Cybersecurity is an arms race between offensive and defensive capabilities.
And unfortunately we are losing this battle as users we want better technology doing cool things enabling
us to do more.
But the more we have the more we rely on it and the more complex the systems become.
Complexity is the enemy of security.
In fact complexity is a nemesis of security which is one of the main reasons why we are losing this
arms race.
I'm going to get you up to speed on security bugs and vulnerabilities and how they affect your security.
Security bug and a vulnerability are actually the same thing so they're synonyms for each other.
So if I say security but the vulnerability is the same thing and it's an error it's an error written
into software that creates a potential for a threat agents or a hacker to exploit it.
So an example might be the classic Heartbleed bug which you may have heard about because it was on mainstream
news.
This was a bug in something called Open SSL which enabled the decryption of Internet traffic sent to
vulnerable sites.
So for example maybe you have a online bank.
If it was susceptible to the Heartbleed bug and when you were sending your username and password somebody
may if the bug was in that bank able to decrypt and get access to your username and password security
bugs will always exist as long as humans write software that might not be forever but humans are fallible.
So as long as humans write software there's going to be security bugs and it's no surprise really if
you consider something like the Windows operating system it's made up of millions and millions of lines
of code.
Humans are fallible.
We will make mistakes.
There will be security books on the left here you can see a diagram that represents your computer and
on the right we have a diagram that represents Internet on each side.
We have things that you care about.
Security both can exist in your operating system firmware applications things like Outlook your media
player dobi acrobat and no particular risk that can exist in your browser and the extensions and add
ons within the browser.
So for example there could be a security bug in your Internet Explorer you visit a website which has
special code on it.
You won't see that this code is on there and this will install malware on your machine and take you
over through that vulnerability and maybe the consequences are that they choose to encrypt all your
files and hold them to ransom.
And do you pay money to decrypt it.
That's known as ransom Why.
Because you have things you care about online.
We have to consider the security bugs that exist on Internet sites and on the Internet infrastructure.
So maybe use Dropbox and there's a book that was discovered by Dr. reveal on Dropbox which gives him
access to your files and because Dropbox stores encryption keys so encryption isn't going to save you.
He will then have access to your files.
There are two main types of Bogues really the best to draw a distinction between.
And those are the known and unknown bugs.
So we start with a known Boob's known bugs or vulnerabilities have patches.
And if you patch your system you are safe against that book and we will cover the best and easiest way
to do patching of all the things that need patching as we go through.
And then you have the notebook also can be referred to as zero days.
These are much harder to protect against.
There is no patch.
So we'll cover a lot of techniques to protect against these.
And these are referred to in the security industry as a compensating control.
I'm going to bring a page spreadsheet to give you a little bit more of an insight into the world of
the cyber criminal.
Your boring entrepreneur a hacker doesn't even need to be particularly skilled these days.
He can go purchase an ready readymade exploit kit.
If you look at the spreadsheet here along the top these are the various popular exploit kits that are
available at the moment and to purchase and down here the various abilities what they affect down here.
And as a budding hacking entrepreneur we can look through here and see which particular vulnerability
we might want to use.
OK we might want to exploit Internet Explorer.
So there we go we can use this one.
And here we can see this one allows the remote attacker to execute arbitrary code by a crafted website
that triggers access to a detailed object that really means that if you click on a link or go anywhere
with an Internet Explorer browser susceptible to this vulnerability they can take over your machine.
As of 2018 the use of exploit kids is in decline.
The attackers favoring alternative means of infection like social engineering because of how social
engineering attacks work.
Surely there is still significant activity in the exploit domain though exploit kids are evolving over
time as they adopt new technologies to avoid detection.
A good resource if you're interested in learning more about the latest exploit kids is the ex-boy kit
landscape map which you can see.
The application here in front of you is an attempt to organize current active campaigns involving exploit
kids.
You go to that you are all there you'll need an application but you can then download it.
The landscape map and find out more about the current active campaigns.
If a hacker doesn't want to buy or rent an exploit kit you can always just go out and find the exploit
code itself.
An interesting practical exercise for you to try is have a look at this exploit database which you can
find that you are here.
Or if you don't want to use you or else you can use search exploit which is a tool that comes with Kelly.
Kelly later but for now you can just check out you are around and use the you are now.
So why not have a look to see if there are available exploits for common applications that you use or
operating system that you use.
So let me give you an example so let's do a search for office see what we find.
Go do the no robots capture thing as well.
And here we are we can see offers of obviously both the Microsoft Office of libber office in there.
So here we are we've got a top or rather recent vulnerability for Microsoft Office there.
We can see that the exploit is downloadable.
That's in a ruby script or abbay which generally means it's part of métis boy being part of métis boy
it means you can use the Metis point framework to exploit the vulnerability easier.
And if we click here we can see a little bit more of the actual exploit itself.
So a hacker would they could email someone a word document or document that word processors and then
with that if the vulnerability allows it then take over that person's machine if they're not patched.
Another example let's have a look for Wordpress
and we can obviously specify versions in here.
So if you want to access one WordPress web server if it's not patched you'll be able to find abilities
in here and maybe Let's have a look for Apache struts and Apache struts exploit was used in the Equifax
hack which Expo's 140 plus million personal records.
And in here you'll find the exploit code that actually did the exploiting of Equifax.
Now these exploits of four known security bugs and vulnerabilities most if not all of these vulnerabilities
will have patches available for them.
But many devices won't be patched even though there is a patch available this is the nature of the Internet
which is why these exploits are useful to hackers still vulnerabilities that have exploits publicly
available like these that we can see here or a big risk to anyone who's not actually against them.
We have a look at this chart here.
Vulnerabilities are assigned C.V numbers.
These are the current top exploited vulnerabilities is an example for Windows.
So as you can see are as old as 2010 are still not getting patched and therefore being exploited by
hackers and within ex-boy kits.
So that gives you a better idea about what security boobs are and vulnerabilities and later on we're
going to be going through the ways to mitigate against the known virtues and the unknown vulnerabilities.