Hacker (computer security)

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In a security context, a hacker is someone involved in computer security/insecurity, specializing in the discovery of exploits in systems (for exploitation or prevention), or in obtaining or preventing unauthorized access to systems through skills, tactics and detailed knowledge. In the most common general form of this usage, "hacker" refers to a black-hat hacker (a malicious or criminal hacker). There are also ethical hackers (more commonly referred to as white hats), and those more ethically ambiguous (grey hats). To disambiguate the term hacker, often cracker is used instead, referring either to computer security hacker culture as a whole to demarcate it from the academic hacker culture (such as by Eric S. Raymond^[1]) or specifically to make a distinction within the computer security context between black-hat hackers and the more ethically positive hackers (commonly known as the white-hat hackers). The context of computer security hacking forms a subculture which is often referred to as the network hacker subculture or simply the computer underground. According to its adherents, cultural values center around the idea of creative and extraordinary computer usage. Proponents claim to be motivated by artistic and political ends, but are often unconcerned about the use of criminal means to achieve them.

Contents 1 History 2 Artifacts and customs 2.1 Hacker groups 3 Hacking and the media 3.1 Hacker magazines 3.2 Hackers in fiction 3.3 Non-fiction books 4 Hacker attitudes 4.1 White hat 4.2 Grey hat 4.3 Black Hat 4.4 Cyberterrorist 4.5 Script kiddie 4.6 Hacktivist 5 Common methods 5.1 Security exploit 5.2 Vulnerability scanner 5.3 Packet Sniffer 5.4 Spoofing attack 5.5 Rootkit 5.6 Social engineering 5.7 Trojan horse 5.8 Virus 5.9 Worm 5.10 Key loggers 6 Notable intruders and criminal hackers 7 Notable Security Hackers 7.1 Eric Corley 7.2 Fyodor 7.3 Johan Helsingius 7.4 Tsutomu Shimomura 7.5 Solar Designer 7.6 Michał Zalewski 8 References 9 Related literature 10 See also 11 External links

[edit] History

Main article: Timeline of hacker history

[edit] Artifacts and customs

Main article: Hacker culture

Hacker culture is heavily dependent on technology.^[2]

The subculture has given birth to what its many members consider to be novel forms of art, most notably ASCII art. It has also produced its own slang and various forms of unusual alphabet use, for example l33tspeak. Both things are usually seen as an especially silly aspect by the academic hacker subculture. In part due to this, the slangs of the two subcultures differ substantially. Political attitude usually includes views for freedom of information, freedom of speech, a right for anonymity and most have a strong opposition against copyright.^{[citation needed]} Writing programs and performing other activities to support these views is referred to as hacktivism by the subculture. Some go as far as seeing illegal cracking ethically justified for this goal; the most common form is website defacement.^{[citation needed]}

Hacker culture is frequently compared to the Wild West: a male-dominated Frontier to conquer.^[3]

[edit] Hacker groups

Main articles: hacker conference and hacker group

The network hacking subculture is supported by regular real-world gatherings called hacker conventions or "hacker cons". These have drawn more and more people every year including SummerCon (Summer), DEF CON, HoHoCon (Christmas), PumpCon (Halloween), H.O.P.E. (Hackers on Planet Earth) and HEU (Hacking at the End of the Universe). They have helped expand the definition and solidify the importance of the network hacker subculture.

[edit] Hacking and the media

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[edit] Hacker magazines

Main category: Hacker magazines

The security hackers have also edited some magazines, most notably:

• Phrack
• GTNL
• 2600: The Hacker Quarterly
• Hakin9
• TAP
• Blacklisted 411

While the information contained in hacker magazines and ezines was often outdated, they improved the reputations of those who contributed by documenting their successes.^[4]

[edit] Hackers in fiction

Hackers from the network hacking subculture often show an adherence to fictional cyberpunk and cyberculture literature and movies. Absorption of fictional pseudonyms, symbols, values, and metaphors from these fictional works are very common.

Books portraying hackers:

• The cyberpunk novels of William Gibson novels — especially the Sprawl Trilogy — are very popular with hackers.^[5]
• Hackers (short stories)
• Snow Crash
• Helba from the dot .hack manga and anime series.

Films also portray hackers:

• WarGames
• The Matrix series
• Hackers
• Die Hard 4.0
• Swordfish
• The Net
• The Net 2.0
• Antitrust
• Enemy of the State
• Sneakers
• Untraceable

[edit] Non-fiction books

• The Hacker Crackdown
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

[edit] Hacker attitudes

The term "Hacker" may mean simply a person with mastery of computers; however the mass media most often uses "Hacker" as synonymous with a (usually criminal) computer intruder. See hacker, and Hacker definition controversy. In computer security, several subgroups with different attitudes and aims use different terms to demarcate themselves from each other, or try to exclude some specific group with which they do not agree.

