Speaker 1: So I was actually just looking at my phone this morning,
Speaker 1: checking emails, you know, texting my mom, the usual routine,
Speaker 1: All right, the usual, and it hit me. We always
Speaker 1: talk about connectivity like it's this purely benevolent force. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we really think everything is smart, everything talks to everything else.
Speaker 1: But there's this flip side that we don't usually discuss
Speaker 1: until it's way too late, which is that connectivity is
Speaker 1: basically just a synonym for exposure.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, that is the reality nobody puts on the
Speaker 2: marketing brochure.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Every connection is a door, Yeah, and the more doors
Speaker 2: you have, the harder it is to make sure they're
Speaker 2: all locked. Used to be that security was just for
Speaker 2: you know, the IT guys in the basement protecting the server.
Speaker 1: Ax right, the guys with the physical keys exactly.
Speaker 2: But now if you have a log in or even
Speaker 2: just a key card to get into the building, you
Speaker 2: are part of the security.
Speaker 1: Perimeter, which is a terrifying thought, considering I sometimes completely
Speaker 1: forget my own Netflix password. Most people do, but I
Speaker 1: mean that's exactly what I were doing this deep duck.
Speaker 1: Today we are tackling cybersecurity fundamentals, and before anyone listening
Speaker 1: rolls or eyes thinking this is going to be you know,
Speaker 1: dry tech.
Speaker 2: Support manuals Pleazon't you now yet?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Hold on, we are decoding the actual mechanics of
Speaker 1: how the digital world breaks. We're pulling all our insights
Speaker 1: from the CCNP and CCIE security Core score three fifty
Speaker 1: seven to one official CIRT Guide.
Speaker 2: I know it's a bit of a mouthful of attich
Speaker 2: a massive mouthflow, but it really is the gold standard.
Speaker 2: It's the literal playbook that high level security architects use.
Speaker 2: And what's great about this source material is that it
Speaker 2: moves way past the buzzwords, right Like we hear hacker
Speaker 2: or firewall or malware on the news all the time,
Speaker 2: but we rarely stop to ask how does that actually work? Yes, like,
Speaker 2: how does a literal line of code physically steal money
Speaker 2: from a bank?
Speaker 1: And that's exactly my goal today. I want to move
Speaker 1: past the headlines and understand the actual machinery.
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: But let's start with the basics, because I think I
Speaker 1: think I've been using two terms interchangeably that are actually
Speaker 1: quite different, information security and cybersecurity. Are these just corporate
Speaker 1: synonyms or no?
Speaker 2: There's real distinction, and it matters a lot in the
Speaker 2: industry information security, or INFOSEC. That's kind of the old guard.
Speaker 2: It's strictly about the data itself. Think of it like
Speaker 2: a secret recipe in a physical safe. INFOSEC is obsessed
Speaker 2: with what we call the CIA.
Speaker 1: Triad the intelligence agency No.
Speaker 2: No, it stands for confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Okay, So
Speaker 2: is the recipe secret? That's confidentiality. Has anyone changed the
Speaker 2: ingredients without asking? That's integrity? And can the chef actually
Speaker 2: get the recipe when he needs it? That's availability.
Speaker 1: So INFOSEC is basically just locking the safe.
Speaker 2: Right, But cybersecurity is the whole factory around it. It
Speaker 2: includes infosec obviously, but it zooms way out to protect
Speaker 2: the actual operations that rely on that digitized data. So
Speaker 2: it's bigger, much bigger. It's about securing the delivery trucks,
Speaker 2: the power grid running the ovens, the third party vendors
Speaker 2: who supply flower. If your flower supplier gets hacked and
Speaker 2: sends you poisoned.
Speaker 1: Ingredients, you're safe, is totally fine, but your business is
Speaker 1: dead exactly.
Speaker 2: That is a cybersecurity problem. It's defending every single ingress
Speaker 2: and egress connection.
Speaker 1: That helps a lot actually, so, cybersecurity is about the
Speaker 1: resilience of the whole system, not just keeping a file secret. Right,
Speaker 1: But if you're trying to secure a factory that complex
Speaker 1: with thousands of employees and devices, where do you even start.
Speaker 1: Do you just start like patching holes randomly?
Speaker 2: Well, that's the wild West approach and it almost always fails.
