Speaker 1: Welcome curious minds to the deep dive. Have you ever
Speaker 1: paused to consider the silent, relentless battle unfolding every second
Speaker 1: in our digital world?
Speaker 2: It's a high stakes game. Really, How do the.
Speaker 1: Bad actors, the digital adversaries, how do they manage to
Speaker 1: slip past our defenses, breach our systems, get their hands
Speaker 1: on sensitive data? And just as crucially, how do the
Speaker 1: good guys, the digital defenders, how do they learn to
Speaker 1: anticipate those moves and lock down systems before it's too late.
Speaker 1: Today we're plunging right into the heart of that digital struggle.
Speaker 1: We're talking about security testing with a keen focus on
Speaker 1: penetration testing. Our guide for this deep dive is Robert
Speaker 1: Spenson's insightful book From Hacking to Report Writing, An Introduction
Speaker 1: to Security and Penetration testing.
Speaker 2: Really good stuff in here.
Speaker 1: Our mission, well, it's to take you on a complete
Speaker 1: journey right through the life cycle of a security test,
Speaker 1: from adopting the hacker mindset all the way to crafting
Speaker 1: that vital report, the one that ultimately helps organizations build
Speaker 1: robust digital defenses. We'll uncover the how and why behind
Speaker 1: finding digital weaknesses and believe the insights are pretty profound.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And what's truly fascinating about this field, I think
Speaker 3: is the delicate balance it strikes. It's really about leveraging
Speaker 3: offensive techniques, understanding precisely how an attacker thinks and operates,
Speaker 3: but crucially doing so for entirely defensive purposes. It's using
Speaker 3: the very tools of compromise to build stronger, more resilient
Speaker 3: digital walls.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, and to truly grasp why this proactive approach is
Speaker 1: so vital. Let's anchor ourselves with a real world example.
Speaker 1: Remember the VTech hack back in November twenty fifteen. This
Speaker 1: Hong Kong based company. They make electronic learning toys for kids.
Speaker 1: They suffered a massive breach. Millions of children's and parents data,
Speaker 1: user names, passwords, photos, even private messages all stolen and
Speaker 1: the root causes while a critical database code injection vulnerability
Speaker 1: and kind of astonishingly unencrypted information, it also highlighted that
Speaker 1: the toys themselves just weren't designed to communicate securely.
Speaker 3: Right. And what's profoundly alarming about a hack like VTech
Speaker 3: beyond the sheer volume of data stolen, is that it
Speaker 3: points to a fundamental flaw like right in the design.
Speaker 3: This wasn't some super sophisticated zero day exploit. It was
Speaker 3: about basic security principles just being completely missed ignored. Really,
Speaker 3: it properly performed security test before that breach, it would
Speaker 3: almost certainly have uncovered. These frankly glaring weaknesses made the
Speaker 3: attack far hard, maybe even prevented it altogether. It's a
Speaker 3: stark lesson, isn't it, in the value of security by
Speaker 3: design versus just, you know, security as an afterthought, and.
Speaker 1: That leads us to a fundamental truth. Really, vulnerabilities are well,
Speaker 1: they're everywhere modern complex computer systems. They're constantly interacting with
Speaker 1: uncontrolled external systems users. This inherent complexity means achieving one
Speaker 1: hundred percent security is quite frankly impossible.
Speaker 3: It just is.
Speaker 1: Think of it like this, Maybe imagine a dusty road
Speaker 1: connecting two villages centuries ago, good enough for simple transport, right,
Speaker 1: but then as traffic grew, it became a busy city
Speaker 1: street packed with intersections, crosswalks, strains. All these security features
Speaker 1: were layered on after the road's core purpose transport was established.
Speaker 1: In the digital world, security often becomes that afterthought, bolted
Speaker 1: on instead of being integral to the initial design and it's.
Speaker 3: Crucial to understand it's not just malicious hackers exploiting these weaknesses.
Speaker 3: Take the Slammer worm two thousand and three. This was
Speaker 3: the fastest computer worm in history. In fact, something like
Speaker 3: ninety percent of vulnerable servers online within ten minutes. Ten
Speaker 3: minutes it brought so many mission critical systems just grinding
Speaker 3: to a halt, and not because of some cunning new exploit. No,
Speaker 3: it took advantage of a vulnerability for which a patch
Speaker 3: had been readily available for six months. This just drives
Speaker 3: on the point that basic cyber hygiene like patch management,
Speaker 3: is incredibly important. Its absence allowed a known fixable weakness
Speaker 3: to cause just widespread chaos.
Speaker 2: So if we.
Speaker 1: Boil it down, what exactly is a security test? Robert
Speaker 1: Spenson emphasizes that it's a type of vulnerability assessment where
Speaker 1: a tester actively takes on the role of a hacker.
Speaker 1: They meticulously try to break into an organization's IT environment,
Speaker 1: uncover vulnerabilities, and then importantly provide concrete suggestions for fixing
Speaker 1: them before a real attack can occur. It's leveraging offensive
Speaker 1: knowledge for defensive gain, simple as that almost And who
Speaker 1: are these individuals?
Speaker 2: The ones wielding.
Speaker 1: Digital tools for good or sometimes for ill. The landscape
Speaker 1: of hackers is incredibly diverse, each with their own motivations,
Speaker 1: their own methods.
Speaker 2: Okay, so at the highest.
Speaker 1: Level, you've got state sponsored actors. These groups, they strive
Speaker 1: to operate way below the radar, backed by immense funding
Speaker 1: national resources, their attacks are increasingly becoming a cornerstone of
Speaker 1: national defense. Really, think about China's Unit sixty one three
Speaker 1: ninety eight, widely believed to have systematically stolen terabytes terabytes
Speaker 1: trade secrets from US companies, or the infamous stux networm,
Speaker 1: thought to be a joint US Israel effort right designed
Speaker 1: not just to steal data, but to physically damine Iran's
Speaker 1: nuclear centrifuges. That ability to translate digital action into real
Speaker 1: world physical destruction that really sets some of these operations
Speaker 1: apart exactly.
Speaker 3: And what's particularly challenging with state sponsored actors is their
Speaker 3: patients and their persistence. They often conduct these long term campaigns,
Speaker 3: we call them advanced persistent threads or apts. They brow
Speaker 3: deep into networks over months, years, sometimes to achieve their objectives.