Paul A. Taylor quotes Steven Levy when describing the hacker ethic as:^[6]

1. All information should be free;
2. Mistrust authority--promote decentralization;
3. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position;
4. You can create art and beauty on a computer; and
5. Computers can change your life for the better.

It is common among hackers to use aliases for the purpose of concealing identity, rather than revealing their real names. Members of the network hacking scene are often being stereotypically described as crackers by the academic hacker subculture, yet see themselves as hackers and even try to include academic hackers in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by the academic hacker subculture itself. Instead of a hacker – cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat (“ethical hacking”), grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to the academic hackers, they usually reserve the term cracker to refer to black hat hackers, or more generally hackers with unlawful intentions.

[edit] White hat

Main article: White hat

A white hat hacker breaks security for non-malicious reasons.

[edit] Grey hat

Main article: Grey hat

A grey hat hacker is a hacker of ambiguous ethics and/or borderline legality, often frankly admitted.

[edit] Black Hat

Main article: Black hat

A black hat hacker is someone who subverts computer security without authorization or who uses technology (usually a computer or the Internet) for terrorism, vandalism (malicious destruction), credit card fraud, identity theft, intellectual property theft, or many other types of crime. This can mean taking control of a remote computer through a network, or software cracking.

[edit] Cyberterrorist

Main article: Cyberterrorist

A Cyberterrorist is someone who uses technology to commit terrorism. Their intentions are to cause harm to social, ideological, religious, political, or governmental establishments. For example, a cyberterrorist may attempt to shut down a city's electricity or cause malfunctions at a nuclear power plant. This can also be seen when two countries are at war with each other.

[edit] Script kiddie

Main article: Script kiddie

A script kiddie is a person, usually not an expert in computer security, who breaks into computer systems by using pre-packaged automated tools written by others.

[edit] Hacktivist

Main article: hacktivism

A hacktivist is a hacker who utilizes technology to announce a political message. Web vandalism is not necessarily hacktivism.

[edit] Common methods

It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into computer insecurity. (Discuss)

Main article: computer insecurity

The approach followed to attack a internet-connected computer or network is usually the following:

1. Network enumeration: Discovering as much as possible about the intented target.
2. Vulnerability analysis: Identifying all potential ways of attack.
3. Exploitation: Attempting to compromise the network by employing the vulnerabilities found trough the vulnerability analysis and following as many avenues identified as time allows. ^[7]

In order to do so, there are several recurring tools of the trade and techniques used by computer criminals and security experts.

[edit] Security exploit

Main article: Exploit (computer security)

A security exploit is a prepared application that takes advantage of a known weakness.

[edit] Vulnerability scanner

Main article: Vulnerability scanner

A vulnerability scanner is a tool used to quickly check computers on a network for known weaknesses. Hackers also commonly use port scanners. These check to see which ports on a specified computer are "open" or available to access the computer, and sometimes will detect what program or service is listening on that port, and its version number. (Note that firewalls defend computers from intruders by limiting access to ports/machines both inbound and outbound, but can still be circumvented.)

[edit] Packet Sniffer

Main article: Packet sniffer

A packet sniffer is an application that captures TCP/IP data packets, which can maliciously be used to capture passwords and other data while it is in transit either within the computer or over the network.

[edit] Spoofing attack

Main article: Spoofing attack

A spoofing attack is a situation in which one person or program successfully masquerades as another by falsifying data and thereby gaining illegitimate access.

[edit] Rootkit

Main article: Rootkit

A rootkit is a toolkit for hiding the fact that a computer's security has been compromised, is a general description of a set of programs which work to subvert control of an operating system from its legitimate (in accordance with established rules) operators. Usually, a rootkit will obscure its installation and attempt to prevent its removal through a subversion of standard system security. Root kits may include replacements for system binaries so that it becomes impossible for the legitimate user to detect the presence of the intruder on the system by looking at process tables.

[edit] Social engineering

Main article: Social engineering (computer security)

Social Engineering is simply the art of getting unsuspecting persons to reveal sensitive information about a system. This is usually done by impersonating someone or by convincing people to believe you have permissions to obtain such information. A typical example would be eavesdropping on or discussing company security details at a café. A more subtle method would be via impersonation: requesting promotional material or technical reference material regarding a company's systems while pretending to be co-worker or contractor working under pressure or within unseen limitations.

