Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep dive. Today we are taking
Speaker 1: aim at something pretty central to modern life but often
Speaker 1: really misunderstood, computer hacking. Yeah, definitely forget the cliches, you know,
Speaker 1: the dark rooms, green tech's flashing. We want to get
Speaker 1: into the real mindset, the methods, and maybe most importantly,
Speaker 1: what you can actually do to protect yourself exactly.
Speaker 2: And I think our mission here for you listening is
Speaker 2: to move past this idea that hacking is always some
Speaker 2: super complex code breaking thing. Okay, Often hacking just means
Speaker 2: well using skills cleverly to find weak spots, and overwhelmingly
Speaker 2: those weak spots they're.
Speaker 1: Human human vulnerabilities.
Speaker 2: That's it. Technology is moving so fast, but the biggest
Speaker 2: threats to your privacy they're often exploiting basic trust, not
Speaker 2: some futuristic AI.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack that. Because hacker itself is such a
Speaker 1: loaded term, we probably need to define who we're actually
Speaker 1: talking about first, maybe based on like their intention the
Speaker 1: old hat analogy.
Speaker 2: Vercise, it's a good shorthand basically, have three relationships to
Speaker 2: the system you're interacting with. First, the black hats the
Speaker 2: bad guys. Yeah, pretty much, they're looking for malicious unauthorized entry.
Speaker 2: Their goal is you know, theft, damage, messing with data.
Speaker 2: They're criminals, plain and simple, no permission involved.
Speaker 1: Right. Then you've got the opposite, the white hats, ethical
Speaker 1: hackers exactly.
Speaker 2: They're the defenders, often hired by big companies think Facebook, Microsoft, Google,
Speaker 2: places like that. They're authorized to attack the system, but
Speaker 2: their job is purely to find those weaknesses and help
Speaker 2: fix them before the black hats can get there. Essential
Speaker 2: security work.
Speaker 1: So protectors basically, right. And the third type, the gray hats.
Speaker 1: They sound a bit ambiguous, they really are. They operate
Speaker 1: in this murky middle ground. They might exploit a system,
Speaker 1: find a vulnerability without permission, okay, but maybe not with
Speaker 1: purely evil intent. Often they'll tell the owner, hey, you've
Speaker 1: got a hole here, But sometimes sometimes they might ask
Speaker 1: for a small fee like a bug bounty. They set
Speaker 1: themselves to fix it, which puts them in a tricky
Speaker 1: ethical spot. Yeah, definitely a gray area. Okay, So we
Speaker 1: have these different players. But here's what blew my mind
Speaker 1: from the sources. When you look at how attacks actually
Speaker 1: happened today, it's rarely the super technical stuff. It's mostly
Speaker 1: about people. Social engineering that is.
Speaker 2: The absolute key takeaway here, it's staggering, really technical flaws.
Speaker 2: They account for maybe what three percent of successful attacks?
Speaker 1: Only three percent?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the other ninety seven percent purely based on social
Speaker 2: engineer ninety seven.
Speaker 1: Wow, So the whole game has shifted. It's not about
Speaker 1: breaking the code, it's about breaking the person exploiting our psychology,
Speaker 1: you got it, our instinct to help, maybe our fear
Speaker 1: of authority or just getting rushed into doing something without thinking.
Speaker 2: That's the target now, much more than the software itself.
Speaker 1: And within that huge ninety seven percent, there's one technique
Speaker 1: that stands out.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the undisputed king is fishing. The stats suggests
Speaker 2: something like ninety one percent, nine out of ten data
Speaker 2: breaches start with a phishing attempt.
Speaker 1: Hishing. This is the classic email scam, right, trying to
Speaker 1: lure you into clicking a bad link or giving up
Speaker 1: your log in details.