Speaker 2: You need a map, a set of guardrails. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: that's where frameworks come in. This source material leans heavily
Speaker 2: on two big ones, NIST and ISO.
Speaker 1: I've definitely heard of NIST. That's the government one.
Speaker 2: Right now, Yeah, the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Speaker 2: It's under the US Department of Commerce.
Speaker 1: To be honest, when I hear government framework, my brain
Speaker 1: immediately goes to bureaucracy and endless red tape. Is it
Speaker 1: actually useful for a private company?
Speaker 2: Surprisingly? Yeah, it's a voluntary set of standards. But the
Speaker 2: NIST Cybersecurity Framework is incredibly practical. It breaks everything down
Speaker 2: into just five simple functions, which are identify, protect, detect, respond,
Speaker 2: and recover.
Speaker 1: Identify, Protect, detect, respond, recover.
Speaker 2: Okay, it gives everyone a common language. So if I'm
Speaker 2: a chief information security officer and I have to go
Speaker 2: talk to the border directors. I don't bore them with
Speaker 2: code then fall asleep exactly. I say, here's how we
Speaker 2: detect a threat and here's how we recover. It's a
Speaker 2: way to manage risk cost effectively without getting bogged down
Speaker 2: in the technical weeds.
Speaker 1: And what about ISO.
Speaker 2: So ISO is the international standard, specifically the ISO twenty
Speaker 2: seven thousand series.
Speaker 1: Okay, how does that differ from NIS.
Speaker 2: If NIST is the playbook you use internally to get
Speaker 2: your act together. ISO, specifically ISO twenty seven to seven
Speaker 2: zero one is the actual certification you get to prove
Speaker 2: to the rest of the world that you're secure. Oh,
Speaker 2: I see, Yeah, it's specifications for information security management systems.
Speaker 2: And then there's ISO seven zero zero two, which is
Speaker 2: more like a code of practice, but generally ISO twenty
Speaker 2: seven zero zero one is the stamp of approval you
Speaker 2: put on your website to tell clients, Hey, we actually
Speaker 2: know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we have the rulebooks down, now let's talk
Speaker 1: about what we're actually fighting against. The guide breaks this
Speaker 1: down into basically an equation risk equals threat times vulnerability.
Speaker 2: Sometimes with impact thrown in there too. Yeah, right, I.
Speaker 1: Want to drill into the difference between a threat and
Speaker 1: a vulnerability, because I feel like I use those words
Speaker 1: to mean the exact same thing in everyday conversation.
Speaker 2: Most people do think of it this way. A vulnerability
Speaker 2: is a weakness. It's an unluck window in your house.
Speaker 2: In tech, it's a flaw and a piece of software
Speaker 2: code or even a hardware design error just passive, entirely passive.
Speaker 2: It's just sitting there waiting. In the industry, we use
Speaker 2: cvees Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures as the standard ID system
Speaker 2: to track these flaws and the threat. The threat is
Speaker 2: the potential danger. It's the burglar walking down the street
Speaker 2: checking those windows. A threat is latent until it's actually realized.
Speaker 1: Okay, So a vulnerability without a threat isn't really risky.
Speaker 1: Like if you live on a desert island, you can
Speaker 1: leave your front door wide open, exactly.
Speaker 2: But in the digital world, you are never on a
Speaker 2: desert island. The threat is always there. Risk is just
Speaker 2: the probability of that threat actually exploiting that vulnerability.
Speaker 1: The source material mentioned some specific hardware vulnerabilities that sounded
Speaker 1: like straight up sci fi movie titles Specter and Meltdown.
Speaker 2: Oh, those were huge earth shattering for the industry. And
Speaker 2: they weren't software bugs. They were hardware vulnerabilities baked into
Speaker 2: the actual computer processors.
Speaker 1: Which means you can't just download a patch to fix
Speaker 1: the code. Right.
Speaker 2: Well, they made software mitigations, but the flaw was physical.
Speaker 2: They exploited something called speculative execution aculative execution.
Speaker 1: That sounds pretty intense. What does it actually mean for
Speaker 1: a CPU to do that?
Speaker 2: It's actually speed hack. Modern processors are so insanely fast
Speaker 2: that they literally try to guess what you're going to
Speaker 2: do next. Wait really, yeah, they execute instructions before they
Speaker 2: even know if they're actually needed, just to save a
Speaker 2: few fractions of a millisecond. If they guessed right, great
Speaker 2: things run faster. If they guessed wrong, they just discard
Speaker 2: the work.
