We started producing shows as Today with a Techie on 2005-09-19, 18 years, 2 months, 11 days ago. Our shows are produced by listeners like you and can be on any topics that "are of interest to hackers". If you listen to HPR then please consider contributing one show a year. If you record your show now it could be released in 6 days.
Call for shows
We are running very low on shows at the moment. Have a look at the hosts page and if you don't see "2023-??-??" next to your name, or if your name is not listed, you might consider sending us in something.
Holiday
Challenges Series - Ep 2 - TryHackMe Advent of Cyber Challenge
Since some of the information you are about to hear is time specific,
I want to let you know that I am recording this near the end of November
in 2023.
If you missed the first episode, which introduces this series, you
can go back and listen to HPR3996
I have been using TryHackMe for several years, and I recommend it to
all of my students. It is a great environment where people can get hands
on experience with technology that relates to cyber security, all from
the comfort of their browser and free year-round.
The TryHackMe Advent of Cyber challenge is a free gamified
environment which focuses on penetration testing, security
operations/engineering, forensics/incident response, malware analysis,
machine learning, and more!
This year's challenge opens on December 1, 2023 (Which is the reason
why I am posting twice this week). Typically, the Advent of Cyber
challenge includes daily beginner-friendly exercises for people new to
cybersecurity. These can consist of walkthroughs, video tutorials, and
challenges. There are also prizes available based on random drawings and
on participant success.
Infosec personalities like John Hammond, Gerald Auger, InsiderPHD,
and InfoSec Pat are featured in this year's challenge.
You can play with last year's Advent of Cyber challenge by visiting
https://tryhackme.com/room/adventofcyber4. It outlines
the overall story and shows all of the tasks last year's participants
experienced, including both offensive and defensive topics like: log
analysis, OSINT, scanning, brute force attacks, email analysis,
CyberChef, blockchain smart contracts, malware analysis, memory
forensics, packet analysis, web application hacking, and more!
Everything can be done with a free account from within a browser.
If you want to learn more about cybersecurity, transition your career
into infosec, or just have fun playing with cyber challenges, you can
give it a try by visiting tryhackme.com or https://tryhackme.com/r/christmas
Please note: I am not affiliated with TryHackMe in any way, other
than having been a paying member for many years. Students and others who
have participated in previous year's Advent of Cyber challenges have
told me how much they enjoyed it and learned from it. Even though I have
been an infosec practitioner for more years than I would like to admit,
I also have enjoyed taking part in this challenge.
If this is not for you, I will be sharing another option for a
holiday challenge in my next episode.
To improve the speed of my workflow, I wrote a bash script that uses
the open source programs programs gphoto2,
tesseract, grep and ImageMagick
to digitize my mom's 338 page book. Here is the link to the script:
https://github.com/deltaray/ocr-script
A former NHS employee has been found guilty and fined for illegally
accessing the medical records of over 150 people.
Loretta Alborghetti, from Redditch, worked as a medical secretary
within the Ophthalmology department at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals
NHS Trust when she illegally accessed the records.
While NetSupport Manager started off as a legitimate remote
administration tool for technical assistance and support, malicious
actors have misappropriated the tool to their own advantage, using it as
a beachhead for subsequent attacks.
The threat actors are believed to leverage Google's Dynamic Search
Ads (DSAs), which automatically generates ads based on a site's content
to serve the malicious ads that take the victims to the infected
site.
Victims who clicked on the ad were taken to a hacked web page with a
link to download the application, which turned out to install over a
dozen different pieces of malware instead.
What is a "Data
Breach"? A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive,
protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen,
altered or used by an individual unauthorized to do so.
What is "Malware"?
Malware (a portmanteau for
malicious software) is any software intentionally designed to cause
disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak
private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems,
deprive access to information, or which unknowingly interferes with the
user's computer security and privacy.
What is a "Payload"?
In the context of a computer virus or worm, the payload is the portion
of the malware which performs malicious action; deleting data, sending
spam or encrypting data. In addition to the payload, such malware also
typically has overhead code aimed at simply spreading itself, or
avoiding detection.
What is "Phishing"?
Phishing is a form of social engineering
where attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or
installing malware such as ransomware. Phishing
attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently
mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe
everything while the victim is navigating the site, and transverse any
additional security boundaries with the victim.
Social
engineering (security) In the context of information security,
social engineering is the psychological
manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging
confidential information. A type of confidence trick for the purpose of
information gathering, fraud, or system access, it differs from a
traditional "con" in that it is often one of many steps in a more
complex fraud scheme.
Information Security Attributes:Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (C.I.A.).
