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R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S

F O R T H E

H A C K T I V I S T C O M M U N I T Y

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Released on this day of November the 5th, 2014

Penned by The Humble Observer

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Statement of Purpose

I have been observing the hacker and hacktivist communities, at times very

closely, for many years. The exact definition of “hacker” and “hacktivist”

varies from author to author, so I shall make my interpretation of these words

very clear. Let us define a “hacker” as someone who utilizes their knowledge of

computers and of computer networks to make money via illegitimate means. Let us

define a “hacktivist” as someone who utilizes their knowledge of computers and

of computer networks to do justice when justice is not done by the state. I

have found that these two communities are inextricably linked, yet remain

completely separate entities. Many hackers double as hacktivists in their spare

time, although most hacktivists do not fancy themselves hackers.

Although hackers turned hacktivists have the very best of intentions, and their

input and expertise is of great value to the hacktivist community, they have

inadvertently suppressed the potential of the very community they are trying to

aid. The get-in-get-the-goods-get-out methodology of the stolen credit card

driven hacker community that has been transfered to the hacktivist community

via ideological osmosis has tragically affixed blinders to it. It has caused

the hacktivist community to think linearly and strive to do nothing more than

to blindly infiltrate target organizations and immediately leak whatever data

they happen to stumble across. This must change. Stealing and leaking data

makes a point, but it is sometimes necessary to do more than just make a point,

to inflict real, measurable damage. In certain, extreme cases an organization's

disregard for human rights warrants its immediate and complete obliteration.

In this essay, I will discuss a multitude of ideological, operational, and

technical changes that ought to be made to the hacktivist community. These

proposed changes have been derived from my personal observations. Some will

find the ideas contained within this document to be the product of common

sense. I have found these people to be few in number. If the community accepts

my suggestions it will not only become more effective, but the risks associated

with participating in it will be drastically lowered. My intent in writing this

is not to aid criminals, but rather to aid people who wish to do battle with

governments and corporations that have become criminals. If freedom is to

remain on this earth, its people must be willing and able to take arms to

defend it, both physical and digital.

Personal Security

Sound operational security is the foundation from which all effective

cyber-offensives are launched. You should, at all times, put your own, personal

security above the success of your operations and interests. The security

precautions taken by most hacktivists I have met are mediocre at best, and

needlessly so. Maintaining sound personal security is by no means difficult. It

requires much caution but very little skill. I have devised a series of

security precautions that hactivists should take and divided them up into six

main categories: environmental, hardware, software, mental, pattern related,

and archaeological. We shall examine each individually.

(1) Environmental:

There are but two places you can work: at home or in public. Some people insist

that working at home is best and others insist that working in public is best.

The proper working environment debate has been raging on in the hacker

community for quite some time now, and has great relevance to the hacktivist

community, as most governments view hackers and hacktivists as one in the same.

Proponents of the “work in public” argument claim that by always working at a

different public location, you significantly lower your chances of being

apprehended. They argue that even if the authorities are able to trace many of

the cyber-attacks you took part in back to the public places where you took

part in them from, that does not bring them any closer to finding you. Most

retail stores and coffee shops do not keep surveillance footage for more than a

year at the most, and even if the authorities are able to get a photo of you

from some security camera, that does not necessarily lead them directly to your

front door, especially if you wore a hoody the entire time you where working

and the camera never got a clear shot of your face. On the other hand,

proponents of the “work at home” argument argue that the risk of being seen and

reported, or merely recorded while working in a public place far outweighs the

benefits of the significantly large increase in anonymity that working in

public provides. Both sides have legitimate points, and I urge you to consider

both of them.