Speaker 1: So the computer is trying to be psychic.
Speaker 2: It tries, but Specter and Meltdown found a way to
Speaker 2: snoop on that discarded work. They could trick the processor
Speaker 2: into speculatively reading secret memory like your passwords, and then
Speaker 2: reading the tiny physical traces left behind on the chip.
Speaker 2: That is wild. It proved that even the silicon chips
Speaker 2: themselves can be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you have the vulnerability, the chip flaw. You
Speaker 1: have the threat, the bad actor, and then the exploit
Speaker 1: is the tool they use to actually connect the two precisely.
Speaker 2: The exploit is the crowbar. It's the specific tool or
Speaker 2: technique written to take advantage of that specific weakness. And
Speaker 2: here's the really scary part. What's that You don't even
Speaker 2: have to write your own exploits anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the guide mentioned something called exploit dB. It sounded
Speaker 1: almost like an Amazon marketplace for hackers.
Speaker 2: It's a massive archive, the exploit database. Security researchers actually
Speaker 2: post exploits there to help companies see how the flaws
Speaker 2: work so they can fix them.
Speaker 1: But I'm guessing bad actors use them too.
Speaker 2: Oh constantly. You can literally pull up a command line
Speaker 2: tool called search bloit and just search the database like
Speaker 2: show me an exploit for Windows ten boom, here's the
Speaker 2: exact code you need.
Speaker 1: So the tools are completely democratized at this point, which
Speaker 1: brings us perfectly to the who the adversaries themselves, because
Speaker 1: I think pop culture still has this stubborn image of
Speaker 1: the thread actor, as you know, a lone wolf and
Speaker 1: a hoodie drinking a monster energy drink and a dark basement.
Speaker 2: And I mean that guy does exist. We call them
Speaker 2: script kitties.
Speaker 1: Script kitties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're relatively unskilled individuals who just download those existing
Speaker 2: tools from places like exploit dB and fire them off
Speaker 2: without really understanding how the underlying code works.
Speaker 1: So they're dangerous, but maybe not the main problem.
Speaker 2: They're annoying and they cause dan image, but they aren't
Speaker 2: the biggest danger. The biggest danger is organized crime.
Speaker 1: Like digital mafias exactly.
Speaker 2: This is big, big business. They run actual call centers,
Speaker 2: they have HR departments, they have profit sharing models. They
Speaker 2: are motivated purely by money.
Speaker 1: Wow. And then there are nation states right.
Speaker 2: Right governments, and they are usually looking for a quick
Speaker 2: buck from stolen credit cards. They want intellectual property, state secrets,
Speaker 2: or they want to plant malware in critical infrastructure for
Speaker 2: future espionage or defense.
Speaker 1: Their tools must be on a whole other level.
Speaker 2: Custom built, highly sophisticated, and then kind of occupying a
Speaker 2: weird middle ground between all these, you have activists and
Speaker 2: terrorist groups.
Speaker 1: Activists are they the ones who view themselves as kind
Speaker 1: of digital robin hoods.
Speaker 2: In their own minds. Maybe they're motivated by political or
Speaker 2: social causes. They want to embarrass a target or leak
Speaker 2: data to make a point. And then terrorist groups similarly
Speaker 2: are motivated by ideology, usually aiming for disruption and fear.
Speaker 1: So we know who they are and we know they
Speaker 1: have exploits ready to go. Let's talk about their weapon
Speaker 1: of choice, malware, the Fund's duck. The guide distinguishes between viruses, worms,
Speaker 1: and trojans, and I have to admit I just call
Speaker 1: literally everything a virus. What is the actual mechanical difference?
Speaker 2: It mostly comes down to how they spread and operate.
Speaker 2: A virus needs a host.
Speaker 1: File like a word document exactly.
Speaker 2: It attaches itself to a spreadsheet or a document. But crucially,
Speaker 2: a virus needs human interaction to work. You have to
Speaker 2: actively double click the file to trigger the payload.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if I don't click the attachment, the virus just.
Speaker 2: Sleeps, right. It relies on you making a mistake. A worm,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, is entirely different. It's kind of
Speaker 2: the stuff of it nightmares because it does not need
Speaker 2: human help.
Speaker 1: It just moves on its own.
