Start Thinking Like A Hacker

Uploaded on 2023-02-27 in TECHNOLOGY--Resilience, TECHNOLOGY--Hackers, FREE TO VIEW

The list of large and medium-size companies whose internal systems have been hacked has grown rapidly in recent years and now includes such high-profile exploits as SolarWinds, Kaseya, Ireland's Heath Service and many others.

In many cases, cyber security breaches can go undetected for weeks and months before they’re discovered. Cyber security breach response times can be a crucial factor in the data breach scale, its mitigation, the determination of its source, not forgetting the future legal issues involving the disclosure period.

Computer security is a unique field. Unlike other fields in which the challenge is to overcome the scale of a problem or the complexity of an algorithm, in computer security the challenge is the wit of another human being who is trying to carry out an attack in order to compromise and disrupt a computing infrastructure. The saying, "If you can't beat them, join them." certainly applies to cyber security.

To really get inside the mind of a hacker, you need to think like a hacker and this approach is known as "white hat" hacking.

Malicious actors will search for the easiest way in and as you know, social engineering techniques are typically a piece of the plan. In other words, humans are the easiest to hack. Today, there is a pressing need for security professionals to develop vulnerability analysis skills. Vulnerability analysis is the process of analysing a networked system to identify possible security problems. While there are a number of scanning tools that can be used for network analysis, an in-depth analysis requires a more holistic approach that takes into account the design of the network, its goals, and its actual configuration. Given this information, it is then necessary to identify the underlying assumptions of the system's design, especially the undocumented ones.

To succeed as a cyber security analyst, you need to understand the traits, values, and thought processes of hackers, along with the tools they use to launch their attacks.

Three Core Values Characterise A Hacker’s Thinking

Curiosity: Curiosity drives hackers to explore and understand systems, networks, and software in order to identify vulnerabilities. Not only are they constantly seeking new knowledge and skills to improve their abilities and stay ahead of security measures, but they’re also constantly applying newly learned approaches, tricks, and techniques in different systems, to see what sticks.

Aggressivel Attitude: An adversarial attitude is a mindset that is always looking for ways to defeat security measures, challenge the status quo, and push the boundaries of what is possible. Hackers are often driven by a desire to prove their own abilities and to test the limits of systems and networks.

Persistence: Persistence is an important trait for hackers as they often need to try multiple approaches and techniques in order to find a way into a system. They may encounter roadblocks and failures, but they don’t give up easily. But they will continue to work until they have achieved their goal.

Cyber security teams need to identify and remediate all vulnerabilities while a hacker needs to find only one. The relentless pursuit of vulnerabilities is at their core.

The majority of hackers do not think they will suffer consequences and often go after low-level employees because they think there is less risk of getting caught. This thought pattern makes sense because IT administrators and contractors tend to have direct access to servers and other systems housing sensitive data. Furthermore, these contractors or third-party vendors are an excellent choice because they do not work directly within the company, the standards of how they handle data more often fall short.

If you understand that framework, you're one step ahead in finding the right tools that will help you to gain visibility into critical assets like user data, endpoints, servers, and SaaS applications, allowing you to find the next vulnerability before it's exploited by a hacker.

Dark Reading: I-HLS: Techguard: MITSloan: Hacker News: MasterDC:

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