seem obvious, it's still shocking how careless people can be with choosing a password. In e-commerce, web administrators set credentials for accessing the admin panel and they can “help” cybercriminals greatly if they neglect basic password rules. Never use similar or alike passwords to log into different systems. In general, sticking to the same patterns when creating passwords (for example, using a date of birth) is risky. Typically, people have a number of personal profiles in social networks and email services. If they use identical passwords to all of them, cybercriminals can steal credentials just to one social media profile to crack the others. If employees are that negligent about accessing corporate systems, they endanger the security of the company. Let’s outline the worst-case scenario. Criminals take advantage of the leaked database of 167 million LinkedIn accounts to hack a large online store. As soon as they see the password of its web administrator (the employment information is stated in the profile just for hackers’ convenience), they try to apply the password to get access to the admin panel. What luck! The way to break into this web store was too easy. Use strong and impersonalized passwords. We need to introduce the notion of doxing to fully explain the importance of this rule. Doxing is the process of collecting pieces of information from social accounts to ultimately create a virtual profile of a person. Cybercriminals engage doxing to crack a password to an ecommerce platform by using an admin’s personal information in it. Therefore, a strong password shouldn’t contain personal details (like dates, names, age, etc.) and must consist of eight or more characters featuring a mix of letters, numbers, and unique symbols. Lesson 2. Watch out for phishing attacks With the wealth of employment information people leave in social accounts, hackers hold all the cards for implementing targeted, rather than bulk, phishing attacks. When planning a malicious attack on an ecommerce business, criminals can search for profiles of employees, check their position and responsibilities, and conclude what company information they have access to. In such an easy way, hackers get to know a web store administrator and follow with a series of phishing attacks. Here are two possible scenarios of attacks: When hackers target a personal computer. Having found a LinkedIn profile of a web administrator and got a personal email, hackers can bombard them with disguised messages, for example, from bank or tax authorities. If the admin lets their guard down and clicks a malicious link, malware installs itself on their personal computer. Should they remotely log in the admin panel, hackers steal their credentials and immediately set a new password. From this moment, they take over the control over a web store. Hackers can also go a different way. They target a personal email of the web administrator with a phishing attack and succeed in taking it over. Let’s say they have already found out a URL to the admin panel by that time. All they have to do now is to request to change the password to the panel, click the confirmation link from the admin’s email and set a new password. In the described scenario, the web administrator has made three security mistakes of using a personal email for work purposes, not changing the default admin URL, and taking the bait of a phishing email. When hackers target a work computer. Here is how a cyberattack may unfold if web administrators have been reckless to disclose a work email online. This time, hackers create a targeted malicious email related to work activities. Let’s say, the admin can get a legitimate-looking email from FedEx informing about delivery problems. Not alarmed, they open the email, click the link to know the details, and compromise the security of the web store by giving away the credentials to the admin panel to hackers. The main mistake in dealing with phishing attacks is to expect a fraudulent email to look suspicious. However, phishers falsify emails from real companies so it can be easy to fall into the trap. Here are recommendations for ecommerce web administrators to follow: Don’t use personal emails to log in to the admin panel. Don’t make your work email publicly available. Don’t use work email for personal purposes (e.g., for registration in social networks). Watch out for links and downloads in emails. Always hover over the link prior to click it – in malicious emails, the destination URL doesn’t match the expected destination website. Remember that legitimate companies never ask for your credentials, credit card details or any other sensitive information in emails. Be wary of emails with urgent notifications and deadlines – hackers often try to allay suspicions by provoking anxiety and panic among their victims. Engage two-step verification for an ecommerce admin panel. Lesson 3.  Stay alert while communicating with a hosting provider Web administrators of companies that have chosen a hosted ecommerce platform for their e-shop will need to contact the technical support of their hosting provider now and then. Here, a cybersecurity threat comes unexpected. If hackers have compromised the security of the web hosting company, they can target its clients (e-commerce websites) as well. Admins are in serious danger if the hosting company stores their credentials unencrypted. In this case, hackers can get direct access to the admin panel of a web store. Otherwise, more sophisticated attacks are developed. Cybercriminals can mislead web administrators by speaking for tech support agents. When communicating with their hosting provider, web administrators should mind several rules to protect their confidential data and the web store from hacking. Use unique email and password to log in your web hosting account. The usage of similar credentials for different work services or systems leads to a company security breach in case the hosting