Should we fear hackers? Intention is at the heart of this discuss... by Kevin Mitnick

Should we fear hackers? Intention is at the heart of this discussion.

Kevin Mitnick

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Categorized in : Heart Intention Hackers

A company can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on firewalls, intrusion detection systems and encryption and other security technologies, but if an attacker can call one trusted person within the company, and that person complies, and if the attacker gets in, then all that money spent on technology is essentially wasted.

safety technology money

Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer and operate computer systems

dollars use people

Social engineering bypasses all technologies, including firewalls... by Kevin Mitnick

Social engineering bypasses all technologies, including firewalls.

bypass engineering technology

You can never protect yourself 100%. What you do is protect your self as much as possible and mitigate risk to an acceptable degree. You can never remove all risk.

degrees risk self

There is no patch for stupidity. by Kevin Mitnick

There is no patch for stupidity.

patches stupidity

The methods that will most effectively minimize the ability of intruders to compromise information security are comprehensive user training and education. Enacting policies and procedures simply won't suffice. Even with oversight the policies and procedures may not be effective: my access to Motorola, Nokia, ATT, Sun depended upon the willingness of people to bypass policies and procedures that were in place for years before I compromised them successfully.

policies-and-procedures people years

It's true, I had hacked into a lot of companies, and took copies of the source code to analyze it for security bugs. If I could locate security bugs, I could become better at hacking into their systems. It was all towards becoming a better hacker.

hacking bugs becoming

I got so passionate about technology. Hacking to me was like a video game. It was about getting trophies. I just kept going on and on, despite all the trouble I was getting into, because I was hooked.

video technology games

Social engineering is using deception, manipulation and influence to convince a human who has access to a computer system to do something, like click on an attachment in an e-mail.

engineering deception attachment

Hackers are breaking the systems for profit. Before, it was about intellectual curiosity and pursuit of knowledge and thrill, and now hacking is big business.

thrill curiosity intellectual

Social engineering is using manipulation, influence and deception to get a person, a trusted insider within an organization, to comply with a request, and the request is usually to release information or to perform some sort of action item that benefits that attacker.

engineering deception organization

I use Mac. Not because it's more secure than everything else - because it is actually less secure than Windows - but I use it because it is still under the radar. People who write malicious code want the greatest return on their investment, so they target Windows systems. I still work with Windows in virtual machines.

machines writing people

I think it goes back to my high school days. In computer class, the first assignment was to write a program to print the first 100 Fibonacci numbers. Instead, I wrote a program that would steal passwords of students. My teacher gave me an A.

writing teacher school

As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool... by Kevin Mitnick

As a young boy, I was taught in high school that hacking was cool.

hacking boys school

Social engineers veil themselves in a cloak of believability. by Kevin Mitnick

Social engineers veil themselves in a cloak of believability.

cloaks veils social

Security is always going to be a cat and mouse game because there'll be people out there that are hunting for the zero day award, you have people that don't have configuration management, don't have vulnerability management, don't have patch management.

hunting cat zero

The key to social engineering is influencing a person to do something that allows the hacker to gain access to information or your network.

engineering information keys

I get hired by companies to hack into their systems and break into their physical facilities to find security holes. Our success rate is 100%; we've always found a hole.

holes break found

When an attacker fails with one person, they often go to another person. The key is to report the attack to other departments. Workers should know to act like they are going along with what the hacker wants and take copious notes so the company will know what the hacker is trying to find.

keys want trying

It’s actually a smarter crime because imagine if you rob a bank, or you’re dealing drugs. If you get caught you’re going to spend a lot of time in custody. But with hacking, it’s much easier to commit the crime and the risk of punishment is slim to none.

punishment risk drug