If you decide to work in public, the number one threat you face is other

people. Numerous large criminal investigations have been solved using the

observations of average everyday citizens who just happened to remember seeing

something suspicious. If people sense that you are trying to hide something,

they will watch you more closely than they would otherwise. It is important to

always “keep your cool” as the old saying goes. Always try to sit in such a way

that your screen is facing away from the majority of the people in the room you

are sitting in. Corners are your friend. Try to blend in with the crowd. Dress

in plain cloths. Draw no attention. If you are in a coffee shop, sip some

coffee while you work. If you are in a burger joint, buy a burger. If you are

in a library or book store, set a few books beside your laptop. Also, be very

aware of security cameras, both inside the establishment you are working in as

well as on the street near it. Being captured on film is alright as long as the

camera can not see what is on your screen. Some store cameras are watched by

actual people who will undoubtedly report you if they find out what you are

doing. More and more governments are starting to place very high quality CCTV

cameras on their streets to monitor their citizens, and these devices can be a

problem if they are peering over your shoulder through a window you are sitting

beside. When working in public, it is possible that you may have to confront a

law enforcement officer face to face. Law enforcement officers can smell

uneasiness from a mile away, and if you look like you are up to no good it is

possible that a cop will come and talk to you. Always have some sort of cover

story made up before you leave home to explain why you are where you are. If

you are forced to confront a law enforcement officer you should be able to talk

your way out of the situation.

If you decide to work at home, the number one threat you face is your own ego.

Just because you are at home does not mean that your working environment is

secure. Be aware of windows in close proximity to your computer as well as your

security-illiterate or gossipy family members. Security issues in relation to

network configuration begin to come into play when you work at home. If your

computer were to somehow get compromised while you are working at home,

perhaps by your government, it would be nearly impossible for the person or

group of people rummaging around inside of your system to get your actual IP

address (provided that you adhere to the software security guidelines that we

will discuss later). However, if your wi-fi password (or the name of your

printer, or the name of another computer on the network) contains your actual

last name and part of your address, tracking you down becomes very easy. A lot

of people name their network devices and structure their network passwords in

this way.

It is also possible that if an attacker that has infiltrated your computer

notices other machines on your network they can pivot to them (infect them with

malware using your computer as a spring board of sorts) and use them to get

your IP address. A lot of Internet enabled household devices have cameras on

them (your smart TV, your Xbox, and your high tech baby monitor to name a few)

and said cameras can potentially be leveraged against you. It is in your best

interest to not have any other machines running on your home network while you

are working. Also, change your wi-fi password every once in awhile and make

sure that the password on the administrative interface of your router is

something other than the out-of-the-box default. If your computer gets

compromised, logging into your router using username “admin” and password

“admin” is elementary for a moderately skilled attacker. Most modern routers

list their WAN IP address on their control panels.

Regardless of where you decide to work, be aware of mirrors and glass picture

frames near your workplace. In the right light, both of these items have the

potential to reflect crystal clear images of your screen to onlookers across

the room. In addition to this, understand that modern cell phones are your

worst enemy. Not only are they always going to be the weakest link in your

security setup, but if they are somehow compromised they are equipped with a

camera and microphone. Recent studies suggest that it is possible for smart

phones to listen to the high pitched noise your CPU makes and deduce your PGP

private key. Furthermore, the metadata collected by your phone coupled with

pattern analysis techniques could potentially allow your government to link

your real life and online personas together after some time. We will discuss

this in depth later. Leave your phones at home and if possible keep all phones,

yours or otherwise, far away from your computer. Other portable devices such as

iPods and tablets potentially pose the same risk that phones do and should be

treated the same.

(2) Hardware:

Modern computers come equipped with microphones, speakers (which can be used as

microphones under the right circumstances), and cameras. All of these features

can potentially be leveraged to identify you if your computer is compromised.

To mitigate these risks, these features should be physically removed. Your

computer's microphone and speakers should be ripped out of it, but you should

not rip out your web cam, as it will alter the outward appearance of your

computer and potentially draw attention to you. Instead, open your computer's

screen and snip the wires that connect to your web cam. Wrap the ends of the

wires in electrical tape so sparks do not jump in between them. If you must

listen to an audio file while working, use headphones. Only keep your

headphones plugged into your computer when you are using them. The computer you

use for your hacktivist activities also should not contain a hard drive, as

they are unnecessary for our purposes.

