Ah now this is interesting..and scary in a way. Script Kiddies with guns!

Script kiddies going to war, or is it turning soldiers into script kiddies. Who knows.

Anyway, the US military has decided to make their soldiers walking hackers, with an all-in-one super hacking device that can penetrate satellite signals, VoIP networks and normal information systems.

As the US military strives to boost its ability to wage cyber warfare, it’s looking for ways to make it easier for non-expert soldiers on the front lines to wreak havoc on enemy networks.

Enter a new generation of attack devices that is packaged to be brought into the battlefield and used by non-specialists to penetrate satellites, voice over internet networks, and supervisory control and data acquisition systems. Aviation Week recently got a peek at one device and provided a rich description of its features.

The device is designed to allow US forces to test enemy networks for a wide range of vulnerabilities and then synthesize the results so they can be acted on quickly. It offers touch-screen dashboards and sliders to make enumeration and penetration more intuitive. One display shows a schematic of an enemy network and identifies its nodes. A sliding lever can be moved to increase an attack or dial it down to reduce collateral damage.

Seems like point and click hacking has been taken to a new level and can now be done with a mobile device on the move.

It takes virtually no skill at all with sliders and dials.

I’d love to get my hands on one of these devices just to check it out and see how it actually works, run some packet sniffer on the wire and see if it’s actually just a black box with Metasploit inside and a fancy interface.

The device is designed to take a slew of algorithms for monitoring and penetrating networks and put them into an easy-to-use package. Think of it as a hack-by-numbers gadget for combat forces.

“Right now, all that information is in the head of a few guys that do computer network operations and there is no training system,” one researcher told Aviation Week.

There’s much more here.

Sounds pretty interesting either way, I hope some more news pops up about this in the future and we can get a better look at the device.

I’d love to see some pictures and a video demonstration, I’d imagine though as always they will be rather secretive about it.

Anyway if anyone finds out more info on this, let us know!

Source: The Register (Thanks Simon)

Hacking for money again? Well not really in this case, more like script kiddying for money – modifying an ‘off the shelf’ malware/bot package to evade detection and then cashing in on spamware affiliate fees.

I guess they could have made much with a 400,000 bot network – by renting it out for DDoS attacks to online extortionists. Although legally that’s even more risky.

A young hacker accused of helping to corral more than 400,000 computers into a money-making botnet has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in connection with the scheme, which he admits damaged US military computers.

The defendant was identified only by the the initials B.D.H. because he was a juvenile when the crimes were committed. He is better known by the handle “SoBe” in internet relay channels frequented by hackers. He appeared in US District Court in Los Angeles on Monday, where he pleaded guilty to two counts of juvenile delinquency. His plea agreement contemplates a sentence of one year to 18 months in prison.

$58,000 in 3 months isn’t even all that much money split between 2 or 3 people…but as the article says that’s all that is on record. They could have made much more than that. Imagine one of them could be sitting on a huge Paypal account that no one knows about.

It’s like the new age of bank robbers hiding their stash in the forest…nowadays guys are hiding it online.

SoBe entered the public spotlight in November 2005 as an “unindicted co-conspirator” to Jeanson James Ancheta, who eventually pleaded guilty to four felony charges in connection with the same botnet. With SoBe located in Boca Raton, Florida, and Ancheta working in Downey, California, the two built a lucrative business by surreptitiously installing adware on computers and then pocketing affiliate fees. According to court documents, the pair collected at least $58,000 in 13 months, but it’s possible they made much more.

Among the computers infected by SoBe and Ancheta were those belonging to the Defense Information Security Agency. SoBe also claimed to have pwned machines maintained by Sandia National Laboratories.

The elder of the two was sentenced to 57 months in prison (more than 4 years) – that’s a pretty hefty sentence and a good reminder not to do anything naughty.

We are ethical hackers after all – do remember that!

Source: The Register