Speaker 3: They have virtually unlimited resources, unlimited time. It makes them
Speaker 3: exceptionally difficult to detect and defend against.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's one type. Next we encounter computer criminals.
Speaker 1: These guys are driven primarily by financial gain. They follow
Speaker 1: the money, and these days that flows heavily through digital transactions. Obviously,
Speaker 1: think of Alexander andreevag Panin and Hamzabendoladge, the developers of the.
Speaker 2: Spy i botnet.
Speaker 1: They were sentenced to a combine twenty four years for
Speaker 1: selling malware, malware that stole over three million dollars from
Speaker 1: like one point four million computers worldwide. Their botnet toolkit
Speaker 1: made it disturbingly easy for others to commit fraud on
Speaker 1: a massive scale just by the kit.
Speaker 3: Point click Scary stuff and you have activists, right.
Speaker 2: Activists.
Speaker 1: These individuals are motivated more by protests a desire for
Speaker 1: public visibility. They use digital tools as a modern form
Speaker 1: of demonstration. Instead of picket signs, they might use denial
Speaker 1: of service attacks or website defacement. A striking, even kind
Speaker 1: of humorous example is a nineteen ninety six CIA website defacement.
Speaker 1: Remember that visitors were greeted with welcome to the Central
Speaker 1: Stupidity Agency. That message even made it onto CNN.
Speaker 2: Their goal is.
Speaker 1: Maximum exposure for their message. Whatever it is, getting the
Speaker 1: message out there is key for them. Then, perhaps the
Speaker 1: most insidious and maybe the most difficult threat to foresee
Speaker 1: and manage is the insider. These individuals already possess legitimate access,
Speaker 1: which often renders traditional perimeter defenses well less effective. Edward
Speaker 1: Snowden is arguably the most well known insider in history.
Speaker 1: While working as a contractor for the NSA, he gained
Speaker 1: access to and then released an unprecedented amount of classified data,
Speaker 1: including things like the daily interception of six hundred million
Speaker 1: communications spying on foreign leaders. Now, regardless of whether you
Speaker 1: view his actions as whistleblowing or treason, his impact as
Speaker 1: an insider was a fundamentally changed the conversation around government surveillance, and.
Speaker 3: The difficulty with insiders really lies in that challenge of
Speaker 3: building trust models. It's tricky. How do you monitor someone
Speaker 3: who legitimately needs access to sensitive information without creating a
Speaker 3: surveillance state within your own organization. It requires a different
Speaker 3: approach to security, one focus more on behavior analysis granular
Speaker 3: access control rather than just looking at external threats.
Speaker 2: Good point.
Speaker 1: Finally, at the other end of the spectrum, we have
Speaker 1: script kitties. These are individuals who use pre made tools
Speaker 1: and scripts written by others, often without a deep understanding
Speaker 1: of how they work or frankly, the consequences.
Speaker 2: But don't let their lack of technical depth fool you.
Speaker 1: Like someone who doesn't understand the mechanics of a car
Speaker 1: can still cause an accident, right, a script kitty can
Speaker 1: reach significant damage. Michael Kelce or Mafia Boy, he was
Speaker 1: just fourteen years old back in two thousand, launched devastating
Speaker 1: denial of service attacks against some major websites like Amazon, Fifa,
Speaker 1: dot Com, eBay, all using easily downloaded tools. He later
Speaker 1: claimed he was unaware of the dangers, but the impact
Speaker 1: very real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, underestimating them can be a mistake.
Speaker 1: So when we look across all these categories, state sponsored criminals, activists, insiders,
Speaker 1: script kds, what's the overarching takeaway? It seems clear that
Speaker 1: the human element remains the most probable source of intentional
Speaker 1: disruption in computer systems, whether it's spreading malware, activism, phishing attacks.
Speaker 1: Understanding these motivations is really key to building effective defenses.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, it's not just about the technology, it's about the
Speaker 3: people behind it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So now that we have a clearer picture of
Speaker 1: why security testing matters and who the players are. Let's
Speaker 1: shift our focus. Let's talk about the art of the
Speaker 1: penetration test itself. It's actually a highly structured process, from
Speaker 1: the initial concept right through to the final crucial report.
Speaker 1: It all kicks off with what Senson calls the initialization phase.
Speaker 1: This is when an organization first considers a security test.
Speaker 1: They start asking that fundamental question, how safe.
Speaker 2: Are we really?
Speaker 3: That first step is crucial acknowledging. You need to ask
Speaker 3: the question exactly.
Speaker 1: From there, a critical step is setting the scope. This
Speaker 1: needs to be crystal clear, thoroughly verified to prevent what's
Speaker 1: called scope creep. Imagine a tester hired for, say, for
Speaker 1: database servers. During reconnaissance, they discover a dozen more insecure
Speaker 1: servers belonging to other departments if they're then asked to
Speaker 1: test all of them without adjusting the timeline. While it
Speaker 1: often leads to lower quality testing overall, you just spread
Speaker 1: yourself too thin and linked tightly to scope. There's the
Speaker 1: absolute necessity of the well they call it the get
Speaker 1: out of jail free cards.
Speaker 3: Ah. Yes, the essential document it is.
Speaker 1: It's the written, legally binding permission required for a security
Speaker 1: tester to quote break into an organization systems mimicking a
Speaker 1: real attacker. It must be signed by someone with proper
Speaker 1: authority before any testing commences. No signature, no test period,
Speaker 1: and that.
Speaker 3: Legal documentation the scope that get out of jail free card.
Speaker 3: It's completely non negotiable. Without it, even the most ethical
Speaker 3: penetration test could easily be viewed as a and an act.
Speaker 3: It also protects the client right by clearly defining what
Speaker 3: is and isn't being tested, manages exteptations, prevents unintended consequences.
Speaker 3: It's vital for both sides.
Speaker 1: Okay, so when we talk about how much information a
Speaker 1: tester has at the outset, we often use these color
Speaker 1: codes for security tests. White box testing means the tester
Speaker 1: has full access to internal info, network diagrams, maybe source
Speaker 1: codes and configurations everything. It's very time efficient because you
Speaker 1: know where to look, but it's less realistic as a
Speaker 1: true external hacker. Simulation. On the opposite end is black
Speaker 1: box testing. Here the tester starts with minimal information, maybe
Speaker 1: just a company name, truly mimicking an external attacker. This
Speaker 1: is the most realistic simulation, but as fence And points out,
Speaker 1: it's often unnecessarily time consuming and therefore expensive.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of guesswork involved, and.
