by D S Kane
Password managers. Using the same, crummy password for all of your logins—from your bank account, to Seamless, to your Tinder profile—is a bad idea. All a hacker needs to do is get access to one account to break into them all. But memorizing a unique string of characters for every platform is daunting. Enter the password manager: software that keeps track of your various passwords for you, and can even auto-generate super complicated and long passwords for you. All you need to remember is your master password to log into the manager and access all your many different logins.
Penetration testing or pentesting. If you set up a security system for your home, or your office, or your factory, you’d want to be sure it was safe from attackers, right? One way to test a system’s security is to employ people—pentesters—to hack it purposely in order to identify weak points. Pentesting is related to red teaming, although it may be done in a more structured, less aggressive way.
PGP. “Pretty Good Privacy” is a method of encrypting data, generally emails, so that anyone intercepting them will only see garbled text. PGP uses asymmetric cryptography, which means that the person sending a message uses a “public” encryption key to scramble it, and the recipient uses a secret “private” key to decode it. Despite being more than two decades old, PGP is still a formidable method of encryption, although it can be notoriously difficult to use in practice, even for experienced users.
Phishing. Phishing is really more of a form of social engineering than hacking or cracking. In a phishing scheme, an attacker typically reaches out to a victim in order to extract specific information that can be used in a later attack. That may mean posing as customer support from Google, Facebook, or the victim’s cellphone carrier, for example, and asking the victim to click on a malicious link—or simply asking the victim to send back information, such as a password, in an email. Attackers usually blast out phishing attempts by the thousands, but sometimes employ more targeted attacks, known as spearphishing (see below).
Plaintext. Exactly what it sounds like—text that has not been garbled with encryption. This definition would be considered plaintext. You may also hear plaintext being referred to as “cleartext,” since it refers to text that is being kept out in the open, or “in the clear.” Companies with very poor security may store user passwords in plaintext, even if the folder they’re in is encrypted, just waiting for a hacker to steal.
Pwned. Pwned (pronounced ‘pawned’) is computer nerd jargon (or “leetspeak”) for the verb “own.” In the video game world, a player that beat another player can say that he pwned him. Among hackers, the term has a similar meaning, only instead of beating someone in a game, a hacker that has gained access to another user’s computer can say that he pwned him. For example, the website “Have I Been Pwned?” will tell you if your online accounts have been compromised in the past.
RAT. RAT stands for Remote Access Tool or Remote Access Trojan. RATs are really scary when used as malware. An attacker who successfully installs a RAT on your computer can gain full control of your machine. There is also a legitimate business in RATs for people who want to access their office computer from home, and so on. The worst part about RATs? Many malicious ones are available in the internet’s underground for sale or even for free, so attackers can be pretty unskilled and still use this sophisticated tool.
Ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malware that locks your computer and won’t let you access your files. You’ll see a message that tells you how much the ransom is and where to send payment, usually requested in bitcoin, in order to get your files back. This is a good racket for hackers, which is why many consider it now an “epidemic,” as people typically are willing to pay a few hundred bucks in order to recover their machine. It’s not just individuals, either. In early 2016, the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in Los Angeles paid around $17,000 after being hit by a ransomware attack.
Rainbow table. A rainbow table is a complex technique that allows hackers to simplify the process of guessing what passwords hide behind a “hash” (see above).
Red team. To ensure the security of their computer systems and to suss out any unknown vulnerabilities, companies may hire hackers who organize into a “red team” in order to run oppositional attacks against the system and attempt to completely take it over. In these cases, being hacked is a good thing because organizations may fix vulnerabilities before someone who’s not on their payroll does. Red teaming is a general concept that is employed across many sectors, including military strategy.
Root. In most computers, “root” is the common name given to the most fundamental (and thus most powerful) level of access in the system, or is the name for the account that has those privileges. That means the “root” can install applications, and delete and create files. If a hacker “gains root,” they can do whatever they want on the computer or system they compromised. This is the holy grail of hacking.
