What is the Future of Hacking?
Hacking’s future is constantly wriggling, spawning, and transforming itself just out of sight, much like the future of technology in general. Therefore, humans often don’t notice a new danger until the mature beast charges. Bio-hacking is a fascinating and potentially terrifying subfield of hacking. Bill Gates famously said in Wired magazine that he would be “hacking biology” if he were a teenager today. He used the example of DNA hacking as an explanation for the persistence of hacking in a world where coding computer programs is a child’s play. Opportunities that were formerly considered to be beyond of reach for humans will always beckon to be hacked, controlled, and eventually mastered. The practice of biohacking has advanced from its humble beginnings in garages and kitchen sinks to high-tech labs. The goal of synthetic biologists is to replicate DNA code in mechanical, electrical, chemical, and software engineering, but the Holy Grail is to construct artificial life from scratch. The targets might be anything from creating genetic machines to enslaving microorganisms. Like the personal computer revolution, which also started in a garage, some of this work will eventually benefit humanity. In the same vein, it’s a sure bet that a lot of the work done in this area will eventually become the poison that’s used to conduct cyber attacks on businesses, governments, and people. As time goes on, we should expect a rise in both real-world and cyber-based acts of bioterrorism and genetic malware.
According to Kaspersky Lab senior security researcher Kurt Baumgartner, “newer biometric authentication systems will replace passwords, very likely with a combination of ocular and familial credentials.” Cybercriminals will reply to any kind of credential replacement using equipment similar to the ATM skimmers used today. Spyware that reads a person’s retina and steals personal information will be widely used.
Most people will react to this new era as if genetic advancements, technologies, and monsters suddenly materialized before their eyes, and they were given no advance notice.
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SO, IS IT ANY SURPRISE THAT OUR PRECAUTIONS WON’T BE ENOUGH?
The fundamental concern is not the growth of the old threat, but rather new types of misuse, according to James Lyne, a senior technologist at Sophos. The problem is that the rate at which new technologies are adopted has sped up dramatically, and it’s becoming harder to anticipate problems before they arise. The less daring but equally problematic and much more frequent hackers are something we need to watch out for now, not only for the advantages and scares we may eventually get. Some of the threats they are preparing are as follows.
Malware Targeting Virtual Machines
Virtual machines (VMs) have been widely employed by security researchers for isolating and studying malware.
According to Fred Touchette, a senior security analyst at AppRiver, “many breeds of malware today can detect if they are running within virtual machines and make adjustments or shut down entirely to evade detection.” However, only a small number of proof-of-concept viruses have attempted to escape into the host machine. “More of them are likely to appear in the not-too-distant future.”
RFID Bandits
When it comes to potential exploitation, radio frequency identification (RFID) presents a wealth of possibilities. Identical to other forms of electrical and network infrastructure, RFID systems may be compromised in both physical and digital ways. Hackers that attempt to steal data, get access to restricted regions, or shut down a system for financial gain have kept pace with the development and proliferation of this technology. Typically, these vulnerabilities will affect the supply chain, retail transactions, counterfeiting/cloning, and the ability to fraudulently enter physical spaces like public transit. In the end, RFID is simply another data storage, retrieval, and use medium in the electromagnetic spectrum. For a hacker in the modern day, data and the means to utilize it are much more precious than monetary reward. According to Rich Baich, principal of Deloitte & Touche’s Security and Privacy practice, “therefore RFID adoption gives a new capacity to carry out the present and future purpose of any criminal or nation state which is employing collecting, distribution, and use of data to accomplish its goals.” This plan’s objectives are “geared toward economic gain, political influence, and projection of power.”
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Logic Exploits
Emerging threats prioritize exploitable flaws in logic. According to HP Software’s Web Application Security advocate Raf Los, “identification of faults in business logic is the next frontier for application software security.” When companies have learned to protect themselves against common programming vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting (CSS), the focus of attacks will shift to the application logic that controls it.
ATM Attacks
Positive Technologies, an information security consulting business, examined the security of 26 unique ATM setups, including 11 distinct ATM models from NCR, Diebold Nixdorf, and GRG Banking.
No ATM studied by the team was immune to software-based assaults that didn’t need physically accessing the machine. Eighty-five percent, or 22 of 26 ATMs examined, let you walk away with stolen cash without breaking the safe. All of them leaked consumer card data in some form. According to the Positive Technology Report, “security systems are a simple inconvenience for attackers.” In virtually every instance, testers were able to find a technique to circumvent security measures.
RAM Scraping
According to Chris Drake, CEO of FireHost, “for years everyone has been locking down databases since they are the source of information,” but now hackers who can breach a server can get an application less than 1MB in size on the server and capture all the data as it is written to RAM before it goes to a database. This kind of software may even collect information (such credit card numbers) that aren’t stored in a database at all but are instead sent to a third-party processor. As this practice becomes increasingly common among hackers, it poses a serious threat.
Dark Knight Attacks
Everything these days, from Microsoft’s Kinect to smartphones, is Internet-enabled and packed with sensors like microphones, cameras, gyroscopes, and global positioning systems. Bit9’s chief technology officer, Harry Sverdlove, noted that in “The Dark Knight,” the villains hacked into every mobile phone to create a live, three-dimensional representation of everything occurring in Gotham City. The necessary tools already exist today. In the future, hackers could be able to take “targeted assaults” to the next level by using technologies like face recognition, voice pattern detection, and geo-location feedback. The most vital fact to grasp is that the technology required to counter hackers is also constantly developing and improving. They are, in fact, the driving force behind the next generation of safety tools. The next generation of geniuses, good and terrible, will conquer and subjugate us just as their predecessors did.
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