Speaker 2: Yes, Once a worm breaches a network, it replicates itself
Speaker 2: and spreads to other vulnerable computers automatically. It just crawls
Speaker 2: across the network connections. You be fast asleep and a
Speaker 2: worm is systematically infecting.
Speaker 1: Your entire That is genuinely terrifying. And the trojan, like
Speaker 1: the trojan horse, exactly.
Speaker 2: Like the myth, it relies entirely on the uninformed user deception.
Speaker 2: It masquerades is something you actually want, a free game,
Speaker 2: a PDF invoice, a software.
Speaker 1: Update, so you willingly install it.
Speaker 2: You invite it right through the front door, but inside
Speaker 2: it carries a malicious payload. The source specifically highlights rats
Speaker 2: or remote access trojans.
Speaker 1: That sounds extremely bad.
Speaker 2: It's the worst case scenario for a user. Arat like
Speaker 2: the famous poison ivy toolkit, for example, gives the attacker
Speaker 2: total control over your machine.
Speaker 1: Define total control.
Speaker 2: It's like they are sitting in your computer chair. They
Speaker 2: can turn on your webcam, they can record your keystrokes,
Speaker 2: browse your files, move your mouse. You've essentially become a puppet.
Speaker 1: There was a specific physical delivery method mentioned for these
Speaker 1: prosians that really stuck with me. The poison Apple. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds like a fairy tale, but it's actually just
Speaker 1: a USB drive.
Speaker 2: It's a classic, incredibly effective social engineering attack. An attacker
Speaker 2: just drops an infected USB drive somewhere obvious, a company
Speaker 2: parking a lot, cafeteria.
Speaker 1: And they make it look tempting exactly.
Speaker 2: Uh, maybe they label it executive Salaries twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: or they put it on a physical keychain with a
Speaker 2: cute photo of a puppy attached to it.
Speaker 1: They just wait, and human curiosity becomes the vulnerability.
Speaker 2: The strongest vulnerability we have. An employee picks it up,
Speaker 2: their curiosity gets the better of them, and they plug
Speaker 2: it into their work laptop just to see what's on it.
Speaker 1: And that's it.
Speaker 2: The moment they plug it in, the script auto runs,
Speaker 2: the RT installs, and the attacker is inside the network.
Speaker 2: No million dollar firewall can stop a curious employee from
Speaker 2: plugging in a piece of plastic.
Speaker 1: That is so simple and so devious. But okay, that's
Speaker 1: how they get in. Once they're inside, what are they doing,
Speaker 1: because lately it feels like the answer in the news
Speaker 1: is almost always ransomware.
Speaker 2: Ransomware has completely upended the entire economy of cybercrime. It
Speaker 2: used to be all about quietly stealing data to sell
Speaker 2: it on the black market. Now it's about holding the
Speaker 2: data hostage in plain sight.
Speaker 1: Because they encrypt your files right right.
Speaker 2: They scramble all your documents so you can't read them,
Speaker 2: and then they demand a massive payment for the digital
Speaker 2: decryption key.
Speaker 1: But the guide talked about a specific evolution in ransomware
Speaker 1: that I found really disturbing us. Ransomware as a service.
Speaker 2: This is that industrialization of prime I mentioned earlier. In
Speaker 2: the old days, a hacker had to be somewhat of
Speaker 2: a genius. They had to write the complex encryption code,
Speaker 2: build a secure payment portal in the dark web, manage
Speaker 2: the decryption keys. It was a lot of work, it was.
Speaker 2: But now you have highly skilled developers who build the ransomware,
Speaker 2: groups like the ones behind wanacry CONTI your dark side, right.
Speaker 2: But they don't actually use the tools themselves. They rent
Speaker 2: them out.
Speaker 1: So it's literally a franchise model, like opening a fast
Speaker 1: food restaurant.
Speaker 2: It's exactly like that. You the criminal affiliate sign up,
Speaker 2: You get a sleek dashboard, you get a two four
Speaker 2: seven tech support hotline, and a built in payment processing system.
Speaker 1: Tech support for criminals unbelievable.
Speaker 2: You conduct the attack, the victim pays the ransom, and
Speaker 2: the developer software automatically takes a twenty percent commission off
Speaker 2: the top before routing the restu.
Speaker 1: Which means any random person with bad intentions and a
Speaker 1: little bit of cryptocurrency can become a high level thread actor.