[edit] Trojan horse

Main article: Trojan horse (computing)

A Trojan horse is a program designed as to seem to being or be doing one thing, such as a legitimate software, but actually being or doing another.They are not necessarily malicious programs but can be. A trojan horse can be used to set up a back door in a computer system so that the intruder can return later and gain access. Viruses that fool a user into downloading and/or executing them by pretending to be useful applications are also sometimes called trojan horses. (The name refers to the horse from the Trojan War, with conceptually similar function of deceiving defenders into bringing an intruder inside.) See also Dialer.

[edit] Virus

Main article: Computer virus

A virus is a self-replicating program that spreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Thus, a computer virus behaves in a way similar to a biological virus, which spreads by inserting itself into living cells.

[edit] Worm

Main article: Computer worm

Like a virus, a worm is also a self-replicating program. The difference between a virus and a worm is that a worm does not create copies of itself on one system: it propagates through computer networks. After the comparison between computer viruses and biological viruses, the obvious comparison here is to a bacterium. Many people conflate the terms "virus" and "worm", using them both to describe any self-propagating program. It is possible for a program to have the blunt characteristics of both a worm and a virus.

[edit] Key loggers

Main article: Keystroke logging

A keylogger is a software program designed to record ('log') every keystroke on the machine on which it runs. Often uses virus-, trojan-, and rootkit-like methods to remain active and hidden from the victim (and possibly self-replicate). The log is later transferred to the 'owner' of the keylogger. Hardware-assisted and hardware-based keyloggers also exist.

[edit] Notable intruders and criminal hackers

Main article: List of convicted computer criminals

[edit] Notable Security Hackers

[edit] Eric Corley

Main article: Eric Gorden Corley

Eric Corley (also known as Emmanuel Goldstein) is the long standing publisher of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and founder of the H.O.P.E. conferences. He has been part of the hacker community since the late '70s.

[edit] Fyodor

Main article: Gordon Lyon

Gordon Lyon (better known as Fyodor) authored the Nmap Security Scanner as well as many network security books and web sites. He is a founding member of the Honeynet Project and Vice President of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

[edit] Johan Helsingius

Main article: Johan Helsingius

Johan "Julf" Helsingius operated the world's most popular anonymous remailer, the Penet remailer (called penet.fi), until he closed up shop in September 1996.

[edit] Tsutomu Shimomura

Main article: Tsutomu Shimomura

Shimomura helped catch Kevin Mitnick, the United States' most infamous computer intruder, in early 1994. He is the co-author of a book about the Mitnick case, Takedown: The Pursuit and Capture of Kevin Mitnick, America's Most Wanted Computer Outlaw-By the Man Who Did It (ISBN 0-7868-8913-6), though Mitnick himself has raised questions about the book's accuracy.

[edit] Solar Designer

Main article: Solar Designer

Solar Designer is the pseudonym of the founder of the Openwall Project.

[edit] Michał Zalewski

Main article: Michal Zalewski

Michał Zalweski (lcamtuf) is a prominent security researcher.

[edit] References

1. ^ The glider: an Appropriate Hacker Emblem
2. ^ Taylor, Paul A. (1999). Hackers. Routledge, 28. ISBN 9780415180726. 
3. ^ Tim Jordan, Paul A. Taylor (2004). Hacktivism and Cyberwars. Routledge, 133-134. ISBN 9780415260039. "Wild West imagery has permeated discussions of cybercultures." 
4. ^ Thomas, Douglas [2003]. Hacker Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 90. ISBN 9780816633463. 
5. ^ Staples, Brent (May 11, 2003). "A Prince of Cyberpunk Fiction Moves Into the Mainstream". Retrieved on 2008-08-30. "Mr. Gibson's novels and short stories are worshiped by hackers"
6. ^ Taylor, Paul A. (1999). Hackers. Routledge, 27. ISBN 9780415180726. 
7. ^ Hacking approach

[edit] Related literature

• Clifford Stoll (1990). The Cuckoo's Egg. The Bodley Head Ltd. ISBN 0-370-31433-6. 
• Code Hacking: A Developer's Guide to Network Security by Richard Conway, Julian Cordingley
• Kevin Beaver. Hacking For Dummies. 
• Katie Hafner & John Markoff (1991). Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-68322-5. 
• David H. Freeman & Charles C. Mann (1997). @ Large: The Strange Case of the World's Biggest Internet Invasion. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-82464-7. 
• Suelette Dreyfus (1997). Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier. Mandarin. ISBN 1-86330-595-5. 
• Bill Apro & Graeme Hammond (2005). Hackers: The Hunt for Australia's Most Infamous Computer Cracker. Five Mile Press. ISBN 1-74124-722-5. 
• Stuart McClure, Joel Scambray & George Kurtz (1999). Hacking Exposed. Mcgraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-212127-0. 

[edit] See also

• Wireless hacking

[edit] External links