Speaker 3: That guesswork factor in black box testing you can have
Speaker 3: real consequences. K Spenson tells this story. It's quite something.
Speaker 3: A black box test where the tester was given just
Speaker 3: a company name and an emergency contact. That's it. They
Speaker 3: used old Airon database information that's the registry for IPA
Speaker 3: addresses to find ips, which led them to believe in
Speaker 3: IP address and Madrid still belonged to their client. They
Speaker 3: found a terribly outdated Sambo file sharing service running there,
Speaker 3: connected easily with administrators both username and password. Found gigabytes
Speaker 3: of database backups, payroll user data, even a scanned passport.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I called the emergency contact all proud saying
Speaker 3: we're in and the context is, uh, it's not our servers. Hmmm.
Speaker 3: Turns out the IP address now belonged to some completely
Speaker 3: innocent Spanish company. The Airon database information was simply out
Speaker 3: of date. It's just a powerful reminder that even elementary
Speaker 3: information like IP ownership needs to be double checked, especially
Speaker 3: in a black box scenario.
Speaker 1: Well that's a nightmare scenario, seriously, and it really highlights
Speaker 1: why gray box testing is probably the most common approach.
Speaker 3: When you say, definitely, it strikes that balance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it provides the tester with some insider information maybe
Speaker 1: user credentials, network diagrams, but still maintains a realistic simulation
Speaker 1: of a hacker's perspective.
Speaker 2: Makes it both effective and efficient.
Speaker 3: Exactly best of both worlds often okay.
Speaker 2: But regardless of the testing approach, white black, gray, the
Speaker 2: ultimate goal is always define vulnerabilities. So what is a
Speaker 2: vulnerability precisely?
Speaker 3: Well, there are formal definitions out there. ANISA, the European
Speaker 3: Union Agency for Network and Information Security, they put it
Speaker 3: pretty succinctly. They define it as the existence of a
Speaker 3: weakness compromising the security. Simple, okay, a weakness right. The
Speaker 3: Internet Engineering Task Force the IETF they expand on that
Speaker 3: a bit. They call it a flaw or weakness exploited
Speaker 3: to violate the system security policy.
Speaker 1: So, to simplify it even more, it's basically something that
Speaker 1: makes it possible for someone to force your computer or
Speaker 1: your system to do something you don't want.
Speaker 2: It to do.
Speaker 3: That's a good way to put it. And these vulnerabilities
Speaker 3: typically compromise one or more aspects of what we call
Speaker 3: the CIA triapp ah, the CIA triads, YEP, confidentiality, integrity,
Speaker 3: and availability. Confidentiality is about keeping information secret right, ensuring
Speaker 3: only authorized people can access it, pretty straightforward. Integrity ensures
Speaker 3: information hasn't been tampered with by unauthorized users. Think of, say,
Speaker 3: an e commerce system, where a vulnerability might let a
Speaker 3: customer change other customers order information. That's an integrity violation.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 3: Availability just means information and systems are accessible when needed,
Speaker 3: preventing things like a power outage or maybe a distributed
Speaker 3: denial of service attack from bringing services down. That's an
Speaker 3: availability issue.
Speaker 1: Confidentiality, integrity, availability. Okay, So how are these vulnerabilities actually
Speaker 1: uncovered and how do we measure how serious they are?
Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of a continuous process. You can visualize
Speaker 3: it as a vulnerability wheel almost. It starts with flawed software.
Speaker 3: Hackers identify bugs in it, Then they might develop exploit
Speaker 3: code that prompts a vendor response, hopefully a patch, and
Speaker 3: finally there's the user response applying that patch. Then the
Speaker 3: cycle starts again with new flaws or mispatches. It's an
Speaker 3: ongoing cycle of discovery and defense.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and some vendors actually embrace this cycle, don't they
Speaker 1: by offering bug bounties.
Speaker 3: Exactly. These are slightly unorthodox maybe, but incredibly effective ways
Speaker 3: for companies to get security reviews from a huge pool
Speaker 3: of ethical experts. Microsoft, for example, famously paid one researcher
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand dollars back in twenty fourteen for discovering
Speaker 3: a pretty significant vulnerability. It incentivizes finding flaws before the
Speaker 3: bad guys.
Speaker 2: Do one hundred thousand dollars. Wow.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, a crucial concept here is the zero day exploit.
Speaker 2: What exactly is that.
Speaker 3: H zero days? These are vulnerabilities that are not publicly
Speaker 3: known and critically for which no patch is available. This
Speaker 3: leads system administrators with literally zero days to patch because
Speaker 3: the vendor isn't even aware of the issue yet, or
Speaker 3: maybe they are but haven't had time to develop and
Speaker 3: release a.
Speaker 1: Fix, so it's like an open door that nobody knows
Speaker 1: about except the attacker.
Speaker 3: Pretty much, zero days are the holy grail for attackers
Speaker 3: because they offer that window of opportunity where defenses are
Speaker 3: effectively blind. They're highly prized fetch significant sums on the
Speaker 3: black market sometimes because they're so effective before a vendor
Speaker 3: can react.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense. So this raises an important question.
Speaker 1: Once a vulnerability is found, whether it's a zero day
Speaker 1: or just a known one, how do we measure its seriousness?
Speaker 2: How bad is it?
Speaker 3: Right? The industry standard for that is the Common Vulnerability
Speaker 3: Scoring System or CVSS. It's basically a zero to ten scale.
Speaker 3: Higher number means greater severity, more urgent need for attention.
Speaker 2: Okay, zero to ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For instance, there was a Microsoft silver Light vulnerability
Speaker 3: identified as CVE twenty sixteen zero zero zero three four.
Speaker 3: That CVE just tends for common vulnerabilities and exposures. It's
Speaker 3: like a global dictionary for known security flaws. Anyway, that
Speaker 3: silver Light bug scored a high nine point six on
Speaker 3: the CDSS scale. That signals immediate attention needed because the
Speaker 3: potential impact is severe.
Speaker 2: Nine point six Yeah, that sounds pretty urgent.
Speaker 1: Okay, So before any hands on hacking actually begins, a
Speaker 1: security tester needs to make some thorough technical preparations, right.
