History and General Overview of Cybersecurity

Timeline

<1970 - radios, early computers

1970  - mainframes of campuses became targets

1980  - PCs were invented

1990  - internet

2000  - bluetooth, tablets, smartphones ..

>2000 - international law for computer crimes was established

"Making things easier for hackers is the fact that early network

technologies such as the Internet were never designed with security

as a goal. The goal was the sharing of information."

  * source: pg 53/ CEHv9 (3rd edition) Sybex

Famous hacks through the years

1988 - 1st internet worm was created by Robert T. Morris, Jr.

1994 - Kevin Lee Pulsen took over telephone lines of Kiss-FM to win a Porsche

1999 - David L. Smith created "Melissa" virus w/c email itself to entries

       in user's address book

2001 - Jan de Wit created "Anna Kournikova" virus w/c reads all entries of

       a user's outlook address book

2002 - Gary McKinnon connected to deleted critical US military files

2004 - Adam Botbyl (together w/ 2 other friends) stole credit card information

       from Lowe's hardware chain

2005 - Cameron Lacroix hacked into Paris Hilton's phone

2009 - Kristina Vladimirovna (good looking russian hacker) skimmed around

       3 billion US $ on US banks

mid 2000s - "Stuxnet" virus attacked uranium production

          - "anonymous" group attacked local government networks

Generic examples of Cyber crimes

1.  stealing usernames and passwords

2.  network intrusions

3.  social engineering (involves human interaction)

4.  posting/transmitting of illegal material 

5.  fraud

6.  software piracy

7.  dumpster diving (reconstruction of broken data)

8.  malicious code (viruses)

9.  unauthorized destruction of data

10. embezzlement (form of financial fraud)

11. data-diddling (modification of information to cover up activities)

12. Denial-of-service (overloads a system resource)

13. ransomware (encrypts files on target system to get money)

Devices and Systems that adds security

Software:

- VPNs (Virtual Private Networks)

- IPs (Intrusion Prevention Systems)

- firewalls

- ACLs (Access Control Lists)

- biometrics

- smartcards

Physical security:

- cable locks

- device locks

- alarm systems

Malicious Attacks

- Denial-of-service (DoS)

- manipulation of stock prices

- identity theft

- vandalism

- credit card theft

- piracy

- theft of service

Known hacker groups

Anonymous

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)

LulzSec

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec