Ethical hacking has become the bodyguard to computer systems and thanks to the ethical hacking course that provides CEH certification to professionals who become capable of securing the online world.

Banks are always under cyber threats. Similarly, several small, medium and large organizations have been attacked in recent past like Adobe Systems revealed 2.9 million customers’ data was leaked in 2018.

To stop such hacking it is learned one must think like a hacker. Here comes the role of ethical hacking course and its CEH certification. Ethical hackers performs security tasks like the hackers to protect the computer systems. They are allowed to hack networks of organizations to perform tests and make the systems more secured and safe from illegal hacking.

Lately the computer and networking system is going through a transition period towars Cloud computing where IT outsourcing and Virtualization are major trends. Level of cyber threats have increased several folds and this has given rise to more requirement of ethical hackers. Only expert professionals who has undertaken ethical hacking course and obtained CEH certification can overcome the complexities and challenges of Cloud computing.

Let’s have a look to the basics of computer hacking for a home computer and how to avoid as a layman without undertaking any ethical hacking course and without obtaining a CEH certification.

One of the main ways how computers are hacked are through remote desktops, which are very appealing that one can work on a computer from another location from any corner of the world by using sufficient software.

Ethical hackers suggest stopping the practice and below are some of the important things to take a note:

1. DO NOT ADVERTISE YOUR SERVER INFORMATION – This is very important. Do not reveal your dyndns server name. There are different ways of hacking into a remote desktop if the server information is known and I strongly suggest that the server name be confidential. I would like to take this a step further and would request you to change the server name once a week.

2. MAKE SURE YOUR FIREWALL IS CONFIGURED – There are several firewalls available in the market. Use the one that you trust the most. For all general purposes, I use the firewall that comes with Windows. Norton and McAfee firewalls are trustworthy as well.

There is a feature in Windows which would give you an option of remote desktop from a particular computer. Use it if you know the details of the computer you are using to access your remote computer. To get to this feature, right click on my computer – > Properties – > Remote – > Select Remote Users. You can add users here.

3. USE A UNIQUE PASSWORD – Several of the emails that I received were from users who did not create a password. There are a few websites online that search for computers that are open for remote desktop and those who don’t have a password. I STRONGLY suggest creating a password before setting up remote desktop.

Let us also check to couple of popular myths related to hacking:

True or False?

Someone can hack into my computer although my external modem is switched off.

False – Unless your PC is connected to a network, your computer’s only link with the outside world is via your modem. If it is turned off then no one can gain access to it. Internal modems are different. They are always on while your computer is switched on.

People cannot access my computer whilst it is turned off

True – Your computer’s data is only available whilst the PC is up and running.

Anyone can access my computer while I’m on the net.

False – In order to access your PC, the hacker would need to know the IP address of your computer. Unless you have a permanent link to the Internet (which usually only means companies), it is difficult (but not impossible) to find this out. An IP address looks like 127.0.0.1 — four numbers separated with dots. Your IP address changes every time you log on to the net. If you are ever asked for this, never give it out to a stranger!

People can see what I have been doing on the net — where I have been (websites)

True – It is possible to trace your activity through the Internet. One method is to have a look at a special file called cookies.txt. Search your system and see if one exists. Cookies store information about sites you have visited and may contain personal information. There are programs that let you see which cookies are being used. Some people think they are great as they store information about pages that you have visited, but they can be used to find out about you.

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If believed to United States Department of Homeland Security official Neil Jenkins, the ransomware has so far shown to be effective and there’s no reason for it to stop.

Experts at the recent RSA cybersecurity conference fear ransomware will spread and one estimate reveals in 2016 it has already raked in $1 billion.

The ransomware computer infections first targets data of victims and encrypt it. Once done, it threatens to be deleting the captured data unless a payment is made. Usually the cybercriminals in such cases have asked payments in bitcoin.

However, Jenkins pointed the ransomware would start targeting critical infrastructure citing the Austrian hotel attack that took out the keyword system of the hotel doors.

He added in future the ransomware cybercriminals could even try locking down control systems for a water utility too.

Jenkins said, “I worry that’s going to be the next step.”

Security Outliers CEO Gal Shpantzer said ransomware will infect and shut down entire operation of small businesses. It could injure people or lose lives too.

SentinelOne chief of security Jeremiah Grossman said ransomware is going to be worse and victims would not have any choice rather than to pay, that too in seven figures to recover the system.

He added hackers have started demanding higher payments and even more than $40,000 in one case.

Datto security provider CTO Robert Gibbons said ransomeware infections have started harassing small and medium sized business houses and a survey by his company discovered in 2016 about 60 percent of its partners experienced such attacks.

He added, “Ransomware is still an epidemic.”

Amid such era it is highly suggested to business houses to backup their data regularly and test those too ensuring whether they perfectly work.

Meanwhile, security vendors have also been publishing various to help free computers from such infections.

Gibbons further added one out of four times it has been seen the hackers didn’t decrypt data even after receiving payment. He strongly recommends not to be tempted to pay ransom to cybercriminals.

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A new report writes AI look for patterns in behavior and it keeps on alerting about the new threats even though still the machine learning tool is way far from perfection. It is claimed massive data models can spot hacking faster than humans.

According to co-founder and CEO of biometric security company HYPR, George Avetisov, some AI solutions are being built around cyber security analytics.

He added the AI is helping in speeding up the work of data breach discovery and potential threats which otherwise was very slow for humans.

Avetisov further said that companies for decades have been using rules-based engine that does not learn about new threats. The AI on the other hand does so in real-time by analyzing large data sets that fragments and overlaps with one another.

The role of humans is such scenario is to weed out false positives and ensure the data sets fed into an AI engine are robust and accurate. It can be said the AI is equally intelligent to data that it is tasked to analyze. This results with adapting one’s own security infrastructure.

As of now the AI is used for malware detection and spotting the phishing attacks apart from blocking brute-force instrusions, but in later stages it could be added to services on which we always rely.

A small example can be seen in the Gmail mailing service. the artificial intelligence can be tasked to scan countless variables of an email that looks legitimate like looking from which IP address it is originating, knowing the location data, reading the word choice as well as phrasing of sentences, and several other factors before alerting user about a phishing scam.

SAP NS2 enterprise security company’s CEO and president Mark Testoni said the artificial intelligences can also quantify the level of threats that is only possible doing so by humans until now.

However, everything should not be seen as rosy as the hacking community too are learning on AI and so they may also put to work the machine learning tool in finding weak endpoints.

Beware, a different level of hacking and counter-hacking in on the card in near future.

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