Showing posts with label Ethical Hacking. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Ethical Hacking - Getting Started
Posted by
Unknown
,
12:28 PM
Do viruses, DDoS attacks, or buffer overflows tickle your fancy? If so, you might consider becoming a legal hacker, aka an ethical hacker, ''white hat'' hackers or penetration tester.
Businesses and government-related organizations that are serious about their network security hire ethical hackers and penetration testers to help probe and improve their networks, applications, and other computer systems with the ultimate goal of preventing data theft and fraud. You may not get the same adrenaline rush that you might with underground hacking, but you can earn a good and honest living--and not end up facing prison time, as some illegal "black hat" hackers do.
How does the job market look like for ethical hackers? Extremely good! The IT market overall continues to grow despite the current economic turmoil. Research firm Gartner estimates that worldwide enterprise IT spending grew by 5.9 percent between 2009 and 2010, to a total of $2.7 trillion. At the same time, security is becoming a more pressing concern. Gartner expects to see an increase of nearly 40 percent in spending on worldwide security services during the five-year period from 2011 to 2015, eventually surpassing $49.1 billion.
In your first years as an ethical hacker, you'll be in a position to earn anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per year, depending on the company that hires you, and on your IT experience and education. With several years of professional experience, you could command $120,000 or more per year, especially if you do your own independent consulting.
You can't just dive into an ethical hacker position, however. Without IT security experience, you won't get very far, even with degrees and certifications. As is true for other IT jobs, employers typically want candidates who have college degrees, but related experience is king. And experience with certifications can typically take the place of some degree requirements.
Getting Started
What you need to do to get started on the road to becoming an ethical hacker depends on where you are in the IT field. If you haven't started your IT career yet, you might even consider military service. The military offers many IT opportunities, and you get paid to go to school, even if you enlist in a part-time branch such as the National Guard or Reserves. Military service also looks good to employers that require security clearances.
Start with the basics: Earn your A+ Certification and get a tech support position. After some experience and additional certification (Network+ or CCNA), move up to a network support or admin role, and then to network engineer after a few years. Next, put some time into earning security certifications (Security+, CISSP, or TICSA) and find an information security position. While you're there, try to concentrate on penetration testing--and get some experience with the tools of the trade. Then work toward the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) certification offered by the International Council of Electronic Commerce Consultants (EC-Council for short). At that point, you can start marketing yourself as an ethical hacker.
For a hacker, networking know-how is vital; but make sure that you gain experience in related areas as well. Discover and play with Unix/Linux commands and distributions. Make sure you also learn some programming--maybe C, LISP, Perl, or Java. And spend some time with databases such as SQL.
Soft Skills
Hacking isn't all technical. It also requires so-called soft skills, just as any other IT job does. You'll need a strong work ethic, very good problem-solving and communications skills, and the ability to say motivated and dedicated.
Ethical hackers also need street smarts, people skills, and even some talent for manipulation, since at times they need to be able to persuade others to disclose credentials, restart or shut down systems, execute files, or otherwise knowingly or unknowingly help them achieve their ultimate goal. You'll need to master this aspect of the job, which people in the business sometimes call "social engineering," to become a well-rounded ethical hacker.
Stay Legal!
It's important never to engage in "black hat" hacking--that is, intruding or attacking anyone's network without their full permission. Engaging in illegal activities, even if it doesn't lead to a conviction, will likely kill your ethical hacking career. Many of the available jobs are with government-related organizations and require security clearances and polygraph testing. Even regular companies will perform at least a basic background check.
Becoming a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
As noted earlier, becoming a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) involves earning the appropriate credential from the EC-Council after a few years of security-related IT experience. The certification will help you understand security from the mindset of a hacker. You'll learn the common types of exploits, vulnerabilities, and countermeasures.
Qualification for a CEH (a vendor-neutral certification) involves mastering penetration testing, footprinting and reconnaissance, and social engineering. The course of study covers creating Trojan horses, backdoors, viruses, and worms. It also covers denial of service (DoS) attacks, SQL injection, buffer overflow, session hijacking, and system hacking. You'll discover how to hijack Web servers and Web applications. You'll also find out how to scan and sniff networks, crack wireless encryption, and evade IDSs, firewalls, and honeypots.
