I'm a paid hacker, AMA

Title is only slightly clickbait. I graduated from a Cyber Security and Forensic Computing degree, and am currently working as a Cyber Security Researcher. In short clients give us stuff (hardware, software, etc.) and we check it for security flaws by trying to break it.

AMA

Iwas gonna pay for a very special thing....

Reply 21

ANM775

20

Original post by AcseI

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Bug hunting - Identifying bugs in software, which can lead to vulnerabilities

I don't think bug hunting is all that effective is it?

I mean look at Sony. Literally ALL of it's consoles have got hacked. They've now put up a "bug bounty" programme, where if you find a bug and tell it to them they will pay you, and pay depends on how critical the bugs are. Last time I viewed the list on submitted bugs there were quite a lot which people had found, and some big bounties awarded. upto around 40k IIRC ...so it seems there was some critical bugs that it's own bug hunting team missed.

Reply 22

username5383500

OP

18

Original post by ANM775

I don't think bug hunting is all that effective is it?

I mean look at Sony. Literally ALL of it's consoles have got hacked. They've now put up a "bug bounty" programme, where if you find a bug and tell it to them they will pay you, and pay depends on how critical the bugs are. Last time I viewed the list on submitted bugs there were quite a lot which people had found, and some big bounties awarded. upto around 40k IIRC ...so it seems there was some critical bugs that it's own bug hunting team missed.

Well simply put, software is complicated. When you have potentially hundreds of people, writing thousands of lines of code, as part of different systems and everything has to work together you inevitably get problems. A lot of bugs don't tend to follow "common sense" either, and sometimes no amount of testing is going to find all the bugs. It's difficult to really guage how effective bug hunting is though, because you'll never get inside numbers on how many bugs have been squashed in the course of daily work.

Bug bounty programs are becoming more common, whether it's in partnership with services like HackerOne, or independently provided by the vendor. There are thousands of people who engage with them specifically looking for bugs, and that can be thousands of eyes and tooling that a company otherwise wouldn't have had access to. Many people write their own custom tooling, have their own processes, etc. and it results in a huge array of approaches rather than just an internal team doing the same thing they always do. These programs aren't a replacement for internal testing, but reward people for finding bugs.

Ultimately no system is bug free. For every bug found and submitted, there's probably dozens that go unfixed. But not all bugs are created equally. Writing exploits for modern systems is a somewhat difficult process given all the protection mechanisms in place. And of course not all bugs are exploitable. Bug bounty programs are therefore a good way to get people focused on the high impact bugs, and payouts often reflect that. Of course not everyone is getting 40K per submission, and it's not at all uncommon to see smaller payouts in the 2 or 3 figure range. But every bug fixed is one less for an attacker to use. It's all about reducing attack surfaces as much as possible.

Reply 23

username4986690

19

Is this actually true?

Reply 24

username5383500

OP

18

Original post by DiddyDec

Is this actually true?

The general premise is correct yes. Using "correct horse battery staple" specifically as a password would be an awful idea nowadays as a result of the comic, but you're generally much better picking some random words over the substitution approach.

Of course it's more complicated than that when you dig into it, and it's rarely a simple matter of "X days to guess a password". But as approaches go, the second is better than the first.

Reply 25

username5383500

OP

18

Bump, let's do some more Q&A

Reply 26

hajima

20

What university did you go to?
What are the main differences between a Computer Science degree and a degree in Cyber Security & Forensic Computing?

Reply 27

boulderingislife

20

Original post by AcseI

Title is only slightly clickbait. I graduated from a Cyber Security and Forensic Computing degree, and am currently working as a Cyber Security Researcher. In short clients give us stuff (hardware, software, etc.) and we check it for security flaws by trying to break it.

AMA

What’s the most shockingly bad security flaw you’ve come across and what were the potential implications if the problem was not resolved?

Reply 28

Ahmed.S1

5

How much do you get paid

Reply 29

username5383500

OP

18

Original post by hajima

What university did you go to?
What are the main differences between a Computer Science degree and a degree in Cyber Security & Forensic Computing?

I'd rather not provide my university, as understandably I want to keep personal information out of the public domain. Feel free to PM me if you want to have a discussion about uni though.

The primary difference is really depth and breadth. I didn't take CompSci, and each CompSci degree is a bit different so I can't give a fair comparison. But for me the primary difference is the emphasis on Cyber and Forensic topics that would not be present in CompSci. Given degree content is fairly fluid, this isn't a hard and fast comparison. But some of the things I covered that probably won't be covered in CompSci (or you might get one optional module at best) include:

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Reverse Engineering

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Binary Exploitation

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Forensic Investigations

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Cryptography

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The business side of things (so GDPR and other laws, risk assessments, cyber response, etc.)

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I had the option to do a placement with the police, and naturally my placement year was Cyber oriented too

Additionally some CompSci degrees focus heavily on programming, whereas Cyber emphasises well rounded knowledge that can be applied in a Cyber context. We had additional modules on networking for example, that weren't present in my unis regular CompSci degree. We had the option to take more traditional CompSci modules though, such as advanced programming or data structures.

Reply 30

username5383500

OP

18

Original post by boulderingislife

What’s the most shockingly bad security flaw you’ve come across and what were the potential implications if the problem was not resolved?

I don't think this is really something I can answer in any great detail. Generically speaking you'll hear about a lot of different stuff on the news. But when it comes to stuff I've personally encountered there's obviously a very limited subset of details I can provide. Plus I only started my grad job recently, so in a professional context I don't have much experience anyway.

The most generic thing I can say is that I found a payment portal (the sort of thing where you put your card details in before submitting an order) that allowed me to set the prices of products myself. So quite trivially I could say "nope this £99 product actually costs £1" and that's what I'd get charged. I think the implications speak for themselves there.

On a broader level, I found out that the Thames Barrier (I think, it was a long time ago) was accessible over the Internet. This is also one of my favourite videos that covers the sort of everyday "shockingly bad" security issues someone might come across. Hopefully this sort of answers your question.

Reply 31

username5383500

OP

18

Original post by Ahmed.S1

How much do you get paid

I answered this one in an earlier post.

Reply 32

username5383500

OP

18

I'm going to cheat and ask myself a question.

Q: What's the most misunderstood cyber security technology?
A: VPNs. Advertising companies have made the average user thing that a VPN is some sort of necessity in the modern age, and that it'll protect them from all the bad guys. Neither of these are true, and VPNs do not do what the vast majority of people think they do.

(edited 3 years ago)

Reply 33

maniali123

15

Original post by AcseI

I'm going to cheat and ask myself a question.

Q: What's the most misunderstood cyber security technology?
A: VPNs. Advertising companies have made the average user thing that a VPN is some sort of necessity in the modern age, and that it'll protect them from all the bad guys. Neither of these are true, and VPNs do not do what the vast majority of people think they do.

can tell more about this....this thing is making me more worried...

Reply 34

username5383500

OP

18

Original post by maniali123

can tell more about this....this thing is making me more worried...

More worried in what sense? What do you want to know?

Reply 35

geek_kid

9

Original post by AcseI

Title is only slightly clickbait. I graduated from a Cyber Security and Forensic Computing degree, and am currently working as a Cyber Security Researcher. In short clients give us stuff (hardware, software, etc.) and we check it for security flaws by trying to break it.

AMA

Which uni did you do your degree at?