Speaker 2: That's the basics of it. Yeah, but what makes them
Speaker 2: work isn't just the email itself, it's the psychology. How
Speaker 2: So they deliberately create this sense of urgency or maybe
Speaker 2: a threat or fear. Yeah, they want to trigger an
Speaker 2: emotional reaction, so you act fast before your logical brain
Speaker 2: cakes in. Ah, think about that US Tax Day scam
Speaker 2: back in twenty eighteen, emails claiming to be from the
Speaker 2: IRS demanding tax details immediately. They used fear of the IRS,
Speaker 2: the deadline pressure.
Speaker 1: To make people panic and handover info exactly.
Speaker 2: And they often use those weird shortened links or links
Speaker 2: that look legit but actually redirect you to a fake
Speaker 2: site built just to steal your credentials.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's manipulating fear. What about impersonation? How does
Speaker 1: that work psychologically?
Speaker 2: Impersonation plays on our respect for authority really, or maybe
Speaker 2: just our tendency to do what we're told by someone
Speaker 2: who sounds like they're.
Speaker 1: In charge, boss or IT support.
Speaker 2: Precisely, criminals pose as an IT executive, a manager and auditor,
Speaker 2: someone whose request you probably wouldn't question immediately. It takes
Speaker 2: more setup for the attacker, sure, but the success rate
Speaker 2: can be really high. We saw attacks like this jump
Speaker 2: almost four hundred percent of one year because people just comply.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a huge increase. And it's not just email, right,
Speaker 1: We also need to think about vishing and smashing voice
Speaker 1: and text.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, these often fly under the radar of traditional email filters. Phishing,
Speaker 2: that's voice fishing happens over the phone. The attacker calls up,
Speaker 2: tries to get credentials, or sometimes they're more aggressive. They
Speaker 2: might try to talk you into running a script on
Speaker 2: your computer or visiting a compromise website while you're on
Speaker 2: the call, and they're harder to a tract, much harder,
Speaker 2: no obvious digital trail like an email header. Remember that
Speaker 2: massive IRS fishing scam ran for years twenty twelve to
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: I do remember hearing about that.
Speaker 2: Costs victims hundreds of millions, all because people believe they
Speaker 2: were talking to a real IRS agent demanding immediate payment.
Speaker 2: That fear factor.
Speaker 1: Again, and smishing is the text message version.
Speaker 2: Correct SMS fishing. They get numbers from breaches, web crawling,
Speaker 2: sometimes just random generators.
Speaker 1: And what kind of tricks do they use in texts?
Speaker 2: All sorts my promise, fake coupons or discounts, playing on greed,
Speaker 2: or they'll poses your bank, you know, urgent click here
Speaker 2: to reactivate your card, or your online account expires today,
Speaker 2: log in here to renew. Texts feel immediate personal, so
Speaker 2: people react quickly.
Speaker 1: It all comes back to that psychological manipulation. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's say they see they trick us that ninety seven
Speaker 1: percent chance? What tools are they actually using them? What's
Speaker 1: in their like digital toolkit? Once they have that initial access.
Speaker 2: Right the toolkit, it can get specialized, but the concepts
Speaker 2: are often quite straightforward. Take keyloggers, for.
Speaker 1: Instance, teloggers the blog your keys.
Speaker 2: Exactly that They record every single key stor it you make,
Speaker 2: user names, passwords, credit card numbers, private messages, everything.
Speaker 1: How do they work?
Speaker 2: Well? Think of your operating system having this thing called
Speaker 2: an API. It's like a messenger carrying instructions. A keylogger
Speaker 2: basically attaches itself to that messenger and copies down everything
Speaker 2: you type before it even gets processed properly, usually arrives
Speaker 2: hidden inside some malware.
Speaker 1: Nasty. And what about root kits? That sounds even worse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the name is pretty menacing, isn't it. A rootkit
Speaker 2: is basically a collection of software tools designed to give
Speaker 2: an attacker deep remote access and control over your system.
Speaker 2: And crucially, it hides itself really well from detection.
Speaker 1: So it's like a hidden back.