Speaker 2: What does that involve?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, preparation is key. One vital step is collecting network traffic.
Speaker 3: This is essential not just for analysis later, but also
Speaker 3: for legal protection tools like wire shark, which has a
Speaker 3: nice graphical interface, and tcpdump, which is command line based
Speaker 3: are indispensable. They capture every single bite of data sent
Speaker 3: between the tester's machine and the target system. That traffic
Speaker 3: can literally be the sloking gun in a legal dispute,
Speaker 3: or the key to understanding exactly what happened during a
Speaker 3: test or an attack.
Speaker 1: So it's like recording the whole conversation between the computers precisely.
Speaker 3: It provides an undeniable record of events, crucial for diagnosing
Speaker 3: issues and also for defending yourself if something goes wrong
Speaker 3: during a test and questions are asked.
Speaker 2: Makes sense. Note taking is also paramount, I imagine.
Speaker 3: Oh hugely. Yeah, but critically, any sensitive test data, client information, discovered, passwords,
Speaker 3: vulnerability should always be stored locally, securely. Never ever use
Speaker 3: cloud based note taking apps like Evernote or simple note
Speaker 3: for this stuff. You just can't risk processing sensitive client
Speaker 3: data on third party servers. It's a huge liability.
Speaker 2: Good point, Keep it local.
Speaker 3: Keep it local, keep it encrypted. And saving complex commands
Speaker 3: you've used, that's just a smart habit. Save time, helps
Speaker 3: you reproduce your steps, makes reporting easier.
Speaker 2: Okay, and what about the software setup? What tools are essential?
Speaker 3: Well? For efficiency? Pre configured virtual machines, loaded with security
Speaker 3: tools are really the way to go. Kali Linux, for instance,
Speaker 3: is basically a Linux distribution built specifically for security work.
Speaker 3: It comes bundled with well pretty much every imaginable security
Speaker 3: related tool. As Benson puts.
Speaker 2: It, Kyllie right, heard of that one, and then there's metasploit.
Speaker 3: This is widely regarded as the most impactful penetration testing
Speaker 3: solution on the planet. It's invaluable for verifying vulnerabilities. It
Speaker 3: has a huge library of pre built exploits you can
Speaker 3: use to demonstrate impact safely, not.
Speaker 2: A sploit, okay.
Speaker 3: And when you're dealing with data, especially if you're involved
Speaker 3: in incident response after a breach, remember the order of volatility.
Speaker 2: Order volatility, what's that.
Speaker 3: It's a forensics principle. It basically tells you what evidence
Speaker 3: disappears fastest. Data in memory RAM is far more volatile,
Speaker 3: meaning it's lost much quicker than data sitting on a
Speaker 3: hard drive. So if you're the first responder to an incident,
Speaker 3: understanding this tells you what evidence you need to prioritize
Speaker 3: capturing immediately because it might literally vanish if machine reboots
Speaker 3: or loses power.
Speaker 1: Ah okay, capture the most fleeting evidence first, got it.
Speaker 1: That's critical for incident response and to really keep secrets
Speaker 1: safe during the test itself. Security testers rely heavily on
Speaker 1: full disk encryption right like file vault for Max or
Speaker 1: BitLocker for Windows.
Speaker 3: Absolutely non negotiable. Full disc encryption on the testing laptop.
Speaker 3: Encrypted backups too. And if you absolutely must use cloud
Speaker 3: storage for some reason, maybe sharing a draft report, manually
Speaker 3: ENCRYPTO files before they even touch the cloud. Use something
Speaker 3: strong like PDP or AES encrypt within a ZIP file.
Speaker 3: Don't rely on the cloud provider's encryptional loan for highly
Speaker 3: sensitive stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, encrypt it yourself first. And finally, something that sounds
Speaker 1: may be less technical but is crucial liability insurance.
Speaker 3: Oh indispensable, especially for independent consultants. Spenson mentiones his own
Speaker 3: one million dollars coverage.
Speaker 2: A million euros.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and why because things can quickly go sideways during
Speaker 3: a test, even with the best intentions. One wrong move,
Speaker 3: one unintended system crash, one misconfiguration, and you can be
Speaker 3: facing a massive lawsuit. That insurance can be a lifesaver
Speaker 3: financially and professionally. Don't test without it.
Speaker 1: Found advice. Okay, So preparations are done. Insurance is in place.
Speaker 1: Let's step into the hacking phase of the security test,
Speaker 1: where the hands on technical work truly begins. This phase
Speaker 1: generally involves three key steps. Right, identify, exploit, and then report.
Speaker 3: That's the core loop.
Speaker 1: Identify exploit report Okay, First up identifying vulnerabilities. This starts
Speaker 1: with footprinting, you said, which is passive.
Speaker 3: Right. Footprinting is all about passive information gathering, no direct
Speaker 3: interaction with the target system. Yet you're using public resources
Speaker 3: things like intel techniques. May be checking public whois servers
Speaker 3: for domain registration info, looking at job posting, social media,
Speaker 3: gathering intelligence before anyone even knows you're looking.
Speaker 2: Okay, reconnaissance from AFAR. Then comes scanning. That's active.
Speaker 3: Yes, scanning is active. Now you're directly probing the target
Speaker 3: network to map out available hosts and services, and the
Speaker 3: tool for this is almost always end map. It's the
Speaker 3: undisputed industry standard network scanner. For very good reason. NMAP
Speaker 3: can tell you what IP addresses are live, what ports
Speaker 3: are open, closed, or may be filtered by a firewall.
Speaker 3: It can often identify the services running on those open ports,
Speaker 3: and even make a decent guess at the operating system
Speaker 3: it's like taking an X ray of the network perimeter.
Speaker 2: En MAP got it. And you mentioned an anecdote earlier
Speaker 2: about finding something unexpected during a scan the black box.
Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, that was sensence story. During a scan and
Speaker 3: MAPP found this mysterious device, no name, no logo, root
Speaker 3: password unknown, but it was clearly recording incoming calls for
Speaker 3: a call center and MAP revealed it was running a
Speaker 3: web server on an unusual port. The client had insisted
Speaker 3: on a true hacker test, a full assault or nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the tester, kind of bracing the role of a
Speaker 3: clueless script kitty for a moment, found publicly available proof
Speaker 3: of concept code for a known Apache vulnerability CVE twenty
Speaker 3: eleven three one ninety two, known as a patche killer.