Rootkit. A rootkit is a particular type of malware that lives deep in your system and is activated each time you boot it up, even before your operating system starts. This makes rootkits hard to detect, persistent, and able to capture practically all data on the infected computer.
Salting. When protecting passwords or text, “hashing” (see above) is a fundamental process that turns the plaintext into garbled text. To make hashing even more effective, companies or individuals can add an extra series of random bytes, known as a “salt,” to the password before the hashing process. This adds an extra layer of protection.
Script kiddies. This is a derisive term for someone who has a little bit of computer savvy and who’s only able to use off-the-shelf software to do things like knock websites offline or sniff passwords over an unprotected WiFi access point. This is basically a term to discredit someone who claims to be a skilled hacker.
Shodan. It’s been called “hacker’s Google,” and a “terrifying” search engine. Think of it as a Google, but for connected devices rather than websites. Using Shodan you can find unprotected webcams, baby monitors, printers, medical devices, gas pumps, and even wind turbines. While that’s sounds terrifying, Shodan’s value is precisely that it helps researchers find these devices and alert their owners so they can secure them.
Signature. Another function of PGP, besides encrypting messages, is the ability to “sign” messages with your secret encryption key. Since this key is only known to one person and is stored on their own computer and nowhere else, cryptographic signatures are supposed to verify that the person who you think you’re talking to actually is that person. This is a good way to prove that you really are who you claim to be on the internet.
Side channel attack. Your computer’s hardware is always emitting a steady stream of barely perceptible electrical signals. A side-channel attack seeks to identify patterns in these signals in order to find out what kind of computations the machine is doing. For example, a hacker “listening in” to your hard drive whirring away while generating a secret encryption key may be able to reconstruct that key, effectively stealing it, without your knowledge.
Sniffing. Sniffing is a way of intercepting data sent over a network without being detected, using special sniffer software. Once the data is collected, a hacker can sift through it to get useful information, like passwords. It’s considered a particularly dangerous hack because it’s hard to detect and can be performed from inside or outside a network.
Social engineering. Not all hacks are carried out by staring at a Matrix-like screen of green text. Sometimes, gaining entry to a secure system is as easy as placing a phone call or sending an email and pretending to be somebody else—namely, somebody who regularly has access to said system but forgot their password that day. Phishing (see above) attacks include aspects of social engineering, because they involve convincing somebody of an email sender’s legitimacy before anything else.
Spearphishing. Phishing and spearphishing are often used interchangeably, but the latter is a more tailored, targeted form of phishing (see above), where hackers try to tr
ick victims into clicking on malicious links or attachments pretending to be a close acquaintance, rather than a more generic sender, such as a social network or corporation. When done well, spearphishing can be extremely effective and powerful. As a noted security expert says, “give a man a 0day and he’ll have access for a day, teach a man to phish and he’ll have access for life.”
Spoofing. Hackers can trick people into falling for a phishing attack (see above) by forging their email address, for example, making it look like the address of someone the target knows. That’s spoofing. It can also be used in telephone scams, or to create a fake website address.
Spyware. A specific type of malware of malicious software designed to spy, monitor, and potentially steal data from the target.
State actor. State actors are hackers or groups of hackers who are backed by a government, which may be the United States, Russia, or China. These hackers are often the most formidable, since they have the virtually unlimited legal and financial resources of a nation-state to back them up. Think, for example, of the NSA. Sometimes, however, state actors can also be a group of hackers who receive tacit (or at least hidden from the public) support from their governments, such as the Syrian Electronic Army.
Threat model. Imagine a game of chess. It’s your turn and you’re thinking about all the possible moves your opponent could make, as many turns ahead as you can. Have you left your queen unprotected? Is your king being worked into a corner checkmate? That kind of thinking is what security researchers do when designing a threat model. It’s a catch-all term used to describe the capabilities of the enemy you want to guard against, and your own vulnerabilities. Are you an activist attempting to guard against a state-sponsored hacking team? Your threat model better be pretty robust. Just shoring up the network at your log cabin in the middle of nowhere? Maybe not as much cause to worry.