Speaker 2: Door kind of. Yeah. If the key lagger is spying
Speaker 2: on your typing, the root kit is like a secret
Speaker 2: agent living in your computer, giving the hacker full control
Speaker 2: to steel files, install more bad stuff, or even crash
Speaker 2: the whole system. And again they almost always get installed
Speaker 2: through those initial social engineering tricks.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that one tool you mentioned, the vulnerability scanner,
Speaker 1: is used by both sides, black hats and white hats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's purely a tool like a hammer. White hats
Speaker 2: use scanners to find security holes so they can fix
Speaker 2: them quickly. Black hats use the exact same scanners to
Speaker 2: look for those same weaknesses, but obviously they want to
Speaker 2: exploit them. It's like checking the doors and windows before breakin.
Speaker 1: Right. Okay, let's talk passwords. We hear password cracking all
Speaker 1: the time. Can we break down the main ways they
Speaker 1: actually do. Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure. Think of them mostly as automated guessing games. The
Speaker 2: most famous is probably the brute force attack.
Speaker 1: That's just trying everything.
Speaker 2: Pretty much. Automated software just systematically tries every possible combination
Speaker 2: of letters, numbers, symbols abcaaab AC one two three one
Speaker 2: A one B, just keeps going until it hits the
Speaker 2: right one.
Speaker 1: Must take ages for complex passwords.
Speaker 2: They can, Yeah, that's why password complexity helps. Then you've
Speaker 2: got a variation called the dictionary attack.
Speaker 1: Using dictionary words exactly.
Speaker 2: Uses huge lists of common words, phrases, names, maybe common
Speaker 2: modifications like adding what twenty three at the end shockingly
Speaker 2: effective because well, so many people use simple words or
Speaker 2: perle patterns.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. And the third one reverse brute force.
Speaker 1: How's that different?
Speaker 2: So instead of trying many passwords against one username, reverse
Speaker 2: brute force takes one really common, leaked or weak password
Speaker 2: like password one, two three or maybe spring twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four and tries it against thousands or millions of different usernames.
Speaker 1: Ah, playing the odds that someone used that specific weak
Speaker 1: password exactly.
Speaker 2: They know a certain percentage of people will always use
Speaker 2: the easiest option. The defense against all three really is
Speaker 2: a strong unique password, ideally long random, maybe multi word
Speaker 2: makes sense.
Speaker 1: Let's shift two attacks specifically targeting websites. What's in SQL
Speaker 1: injection sounds technical?
Speaker 2: It is a bit technical, but the concept isn't too bad.
Speaker 2: Imagine a website search box or the lug in form.
Speaker 2: Those boxes need to talk to the website's database behind
Speaker 2: the scenes using a language called SQL. Okay, if the
Speaker 2: website code isn't careful about checking what you type into
Speaker 2: that box, an attacker could actually type in malicious sequel
Speaker 2: commands instead us a.
Speaker 1: Search term and trick the database.
Speaker 2: Yeah, basically trick the database into doing something it shouldn't,
Speaker 2: like revealing all the usernames and passwords stored inside or
Speaker 2: customer data. It's exploiting a loophole in how the website
Speaker 2: handles user input.
Speaker 1: Gotcha and the other big web attach DIDO distributed denial of.
Speaker 2: Service that one's maybe easier to picture. It's basically just
Speaker 2: a massive overwhelming traffic jam created on purpose.
Speaker 1: Traffic jam.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The attacker uses a network of compromised computers, sometimes
Speaker 2: thousands or millions of them, called a botnet, to flood
Speaker 2: the target website or network with so much junk traffic
Speaker 2: that legitimate users can't get through. The whole service is
Speaker 2: grind to a halt, becomes unusable.
Speaker 1: Overwhelmed by noise. Okay, let's move to some specific case studies.
Speaker 1: The sources talk about something called session hijacking using cross
Speaker 1: site scripting or EXSS. Can you break that down simply?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 2: Think about when you log into your bank account online,
Speaker 2: you navigate around check balances, make transfers. You don't want
Speaker 2: to type your password on every single page.
