Hacking Humans

Latest Episodes:

Don't click any button...even the 'No' button. Oct 08, 2020

Show notes

Dave's story is about how some adware took a turn for the worse (and how his dad has fallen adware in the past), Joe's story talks about how someone is trying to phish AT&T employees and others, The Catch of the Day is an OfferUp scam on an rtx 3080 (you gamers know what that is), and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Caleb Barlow from Cynergistek reacting to the recent story of the tragic death of a woman due to hospital ransomware.

Links to stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

phishing (verb) [Word Notes] Oct 06, 2020

Show notes

From the intrusion kill chain model, the delivery of a “lure” to a potential victim by pretending to be some trustworthy person or organization in order to trick the victim into revealing sensitive information. According to Knowbe4, the word “phishing” first appeared in a Usenet newsgroup called AOHell in 1996 and some of the very first phishing attacks used AOL Instant Messenger to deliver fake messages purportedly from AOL employees in the early 2000s. The word is part of l33tspeak that started in the early days of the internet (1980s) as a shorthand to let readers know the author was part of the hacker community. In this case, the letters “ph” replace the letter “f” in the word fishing, as in “I fish, with an ‘f,’ for bass in the lake.” In hacking, “I Phish, with a ‘ph,’ for login credentials from key employees at my target’s organization.

Cookies make for some tasty phishing lure. Oct 01, 2020

Show notes

In addition to his regular story Dave shares a situation where his mom almost took the bait, Dave's story is about an SMS phishing (smishing) Apple scam in UK (ps, there's never a free iPhone & Joe is still not an Apple fan), Joe's story talks about why you don't trust anything political on a social network, The Catch of the Day is from a Reddit user invited to join the Illuminati game, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Alex Mosher from MobileIron on MobileIron's Phishing with Cookies Campaign.

Links to stories and Catch of the Day:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

credential stealing (verb) [Word Notes] Sep 29, 2020

Show notes

From the intrusion kill chain model, the first part of an exploitation technique where the hacker tricks their victims into revealing their login credentials. In the second part of the technique, hackers legitimately log into the targeted system and gain access to the underlying network with the same permissions as the victim. Hackers use this method 80% of the time compared to other ways to gain access to a system like developing zero day exploits for known software packages. The most common way hackers steal credentials is with some version of a phishing attack.

It's human nature. Sep 24, 2020

Show notes

Dave and Joe have some follow-up from a listener on OG accounts, Joe's story talks about a new phishing campaign inspired by Twitter from earlier this summer, Dave shares a story about using security awareness training as phishing lures, The Catch of the Day is a SunTrust phishing scam, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Tim Sadler from Tessian on the Psychology of Human Error report.

Links to stories and Catch of the Day:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

The Bombe (noun) [Word Notes] Sep 22, 2020

Show notes

An electro-mechanical device used to break Enigma-enciphered messages about enemy military operations during the Second World War. The first bombe–named Victory and designed by Alan Turning and Gordon Welchman– started code-breaking at Bletchley Park on 14 March 1940, a year after WWII began. By the end of the war, five years later, almost 2000, mostly women, sailors and airmen operated 211 bombe machines in the effort. The allies essentially knew what the German forces were going to do before the German commanders in the field knew. Historians speculate that the effort at Bletchley Park shortened the war by years and estimate the number of lives saved to be between 14 and 21 million.

Your information is already on the Dark Web. Sep 17, 2020

Show notes

Dave and Joe have some follow-up on mobile banking apps, Dave talks about the website bitcoinabuse.com, Joe's story Brian Krebs did on old Gmail emails and people using them either errantly or maliciously to create accounts, The Catch of the Day is about a Netflix-themed campaign that's currently running, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Shai Cohen from TransUnion on identity fraud at center of many digital COVID-19 scams.

Links to stories:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

cross-site scripting (noun) [Word Notes] Sep 15, 2020

Show notes

From the intrusion kill chain model, a malicious code delivery technique that allows hackers to send code of their choosing to their victim’s browser. XSS takes advantage of the fact that roughly 90% of web developers use the JavaScript scripting language to create dynamic content on their websites. Through various methods, hackers store their own malicious javascript code on unprotected websites. When the victim browses the site, the web server delivers that malicious code to the victim’s computer and the victim’s browser runs the code.

The story is what gets people in. Sep 10, 2020

Show notes

Joe shares a story on the ability to make a scam work through storytelling skills, Dave's story is about a guy duping a convenience store clerk into taking over her shift and later robbing the place, The Catch of the Day is about an email from a fake landlord, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Mallory Sofastaii a reporter and anchor at WMAR2 on Impostor uses Maryland man's identity to steal unemployment insurance benefits.

Links to stories and Catch of the Day:

Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

penetration test (noun) [Word Notes] Sep 08, 2020

Show notes

The process of evaluating the security of a system or network by simulating an attack on it. Sometimes called "ethical hacking" or white hat hacking. The phrase started to appear in U.S. military circles in the mid 1960s as time sharing computers became more necessary for daily operations. Computer security experts from Rand Corporation began describing computer compromises as “penetrations.” By the early 1970s, government leaders formed tiger teams of penetration testers to probe for weaknesses in various government systems.

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