company has been hacked. Never reveal any credentials on request of tech support agents. Having shared their password to the admin panel, web administrators can no longer authenticate themselves by using it. Track your company communication with tech support. Web administrators can set email notifications to track requests from team members to the tech support and control what information is shared. Time for an exam As a rule, ecommerce software vendors and retailers do their best for the security of ecommerce businesses. Thus, software vendors take the major role in providing for the security of SaaS ecommerce solutions (like Shopify or Salesforce Commerce Cloud), including the security of servers, databases and the application itself. In IaaS solutions (like Magento), retailers need to put more effort in maintaining the security of the environment and system, staying current on security updates, conducting regular audits and more (you can see the full list of Magento security measures as an example). Still, cybercriminals often target company employees to hack an online store. Retailers are responsible for educating their team what security rules are compulsory to follow and how to identify malicious intents. In our article, we have outlined the fundamental security lessons for web administrators to learn in order to protect a web store against illicit access. In short, they should be careful with personal information they publish online (in their social media profiles) and use unique credentials for different services and systems. There are no grades in our lessons – rather an admin’s contribution to the security of their company can become the evaluation of knowledge they have gained. About the Author Tanya Yablonskaya is Ecommerce Industry Analyst at ScienceSoft, an IT consulting and software development company headquartered in McKinney, Texas. After 2+ years of exploring the cryptocurrency and blockchain sphere, she has shifted the focus of interest to ecommerce industry. Delving into this enormous world, Tanya covers key challenges online retailers face and unveils a wealth of tools they can use to outpace competitors. 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In an online world infested with hackers, we need more ethical hackers. But all around the world, hackers have long been portrayed by the media and pop culture as the bad guys. Society is taught to see them as cyber-criminals and outliers who seek to destroy systems, steal data, and take down anything that gets in their way. There is no shortage of news, stories, movies, and television shows that outright villainize the hacker. From the 1995 movie Hackers, to the more recent Blackhat, hackers are often portrayed as outsiders who use their computer skills to inflict harm and commit crime. Read this: Did you know hackers could hijack aeroplane systems by spoofing radio signals? While there have been real-world, damaging events created by cyber-criminals that serve as the inspiration for this negative messaging, it is important to understand that this is only one side of the story. The truth is that while there are plenty of criminals with top-notch hacking and coding skills, there is also a growing and largely overlooked community of ethical (commonly known as white-hat) hackers who work endlessly to help make the online world a better and safer place. To put it lightly, these folks use their cyber superpowers for good, not evil. For example, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux was a hacker, as was Tim Berners-Lee, the man behind the World Wide Web. The list is long for the same reason the list of hackers turned coders is long – they all saw better ways of doing things. What is ethical hacking? According to the EC-Council, an ethical hacker is “an individual who is usually employed with an organization and who can be trusted to undertake an attempt to penetrate networks and/or computer systems using the same methods and techniques as a malicious hacker.” Listen: We discuss what it means to be a hacker with Adrian Pruteanu [Podcast] The role of an ethical hacker is important since the bad guys will always be there, trying to find cracks, backdoors, and other secret ways to access data they shouldn’t. Ethical hackers not only help expose flaws in systems, but they assist in repairing them before criminals even have a shot at exploiting said vulnerabilities. They are an essential part of the cybersecurity ecosystem and can often unearth serious unknown vulnerabilities in systems better than any security solution ever could. Certified ethical hackers make an average annual income of $99,000, according to Indeed.com. The average starting salary for a certified ethical hacker is $95,000, according to EC-Council senior director Steven Graham. Ways ethical hacking benefits the software industry Nowadays, ethical hacking has become increasingly mainstream and multinational tech giants like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Mozilla, IBM, etc employ hackers or teams of hackers in order to keep their systems secure. And as a result of the success hackers have shown at discovering critical vulnerabilities, in the last year itself there has been a 26% increase in organizations running bug bounty programs, where they bolster their security defenses with hackers. Other than this there are a number of benefits that ethical hacking has provided to organizations majorly in the software industry. Carry out adequate preventive measures to avoid systems security breach An ethical hacker takes preventive measures to avoid security breaches, for example, they use port scanning tools like Nmap or Nessus to scan one’s own systems and find open ports. The vulnerabilities with each of the ports is studied, and remedial measures are taken by them. An ethical hacker will examine patch installations and make sure that they cannot be exploited. They also engage in social engineering concepts like dumpster