Speaker 2: It lowers the barrier to entry to almost zero. That's
Speaker 2: exactly why we're seeing such a massive, sustained spike in
Speaker 2: attacks on targets like hospitals and school districts. It's not
Speaker 2: usually masterminds, it's unskilled affiliates using rented military grade tools.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pivot slightly. Let's say the attacker isn't using ransomware.
Speaker 1: Say they want to quietly steal secrets, maybe a nation
Speaker 1: state trying to steal blueprints for a new jet engine. Okay,
Speaker 1: they're inside the network, how do they actually get that
Speaker 1: massive amount of data out without the company's security team noticing?
Speaker 2: The guide calls this exfiltration, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, xfiltration, And this is where we get into real
Speaker 1: high level spycraft. If you just tried to eat email
Speaker 1: a terabyte of proprietary data to evildash haacker dot com,
Speaker 1: the corporate firewalls could catch it and block it immediately, obviously,
Speaker 1: so they use a technique called tunneling. They hide the
Speaker 1: stolen data inside normal traffic that the network explicitly allows wait.
Speaker 2: Allowed traffic mean like just regular web browsing exactly. Take DNS,
Speaker 2: for example, the domain name system. Every single time you
Speaker 2: type Google dot com into your browser, your computer sends
Speaker 2: a tiny request out to a DNS server, asking, Hey,
Speaker 2: what is the IP address for Google dot com?
Speaker 1: Right, it's the Internet's phone book.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and the server replies, no, company blocks DNS requests
Speaker 2: because if you block DNS, the Internet effectively stops working
Speaker 2: for your whole company.
Speaker 1: Okay, but how do you hide a massive jet engine
Speaker 1: blueprint inside a tiny phone book request?
Speaker 2: You chop the blueprint up into tiny, tiny pieces, then
Speaker 2: you encode those pieces into the web address itself. Oh wow,
Speaker 2: So the malware on the infected computer sends a DNS
Speaker 2: request for something like secret dash part dash one dot
Speaker 2: evildash hacker dot com.
Speaker 1: Ah. I see, so the company's DNAs server just thinks
Speaker 1: it's looking up a normal website, right.
Speaker 2: It dutifully forwards the request out to the Internet. But
Speaker 2: the attacker actually owns the domain evildashacker dot com. So
Speaker 2: when that request hits their server, they just love that
Speaker 2: first part secret part one and send back a fake
Speaker 2: IP address.
Speaker 1: And then the malware sends Part two.
Speaker 2: Secret Part two dot evildashacker dot com. They do this
Speaker 2: thousands and thousands of times.
Speaker 1: It's like smuggling a massive dictionary out of a prison
Speaker 1: by asking the guard to mail one single letter of
Speaker 1: a word every day.
Speaker 2: That is a perfect analogy to the guard the firewall.
Speaker 2: It just looks like someone really likes looking up long,
Speaker 2: weirdly named websites. But effectively you are tunneling gigabytes of
Speaker 2: data right through the front door.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. And the guide mentioned tools for this too, right,
Speaker 1: like iodine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, iodine is a popular tool for DNS tunneling and
Speaker 2: for HTTP or TCP tunneling. Attackers use tools like netcap.
Speaker 1: So if the malware is that sneaky, how does the
Speaker 1: blue team, the defenders, how do they catch this stuff?
Speaker 1: How do you even figure out what a piece of
Speaker 1: malwaar is programmed to do?
Speaker 2: You have to capture a sample of it and dissect it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: We generally use two main methods. First is static.
Speaker 1: Analysis, static meaning it's not moving.
Speaker 2: It's like an autopsy. You don't actually run the code.
Speaker 2: You use decompilation tools like ida pro or Gidra, which
Speaker 2: fun fact, was actually developed and released by the NSA.
Speaker 1: Really, the NSA gave away a hacking.
Speaker 2: Tool, well, reverse engineering tool. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You use it to look at the DNA of the
Speaker 2: virus to see exactly what is programmed to do, looking
Speaker 2: for recognizable functions or.
Speaker 1: Strings of text, and what if the code is scrambled
Speaker 1: or you can't tell just by looking at it.
Speaker 2: Then you move to dynamic analysis. You put the malware
Speaker 2: in a sandbox or a secure virtual machine. It's basically
Speaker 2: a fake isolated computer environment that looks real. Then you
Speaker 2: actually execute the virus and just watch what.
