{"id":334,"date":"2015-05-17T17:33:38","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T17:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learncisco.net\/index.php\/an-overview-of-threats\/"},"modified":"2023-01-19T13:25:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T06:25:21","slug":"an-overview-of-threats","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.learncisco.net\/courses\/iins\/common-security-threats\/an-overview-of-threats.html","title":{"rendered":"An Overview of Threats. Types of hackers"},"content":{"rendered":"

It doesn’t hurt to identify who your potential adversaries are. We’ve mentioned so far that more and more of these are entire nations, or states, or syndicates, you know, terrorist and criminal syndicates, hackers, black hat hacker groups, cracker groups like the ones behind Koobface for example, there could be corporate competitors, there can be somebody who just recently got let go at your company or fired, disgruntled X, whatever, okay, government agencies also are participating in this as well.<\/p>\n

So knowing who your enemies are is a really good thing. You’re trying to think like a cracker, think like a black hat hacker, and realize that a lot of these nations or states they have a long-term approach, so if it’s some advanced persistent threat to their developing against a large corporation, they don’t mind if it takes six months, or a year, or longer for that to come to fruition for them. So they’re in this for the long haul, they’re very persistent. And, so we had to be very, very vigilant in our protection of our corporate systems in our corporate information. Remember that hackers are not always somebody who’s nefarious, we usually call them black hat hackers. Crackers are criminal hackers, so that’s kind of, you know, for financial gain and for other reasons, phone breakers or phreakers. You got script kiddies who basically will use Metasploit and all the prepackaged code to launch attacks or other things they can download off of the Internet. There is hackitivist that have a political agenda, maybe defacing a website, maybe to go beyond that like the group Anonymous, so there are different categories of crackers and black hat hackers out there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Hacker Type<\/th>\nDescription<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Hackers<\/td>\nComputer Enthusiasts<\/p>\n
    \n
  • White hat (ethical hacker)<\/li>\n
  • Blue hat (bug tester)<\/li>\n
  • Gray hat (ethically questionable hacker)<\/li>\n
  • Black hat (unethical hacker)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Crackers<\/td>\nSynonumous with black hat hacker<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Phrackers<\/td>\nHacker of telecommunication systems<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Script Kiddies<\/td>\nHacker with little skills<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Hacktivists<\/td>\nHackers with a policital agenda<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Techniques used by hackers<\/span><\/h2>\n

To think like your adversaries or to think like a cracker, there is really a seven step process that’s usually going to be the modus operandi. And I would want you to memorize this for the exam!<\/p>\n