Cyber-attacks are becoming easier to conduct while conversely security is getting increasingly difficult, according to Kevin Curran, senior IEEE member and professor of cybersecurity, Ulster University, during a virtual media roundtable.
“Any company you can think of has had a data breach,” he commented. “Whenever a data breach happens it weakens our credentials because our passwords are often reused on different websites.”
He observed that the art of hacking doesn’t necessarily require a significant amount of technical expertise anymore, and bad actors can receive substantial help from numerous and readily accessible tools online. “You don’t have to spend seven years in college to learn how to hack, you just have to know about these sites and what terms to use,” noted Curran.
A number of legitimate online mechanisms that can help damaging attacks to be launched by hackers were highlighted by Curran in his presentation. These include Google Dorks, which are “search strings which point to website vulnerabilities.” This means vulnerable accounts can be identified simply via Google searches.
Another are free penetration testing toolkits online such as Metasploit, which can enable hackers to undertake exploits very easily. He said that “with a bit of training you can do a lot of damage with this one tool.”
Curran also demonstrated the free online tool Shodan, which scans the internet and categorizes publicly accessible devices, such as webcams. As with Metasploit, the primary users are cybersecurity professionals, but can be utilized by those with malicious intent as well to hack such devices.
Denial of Service (DoS) attacks, whereby websites c ..
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