Ethical Hacking Seminar

A seminar on Ethical was held here in Manipal last Sunday. Well, to be honest, when I saw the price for the pass for the seminar, I was almost sure I’d be skipping it. But “somehow”, I did end up attending it, and to put it plainly, R.S.650 was worth it! Now, disregarding all the controversy circling the presenter of the seminar, I could in all fairness say that the information that one could absorb from the 3 and a half seminar was worth the money. And let’s face it, it was a Sunday. And if you think about it, all people do on Sundays is waste the entire day sleeping in late, while away time by doing nothing meaningful (Most of the cases in general. There are people who use their Sundays wisely), and catch the Monday blues before sleeping. Hence, it could be fair to say that learning something on a Sunday is a break to the weak monotony.

But moving on to the seminar, Mr Fadia was definitely a good orator, and he did have a quiet and enthusiastic audience clinging to his presentation. The main theme was meant to be “ethical hacking”, but to be honest; it turned out to be more like a “cracking” seminar, followed up by a talk on ethical hacking. Just to clear a misconception, cracking is basically the job of the people who gain unauthorized or illegal access to the system; whereas hacking is actually what the good guys do to prevent it. Anyway, what ethical hacking is, is basically pointing out the loopholes in a computer security system, so that steps can be taken to remove these vulnerable points, and prevent crackers from exploiting the lapses in security. 

The seminar started off with a talk on how hackers do what they do: Hack. A few precautionary methods to safeguard him/herself before actually proceeding anywhere else were explained, such as methods to hide one’s I.P, after which methods for getting the I.P of other P.Cs were explained. Other methods to hide one’s self were pointed out too.

Once this has been done, a criminal would be prepared for an offensive move. A briefing on “Trojans” was given, which would allow the hacker access to the target system. A demonstration was given on how a hacker could completely control the host’s system. This included access to data on the host’s memory, and other basic control such as locking the keys on the keyboard, inverting mouse clicks, opening the CD drives, and switching on the web cams of the host system (Extreme violation of privacy indeed). Other techniques such as password cracking, blue-tooth hacking, and data sniffing, USB hacking, SQL injection were also discussed. I’m avoiding putting down any technical details here, mainly because I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to do so.

But all in all it was a successful event hosted by the “IE-CSE”, which ended with a brief question-answer session. After attending the seminar, it really makes me wonder how safe we actually are when we’re browsing the net. The privacy we believe that we have was totally ridiculed. The possibility that you’re being tracked………right now…..is nowhere near low. It really makes me feel insecure nowadays every time I connect to the net. The only thing I can agree with, is that everyone who does browse the net must indeed provide themselves with adequate amount of security, by installing anti-viruses, anti-spy wares, and the likes. Trust me; it takes extremely basic knowledge of hacking for one to hack an unsuspecting layman’s computer. On a lighter note, for those of you who considered attending, but missed it, you did miss something worth attending!

C.S.Sailendra