Speaker 3: They ran the code against that black box's web server,
Speaker 3: and much to their surprise, the Apache server crashed spectacularly,
Speaker 3: took down the entire call center system that relied on it.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, chaos, I bet total chaos.
Speaker 3: Apparently manager's running around, But it was a vivid, albeit
Speaker 3: disruptive reminder of the importance of that get out of
Speaker 3: jail free card and the potential impact of even known
Speaker 3: older vulnerabilities on critical systems.
Speaker 2: Definitely illustrates the point.
Speaker 1: Okay, so after scanning with n MAP, what's next in identification.
Speaker 3: NIX comes enumeration is deeper probe. Now you're trying to
Speaker 3: map the services you found during scanning to known vulnerabilities.
Speaker 3: Get more detail. Tools like fearce can perform DNS brute
Speaker 3: forcing to find subdomains. The harvester can scrape search engines
Speaker 3: and other sources to pull out email addresses associated with
Speaker 3: the domain, and resources like netcraft are fantastic. They gather
Speaker 3: extensive web presence information, historical IP addresses, hosting companies, domain registrars,
Speaker 3: technologies used on a website. It's all about building a
Speaker 3: detailed picture of the target.
Speaker 1: Okay, Digging deeper and another critical part of identification you
Speaker 1: mentioned is checking for data from hacked sites.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is crucial. We've all heard of major breaches,
Speaker 3: right like the Ashley Madison hack. Member profiles were leaked online,
Speaker 3: caused immense embarrassment, blackmail attempts, tragically, even suicides were linked
Speaker 3: to it. So resources like Troy hunts Have I been pwned?
Speaker 3: Website are invaluable. You can check if your email addresses
Speaker 3: or addresses associated with the target organization have been compromised
Speaker 3: in known data breaches. That leaked data often contains passwords
Speaker 3: that people reuse elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Right, password reuse is a huge problem. Okay, So once
Speaker 1: vulnerabilities are identified through footprinting, scanning, enumeration, checking breach data,
Speaker 1: the next step is exploitation. This is the actual act
Speaker 1: of gaining unauthorized access exactly.
Speaker 3: This is where you try to leverage the weakness as
Speaker 3: you've found.
Speaker 1: And password attacks seem like a common starting point. You
Speaker 1: called it the holy grail of authentication.
Speaker 3: They often are because if you can get valid credentials,
Speaker 3: you can often walk right in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Brute force attacks are a key technique here. Tools like
Speaker 3: Hydra or another one called Medusa can systematically try thousands, millions,
Speaker 3: even billions of password combinations against the log in prompt.
Speaker 3: They can target various services FDP, SSH, HTTP, basic off
Speaker 3: databases like my sqel, remote desktop, RDP, Windows file shares, SMB,
Speaker 3: just hammering away with dictionaries of common passwords or character combinations.
Speaker 2: And these can be online or offline attacks.
Speaker 3: Right correct, Online attacks try to log in directly to
Speaker 3: the live service. They're slower and risk account lockouts. Offline
Speaker 3: attacks are where you've already obtained password hashes, maybe from
Speaker 3: a database dump or that ht password file we mentioned.
Speaker 3: Cracking hash is offline is much faster because you're not
Speaker 3: limited by network speed or log in attempt swaddles.
Speaker 1: Okay, so to protect against this, hashing passwords is critical.
Speaker 1: But just hashing isn't enough anymore. You need salting.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. Hashing is just the first step. It's a one
Speaker 3: way function. Like creating a fingerprint for the password. You
Speaker 3: run password one two three through an algorithm like SAHA
Speaker 3: two five six, you get a unique looking string of characters.
Speaker 3: You can't easily go back from the hash to password
Speaker 3: one two three, But if two users have the same passwords,
Speaker 3: they'll have the same hash without salt. Attackers used to
Speaker 3: use pre computed rainbow tables massive databases of common passwords
Speaker 3: and their corresponding hashes to crack these very quickly. That's
Speaker 3: where salting comes in. Before you hash the password, you
Speaker 3: add a unique random value, the salt, to it. Each
Speaker 3: user gets a different salt. So now even if two
Speaker 3: users have the same password password one two three, their
Speaker 3: stored hashes will be completely different because their salts are different.
Speaker 3: Spens and puts it vividly. Too much salt can make
Speaker 3: any rainbow fade. It renders those pre computed rainbow tables.
Speaker 3: Useless attackers are forced to generate new tables for each
Speaker 3: unique salt or brute force each salted hash individually, which
Speaker 3: is computationally way way more expensive practically impossible on a
Speaker 3: large scale.
Speaker 1: So salting makes a massive difference. What should people use?
Speaker 3: Algorithms like b crypt or ar gone two are considered
Speaker 3: very solid foundations for secure password storage today. They incorporate
Speaker 3: salting and are designed to be slow, making brute forcing
Speaker 3: even harder. MD five and SAHA one for passwords absolutely
Speaker 3: not anymore.
Speaker 2: Okay, be crypt. Good tip.
Speaker 1: And here's something you mentioned earlier that seems related, but
Speaker 1: simpler default accounts and their passwords.
Speaker 2: That's still a thing.
Speaker 3: Shockingly, yes, it's amazing how many devices, routers, printers, webcams,
Speaker 3: industrial control systems still ship with incredibly simple, well known
Speaker 3: to fault credentials. Spenson uses the example of many Netgear
Speaker 3: devices shipping with admin as the username and password is
Speaker 3: the password. It's the absolute equivalent of building a Fort
Speaker 3: Knox like secure house but leaving the front door wide
Speaker 3: open with the key labeled key hanging.
Speaker 2: Next to it just admin password unbelievable, always change defaults. Okay,
Speaker 2: let's talk about web applications specifically.
Speaker 1: A crucial guide here is the OAS top ten list
Speaker 1: right definitely OAS.
Speaker 3: The Open Web Application Security Project publishes this list regularly.
Speaker 3: It aims to raise awareness about the most critical security
Speaker 3: risks facing web applications. It's essential reading for developers and testers.
Speaker 1: Let's run through a few key types from the list,
Speaker 1: maybe with examples.
Speaker 2: How about injection flaws?
Speaker 3: Right? Injection is a huge category. This is where untrusted
Speaker 3: input from a user gets sent to an interpreter like
Speaker 3: a database or the operating system shell as part of
Speaker 3: a command or query without being properly cleaned first. The
Speaker 3: classic example is seql injection. Imagine a website login form.