(3) Software:

Always use a TOR enabled Linux live system when working. At the present moment,

Tails (The Amnesiac Incognito Live System) is by far the best live distribution

for your purposes. You can read more about TOR at www.torproject.org and you

can read more about acquiring, setting up, and using Tails at tails.boum.org.

The Tails operating system lives on a USB flash drive. Every time you start up

your computer, you must first insert your Tails flash drive into it. The Tails

website will guide you through making said flash drive. Tails will

automatically direct all of your outgoing traffic into the TOR network in an

effort to hide your IP address. If you use Tails you will be completely

anonymous and be able to work with impunity provided that:

* You keep your Tails USB up to date. New versions of the Tails

operating system are released every few months.

* You do not login into your “real world” accounts while using Tails.

Do not check your Twitter feed while you are working.

* You do not use Tails to create an account with an alias that you have

used before. If you have been “0pwn” for the past seven years, now

is a good time to stop being 0pwn.

* You do not alter Tails' default security settings. They are the way

they are for a reason.

* You do not use Tails to create an online account with a password that

you have used before. Doing this only makes deanonymizing you easier.

* You do not install and use random packages that “look cool”; they

could be miscellaneous. Only use packages and scripts that you trust.

Tails is not bullet proof.

* If you decide to set a sudo password when starting up Tails, make

sure that it is very strong.

* You stay conscious of metadata analysis techniques. We will discuss

these later.

* You switch exit nodes every ten to fifteen minutes. This can be done

by double clicking the little green onion in the upper right hand

corner of your Tails desktop and hitting the “Use a New Identity”

button.

* You follow the communication guidelines laid out later in this

document.

More information can be found on the Tails warning page: https://tails.boum.org/

doc/about/warning/index.en.html. Be aware that it is very easy for your ISP

(which is probably working closely with your government) to tell that you are

using both TOR and Tails. It is probably in your best interest to use something

called “TOR bridge mode”. You can read more about how to configure Tails to

use TOR bridges here: https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/startup_options/

bridge_mode/index.en.html.

Tails is unique in that it has a special feature that wipes your computer's

memory before it shuts down. This is done in order to mitigate risks associated

with the dreaded “cold boot attack” (a forensics method in which a suspects RAM

is ripped out of his or her computer and then thrown into a vat of liquid

nitrogen to preserve its contents for later analysis). This feature is also

triggered if you pull your Tails flash drive out of your computer while you are

working. If while you are working you ever feel that the authorities are about

to move in on you, even if you have a seemingly irrational gut feeling, yank

your Tails flash drive out of your computer. Tails also has a feature that

allows it to disguises itself as a Windows desktop. Using this feature in

public will reduce your risk of capture significantly.

(4) Mental:

A skilled attacker is well disciplined and knows that he must keep his actions

and skills a secret in order to remain safe from harm. Do not flaunt the fact

that you are dissatisfied with your government, a foreign government, or a

particular corporation. Do not attend protests. Do not publicly advertise the

fact that you have an above average aptitude for computer security offensive or

otherwise. And whatever you do, do not tell anyone, even someone you think you

can trust, that you are planning to launch an organized cyber-attack on any

organization, big or small. If you draw attention to yourself no amount of

security precautions will keep you safe. Keep your “real” life mentally

isolated from your “hacktivist” life. One lapse in operational security could

end you.

Be alert and focused. Remain mentally strong. Come to terms with the illegality

of your actions and what will happen to you if you are apprehended. As a wise

man once said, “A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing

to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm;

judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has

witnessed everything.” It is perfectly acceptable to be paranoid, but do not

let that paranoia consume you and slow your work. Even if you are extremely

cautious and follow this document's advice to the letter, you still may be

hunted down and incarcerated, tortured, or killed. Some countries do not take

kindly to hacktivists. It is best that you be honest with yourself from the

beginning. In order to operate effectively you must be able to think clearly

and see the world as it actually is.

