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tshile
Guest
A little walk through how a security researcher created 14 million dollars out of thin air once he got into a bank's network
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/15/technology/security/bank-heist/index.html
the worst part is, none of that is sophisticated. I know some here have no idea what they're talking about, but trust me flooding a switch with data and just sniffing the crap it spits out looking for a username/password is not hard. as the article says, those tools are available online for free.
the worst part would have been getting into the network. I doubt that would have been too much of a challenge given how easy the rest of the heist was.
and people want our hospitals transmitting healthcare records back and forth. lol.
edit:
to break it down for those interested, there are two types of devices for routing traffic on a network. a hub and a switch.
a hub is a dumb device. it takes data in one port and just spits it out all the other ports. it has nothing in it to make it smart, to route traffic from 1 device to another. it just broadcasts data indiscriminately, that's why they're called 'dumb' devices. to give you an example, BGO isn't encrypted (its not https, nor should it be, its not worth the cost). if you hooked up your computer to a hub and my computer was on the hub and you logged into bgo, your computer would send my computer your username and password. my computer would 'ignore' it because that's the way computers are designed - but that can easy be turned off.
a switch is a more sophisticated device - at least it's supposed to be. it takes traffic from device a, analyses it to figure out where it's going, finds the destination, then only sends that information to that destination. so if you were on a switch, I was on a switch, and you logged into BGO not only would I not get your username and password but I wouldn't even know you were logging into a website...
this guy did what is called 'packet flooding'. it used to be a naturally occurring (by that I mean not for a malicious reason, purely accident or defect) issue with networks - it would bring entire networks down until the device that was causing it was fixed. you basically overload the switch with information, it freaks out, and just starts spitting nonsense all over the play - like a hub. well that nonsense is actually packets with useful information in them if your device is lucky enough to get one of the packets and you're actually paying attention.
there's an overly long explanation for those interested.
by the way - open wifi networks behave the same as hubs. so when you're walking around with your phone connecting to random wireless networks and your facebook is logging in over http instead https (they may have fixed this...), your phone is sending your facebook login username and password to every device on the network. whether someone is listening or not... well, that's up to chance I suppose.
edit2: word is facebook now uses https which fixes that. but anything you use unencrypted over an open wifi network behaves that way.
edit3: lol spoke too soon. facebook allows you to turn off 'secure browsing', so its still a problem when you consider majority of users don't know what 'secure browsing' means.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/15/technology/security/bank-heist/index.html
the worst part is, none of that is sophisticated. I know some here have no idea what they're talking about, but trust me flooding a switch with data and just sniffing the crap it spits out looking for a username/password is not hard. as the article says, those tools are available online for free.
the worst part would have been getting into the network. I doubt that would have been too much of a challenge given how easy the rest of the heist was.
and people want our hospitals transmitting healthcare records back and forth. lol.
edit:
to break it down for those interested, there are two types of devices for routing traffic on a network. a hub and a switch.
a hub is a dumb device. it takes data in one port and just spits it out all the other ports. it has nothing in it to make it smart, to route traffic from 1 device to another. it just broadcasts data indiscriminately, that's why they're called 'dumb' devices. to give you an example, BGO isn't encrypted (its not https, nor should it be, its not worth the cost). if you hooked up your computer to a hub and my computer was on the hub and you logged into bgo, your computer would send my computer your username and password. my computer would 'ignore' it because that's the way computers are designed - but that can easy be turned off.
a switch is a more sophisticated device - at least it's supposed to be. it takes traffic from device a, analyses it to figure out where it's going, finds the destination, then only sends that information to that destination. so if you were on a switch, I was on a switch, and you logged into BGO not only would I not get your username and password but I wouldn't even know you were logging into a website...
this guy did what is called 'packet flooding'. it used to be a naturally occurring (by that I mean not for a malicious reason, purely accident or defect) issue with networks - it would bring entire networks down until the device that was causing it was fixed. you basically overload the switch with information, it freaks out, and just starts spitting nonsense all over the play - like a hub. well that nonsense is actually packets with useful information in them if your device is lucky enough to get one of the packets and you're actually paying attention.
there's an overly long explanation for those interested.
by the way - open wifi networks behave the same as hubs. so when you're walking around with your phone connecting to random wireless networks and your facebook is logging in over http instead https (they may have fixed this...), your phone is sending your facebook login username and password to every device on the network. whether someone is listening or not... well, that's up to chance I suppose.
edit2: word is facebook now uses https which fixes that. but anything you use unencrypted over an open wifi network behaves that way.
edit3: lol spoke too soon. facebook allows you to turn off 'secure browsing', so its still a problem when you consider majority of users don't know what 'secure browsing' means.
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