You’ve mentioned these before

Back in #WeekendWisdom number 76, where I talked about connecting devices to the internet and #WeekendWisdom number 84, where I talked about distributed denial-of-service attacks, I mentioned botnets.

What are botnets?

A botnet is a collection of a large amount of compromised devices that are connected to the internet.

How do they get formed?

There are legitimate services out there that scan the entire internet and every device that is connected to it and it keeps a database of all these devices.

Criminals then using these legitimate services are able to tailor their searches and locate:

• CCTV cameras
• Baby monitors
• Digital video recorders
• In-house IP cameras
• Any other type of device that may be connected to the internet in a very insecure manner

If they can detect these through this database, what they can do then is compromises it using maybe:

• Default credentials
• Known compromise
• Weak vulnerabilities

in those devices. Take them over, add them to their botnet and then they have control of these devices. They give them instructions to carry out a distributed denial of service attack.

So that’s how these botnets get formed.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

The post #WeekendWisdom 093 Botnets appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..

Where does this term Backdoors come from?

A lot of cyber security terminology uses common terms that relate to the real-world. In the real-world, a backdoor is usually the door of a house or building that is around the side or the back. This door cannot seen from the front of the building.

In cyber security terminology?

In cyber security terms a backdoor is a way in that is unseen, into an appliance or device or to a network.

Back in #WeekendWisdom number 61, I talked about a backdoor to a set of firewalls. This was where the manufacturer had put in place a hardcoded password. This password enabled them to be able to sign into those firewalls through the backdoor.

What way can hackers use Backdoors?

But hackers tend to use a bit more sophisticated methods to establish their backdoors. If they break into your network they usually want to try and keep their access on there. So they will usually install some program, some piece of software on one of the devices on the network to establish what we call a persistent connection, where they can just keep coming back.

That’s just a piece of software that opens up a backdoor. Sets up a communication with the outside world that the hacker controls and that they can use to come back in and continue doing whatever they want to do on your network.

So that’s what a backdoor is in cyber security terms.

So that’s it for this week. Lets be careful out there and we’ll talk to you again next week.

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The post #WeekendWisdom 075 Backdoors appeared first on L2 Cyber Security Solutions Ltd..