Tutorial

This is a brief tutorial about hacking and how it fits into the broader context of cybersecurity.

Strictly speaking, "hacking" is a value-neutral term. Not all hacking is bad, and not all hackers are bad people. Well, some are, as you will see in the paragraphs below.

Hacking refers to the willful circumvention of security measures designed to protect digital or physical assets connected to the Internet. Until recently this applied only to websites, but now there are numerous consumer and commercial devices connected to the Internet, including refrigerators, burglar alarms, thermostats, garage doors, lights, smartphones, televisions, power grids, medical robots, and many other devices collectively known as the Internet of Things (IoT).

Regrettably, there is no shortage of "Black Hat" hackers, bad actors who are determined to frustrate your efforts to protect your assets. This is described in detail below, in addition to several other categories of hacker.

There is a growing vocabulary used to describe the types of hackers, based mainly on "hats", but there are other categories which don't fit neatly into a hat.

White Hat hackers. These are the good guys, also called "ethical" hackers. They detect security vulnerabilites, always with the permission of the site's owner. They may also execute disruptive exploits, but without doing actual damage, always in coordination with the owner. The White Hat hacker reports to the owner the exact method by which vulnerabilites were detected and the exact method by which an exploit was executed. The owner then takes this information to a cybersecurity company skilled in fixing vulnerabilities.

For large organizations, White Hat hackers may organize employee teams of various types to test the security of their digital assets. They may simulate an "inside job", to see how much damage a disgruntled or former employee can do, especially if that employee has elevated permissions, such as a member of an IT group would have. The White Hat hacker may recommend establishing a military-style "need to know" policy for IT members to minimize the damage that any individual can do.

The identification of vulnerabilities is often called "threat assessment" or "pen (penetration) testing". Some authors make a distinction among penetration testing, vulnerability assessment, threat assessment, and risk assessment. Technically there are distinctions, but they overlap, and these terms are often used interchangeably in the cybersecurity industry. At Aggressive Hacking we consider those terms to be the same, and we also use the terms interchangeably.

Pen testing is not limited to websites. It also applies to email, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol, such as Skype, IR Chat, Zoom, etc.), and to IoT. More company secrets are stolen by email phishing than by website snooping.

Black Hat hackers. These are bad guys, also known as threat actors, who engage in malicious activities for personal gain or to promote a political agenda or vendetta, or just for a sense of satisfaction. They steal data like Social Security and credit card numbers and sell it on the dark web, or sometimes just destroy it. They infect computer systems with malware, demand ransom from critical institutions like hospitals, they install spyware, phishing, key loggers, and viruses, they crash websites, and they disrupt physical devices connected to the IoT. Individuals, businesses, or governments may be their target. For the IoT, Black Hats seek to disrupt the electric grid, shut down alarm systems, and disable oil refineries.

Black Hats are typically very intelligent and highly educated, both of which are necessary to master the complexity of the Internet. They are generally expert programmers as well. A few of them are even well-intentioned, believing that they have a duty to expose the misdeeds of corporations and governments. This is a complex issue about which we, at Aggressive Hacking, do not have an official opinion; it is a murky area which future historians will adjudicate.

Unlike Hacktivists (see below), Black Hat hackers are usually anonymous and operate in the dark web.

Gray Hat hackers. These fall somewhere between White Hat and Black Hat hackers. They are mainly hobbyists who hack computer systems because "they can", or just to tweak the nose of the establishment. They are analogous to rebellious adolescents who rebel merely to assert their independence.

Gray Hats are more of a nuisance than a real threat, but there are quite a few of them, and they do disrupt websites. They often have good intentions and consider themselves do-gooders, and may be motivated by recognition or fame, but they hack without permission and report vulnerabilites to site owners, often demanding compensation for their "services". This is generally not appreciated because they inadvertently disrupt websites. They have seminars, webinars, conventions, contests, and gatherings of all sorts where they trade their hacking "secrets". Many have their own websites of dubious value which are inducements to enroll in costly online "courses" which regurgitate what you can read for free in textbooks (well, free if you know about libgen).

Green Hat hackers. Also known as "newbies" or "noobs", these are White Hat wannabes. They are not Script Kiddies (see below) because they have good intentions. They often enroll in online hacking courses and go to hacking conventions.

A favorite tactic of Green Hat hackers is "phishing" and other types of "social engineering" by which a target is tricked into clicking on a bogus link which downloads spyware into the target's computer.

Red Hat hackers. Also called "vigilante" or "eagle-eyed" hackers, they are White Hat hackers whose only target is Black Hat hackers, including their groups, associations, and forums.

