The further you progress down the path of hacking, the more you will notice that your Web browser is the most powerful tool in your arsenal. Hackers are finding you through your digital signature on the Internet, and Jimmy Ray Purser shows you how they're doing it.
Remember how it felt in the early morning just before your folks woke up on Christmas Day? Jettin' down the stairs to the Christmas tree to weed out the crappy socks and sweaters to get to the Hot Wheels and GI Joes? This is still the feeling I get when I start a hacking project. I am pumped!! However, I try not to let the excitement override the reality that without a signed document from a company officer, this is an illegal act. Kinda like the digital equivalent of getting a Red Rider BB gun to put your eye out.
Now that you have your "get out of jail free" document, it is time to get started. But where? Where is the best place to start hacking your network? I do not believe that hacking is a cookie-cutter process. Any security professional who starts out a pen test with Nessus or on any type of vulnerability scanner is a noob. These scanners are very noisy and will be picked up by even the worst IPS out there. They absolutely have a place in pen testing, just not at the start. I typically do not use the same tools over and over, but I do use the same methodology. My favorite methodology for finding your network without you knowing I am there starts out with recon: finding your digital footprint.
Web Browser As A Powerful Tool
As you will see, the further you progress down the path of hacking, the more you will notice that your Web browser is the most powerful tool in your arsenal. Hackers are finding you through your digital signature on the Internet. Of course, feeds like WHOIS and ARIN are obvious, but if you are a publicly traded company, your SEC 10-K fillings also tell a whole lot about you. Search the SEC Edgar database for your company name. I have found many things such as merging data system dates. Those are very useful, because many IT folks drop their security requirements to enable an easier transition and then tighten them back up again. This gives a hacker plenty of time to plant backdoors. Understand that hacking today is all about volume, volume, volume!! The more sites I can hit, the better my chances are of making some money and getting hired out by others. Search engines have changed the face of hacking because they are so powerful and index so much data that now hackers have a true hacking possibilities database at their fingertips. Like with any database, knowing how to write the query determines your success.
Don't Miss: To Catch a (Hacking) Intruder
Googling: Google is an amazing repository of information. Just imagine: Armed with a search engine, one guy pointed the finger at major world power, China, and caused a huge uproar at the 2008 Olympics in women's gymnastics over age. Amazing, isn't it? Truthfully, traditional hacking tools are taking a backseat to more advanced attacks on SQL Servers and trust exploiting between the clients and servers. These are dangerous because they are transparent to your users. Hackers today are using search engines to track down weak servers and exploit them.
Google uses what is called site operators to narrow down your data search. Some quick and easy Google search operators you can use to find your digital signature:
Operator: site. The site operator is very useful when searching for data leakage on your Web site. Let's say you are getting a huge amount of spam clogging up your MTAs. You can use the site operator to see if your Webmaster has placed e-mail addresses on your Web site:
Site:techwisetv.com email
This will search only the site techwisetv.com for e-mail. You can also use this to crawl a Web site to find what is beyond the highest-ranking page. For example, searching Cisco with a reduction operator:
site:mytechwisetv.com "site:www.mytechwisetv.com
This will reveal all of the subdomains under the main or highest-ranked page. Now just use a DNS lookup to verify the results, and you have some solid info in your hand.
Next Page: Hacking Your Network With My Web Browser