Speaker 1: Happens, like putting it in an interrogation room. Does it
Speaker 1: try to delete files? Does it try to phone home?
Speaker 2: Exactly? But malware authors are smart, they know all about sandboxes,
Speaker 2: so modern malware often has anti sandbox feed is built
Speaker 2: right in.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? It knows it's being watched.
Speaker 2: It wakes up and does a quick environment check. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it asks, is my hard drive remarkably small? Is the
Speaker 2: user's mouse moving in a perfectly straight line instead of naturally?
Speaker 2: Does my network card have a generic virtual sounding MSc address?
Speaker 1: It literally checks to see if it's trapped in the matrix.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it's doing, and if it detects that
Speaker 2: it's in a virtual machine, it just plays dead. It
Speaker 2: does absolutely nothing malicious. The analyst looks at it and says, oh,
Speaker 2: this is totally safe and lets it through.
Speaker 1: And then when it gets onto a real employee laptop,
Speaker 1: it detonates. Man, that is devious. Okay, we've covered the network,
Speaker 1: the hardware, and the malware, but we have to talk
Speaker 1: about the web. We basically live in our browsers. Now,
Speaker 1: what are the big technical threats there? Because the guide
Speaker 1: went really deep into SEQL injections.
Speaker 2: Golah. Yeah, this is the absolute granddaddy of web vulnerabilities.
Speaker 2: It targets the database sitting behind the website.
Speaker 1: The guide used the snow example, which I found really helpful.
Speaker 1: But let's try to visualize for the listener. Say you're
Speaker 1: at a normal login screen. It asks for a username.
Speaker 2: Right, Normally, you'd type in a name like Smith. The
Speaker 2: website takes that name and talks to its database using
Speaker 2: a language called SQL. It basically says select the user
Speaker 2: record where the name equals smith.
Speaker 1: But in an injection attack, you don't type a normal name, No.
Speaker 2: You type actual database commands into the user name box.
Speaker 2: This specific example in the book is typing snow, then
Speaker 2: an apostrophe, then O R one equals one.
Speaker 1: Walk me through why that specific string breaks things snow
Speaker 1: or R one with one.
Speaker 2: The apostrophe tricks the database into thinking the name input
Speaker 2: is finished. Then comes the injected command or R one
Speaker 2: equals one. In basic logic, the number one always equals
Speaker 2: the number one. That statement is universally true. Okay, so
Speaker 2: you fundamentally changed the core question. The database is asking itself.
Speaker 1: Instead of asking, fine, user snow, it's now asking.
Speaker 2: What it asked The database find the user snow or
Speaker 2: return any record where one equals one. Since one always
Speaker 2: equals one, the database evaluates that is true for every
Speaker 2: single entry it has. Oh no, yep, it dumps the
Speaker 2: entire database passwords, credit cards, emails, everything, right under the screen.
Speaker 2: This is what we call an inband SQL injection, where
Speaker 2: you see the results directly. There's also blind sickly, where
Speaker 2: you have to guess based on how the server behaves.
Speaker 2: But the concept is the same, and all.
Speaker 1: That happens just because the website developers didn't configure the
Speaker 1: log inbox to reject special characters exactly.
Speaker 2: It's a massive failure of what we call input sanitization.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that attacks the database directly. What about XSS
Speaker 1: cross sit scripting?
Speaker 2: So XSS flips the script. It attacks the user, not
Speaker 2: the server. The website server is perfectly fine, but the
Speaker 2: attacker uses the website as a delivery mechanism to attack
Speaker 2: the visitors.
Speaker 1: How does that work in practice?
Speaker 2: Imagine a forum or a blog with a comment section.
Speaker 2: If the website is vulnerable to XSS, I can post
Speaker 2: a comment that isn't just regular text, it's actually a
Speaker 2: hidden the line of jagascript code. That specific type is
Speaker 2: called stored X or persistent EXSS.
Speaker 1: So I post my malicious comment and the website just
Speaker 1: saves it to the page.
Speaker 2: It saves it. It thinks it's just a normal comment.
Speaker 2: Now you come along later to read the blog. Your
Speaker 2: browser downloads all the comments to display them on your screen.
Speaker 2: But when it hits my comment, it doesn't just display text.
Speaker 2: Your browser actually executes my JavaScript code.
