In 1993, sat in a friend’s bedroom as a spotty teen, I downloaded a file – how to hack.
This was the first time I had read anything about hackers. It intrigued me. I understood there were ways to program computers to make the computer games that I loved playing, and do typing for offices… But hacking. Breaking into a computer. That was new. What was it all about?
The file was short and didn’t go into technical details – not that I would have understood. It explained there were 3 steps needed to hack a company.
I had a new superpower, a new way of looking at things. In the early 90s, homes didn’t have internet connections, and this information wasn’t widely known. At the time, I had the morals of a 13-year-old boy, so what could I do with this newfound knowledge?
Sat in the computer lab at school it was clear. How could I get into everyone else’s account? They had passwords… but how could I get their passwords? Could I guess them?
Luckily a teacher intervened before I started a life of cybercrime. It was great to learn how computer security worked, but here were the ground rules. We made a deal. I couldn’t hack into other student’s accounts. I could write a programme to guess passwords, but not find out what the ‘correct’ answers were.
I spent months slowly working through a well-thumbed book on how to write programmes in BASIC. Many lunch breaks were spent working out how to write a simple password guesser. Then the day came… using a list of words and names I had gathered together, my teacher ran the final test.
My naïve little programme correctly guessed 3 in every 10 passwords on the school network. Hacking a computer wasn’t that hard.
What is most surprising, looking back 27 years later is nothing has changed. Searching for how to hack will get you the same basic information. The words have changed a little (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_chain#The_cyber_kill_chain) as cyber security has become militarised, but the outline is the same.
Following the 3 steps, hackers can break-in.
Fresh Security provides a hacker’s view of your organisation.
If you can answer - What can you find out about my company?
If you know - Which weaknesses need fixing?
If you can tell - Who are the highly visible people?
Fresh Security helps you answer all three questions.
The best way to protect yourself and your business from malicious actors is to understand their modus operandi...
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