a . Identify one step in the attack on HBGary Federal that exploited an unpatche

Question

a. Identify one step in the attack on HBGary Federal that exploited an unpatched manufacturer vulnerability in commonly used software. (Hint: I believe there is only one exploit in the entire attack that fits this category, this will likely be the hardest one to find).

b. Identify one step in the attack that exploited a local vulnerability. This is the most common type of vulnerability exploited in the attack.

c. Identify one step in the attack that used social engineering.

Question 2. (10 points) Is the HGBary Federal attack best categorized as a “targeted” or “opportunistic” attack, and most importantly, why?

Question 3. (30 points) On page 70, the textbook suggests characterizing attacks according to the CIA (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) triad. The attack on HBGary Federal had elements of all three types of attacks.

a. What part of the attack on HBGary Federal can be considered as a Confidentiality attack, and why?

b. What part of the attack on HBGary Federal can be considered as an Integrity attack, and why?

c. What part of the attack on HBGary Federal can be considered as an Availability attack, and why?

Question 4. (30 points) Like most cyberattacks, the attack on HBGary Federal did not consist of one single act, but a series of actions linked together. Here's a list of eight actions that were taken by Anonymous during the attack.

A. Anonymous defaces the HBGary Federal website

B. Anonymous deletes backups and research data

C. Anonymous gains administrator access to HBGary's Google App's email system

D. Anonymous gains root access to a Linux computer, support.hbgary.com

E. Anonymous retrieves usernames, email addresses and hashed passwords of administrators for the HBGary Federal webserver

F. Anonymous takes over Aaron Barr's twitter account

G. Anonymous tricks an administrator into giving them root access to the rootkit.com webserver

H. Anonymous is able to use hashed passwords to find plaintext passwords belonging to Aaron Barr and Ted Vera

Some of these events are dependent upon earlier events, for instance, Anonymous could not take over Aaron Barr's twitter account without having already found his plaintext password. The purpose of these next three questions is to identify other dependencies among these events.

a. Among these eight actions, there is one that started everything else for anonymous, one action that all of the others were dependent upon. Which action is this, and why?

b. Actions C and G are closely related, and one of them had to have occurred before the other. Which one occurred first, and why?

c. Actions B and D are closely related, and one of them had to have occurred before the other. Which one occurred first, and why?

Explanation / Answer

1.a) HBGary Federal’s website was running a Content Management System which was created for the company. the hbgaryfederal.com CMS stores its data in an SQL database, retrieving data from that database with suitable queries. The hbgaryfederal.com Content Management System was vulnerable to a type of attack called SQL injection. SQL injection is possible when the code that deals with parameters is faulty. Many applications join the parameters from the Web front-end with hard-coded queries, then pass the whole concatenated lot to the database. Often, they do this without verifying the authenticity of those parameters. THis makes the system vulnerable to an SQL attack. Lack of protection against SQL injection allowed attackers to retrieve information directly from the back-end database including  passwords of users, that had access to the administration web interface.

1.b) Two HBGary Federal employees: the CEO and teh COO used passwords that were very simple and weak; each was just six lower case letters and two numbers which were very easy for the hackers to crack. Thus the local vulnerability was that the passwords weren't strong enough and were easily cracked.

1.c) After the attackers cracked the password, they tried it on all other applications/websites. it turned out that the same weak password was being used for e-mail, Twitter and Linkedin. Since everyone depend on emails for communication, the hackers were able to read the CEO's email and even send emails portraiting themselves as the CEO. From the emails, they carefully checked the individuals whom the CEO used to send the mails to. The attackers used social engineering to attack a system administrator of another system(rootkit.com) giving them complete access to the webservers of rootkit.com.

2. This was an oppurtunistic attack because hackers knew that the CMS is vulnerable to SQL injections, and after making this assessment, they made the decision to attack the system.

3.a) The hackers were able to retrieve usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords of users that had access to the administration web interface. In other words, they extracted information on HBGary’s systems and their user's data.

b.) The hackers gained complete access to the HBGary's website and wrote their own message, and corrupted all the data. The hackers also threatened to wipe all the sensitive financial information from the network.

c.) The availability attack happened during the DDoS attack which made the system unavailable by overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources.

4.a) The action that started everything else for anonymous was gaining root access to the linux computer by using social engineering. Once they gained root access, they were able to eventually get access to all the other areas of HBGary and also hacked Barr’s Twitter account.

b.) G was done first to gain root access to the webserver so that they could hack into the HBGary's Google App’s email system using the root access. Thus G was done before C

c.)D was done first because they need to get the root access first to backup and delete the research data. Hence D came before B.

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