Speaker 1: Right right, there would be annoying.
Speaker 2: Exactly. That convenience comes from something called a session ID.
Speaker 2: Once you log in, the website gives your browser a
Speaker 2: temporary token, like a digital hall pass. This little piece
Speaker 2: of data, often stored in something called a cookie, proves
Speaker 2: to the website that you're already logged in for that session.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the hacker wants my hall.
Speaker 2: Pass precisely now. XSS. Cross site scripting happens when a
Speaker 2: website doesn't properly clean up the input fields, maybe a
Speaker 2: comment section, a user profile, somewhere users can type stuff.
Speaker 2: An attacker injects a small piece of malicious code, usually JavaScript,
Speaker 2: into that field, and then what then? An unsuspecting user,
Speaker 2: maybe even someone with high privileges like a site administrator,
Speaker 2: visits that page. The malicious script runs silently in their
Speaker 2: browser and steals their session id that hall pass.
Speaker 1: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: The hacker then takes that stolen session ID and uses
Speaker 2: a tool to basically stick it into their own browsers
Speaker 2: request to the website. The website sees the valid hall
Speaker 2: pass and things the hackers the administrator to get logged in,
Speaker 2: effectively impersonating the victim without ever needing the password.
Speaker 1: So they're logged in without actually logging in. That's sneaky,
Speaker 1: very and.
Speaker 2: That's why website security involves constantly checking and cleaning user input,
Speaker 2: encrypting those section cookies, setting them to expire quickly, all
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 1: Right. There was also that incredible story about Instagram. A
Speaker 1: researcher found a way to potentially hijack any account and
Speaker 1: got paid for it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was Laxman Maia. He got a thirty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars bug bounty from Facebook for finding and responsibly reporting it.
Speaker 1: It was clever.
Speaker 2: He targeted the password reset.
Speaker 1: Feature, the one that sends a code to your phone exactly.
Speaker 2: You get a six digit code via SMS or email. Right,
Speaker 2: But the trick is that code usually expires pretty quickly,
Speaker 2: maybe ten minutes, and Instagram, like most services, has rate
Speaker 2: limiting in place.
Speaker 1: Meaning you can't just guess codes endlessly.
Speaker 2: Right. They block you after a certain number of failed
Speaker 2: attempts from the same place, the same IP address. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but Mathia figured out a way around the rate limit.
Speaker 2: He realized he could send a huge number of simultaneous guesses,
Speaker 2: but crucially, he sent them from many, many different IP addresses,
Speaker 2: all at once, constantly rotating them. The system's rate limiting
Speaker 2: wasn't sophisticated enough to catch that distributed attack.
Speaker 1: So he could just flood it with guesses from everywhere
Speaker 1: pretty much.
Speaker 2: He calculated he'd need about five thousand different IP addresses
Speaker 2: to have enough guesses to reliably crack the six digit
Speaker 2: code within that ten minute window.
Speaker 1: Five thousand ips.
Speaker 2: That sounds expensive, you'd think so, but here's the kicker.
Speaker 2: He estimated he could rent those five thousand ips from
Speaker 2: cloud computing providers for only about one hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: US dollars.
Speaker 1: Wow, only one hundred and fifty bucks to potentially take
Speaker 1: over any Instagram account. That's sobering.
Speaker 2: It really shows the economics of these things and why
Speaker 2: finding and fixing these flaws is so critical and why
Speaker 2: responsible disclosure like he did is so important.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And speaking of mobile, let's touch on smartphones Pacific attacks.
Speaker 1: The sources mentioned they have a high success rate.
Speaker 2: They do. Yeah, the mobile threat landscape is a bit different.
Speaker 2: You know. For regular computers, hackers might use rit's remote
Speaker 2: administration tools things like nanocore or dark comet to get
Speaker 2: a control. Okay, for smartphones, especially Android, you have similar
Speaker 2: tools like androad or droi jack. They can be really effective.