Speaker 1: And what could that code do to me?
Speaker 2: Almost anything your browser can do the most common goal
Speaker 2: is stealing your session cookies, which are basically your temporary
Speaker 2: digital ID cards, and quietly sending them back to me.
Speaker 2: Now I can log into that site as you bypassing
Speaker 2: your password completely. There's also reflected XSS, where the script
Speaker 2: comes from a militia of link you click, like in
Speaker 2: a fishing email. But stored XSS is terrifying because it's
Speaker 2: like planting a landmine on a public road. Everyone who
Speaker 2: visits the page gets hit.
Speaker 1: And finally, there was CSRF cross site request forgery. The
Speaker 1: guide also called this session writing.
Speaker 2: This one is incredibly sneaky because it weaponizes the trust
Speaker 2: a website has in your browser. Let's say you log
Speaker 2: in to your banking website, you check your balance, and
Speaker 2: you just leave the tab open in the background.
Speaker 1: Okay, totally normal behavior.
Speaker 2: Then in a new tab you click a completely different
Speaker 2: link I sent you in an email.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now I'm on your malicious site. In tab two.
Speaker 2: That malicious site has a hidden automatic script that essentially
Speaker 2: shouts over to your browser, Hey tell the bank and
Speaker 2: the other tab to transfer one thousand dollars to account
Speaker 2: x right now.
Speaker 1: But wait, why would the bank actually listen to a
Speaker 1: random command like that?
Speaker 2: Because the request is technically coming from your browser and
Speaker 2: you are currently logged in, the bank sees your valid
Speaker 2: session cookie attached to the request and just assumes that
Speaker 2: you pushed a button to make that transfer.
Speaker 1: So I forged your request without even knowing I did it.
Speaker 2: Exactly you were writing on your own valid session.
Speaker 1: That makes the logout buttons seem so much more critical
Speaker 1: than I ever realized.
Speaker 2: It really really is. Closing the tab isn't always enough.
Speaker 2: You need to kill the session.
Speaker 1: We have covered a truly massive amount of ground today,
Speaker 1: from the high level governance stuff like NIST and ISO,
Speaker 1: all the way down to the gritty details of SQL
Speaker 1: code tunneling and dropping poisoned USB drives and parking lots.
Speaker 2: It's a vast ecosystem.
Speaker 1: It is. If we zoom out for a second, what
Speaker 1: does the core takeaway from all this material?
Speaker 2: The big picture is that security isn't a wall you
Speaker 2: build once and just walk away from. It's a living,
Speaker 2: breathing operation because the attackers are constantly innovating. Look at
Speaker 2: ransomware as a service. They are quite literally turning cybercrime
Speaker 2: into a scalable franchise model.
Speaker 1: That was definitely the most striking part for me, the
Speaker 1: democratization of the threat. It's not just nation state superspies anymore.
Speaker 1: It's literally anyone who can afford to rent the software exactly.
Speaker 2: And because the threat is democratized, the defense has to
Speaker 2: be democratized too. It can't just fall in the IT
Speaker 2: department's shoulders. It has to be the entry level employee
Speaker 2: who knows not to plug in that random USB drive.
Speaker 2: It has to be the web developer who double checks
Speaker 2: that they sanitize the log inbox.
Speaker 1: Input, the average user who actually clicks log out on
Speaker 1: their bank account.
Speaker 2: Please always log out of your bank account.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do that immediately after we finish recording,
Speaker 1: but I want to leave everyone listening with a thought
Speaker 1: based on what we just discuss. If we're entering an
Speaker 1: era where sophisticated, military grade ransomware is sold as a
Speaker 1: service to unskilled criminals, are we reaching a point where
Speaker 1: anyone can be a high level threat actor? And if so,
Speaker 1: what does that mean for our own personal digital security
Speaker 1: moving forward.
Speaker 2: It's a very sobering question to think about.
Speaker 1: It really is. Thank you so much for guiding us
Speaker 1: through this digital mindfield today.
Speaker 2: My pleasure stay safe out there.
Speaker 1: And thank you for listening. Hopefully you are looking at
Speaker 1: your phone a little differently right now, not just as
Speaker 1: a magic connection machine, but as something that is actively
Speaker 1: worth protecting until next time, keep your firewalls up and
Speaker 1: your curiosity open. This has been the deep dive