The Hacker Hunter

All this means that techniques once only found in state-sponsored cyber warfare are beginning to be deployed against corporate targets. Industrial espionage is evolving, from attempting to capture commercial secrets and intellectual property to actually controlling physical assets via hacking. While no state has ever officially claimed responsibility, the US and Israel have not denied media leaks that they were responsible. Saudi officials later acknowledged that the attack apparently was intended to hurt production. The attack occurred in the same month that Aramco was hit and not long after Saudi Arabia said it would increase oil production to counter any supply problems caused by sanctions placed on Iran.

More recently — and closer to home — Europol smashed a drug ring this summer that was hacking into the control systems of the Belgian port of Antwerp as a means of controlling containers to ship their narcotics, weapons and cash.

The Antwerp case was also interesting because, according to Europol, the drugs cartel outsourced the technical part of the scam to hackers. Teenagers and young adults with the requisite skills to mount, or defend against, a cyber attack are in limited supply. But the market for them — legitimate or not — is expanding. The worst global downturn in a generation may also be swelling the ranks of the so-called black hat — or nefarious — hackers globally, as legitimate job markets for young people are decimated.

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If corporate players such as PwC have had to open their ranks to less conventional candidates, so the darker side has had to become more businesslike. And PwC has been able to pinpoint attacks to observe that they occur during predictable timeframes.

The Hacker Hunter

The firm has noted that such attacks increase in frequency just before the year-end, when even hackers apparently try to impress their superiors in anticipation of an annual bonus. Garfield, the analyst at BAE Detica, points to a graph that underscores similarities in industriousness between white-hat and black-hat hackers. Sorting through hacks thought to originate in China, Garfield found that the peak activity occurs between 9am-5pm local time, with a slight drop-off during the lunch break.

Another spike occurs late into the Chinese night — which coincides with working hours on the US east coast. The team was organised to be working double shifts, he concluded. Kelly at PwC says that sort of methodical hacker strategy — round-the-clock and relentless — frightens most corporations trying to sort through a rapidly changing landscape of risk. One day you are going to compromise your target. Luckily for his clients, Kelly is equally persistent. He has always pulled things apart to see how they worked.

Only now, he says, he could actually be doing it to keep the world safe. And if that one person was able to shut a lot of things down, that could affect an entire country, or maybe even the world over. Hackers research a target company. Board members, management, location and supply chains will all be analysed. The hackers embed malware within a document tailored to lure employees from that company to open it — a PDF of an industry conference, for example. APT is sometimes shorthand for state-sponsored hacking.

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Backdoors A generally secret way of getting in and out of a computer system without having to go through the normal security checks. This can be for a legitimate use — for IT personnel to sort out issues remotely, for instance — but often hackers will try to create a backdoor on initial recces around a system for future, surreptitious ease-of-access. Distributed Denial of Service Attacks When a website crashes or runs slowly after a wave of requests generated by thousands of computers controlled by a botnet.

Spear-phishing A reworking of the ubiquitous phishing email scam. In this more bespoke version, an email is sent from a seemingly familiar contact, asking the recipient to click on an attachment that either introduces malware or diverts them to a bogus website.

Watering hole An infected website that is frequented by many potential targets, so that each time a target visits the site they pick up a virus or malware that can then go on to steal data. To comment, please email magazineletters ft. Get alerts on Cyber Security when a new story is published. Choose your FT trial. Cyber Security Add to myFT.

An elite battalion of largely twentysomething experts are on the front line of corporate cyber defence.

The Hacker Hunters Chasing Russian Shadows

Caroline Binham November 21, Listen to this article Play audio for this article Pause Cookies on FT Sites We use cookies for a number of reasons, such as keeping FT Sites reliable and secure, personalising content and ads, providing social media features and to analyse how our Sites are used. Close Financial Times International Edition. Search the FT Search. World Show more World links. US Show more US links. Companies Show more Companies links. Markets Show more Markets links. Opinion Show more Opinion links.

Personal Finance Show more Personal Finance links. Return to Book Page. The Hacker Hunter by Christopher Keenan. This book is the first ever story written by Christopher Keenan. John was head of the focus group used for keeping the book as close to reality as possible within its fiction genre. John suddenly and very unexpectedly died just 9 days after the book was finished. Every daring entrepreneur and foreign government is out to steal what they can from the failing and now corrupted old USSR.

The Russian government is desperate to protect their top scientists and secret weapons projects, desperate enough to kill. Maria has been competing with Cannon for years, hacking into legal firms, accounting companies and investment houses to demonstrate their weaknesses and for a large fee she then offers to help these businesses secure their computer networks. Maria knows she will never directly be able to win a bid to secure the NSA computer network because of her mafia boss father, so invites Christian Cannon to front the deal. Cannon accepts on the condition that he can use his Russian team to hunt down and locate the other hackers logged into the NSA.

The plan seems solid with the exception of four factors: The Russians are also onto Cannon and they want to kill him to set an example to any other entrepreneurial spies.

The hacker hunters | Financial Times

An aging private security advisor to the Queen called Sir Adam, is looking for his replacement and feels Cannon might make a suitable candidate for the job. Kindle Edition , pages. Published first published October 13th To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Hacker Hunter , please sign up.

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