Speaker 2: But phones also have that unique SMS channel that computers don't.
Speaker 1: Right. You mentioned vishing and smishing, But are there other SMS.
Speaker 2: Attacks, Yes, some quite alarming ones. There's something called the
Speaker 2: midnight rate. A simple SMS can be crafted to silently
Speaker 2: trigger actions on the phone, like opening the browser to
Speaker 2: a malicious site, retrieving devised info like its unique ID number,
Speaker 2: or even pushing malware onto the.
Speaker 1: Device, all from one text message.
Speaker 2: Potentially, Yes, and then there's the control message attack. This
Speaker 2: is even scarier. Certain types of control messages, if exploited,
Speaker 2: could potentially change core phone settings without you knowing, things
Speaker 2: like disablings security features, maybe unchecking SSL so your encrypted
Speaker 2: connections aren't actually encrypted anymore, or, in a worst case scenario,
Speaker 2: pushing a remote wipe command to erase everything on the phone.
Speaker 2: Erase everything, Yes, and imagine if that wipe command could
Speaker 2: then be forwarded to everyone in the hacked phone's contact list.
Speaker 2: The potential for damage spreads rapidly.
Speaker 1: That's terrifying. Okay, let's shift to our final section. This
Speaker 1: is something a lot of people worry about IP addresses.
Speaker 1: If someone online gets your IP address, should you panic?
Speaker 1: Are they in your system, right.
Speaker 2: This causes a lot of anxiety. Let's be really clear.
Speaker 2: An IP address by itself is just a number. It's
Speaker 2: like your house's street address, but for.
Speaker 1: The Internet, your Internet provider gives it to you exactly.
Speaker 2: It's assigned by your ISP, and it's necessary for your
Speaker 2: computer or phone to send and receive data online. Just
Speaker 2: knowing someone's ipaddress is generally normal. It happens constantly during
Speaker 2: web browsing, gaming, emailing. It's not inherently illegal or dangerous.
Speaker 1: So the danger isn't the IP itself.
Speaker 2: No, the danger only comes if someone uses that IP
Speaker 2: address to actually try and attack or violate your device
Speaker 2: or network. That act is illegal, But simply knowing the
Speaker 2: number doesn't grant them automatic access. Think of it like
Speaker 2: knowing someone's home address doesn't mean you can walk through
Speaker 2: their locked front door.
Speaker 1: Okay, that helps clarify, But how do hackers actually track
Speaker 1: an IP address if they want to target someone specifically?
Speaker 2: Well, the most reliable way to silently get someone's IP
Speaker 2: is to trick them into sending traffic directly to you
Speaker 2: or to something you control. A common method involves setting
Speaker 2: up a simple, free website. You upload a small script,
Speaker 2: often called an IP finder or logger. Then you give
Speaker 2: the target a specific link to that website, maybe disguised
Speaker 2: as a link to an image or an interesting article.
Speaker 1: And when they click it.
Speaker 2: When they click the link, their browser connects to your
Speaker 2: website to load the content. Your script then automatically logs
Speaker 2: their IP address, often along with their browser type and
Speaker 2: operating system details, all silently in the background.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now the hacker has my IP knows I
Speaker 1: use Firefox on Windows for example. What can they realistically
Speaker 1: do with just that information? What's the actual threat level?
Speaker 2: This is important for many, let's say, less skilled or
Speaker 2: amateur hackers getting that info the IP the browser is
Speaker 2: often just used for.
Speaker 1: Scare tactics, just to frighten people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they'll message you saying I have your IP, I
Speaker 2: know you're using Chrome, I'm hacking you, hoping you'll panic,
Speaker 2: maybe even try to extort money from you. In reality,
Speaker 2: they might not have any deeper access at.
Speaker 1: All, so it can be a bluff. What about finding
Speaker 1: my location?
