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Anatomy of a Hack
Tiberius_Fel writes "Informit.com is running an extensive article about the anatomy of a hack against a sample network. It's an excerpt from a book titled Protect Your Windows Network: From Perimeter to Data. Even though it makes references to Windows, the techniques can be applied to other operating systems fairly easily." From the article: "Although attacking networks can be fun and informative--not to mention illegal if you do not have all the proper permissions--the fact remains that the vast majority of us do not need to know how to do so. Frankly, becoming a good penetration tester (pen tester) takes more than a week-long class. It takes commitment, dedication, intuition, and technical savvy, not to mention a blatant disregard for the rules and the right way to do things."
For all too many business owners and managers out there it just isn't worth it for them to learn to secure computers. They have enough trouble learning and keeping up with the business they have. Normally it isn't until they are breached that they realize that security is a need.
But that's what America is for. They need something, but don't have the time to do it. So you learn how to provide for their need, and sell it to them.
Isn't hacking more about the creation of something than the destruction of something? This sounds more like cracking. Anyone can open up a locked car with a coat hanger and hot wire it, but that doesn't make them equal with the skill of the engineers that created the car.
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I don't think this isn't really what the author meant about the backups being compromised.
If you were a hacker, and had just broken into someone's computer/network, would you start playing around and messing things up as soon as you got in?
Hell no. Only a moron would do that. You would (very quietly) install another backdoor or two, to make sure you can still get in, and then you'd wait five or six months, maybe a year or so, and ~then~ start causing trouble.
If you start making a mess right away, there's a good chance you'll get detected, and they'll do something about it to lock you out, maybe even going back to those backups and restoring them. That's no good.
On the other hand, if you wait, then by the time you start causing noticeable damage, they've already made new backups several times. With your exploits already in them. So they can restore the backups, and you can log right back in. The only way to get uncompromized backups will to use very old ones, from before you got in in the first place.
Patience is a virtue, in hacking just as in everything else.
Slashdot surrendering to the mainstream, negative meaning of "hack".
:~
I though it was supposed to be a hacker forum