8 Most Frightening Black Hat Hack Attacks

8 Most Frightening Black Hat Hack Attacks

In 2014, Black Hat attacks have become quite popular and these attacks suggest some future possible crimes too. Have a look.    Saturday, August 30, 2014:  Black Hat attacks have become common trend in 2014. These attacks can take place everywhere including cars, satellites and hotels. When these attacks are becoming more and more popular, safety policies are also not lagging behind. The biggest scare with Black Hat is the least expected objects are most vulnerable to these attacks. Three years ago Black Hat used to hack ATMs and criminals have actually started looting ATMs now. As Black Hat knows it very well how to hack chip-and-PIN cards too, if security measures are not beefed up right now then even these high security cards will also become vulnerable in any case and it’s scary enough. Black Hat 2014 is getting over now but we need to discuss some shocking observations which can lead to terrible crimes in near future. Here are 8 such incidents which need special caution to avoid sleepless nights in the days ahead. 1. Lack of common sense and its implementation: There are so many measures to defend your computer or mobile from hackers but the most important thing is to use your common sense. Sometimes we think that we have installed a security software and that’s more than enough. But have you ever given a thought about the Internet of Things? Researchers have continuously showed that critical devices which are Internet connected are most easy to access. There was a hacking team which hacked the Nest smart thermostat and got it down in just 15 seconds. Findings came out that there were some default passwords which were hardcoded into the scanning machines which were issued at TSA checkpoints. The 15-second hack took the entire world aback. 2. Lack of safety in devices used by ships, airplanes and more: Devices which are used by ships, aeroplanes, journalists and also the military are not that much safe as we think them to be. It was demonstrated by Ruben Santamarta that most of these systems are having backdoors for maintenance and password recovery. These attacks can be conducted in airplanes too by using in-flight Wi-Fi. If this kind of hack actually happens on your jet, just think what level of panic it can be. 3. Vulnerability of camcorders, smartphones and smartwatches: Stealing a password is one of the easiest tasks for a hacker. One most popular approach to do that has been taught by Black Hat as it can be done without installing any malware in your system. One of the presenters from Black Hat showed off his new system which can read passwords with 90 per cent perfection. Even if the target is at street level it works and the method works best with digital camcorders, smartphones, smartwatches and Google Glass. These can be used to capture videos at very short range. 4. Emergence of FAKE ID: MasterKey vulnerability was unveiled last year by Jeff Forristal and it informed that malicious apps can be passed through as legitimate ones. Now MasterKey has paved way for FAKE ID which takes advantage of Android’s architectural flaws. The apps sign certificates and Android process those certificates. If Android is lacking in its security infrastructure then what will happen to this Android dominating world! 5. USB Drives are getting worse: If AutoPlay is not disabled then USB drives are huge threats and you supposedly know that. But the latest threat is actually worse. If USB drive firmware is hacked, then as pair of researchers showed that a wide range of hacks can be done on Windows and Linux machines. The gimmicked USB drive emulates a USB keyboard and by commanding one test system it downloads malware. In another test a fake Ethernet hub was offered, resulting in when a victim tried to use PayPal it actually went to a password-stealing PayPal duplicate site. So beware of your USB drive! 6. Radio Hacking: Radio is the best way to wirelessly transmit any information. Hence radio becomes the prime target of hackers. Software defined radio is the most vulnerable one. When someone is able to hear to air-traffic radar dishes, then tracking objects close to the ground level becomes easy. It's scary, but irt's a cool idea too, no doubt. 7. Credit Card Hacking: In 2013-14 retail breaches have become a common incident and since then chip-and-PIN cards have been rolled out. But even these cards are not safe. These cards can get compromised using maliciously crafted cards. Attackers just swipe a card into the reader and a Trojan is inserted which harvests PINS in the reader. Then a second card copies the file and it's also able to delete the Trojan after the attack is completed so that the retailer never comes to know about the attack. 8. Home Networks Getting Hacked: Recently attacks on home routers have received lot of attention. Network-attached storage devices are quite problematic and highly vulnerable. Jacob Holcomb from Independent Security Evaluators has evaluated 10 router manufacturers - Asustor, TRENDnet, QNAP, Seagate, Netgear, D-Link, Lenovo, Buffalo, Western Digital, and ZyXEL – and found all of them as highly susceptible. Common flaws are mostly popular like command injection, cross-site request forgery, authentication bypasses and failures, backdoor accounts and poor session management. A combination of all these issues help attackers get full control over the devices.