Speaker 2: Geolocation from an IP address is not precise. It gives
Speaker 2: an approximate location, usually narrowed down to your city or region,
Speaker 2: maybe a few square kilometers in urban areas, maybe dozens
Speaker 2: in rural areas. It points to the general areas served
Speaker 2: by your ISP's equipment, not your specific house. Only your
Speaker 2: ISP or law enforcement with a warrant can link that
Speaker 2: IP to your exact physical address.
Speaker 1: Okay, so they don't instantly know where I live. A
Speaker 1: skilled hacker use the IP to actually get in.
Speaker 2: That's where the complexity comes in. A skilled attacker could
Speaker 2: use your IP address as a starting point. They would
Speaker 2: likely try to scan your internet router, the box connecting
Speaker 2: your home network to the Internet, looking for open ports
Speaker 2: or known vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: How would they do that.
Speaker 2: They try to figure out the make and model of
Speaker 2: your router, the software version it's running, and then check
Speaker 2: databases of known exploits for that specific hardware or software.
Speaker 2: Or if they find an administrative login page for the
Speaker 2: router exposed to the Internet, they might try a brute
Speaker 2: force or dictionary attack against the router's password itself.
Speaker 1: But that sounds difficult and time consuming.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is. It's a long, complex process, not instant
Speaker 2: access by any means. Most home routers have basic security features.
Speaker 2: Default passwords should always be changed, and keeping firmware updated
Speaker 2: helps close known vulnerabilities.
Speaker 1: So what's the simplest defense If I'm worried someone has
Speaker 1: my IP?
Speaker 2: Often the easiest thing is just to reboot your router.
Speaker 2: For most home Internet connections, this will cause your ISP
Speaker 2: to assign you a new public IP address. The old
Speaker 2: one becomes useless to the attacker.
Speaker 1: A simple reboot, okay. And for more robust protection.
Speaker 2: For genuine anonymity and security against IP tracking and some
Speaker 2: types of scanning, using a reputable VPN virtual private network
Speaker 2: is a good step, or for higher security using something
Speaker 2: like the TR network. These services mask your real IP
Speaker 2: address by routing your traffic through their servers.
Speaker 1: First makes sense VPNs and TR for masking.
Speaker 2: Okay. So if we kind of pull all these threads together,
Speaker 2: what does it all mean? I think the big picture
Speaker 2: is that no single piece of software, no machine, can
Speaker 2: give you one hundred percent guaranteed security, especially in a
Speaker 2: world where technology keeps changing so fast. Awareness, being diligent,
Speaker 2: staying informed, these are just essential now, particularly when as
Speaker 2: we saw, ninety seven percent of attacks are aimed squarely
Speaker 2: at our basic human instincts and reflexes.
Speaker 1: That really is the most critical takeaway, isn't It's less
Speaker 1: about fighting off some super genius coder in a basement. Often, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and more about recognizing and resisting that social exploitation using strong,
Speaker 1: unique passwords, not falling for those urgent fear based requests,
Speaker 1: being skeptical, that's your first and best line of defense.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and supporting things like responsible disclosure like the Instagram
Speaker 2: researcher did is vital too. That helps everyone become safer
Speaker 2: by getting flaws fixed before they're widely abused.
Speaker 1: Definitely. Okay, let's wrap up with a final thought for you,
Speaker 1: our listener, to take away and maybe mull over. Given
Speaker 1: that the overwhelming majority of successful attacks, that huge ninety
Speaker 1: seven percent statistic rely not on technical wizardry, but on
Speaker 1: exploiting basic human psychology, our instinct to help our deference
Speaker 1: to authority. What's one small daily habit you could change,
Speaker 1: starting right now, to make yourself less exploitable. Think about
Speaker 1: that immediate reaction you have when you get an urgent
Speaker 1: email or call from someone claimed to be your boss
Speaker 1: or the bank or IT support. Could you build in
Speaker 1: just a tiny pause, maybe a five second verification delay,
Speaker 1: before you automatically click or comply? How might that change
Speaker 1: things