Hacking has a certain dark image in popular culture. Films show shadowy figures in hoodies, fingers dancing across keyboards as code scrolls down the screen. News headlines paint hackers as either digital criminals or modern-day vigilantes. Let’s peek into the real world of cyber security and breakdown how cyber criminals and professionals exploit vulnerabilities.
The Basics of Exploitation
At its core, exploitation is about finding a weakness and using it to gain unauthorised access, control, or information. It can be technical, targeting software flaws, or social manipulating people into making security mistakes. Here are some key components:
Vulnerabilities
Bugs or design flaws that create security holes in systems.
Exploits
Pieces of code, techniques, or tricks used to take advantage of those vulnerabilities
Payloads
When a hacker takes advantage of a system, what they are doing is exploiting a weakness they have found. This could be installing malware, stealing data, or creating backdoors for future access.
Exploitation isn’t as simple as pressing a button. The key to any successful hack is research, to understand the systems that are being targeted. Sometimes this means using multiple vulnerabilities together.
Real-World Examples
Exploiting systems is like meteoroids hitting the earth, they happen often and frequently, by we only hear about the big ones that might impact our lives, or those that just make for good new stories. If you have been exploring cyber security, here are some you may of heard before:
EternalBlue & WannaCry
One of the most famous exploits in recent history, EternalBlue was a vulnerability in Microsoft’s SMB (Server Message Block) protocol. Cyber criminals weaponised it in 2017 to create WannaCry ransomware attack, which crippled hospitals, businesses, and public services worldwide. Microsoft released a patch months before the attack, but many organisations failed to update their systems which could defend their systems, demonstrating how a simple lapse in security can lead to massive consequences.
Phishing and Social Engineering.
In 2020, Twitter (now known as X) was hit by an attack where hackers tricked employees into providing login credentials over the phone. This gave the attackers access to internal tools, allowing them to take over high-profile accounts, including those of Elon Musk, and Barack Obama, to run a Bitcoin scam.
This attack showed that even the best security can be exploited by human error.
Zero-Day Exploits
A ‘Zero-Day’ is a vulnerability that isn’t known to owners of the software, meaning that there isn’t a fix available for it right away. Attackers love these because they provide a way into the systems with no immediate defence. In 2021, a zero-day in Microsoft Exchange was exploited to gain access to thousands of organisations, allowing attackers access to steal emails and plant malware before a patch was released.
The Information Highway
If you’ve gotten this far, you might be thinking that the internet is a lawless place, full of outlaws roaming free. The thing is that most successful attacks rely on basic security lapses. Regular updates, strong passwords, using two-factor authentication, and a healthy dose of scepticism can go along way in protecting yourself and people around you. Sure there are some bad people on the internet, but the same can be said about the real word too. If you stay on your toes when it comes to numbers you don’t know or emails you don’t trust, you are half way there to protecting yourself.
Also never use the same password twice, use a good password manager, I personally use Bitwarden, free to use for personal use and also has a free password checker to ensure that any password you generate isn’t listed on the dark web.
Conclusion
Exploitation isn’t a magic trick, hackers aren’t wizards (despite what some might have you believe). It’s a combination of technical know-how, patience, and often exploiting human weaknesses. Understanding how exploitation works doesn’t just make for interesting reading, it helps you become more aware of how to protect yourself.