Speaker 3: Instead of typing their user name and attacker types something
Speaker 3: like anna or R one one anna or R one
Speaker 3: one one one Yeah, the single quote breaks out of
Speaker 3: the expected username string or R one is one is
Speaker 3: a condition that's always true, and the often comments out
Speaker 3: the rest of the original SEQL query, which might have
Speaker 3: checked the password if the website code just blindly sticks
Speaker 3: that input into its database query the database might interpret
Speaker 3: one ones as true for every row, so instead of
Speaker 3: just returning and as details, it can return all user
Speaker 3: names and maybe they're hashed passwords from the user table.
Speaker 2: Wow, just from typing that into the username box exactly.
Speaker 3: It shows how a single seemingly innocuous input field can
Speaker 3: become a literal doorway into your entire database if you
Speaker 3: don't do proper input validation and use parameterized queries. All
Speaker 3: the hacker needs is a web browser and some knowledge
Speaker 3: of SQL.
Speaker 1: Okay, SQL injection scary. What about broken authentication and session management?
Speaker 3: This covers a whole range of issues that let attackers
Speaker 3: compromise passwords, keys, session tokens, basically anything that lets them
Speaker 3: in person and eight legitimate users spensin highlights an example
Speaker 3: of a web app where the session cookie, the little
Speaker 3: piece of data that keeps you logged in, was set
Speaker 3: to expire way off in the future, like in.
Speaker 2: Twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen years later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if user just close their browser without explicitly
Speaker 1: logging out, anyone else who could access that browser later,
Speaker 1: maybe on a shared computer, could potentially just reopen it
Speaker 1: and still be logged in as that user. They could
Speaker 1: piggyback on the old session. Another related issue he found
Speaker 1: was just poorly protected passwords, like discovering a database table
Speaker 1: where user passwords were stored in clear text, no hashing,
Speaker 1: no salting, just plain text. If a hacker gets access
Speaker 1: to that database, it's game over instantly for every single user.
Speaker 3: Clear text passwords. That's just wow, basic stuff missed. Again.
Speaker 3: It's astonishing how often these fundamental authentication problems persist. These
Speaker 3: aren't obscure attacks. They're often basic design flaws or misconfigurations
Speaker 3: known for decades. Sometimes the biggest threats are the most
Speaker 3: obvious ones, just waiting to be found.
Speaker 1: Okay, next, positive data exposure? What does that cover?
Speaker 3: This happens when applications don't properly protect sensitive data like
Speaker 3: financial info, health records, credentials, leading to its accidental exposure.
Speaker 3: Tools called URL fuzzers, like one named folder Boulder, can
Speaker 3: automatically probe web servers for hidden or forgotten files and directories.
Speaker 3: Spenson describes using one to find and dot ht password
Speaker 3: a file just sitting there on a web server. That
Speaker 3: file often contains usernames and hashed passwords. For basic web.
Speaker 2: Authentication, finding password files just lying around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes configuration files or backup files get left in
Speaker 3: web accessible locations by mistake. And related to this is
Speaker 3: clear text communication setting sensitive data without encryption. You talked
Speaker 3: about wire Shark. The network's Niver Stenson showed how easily
Speaker 3: it could intercept log ins if they weren't encrypted using HTTPS.
Speaker 3: He saw Dave's password transmitted as baseball in plain text.
Speaker 2: Just baseball flying across the network exactly now.
Speaker 3: To intercept that traffic usually requires the attacker to be
Speaker 3: on the same network and maybe use techniques like ARP poisoning,
Speaker 3: digitally tricking computers into setting traffic their way, or setting
Speaker 3: up a man in the middle MITM attack, maybe via
Speaker 3: a road Wi Fi hotspot. But if the log in
Speaker 3: isn't encrypted, once they intercept it, the password is right.
Speaker 2: There hg TTPs everywhere is key? Then all right? What
Speaker 2: a security misconfiguration sounds broad?
Speaker 3: It is broad, but very common. This covers a wide
Speaker 3: range of issues. Unpacked servers running software with known flaws,
Speaker 3: leaving default accounts enabled overleave, verbose error messages that leak information,
Speaker 3: exposing configuration files that dot ahgpasswood file discovery. We just mentioned.
Speaker 3: That's both sensitive data exposure and potentially a security misconfiguration
Speaker 3: if it shouldn't have been web accessible. Stunts in details,
Speaker 3: taking that found dot hd passwoot file, figuring out a
Speaker 3: used apaches version of MDFI hashing, which is weak, and
Speaker 3: then using a powerful offline hashtracking tool called hashcat with
Speaker 3: big password dictionary and dot crack. The password for the
Speaker 3: root user in that file turned out to be ADC one.
Speaker 1: Two three one two three for root Oh dear yep.
Speaker 3: Again not a complex hack targeting the hashing algorithm itself,
Speaker 3: but just exploiting a terrible password choice combined with an
Speaker 3: exposed hash file. Critical oversight.
Speaker 2: Okay, one more from OAS cross site request forgery or CSRF.
Speaker 2: This one sounds complicated.
Speaker 3: It can seem tricky, but the concept is powerful. It's
Speaker 3: sometimes called a one click attack or session writing. Imagine
Speaker 3: Maria is logged into her online bank account in one
Speaker 3: browser tab, then in another tab, she visits a news
Speaker 3: website that unfortunately has been hacked. Unbeknownst to Maria, the
Speaker 3: hacked news site contains some hidden malicious HTML code, maybe
Speaker 3: an image tag who source src is actually a URL
Speaker 3: that performs an action on her bank's website, like a
Speaker 3: transfer exactly. The malicious code tricks Maria's browser into automatically
Speaker 3: sending a request to her bank's site to transfer funds.
Speaker 3: Because Maria is already logged into her bank, her browser
Speaker 3: automatically includes her session cookie with that request. The request
Speaker 3: might look legitimate to the bank it came from Maria's
Speaker 3: browser with her valid session cookie, but the crucial part,
Speaker 3: like the transfer to account number variable, has been sneakily
Speaker 3: set by the hacker's code on the malicious news site, so.
Speaker 1: The bank thinks Maria wanted to send money to the
Speaker 1: hacker precisely.
