- Dec 30, 2012
- 4,809
Whether you're a nation or a citizen, cyber security is an ever-growing issue – new hacks or data breaches emerge daily, in which people's information is exposed or leaked, from bank details to intimate photographs. But is the threat of being hacked something that you or I really need to worry about? And if someone did hack into your computer, what would they be able to do with the information they found?
Over the summer I decided to put these questions to the test. I got in touch with an 'ethical hacker' called John Yeo, who works for cyber security firm Trustwave, and asked him to try and hack me.
The job of an ethical hacker is to do 'penetration testing' for companies. This means they adopt the role of a real hacker and use the same tools that real hackers use to try and break into a company's computer systems, to identify vulnerabilities. The ethical hacker then tells the company what they have found, so that it can fix the vulnerabilities before a real hacker discovers and exploits them.
Hacking an individual is quite a different matter, and John warned me that the attempt may be unsuccessful. Apart from anything else, I knew that it was coming, so would inevitably be more cautious than usual about opening suspicious emails. He also explained that most hackers would 'spread their bets' and target large numbers of people in one go, rather than just one, to increase their chances of success. However, he said he would give it a go.
On 24 July I signed a waiver stating that the ethical hacking would be carried out at my own risk and that I would be solely responsible for any damage. Then everything went very quiet. I went about my life as normal, and John and his team of ethical hackers at Trustwave 'SpiderLabs' began scraping the internet for every piece of information they could about me.
Interesting read:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...153381/How-hackers-took-over-my-computer.html
Over the summer I decided to put these questions to the test. I got in touch with an 'ethical hacker' called John Yeo, who works for cyber security firm Trustwave, and asked him to try and hack me.
The job of an ethical hacker is to do 'penetration testing' for companies. This means they adopt the role of a real hacker and use the same tools that real hackers use to try and break into a company's computer systems, to identify vulnerabilities. The ethical hacker then tells the company what they have found, so that it can fix the vulnerabilities before a real hacker discovers and exploits them.
Hacking an individual is quite a different matter, and John warned me that the attempt may be unsuccessful. Apart from anything else, I knew that it was coming, so would inevitably be more cautious than usual about opening suspicious emails. He also explained that most hackers would 'spread their bets' and target large numbers of people in one go, rather than just one, to increase their chances of success. However, he said he would give it a go.
On 24 July I signed a waiver stating that the ethical hacking would be carried out at my own risk and that I would be solely responsible for any damage. Then everything went very quiet. I went about my life as normal, and John and his team of ethical hackers at Trustwave 'SpiderLabs' began scraping the internet for every piece of information they could about me.
Interesting read:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolo...153381/How-hackers-took-over-my-computer.html
