It is quite common in Information Systems to use pseudo code to describe a process. I have often thought that the same principle can be applied to the process of hacking an organisation, which may help people understand the process and how to protect themselves. Below is my proposal for this pseduo-code for the hacking process. This is very much a work in progress. I would welcome feedback on it and I will update it as suggestions are made or as I feel it needs revising. organisation = proposed target organisation. footprint (value, effort, risk) profit = value - (effort * risk) if profit > 0 then   organisation. enumerate ()    select attack_type      case DoS        engage_botnet (myBotnet)       myBotnet. launchDDoS (organisation)      case Access       organisation. gainAccess (myAccount)     ...

In this day of doing everything online, we still rely heavily on services delivered over POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service). Banks and credit card companies still require the telephone to make certain changes, queries and security checks, even though most functions can be performed online. Medical records, bank details, security key order requests, etc., are routinely transferred by facsimile. However, are these secure? Are they more or less secure than doing the same thing online? I'm not going to talk about the underlying security of POTS , but concentrate on a couple of easy attack vectors on the end device of the user that I have recently observed. A couple of weeks ago, I needed to amend something on one of my credit card accounts (I would tell you which bank, only it's my personal credit card and I don't want phisers knowing which banks I have accounts with). This bank has an automated telephone answering system to make things more efficient and reduce staff require...

While I was answering emails and writing another blog post, I was reminded that lots of people ask me about the seriousness of the threat of attack as they are sceptical. So, I decided to turn on additional logging on my router to view all incoming traffic to see what it is blocking silently. I can tell you that in 2 hours on my home connection here I have had 22 different IP addresses making 47 different attempts to connect to me. One tried to launch a Denial-of-Service (DoS) attack on my web server three times (unsuccessfully), and another attached to my web server to view the options available and didn't bother retrieving any pages - this is a classic sign of footprinting before an attack. The first was host 123-204-6-150.dynamic.seed.net.tw and the second was host164-120-static.29-87-b.business.telecomitalia.it. What were the other 20 connection attempts? Well I don't actually have anything else open on my network, but by logging all connection attempts I can view what pe...