diving—rummaging through trash bins for passwords, charts, sticky notes, or anything with crucial information that can be used to generate an attack. They also attempt to evade IDS (Intrusion Detection Systems), IPS (Intrusion Prevention systems), honeypots, and firewalls. They carry out actions like bypassing and cracking wireless encryption, and hijacking web servers and web applications. Perform penetration tests on networks at regular intervals One of the best ways to prevent illegal hacking is to test the network for weak links on a regular basis. Ethical hackers help clean and update systems by discovering new vulnerabilities on an on-going basis. Going a step ahead, ethical hackers also explore the scope of damage that can occur due to the identified vulnerability. This particular process is known as pen testing, which is used to identify network vulnerabilities that an attacker can target. There are many methods of pen testing. The organization may use different methods depending on its requirements. Any of the below pen testing methods can be carried out by an ethical hacker: Targeted testing which involves the organization's people and the hacker. The organization staff will be aware of the hacking being performed. External testing penetrates all externally exposed systems such as web servers and DNS. Internal testing uncovers vulnerabilities open to internal users with access privileges. Blind testing simulates real attacks from hackers. Testers are given limited information about the target, which requires them to perform reconnaissance prior to the attack. Pen testing is the strongest case for hiring ethical hackers. Ethical hackers have built computers and programs for software industry Going back to the early days of the personal computer, many of the members in the Silicon Valley would have been considered hackers in modern terms, that they pulled things apart and put them back together in new and interesting ways. This desire to explore systems and networks to find how it worked made many of the proto-hackers more knowledgeable about the different technologies and it can be safeguarded from malicious attacks. Just as many of the early computer enthusiasts turned out to be great at designing new computers and programs, many people who identify themselves as hackers are also amazing programmers. This trend of the hacker as the innovator has continued with the open-source software movement. Much of the open-source code is produced, tested and improved by hackers – usually during collaborative computer programming events, which are affectionately referred to as "hackathons." Even if you never touch a piece of open-source software, you still benefit from the elegant solutions that hackers come up with that inspire or are outright copied by proprietary software companies. Ethical hackers help safeguard customer information by preventing data breaches The personal information of consumers is the new oil of the digital world. Everything runs on data. But while businesses that collect and process consumer data have become increasingly valuable and powerful, recent events prove that even the world’s biggest brands are vulnerable when they violate their customers’ trust. Hence, it is of utmost importance for software businesses to gain the trust of customers by ensuring the security of their data. With high-profile data breaches seemingly in the news every day, “protecting businesses from hackers” has traditionally dominated the data privacy conversation. Read this: StockX confirms a data breach impacting 6.8 million customers In such a scenario, ethical hackers will prepare you for the worst, they will work in conjunction with the IT-response plan to ensure data security and in patching breaches when they do happen. Otherwise, you risk a disjointed, inconsistent and delayed response to issues or crises. It is also imperative to align how your organization will communicate with stakeholders. This will reduce the need for real-time decision-making in an actual crisis, as well as help limit inappropriate responses. They may also help in running a cybersecurity crisis simulation to identify flaws and gaps in your process, and better prepare your teams for such a pressure-cooker situation when it hits. Information security plan to create security awareness at all levels No matter how large or small your company is, you need to have a plan to ensure the security of your information assets. Such a plan is called a security program which is framed by information security professionals. Primarily the IT security team devises the security program but if done in coordination with the ethical hackers, they can provide the framework for keeping the company at a desired security level. Additionally by assessing the risks the company faces, they can decide how to mitigate them, and plan for how to keep the program and security practices up to date. To summarize… Many white hat hackers, gray hat and reformed black hat hackers have made significant contributions to the advancement of technology and the internet. In truth, hackers are almost in the same situation as motorcycle enthusiasts in that the existence of a few motorcycle gangs with real criminal operations tarnishes the image of the entire subculture. You don’t need to go out and hug the next hacker you meet, but it might be worth remembering that the word hacker doesn’t equal criminal, at least not all the time. Our online ecosystem is made safer, better and more robust by ethical hackers. As Keren Elazari, an ethical hacker herself, put it: “We need hackers, and in fact, they just might be the immune system for the information age. Sometimes they make us sick, but they also find those hidden threats in our world, and they make us fix it.” 3 cybersecurity lessons for e-commerce website administrators Hackers steal bitcoins worth $41M from Binance exchange in a single go! 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