Information Systems are composed in three main portions, hardware,
software and communications with the purpose to help identify and apply
information security industry standards, as mechanisms of protection and
prevention, at three levels or layers: physical, personal and
organizational. Essentially, procedures or policies are implemented to
tell administrators, users and operators how to use products to ensure
information security within the organizations.
What is "Risk
management"? Risk management is the identification, evaluation, and
prioritization of risks followed by coordinated and economical
application of resources to minimize, monitor, and control the
probability or impact of unfortunate events or to maximize the
realization of opportunities.
What is a "Vulnerability"
(computing)? Vulnerabilities are flaws in a computer system that
weaken the overall security of the device/system. Vulnerabilities can be
weaknesses in either the hardware itself, or the software that runs on
the hardware.
What is an "Attack
Surface"? The attack surface of a software environment is the sum of
the different points (for "attack vectors") where an unauthorized user
(the "attacker") can try to enter data to or extract data from an
environment. Keeping the attack surface as small as possible is a basic
security measure.
What is an "Attack
Vector"? In computer security, an attack vector is a specific path,
method, or scenario that can be exploited to break into an IT system,
thus compromising its security. The term was derived from the
corresponding notion of vector in biology. An attack vector may be
exploited manually, automatically, or through a combination of manual
and automatic activity.
What is
"Standardization"? Standardization is the process of implementing
and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different
parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards
organizations and governments. Standardization can help maximize
compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, or quality. It
can also facilitate a normalization of formerly custom processes.
What is a "Replay
attack"? A replay attack is a form of network attack in which valid
data transmission is maliciously or fraudulently repeated or delayed.
Another way of describing such an attack is: "an attack on a security
protocol using a replay of messages from a different context into the
intended (or original and expected) context, thereby fooling the honest
participant(s) into thinking they have successfully completed the
protocol run."
What is a
"Man-in-the-middle attack"? In cryptography and computer security, a
man-in-the-middle, ..., attack is a cyberattack where the attacker
secretly relays and possibly alters the communications between two
parties who believe that they are directly communicating with each
other, as the attacker has inserted themselves between the two
parties.
What is "Transport Layer
Security" (TLS)? Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic
protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer
network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email,
instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securing HTTPS
remains the most publicly visible.
What is a "Handshake"
(computing)?. In computing, a handshake is a signal between two
devices or programs, used to, e.g., authenticate, coordinate. An example
is the handshaking between a hypervisor and an application in a guest
virtual machine.
What is Security
theater? The practice of taking security measures that are
considered to provide the feeling of improved security while doing
little or nothing to achieve it.
Since some of the information you are about to hear is time specific,
I want to let you know that I am recording this near the end of November
in 2023.
Whichever holidays you celebrate this time of year, life generally
gets busy and stressful.
It could be shopping
or cooking
or cleaning
or school activities
or buying, assembling, wrapping, and delivering gifts
or planning time with family
or dealing with visiting family
or scheduling time off from work
or managing extra work while others have scheduled time off
or a whole plethora of other things.
This time of year can be stressful.
A few years ago, I discovered a fun activity, which challenged my
mind and helped me focus and detach from the stress for a little while
each day, through the month of December. It helped me manage the stress
in an enjoyable way.
Since then, I have found and tried several other similar activities,
so I wanted to share a little about them with you for the next few
episodes so you can see what might work for you.
But the TLDR (Or maybe the TLDL -- Too Long Didn't Listen?) for
Advent of Code is that it is a 25 day challenge which begins on December
1. Once you register at adventofcode.com, Each day, you will be
presented with a problem to solve and some sample data to use for
verification that your program works. You can choose to use any
programming language or application you desire produce the answer. Last
year, I used this to brush up on my Python skills. Others use Visual
Basic, C (and all its variants), Rust, Go, etc. I have seen people use
Cobol, Fortran, and Pascal, or even Microsoft Excel. It is really up to
you. You are then presented a dataset which is unique to your login, and
against which you run your code. When complete, you submit the answer
came up with on the adventofcode.com web site and they will tell you if
you are correct or not.
If you are competitive (And REALLY GOOD) there is a Global
Leaderboard. If you want to compete with a group of friends, you can
build your own leaderboard and invite others to take part with you.
Python script to extract/backup savefiles out of Xbox Game Pass for
PC games.
When run, the script produces a ZIP file for each supported game save
found in the system.
In most cases the files in the ZIP can be copied to the save
directory of the Steam/Epic version of the game. To find out the save
file location, check PCGamingWiki.
This continues our look at how to play Alpha Centauri, and we look at
game concepts that set this game apart from others. This episode is all
about Social Engineering choices.