Through approved EC-Council training partners, you can take a live, five-day onsite or online training course to prepare for the CEH cert. You can generally take live online classes over five consecutive days; onsite courses typically offer the content spread over a couple weeks for locals. In addition, you can take self-paced courses and work with self-study materials (including the CEH Certified Ethical Hacker Study Guide book) with or without the training courses. The EC-Council also offers iLabs, a subscription based-service that allows you to log on to virtualized remote machines to perform exercises.
The EC-Council usually requires that you have at least two years of information-security-related work experience (endorsed by your employer) in addition to passing the exam before it will award you the official CEH certification.
Ethical Hacking - Goals of Security
Posted by
Unknown
,
11:49 AM
Goals of Security
Understand the security triangle, also known as CIA (confidentiality, integrity, and availability).
There are many ways in which security can be achieved, but it’s universally agreed that the security triad of confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) form the basic building blocks of any good security initiative.
Confidentiality addresses the secrecy and privacy of information. Physical examples of confidentiality include locked doors, armed guards, and fences. Logical examples of confidentiality can be seen in passwords, encryption, and firewalls. In the logical world, confidentiality must protect data in storage and in transit. For a real-life example of the failure of confidentiality, look no further than the recent news reports that have exposed how several large-scale breaches in confidentiality were the result of corporations, such as Time Warner and City National Bank, misplacing or losing backup tapes with customer accounts, names, and credit information. The simple act of encrypting thebackup tapes could have prevented or mitigated the damage.
Integrity is the second piece of the CIA security triad. Integrity provides for the correctness of information. It allows users of information to have confidence in its correctness. Correctness doesn’t mean that the data is accurate, just that it hasn’t been modified in storage or transit. Integrity can apply to paper or electronic documents. It is much easier to verify the integrity of a paper document than an electronic one. Integrity in electronic documents and data is much more difficult to protect than in paper ones. Integrity must be protected in two modes: storage and transit.
Information in storage can be protected if you use access and audit controls. Cryptography can also protect information in storage through the use of hashing algorithms. Real-life examples of this technology can be seen in programs such as Tripwire, MD5Sum, and Windows File Protection (WFP). Integrity in transit can be ensured primarily by the protocols used to transport the data. These security controls include hashing and cryptography.
Availability is the third leg of the CIA triad. Availability simply means that when a legitimate user needs the information, it should be available. As an example, access to a backup facility 24×7 does not help if there are no updated backups from which to restore. Backups are one of the ways that availability is ensured. Backups provide a copy of critical information should files and data be destroyed or equipment fail. Failover equipment is another way to ensure availability. Systems such as redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) and subscription services such as redundant sites (hot, cold, and warm) are two other examples. Disaster recovery is tied closely to availability, as it’s all about getting critical systems up and running quickly. Denial of service (DoS) is an attack against availability. Although these attacks might not give access to the attacker, they dodeny legitimate users the access they require.
Ethical Hacking – Introduction
Posted by
Unknown
,
11:15 AM
Introduction
This lesson introduces you to the world of ethical hacking. Ethical hacking is a form of legal hacking that is done with the permission of an organization to help increase its security. This lesson discusses many of the business aspects of penetration (pen) testing. Information about how to perform a pen test, what types can be performed, what are the legal requirements, and what type of report should be delivered are all basic items that you will need to know before you perform any type of security testing. However, first, you need to review some security basics. This lesson starts with a discussion of confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Finally, the lesson finishes up with the history of hacking and a discussion of some of the pertinent laws.
Nothing learned in this class is intended to teach or encourage the use of security tools or methodologies for illegal or unethical purposes. Always act in a responsible manner. Make sure that you have written permission from the proper individuals before you use any of the tools or techniques described within. Always obtain permission before installing any of these tools on a network.
Security Fundamentals
Security is about finding a balance, as all systems have limits. No one person or company has unlimited funds to secure everything, and we cannot always take the most secure approach. One way to secure a system from network attack is to unplug it and make it a standalone system. Although this system would be relatively secure from Internet-based attackers, its usability would be substantially reduced. The opposite approach of plugging it in directly to the Internet without any firewall, antivirus, or security patches would make it extremely vulnerable, yet highly accessible. So, here again, you see that the job of security professionals is to find a balance somewhere between security and usability.
To find this balance, you need to know what the goals of the organization are, what security is, and how to measure the threats to security. The next section discusses the goals of security.
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