Speaker 3: Even though Maria didn't click anything on the bank site
Speaker 3: to initiate it, the request was forged by the other
Speaker 3: site she visited. All the hacker needs is from Maria
Speaker 3: to visit their compromised site while she's logged into the
Speaker 3: vulnerable target site the bank.
Speaker 2: That's sneaky. How do you sites defend against that?
Speaker 3: Good defenses involve things like anti CSRF tokens unique unpredictable
Speaker 3: values to the website, embeds in its forms, and checks
Speaker 3: upon submission. The attacker on the other site won't know
Speaker 3: the correct token value from Maria's session. B SSRF highlights
Speaker 3: how actions can be triggered across sites if defenses aren't robust.
Speaker 2: Okay, so those are some heavy hitters from oas.
Speaker 1: If you're listening and thinking, wow, I'd like to try this,
Speaker 1: But legally, where can people practice?
Speaker 3: Great question? There are excellent legal resources. The damn Vulnerable
Speaker 3: Web a DVWA is a PHP MI SQL web application
Speaker 3: specifically designed to be full of common vulnerabilities for practice.
Speaker 3: Google also has something called the Firing Range, which is
Speaker 3: a test bed for web vulnerabilities. And participating in legitimate
Speaker 3: bug bounty programs on platforms like hacker one or bug
Speaker 3: crowd is another great way. Companies want you to find
Speaker 3: flaws in their systems within the rules of the program
Speaker 3: and will often pay you for it.
Speaker 1: Practice legally absolutely Okay, So the hacking phase, identify and
Speaker 1: exploit is done. Now comes what you said is arguably
Speaker 1: the most important.
Speaker 2: Part the report.
Speaker 3: Without a doubt, the final report is a culmination of everything.
Speaker 3: It's not something to be thrown together at the last minute.
Speaker 3: It really needs to be a continuous effort documenting findings
Speaker 3: as you go.
Speaker 2: What makes a good report structure.
Speaker 3: Clarity, and audience awareness are key. It needs an executive summary,
Speaker 3: short non technical, high level for the managers and decision makers.
Speaker 3: What are the biggest risks, what's the business impact? What
Speaker 3: needs to happen? Then it needs detailed technical to descriptions
Speaker 3: for the IT team exactly what vulnerabilities were found, how
Speaker 3: are they exploited? Include screenshots, logs, reproduction steps, and most importantly,
Speaker 3: clear actionable recommendations. Not just fix this, but how to
Speaker 3: fix it? Prioritize based on risk. Spinson suggests always asking yourself,
Speaker 3: if I was the manager receiving this, what kind of
Speaker 3: report would I want? What would help me actually get
Speaker 3: things fixed?
Speaker 1: That's a great perspective and delivery. These reports contain super
Speaker 1: sensitive findings.
Speaker 3: It's extremely sensitive, so deliver securely. Don't just email it unencrypted.
Speaker 3: A common method is to put the report in an
Speaker 3: encrypted ZIP file using strong AES encryption, not weak legacy
Speaker 3: zip crypto all right, Then send an encrypted file via
Speaker 3: one channel like email, and the password via a completely
Speaker 3: separate channel like a phone call or secure message. Minimize
Speaker 3: the risk of interception. You know, the art of reporting
Speaker 3: is really about translating that technical jargon into actionable business intelligence.
Speaker 3: A truly excellent report tells a story. Here's what we found.
Speaker 3: Here's what it means to your business in terms of risk,
Speaker 3: and here's exactly what you need to do about it.
Speaker 3: The goal isn't just to point out flaws, but to
Speaker 3: empower the organization to fix them effectively.
Speaker 2: Right, making it useful.
Speaker 1: Now there's the often overlooked cost of security. How do
Speaker 1: you even put a price tag on a potential vulnerability
Speaker 1: or a breach that hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 2: It seems abstract.
Speaker 3: It is abstract, but you can try to quantify. One
Speaker 3: method is calculating the annualized loss expectancy or AL. The
Speaker 3: formula is basically AL equal a single loss expectancy SL
Speaker 3: times the annualized rate of occurrence.
Speaker 2: RO SLA times arka break that down.
Speaker 3: SL is how much you estimate a single incident would
Speaker 3: cost you lost revenue orcovery, cost, finds, reputation damage, all
Speaker 3: of it. AR is how many times you expect that
Speaker 3: incident to happen per year, maybe based on historical data,
Speaker 3: industry trends, threat intelligence. Multiplying them gives you the ale
Speaker 3: an estimate of how much that specific risk might cost
Speaker 3: you annually. It's definitely an educated guess, as Fenson calls it,
Speaker 3: but it helps put a financial figure on future risks,
Speaker 3: and that's incredibly helpful for justifying security investments the leadership
Speaker 3: who think in terms of dollars and cents.
Speaker 1: Okay ali, that's a useful concept. Now, when presenting these findings,
Speaker 1: say in a meeting, you stress the importance of an
Speaker 1: understandable presentation, spends and suggests the WOP time model.
Speaker 2: What's that you know?
Speaker 3: Wappytai ites is a handy acronym to structure your presentation.
Speaker 3: W is for way Why security testing important for this organization?
Speaker 3: Start with the context. A is for approach, How did
Speaker 3: you conduct the test? What was the scope? White box,
Speaker 3: black box, gray box? P is for problems? What did
Speaker 3: you actually find the key vulnerabilities? I is for impact?
Speaker 3: What do these problems mean? What's the risk to the business?
Speaker 3: Use that CIA triad. Maybe T is for things to correct?
Speaker 3: What are the specific recommendations practical steps including maybe organizational
Speaker 3: issues not just technical fixes. And the final eye is
Speaker 3: for is everything clear? Leave plenty of time for questions.
Speaker 3: Make sure the audience understands the findings and the path forward.
Speaker 2: WTI why approach, problems, impact, things to correct? Is it clear?
Speaker 2: I like that it covers all the bases exactly, and.
Speaker 3: The real challenge in that presentation is precisely that balance
Speaker 3: we talked about earlier. You need enough technical detail for
Speaker 3: the engineers in the room to understand how to fix things,
Speaker 3: but you need to keep the executive summary concise and
Speaker 3: focus on business impact for the leadership. You might lose
Speaker 3: one or two members of the audience briefly over some
Speaker 3: deep technical detail, and that's probably okay, but you absolutely
Speaker 3: cannot lose the whole room. The goal is to inform
Speaker 3: and guide action, not just overwhelm people with technical jargon.