Token. A small physical device that allows its owner to log in or authenticate into a service. Tokens serve as an extra layer of security on top of a password, for example. The idea is that even if the password or key gets stolen, the hacker would need the actual physical token to abuse it.
Tor. Tor is short for The Onion Router. Originally developed by the United States Naval Research Laboratory, it’s now used by bad guys (hackers, pedophiles) and good guys (activists, journalists) to anonymize their activities online. The basic idea is that there is a network of computers around the world—some operated by universities, some by individuals, some by the government—that will route your traffic in byzantine ways in order to disguise your true location. The Tor network is this collection of volunteer-run computers. The Tor Project is the nonprofit that maintains the Tor software. The Tor browser is the free piece of software that lets you use Tor. Tor hidden services are websites that can be accessed only through Tor.
Tails. Tails stands for The Amnesic Incognito Live System. If you’re really, really serious about digital security, this is the operating system endorsed by Edward Snowden. Tails is an amnesic system, which means your computer remembers nothing; it’s like a fresh machine every time you boot up. The software is free and open source. While it’s well-regarded, security flaws have been found.
Verification (dump). The process by which reporters and security researchers go through hacked data and make sure it’s legitimate. This process is important to make sure the data is authentic, and the claims of anonymous hackers are true, and not just an attempt to get some notoriety or make some money scamming people on the Dark Web.
Virus. A computer virus is a type of malware that typically is embedded and hidden in a program or file. Unlike a worm (see below), it needs human action to spread (such as a human forwarding a virus-infected attachment, or downloading a malicious program.) Viruses can infect computers and steal data, delete data, encrypt it, or mess with it in just about any other way.
VPN. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network. VPNs use encryption to create a private and secure channel to connect to the internet when you’re on a network you don’t trust (say a Starbucks, or an AirBnB WiFi). Think of a VPN as a tunnel from you to your destination, dug under the regular internet. VPNs allow employees to connect to their employer’s network remotely, and also help regular people protect their connection. VPNs also allow users to bounce off servers in other parts of the world, allowing them to look like they’re connecting from there. This gives them the chance to circumvent censorship, such as China’s Great Firewall, or view Netflix’s US offerings while in Canada. There are endless VPNs, making it almost impossible to decide which ones are the best.
VPN, undetectable or anonymous. Virtual Private Network. A VPN in and of itself is not necessarily anonymous. To be anonymous, it requires a set of architectural parameters and constant shifting of network nodes withing the constraints of those parameters. The entire VPN must continuously deconstruct and reconstruct itself with new nodes. Also, the access node has to be part of that activity to make it appear that the access node is a different machine each time—as it generates a new IP address and corresponding false physical location GPS data every so many seconds or minutes.
Vuln. Abbreviation for “vulnerability.” Another way to refer to bugs or software flaws that can be exploited by hackers.
Warez. Pronounced like the contraction for “where is” (where’s), warez refers to pirated software that’s typically distributed via technologies like BitTorrent and Usenet. Warez is sometimes laden with malware, taking advantage of people’s desire for free software.
WiFi. A term used to indicate a wireless network.
White hat. A white-hat hacker is someone who hacks with the goal of fixing and protecting systems. As opposed to black-hat hackers (see above), instead of taking advantage of their hacks or the bugs they find to make money illegally, they alert the companies and even help them fix the problem.
Worm. A specific type of malware that propagates and replicates itself automatically, spreading from computer to computer. The internet’s history is littered with worms, from the Morris worm, the first of its kind, and the famous Samy worm, which infected more than a million people on MySpace.