They are very aggressive and ruthless, single-minded in their quest to obliterate the bad guys, and there are no limits to what they are willing to do to accomplish that goal. They have been known to even destroy physical devices.

Blue Hat hackers. There are two flavors of Blue Hat hackers. The first is the "outsourced" type, who are hired by a company to test the company's software product before it is released to the public. In this sense they are similar to White Hat hackers, but with a single client.

The other flavor is the "revenge" type. They seek to damage a target as punishment for a real or imagined wrong done to them.

What the outsourced and revenge type Blue Hat hackers have in common is their focus on a single target.

Purple Hat hackers. These are self-taught hackers who hack their own systems to learn and improve their skills. They are not considered dangerous because they only hack themselves and don't seem to bother anybody, but the ultimate purpose of honing their skills could be anything.

The hat metaphor has gotten a bit out of hand. Other hats which have appeared in the literature include Griite Hat, Screen Hat, Greey Hat, Screy Hat, Cluer Hat, Hiet Hat, Scrfy Hat, Sied Hat, Sezed Hat, and many others.

Hackers who don't fit neatly into any hat category include the following.

Hacktivists. These are hackers with a political or social agenda. We've seen a lot of these lately; they hack into government or corporate websites and publicly disclose wrongdoing by those entities. They often execute DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks or leak sensitive data to support their cause. They consider themselves ethical hackers, but often do unintentional harm to innocent individuals and organizations.

Script Kiddies. Also called "skiddies". The term originated from the emergence in Europe of teenagers who have little or no technical skills themselves, but instead use scripts, easily downloaded from the Internet, to execute disruptive exploits. They have a wide variety of motives, including fun, fame, or just the "thrill" of it. Now the term is simply a pejorative applied to individuals who behave in the same way and with the same motives as the teens.

State-Sponsored hackers. Also called "nation-state" hackers or "cyber soldiers", these are very skilled individuals backed by governments who often lack the brain power of Black Hat hackers but compensate for that with enormous resources in money and computer power. These hackers are tasked with spying on other governments or hacking the infrastructure of hostile governments. Some governments employ these hackers to spy on their own people; we find this in countries where the ruling class thinks of their country as a government with a people instead of a people with a government.

Because of the enormity of resources available to State-Sponsored hackers, they are considered extremely dangerous.

Cyber Espionage hackers. These folks are often hired by corporations to spy on the competition to learn trade secrets, marketing strategies, financial activites, and intellectual property. Sometimes governments spy on their own country's corporations to assess tax and regulations compliance.

Crackers. These are specialists in hacking software licenses. We all know someone who has a "cracked" license key for an expensive software product (not us, of course).

Social Engineers. This is a polite term for extortionists. They either discover, or trick people into disclosing, embarrassing information, and then use that information to control their targets. Politicians, entertainers, and other high-profile people are favorite targets.

Phreakers. These are specialists in circumventing telecommunication protections in order to make free long-distance calls or disrupt phone services. Because of the proliferation of VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) phone services, which are mostly free, we don't see many Phreakers.

Whistle-blowers. Similar to Hacktivists, except that they are employees or insiders of a single organization and seek to expose the same types of wrongdoing as Hacktivists. And, like Hacktivists, they often do unintentional damage to innocent individuals or companies.

Cyberterrorists. We've all heard the term "fake news". Cyberterrorists spread fake news, otherwise known as propaganda, to spread fear with the intention of disrupting organizations or governments. They can cripple transportation, the power grid, and financial institutions.

Cryptohackers. These hackers steal bitcoin and other cryptocurrency by using phishing and other social engineering techniques to get targets to reveal passwords or to deposit funds in a fraudulent account.

Cryptojackers. These crooks steal the results of cryptocurrency miners.

Botnet hackers. These hackers plant dormant viruses on many unsuspecting computers, then wake them up to unleash large-scale attacks and malware infestations. Very hard to trace.

Because of the breadth of their attacks, they are considered very dangerous.

Elite hackers. Rather than exploit existing vulnerabilities, these very skilled hackers invent new ways to circumvent cybersecurity measures. They are generally successful because the Internet is inherently insecure and no measure of security will be completely effective.

Suicide hacker. This could be either a White Hat or a Black Hat, or anything in between. Their distinguishing characteristic is that they do not fear punishment. They often believe that they are on a mission, whether for good or for evil.

Like suicide bombers, they are extremely dangerous because they cannot be dissuaded from their activities.

If you have made it this far in the tutorial, you should have a pretty good idea of what your vulnerabilities might be, what type of hacker might be targeting you, and what level of protection you need.