Speaker 1: Right and speaking recommendations, Svenson makes a point about one essential,
Speaker 1: yet maybe sometimes boring recommendation almost always suggest patching.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, it sounds basic, but it's fundamental. Patching known
Speaker 3: vulnerabilities is oxen the easiest and cheapest way to keep
Speaker 3: the average hacker at base. He puts it, if systems
Speaker 3: are kept up to date free from those publicly known,
Speaker 3: often easily exploitable flaws, they become exponentially harder for the
Speaker 3: average attacker. The script kitties even many criminals to breach.
Speaker 3: It's foundational cybersecurity hygiene. Don't skip the basics.
Speaker 1: It seems so obvious, but the slammer room example showed
Speaker 1: how often it gets missed. Okay, you mentioned anecdotes. Spenson
Speaker 1: shares one about finding a password that's just memorable. Tell
Speaker 1: us about James and I love drugs.
Speaker 3: Ah. Yes, that was a classic illustration of multiple failures.
Speaker 3: The tester was looking at a payroll management system apparently
Speaker 3: called James. They found an unsecured admin debug page, which
Speaker 3: first off shouldn't have been accessible. This debug page listed
Speaker 3: all the system user names and their corresponding password hashes.
Speaker 3: Big mistake number two. Just for fun really, and to
Speaker 3: drive home the point about weak security, the tester took
Speaker 3: the password hash belonging to the system administrator, the guy
Speaker 3: who should know better, and just googled it.
Speaker 2: Googled the hash.
Speaker 3: Yep, sometimes people post cracked hashes online in forums or
Speaker 3: password lists, and bingo, Google returned a result showing the
Speaker 3: clear text password associated with that hash. The unwilling system
Speaker 3: administrator's password was I love drugs.
Speaker 1: I love drugs for the admin of a payroll system
Speaker 1: on my word exactly.
Speaker 3: It just vividly illustrates multiple critical failures. The deep bug
Speaker 3: page shouldn't have been there. Passwords shouldn't have been hashed
Speaker 3: with a weak or unsalted algorithm that allowed for easy
Speaker 3: look up, and of course the password itself was terrible.
Speaker 3: A painful but powerful lesson in basic security controls.
Speaker 2: Unforgettable though, Okay. As you start to wrap up.
Speaker 1: For those listening who might be considering a career in
Speaker 1: security testing or maybe just want to sharpen their own
Speaker 1: digital defense skills, Spenson offers some great advice. Let's quickly
Speaker 1: cover five of his ten tips to become a better
Speaker 1: security tester.
Speaker 3: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: First, learn how to program, even.
Speaker 3: A little bit hugely helpful. Even understanding a simple Python
Speaker 3: script like one that probes web servers quote printing profoundly
Speaker 3: helps you grasp how exploit code actually works, how vulnerabilities
Speaker 3: arise in code. You don't need to be a master developer,
Speaker 3: but basic coding literacy is a massive advantage. Okay.
Speaker 2: Second, learn to spot the shape that breaks the pattern?
Speaker 2: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: This goes beyond just technical flaws found by scanners. It's
Speaker 3: about developing an intuition for things that just seem off
Speaker 3: inappropriate configurations. Organizational oversights. Svenson recounts finding an employee's personal
Speaker 3: French language website running on a company server inside the
Speaker 3: corporate network during a test. A vulnerability scanner wouldn't flag
Speaker 3: that as a technical flaw, but from an organizational security perspective,
Speaker 3: that's a huge red flag. It requires looking beyond the
Speaker 3: automated tools and developing a sense for what simply doesn't
Speaker 3: belong right.
Speaker 2: Context matters. Third, tap into the noise.
Speaker 3: Stay updated constantly. The security landscape changes daily. You need
Speaker 3: to stay relentlessly updated with it. Security news, new vulnerabilities,
Speaker 3: attack techniques sites like crebsonsecurity dot com, Schneier on Security,
Speaker 3: Schneier dot com, reading blogs, following researchers on social media,
Speaker 3: attending conferences. It's crucial for staying.
Speaker 2: Current, continuous learning.
Speaker 1: Fourth, watch the movie War Games seriously huh yes.
Speaker 3: Svenson suggests it partly for historical context about hacking culture,
Speaker 3: but also, he says, for storytelling inspiration when writing your reports.
Speaker 3: A good security report, like a good movie, tells a
Speaker 3: compelling story, in this case, a story of risk and
Speaker 3: how to mitigate it. Make it engaging interesting.
Speaker 1: Take and Fifth, know that old vulnerabilities never get old, meaning.
Speaker 3: The basics still matter immensely. Default credentials like that admin
Speaker 3: password example still shockingly common years after they should have
Speaker 3: been eradicated. Unpashed systems, simple misconfigurations, these old vulnerabilities are
Speaker 3: often still the most effective attack fextures because they are
Speaker 3: so frequently overlooked. It truly is, as he says, akin
Speaker 3: to building a secure house while leaving the front door unlocked.
Speaker 3: Master the fundamentals.
Speaker 2: Great tips.
Speaker 1: Okay, and that really wraps up our deep dive into
Speaker 1: the fascinating and sometimes frankly scary world of security testing.
Speaker 1: We've journeyed from understanding the diverse motivations of hackers and
Speaker 1: the threats they pose, all the way through the meticulous
Speaker 1: process of idea identifying, exploiting, and most importantly, reporting vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: to help organizations build stronger digital defenses.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this deep dive really reinforces that security isn't a
Speaker 3: one time fix. It's not a product you buy. It's
Speaker 3: an ongoing, evolving process. It demands continuous learning, vigilance, and
Speaker 3: definitely critical thinking in the face of just ever increasing
Speaker 3: information and constantly evolving threats.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, so, as you go about your day, maybe take
Speaker 1: a moment to mul over this provocative thought. What old,
Speaker 1: seemingly harmless vulnerability might be lurking in a system you
Speaker 1: rely on every day. Maybe that router in your house,
Speaker 1: that app on your phone just waiting for someone to
Speaker 1: try those surprisingly common default credentials.
Speaker 2: Perhaps it's worth taking.
Speaker 1: A deep dive into your own digital habits and security posture.
Speaker 1: We certainly hope this exploration has encouraged continued learning and
Speaker 1: awareness in your own digital life.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on the deep dive.