Zero-day. A zero-day or “0day” is a bug that’s unknown to the software vendor, or at least it is not patched yet. The name comes from the notion that there have been zero days between the discovery of the bug or flaw and the first attack taking advantage of it. Zero-days are the most prized bugs and exploits for hackers because a fix has yet to be deployed for them, so they’re almost guaranteed to work.
Appendix A – Character List
for the Spies Lie series (alphabetical)
Harry Aimes. An aging retiree whose lack of medical insurance coverage is due to the company he worked for having reneged on it. They also retroactively reduced his pension, leaving him dying of cancer and without the money for any medical treatment. He faces a death that will leave his aging wife homeless and decides to become a “zombie patriot.”
Lee Ainsley. Director of Information Security at Gilbert Greenfield’s unnamed intelligence service in Washington, DC. He has a crush on Cassandra Sashakovich.
Hazret Ali. Tribal leader in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan.
Yigdal Ben-Levy. Call-sign “Emah” or Mother. Ben-Levy is the Associate Director of the Mossad, a spymaster who also runs liaison between them and Aman. Ben-Levy runs the dirtiest black ops missions. His niece, Aviva Bushovsky, died one year ago.
Elizabeth Rochelle Brown. Call-sign Butterfly. Hacker living in Woodbine, Iowa. Self-proclaimed as the best hacker on earth. William Wing claims the same thing about himself.
Aviva Bushovsky. Call-sign Sweetthing, aka Lisa Gabriel. Under cover, she became engaged to Jon Sommers. She was a Mossad bat leveyha, niece of Yigdal Ben-Levy. Aviva died in a car bomb set in the parking garage in Herzliyya where she’d left her car to meet Ruth Cohen for lunch.
Captain Billie-Jo Casselton. Mercenary with the Swiftshadow Group. Primarily a sniper, using the M40A3 rifle paired with an AN/PVS-10 sniper scope. She has also e
ngaged targets using a Dragunov long rifle.
Lieutenant (later General) Benjamin Chan. A direct report to Xian Wing, Benjamin’s mother was English, and hence his Western first name.
Norman Cisco. Currency Custodian working at the Federal Reserve Bank in Manhattan.
Ruth Cohen. Call-sign Toots, alias Ruth DeWitt. Cohen rose through the ranks from bat leveyha (honey pot) to kidon to katsa, and is now Mossad Station Chief, Berlin, Germany. Less than one year ago, she and Jon Sommers were lovers.
Sir Charles Crane. Call sign Mastercollector, a British spymaster at MI-6, whose career was almost terminated by Jon Sommers’ parents, Abel and Natasha Sommerstein.
CypherGhost. See Charlette Keegan-Ashbury
Cyrus DeSpain. Father of Charlette Keegan-Ashbury, the CypherGhost. DeSpain is a self-made billionaire industrialist, invested in military and technology businesses.
Michael Drapoff. A kidon reporting to Yigdal Ben-Levy.
Lester Dushov. A katsa reporting to Yigdal Ben-Levy.
Arthur Endor. South Dakota congressman, chair of secret Cyber Security subcommittee
Walter Fergusson. VP of Starborne Security Corporation (SCC)
Simon Fiernen. A cover identity for Yigdal Ben-Levy.
Bob Gault. Call-sign Snakecharmer, works as a case officer at Gilbert Greenfield’s unnamed intelligence service in Washington, DC. Gault is overweight and unpromotable, but he is also an effective operative.
Oscar Gilead. Director of the Mossad, to whom Yigdal Ben-Levy reports.
Major Ralph Giondella. American Tactics Commander.
Gilbert Greenfield. Director in Charge of an intelligence agency in Washington DC so secret that it is “unnamed.” Aliases include Herr Flouber and Ellbert E. Friend.
Abdul Hassain. Abdul was hired by Pesi Houmaz to torture and murder Cassandra Sashakovich in Riyadh after first determining if she had learned of the Houmaz brothers plans to attach the United States. He raped and impregnated her, before Cassandra was able to kill him in self-defense.