(5) Pattern Related:

When your online persona is active your real life persona ceases to exist, and

an observant adversary can use this to their advantage. If your ISP, bank, and

mobile phone provider are “cooperating” with your government and allowing them

to browse through all of their records (a fair assumption in this day and age)

then, eventually, they will be able to deduce your real identity by comparing

everyone's data to information about your online persona. If the government

looks backs on all of the records they have collected in the past year and

notice that you never make a credit card purchase, watch Netflix, go on your

Facebook, Google, or Twitter account, or change your physical location while

1337Hax0r64 is online on some anti-government forum on the deep web, they will

assume that you are 1337Hax0r64. Even information about your home network's

bandwidth usage can give away your real identity.

Luckily, performing the type of metadata analysis attack described above takes

time, usually many months. It is very important that you change aliases often,

preferably every three or four months. Shed your old names like a snake sheds

its skin. When you do change your online name, make sure your new identity

can not be tied back to your old one.

DO NOT not launch cyber-attacks from your own computer. Launch attacks only

from hacked servers, servers purchased with washed bitcoins, or free shell

accounts. Certain types of cyber-attacks produce a large amount of traffic over

a short amount of time. If the bandwidth usage of your home network spikes at

the same instant that a government or corporate server is attacked, the time it

takes to deanonymize you is reduced significantly. This is especially true if

you launch multiple attacks on multiple occasions. Launching attacks in this

way can be mentally exhausting. Configuring a new attack server with your tool

set every time your old attack server is banned (an inevitable occurrence) can

be a tedious task indeed. I personally recommend creating a bash script to

automatically install your favorite tools to make this transition process

easier. Most hackers and offensive security professionals use under thirty

non-standard tools to do their job, so configuring a new server with everything

you need should not take very long if you know what you are doing. Consider

equipping your server with TOR and a VNC server (for tools that require GUIs

such as most popular intercepting proxies) as well.

(6) Archaeological:

You must insure that there is no forensics evidence of your actions, digital or

otherwise. If the government breaks into your house and rummages through your

things, they should find nothing interesting. Make sure that you never make any

physical notes pertaining to your hacktivist activities. Never keep any

computer files pertaining to your hacktivist activities in your home. Keep all

of your compromising files, notes, scripts, and unusual attack tools (the ones

that can not be installed with apt-get or the like), and stolen information in

the cloud. It is recommended that you keep all of your files backed up on

multiple free cloud storage providers so that in the event that one of the

providers bans your account you still have all of your data. Do not name your

cloud accounts in such a way that they can be connected back to your online

persona. Never, under any circumstances, mention the names or locations of your

cloud accounts to the people you work with. Always hit the “Use New Identity”

button on your TOR control panel after accessing your cloud storage solutions.

Every time you shed your old alias, shed your old cloud accounts.

Security of Communications

The majority of hacktivists I have met communicate via public IRC. Using IRC is

fine for meeting other hacktivists, but as soon as you muster a team of other

hacktivists who wish to attack the same target as you, move to another more

secure form of communication. Some means of communication are more secure than

others, but completely secure communication does not exist. The following

guidelines are meant to work in conjunction with the personal security

guidelines that where discussed in the previous section. If proper personal

security measures are implemented effectively, compromised communication will

result in operational failure at worst and not complete deanonymization. Since

operational failure may very well set you and your cause back several months,

it is in your best interest to attempt to communicate securely:

* Remember that any of the people you meet on the clearnet, deep web,

or public IRC channels who claim to be on your side could actually

be government agents trying to sabotage your operations.

* If possible, communicate mainly via privacy friendly email accounts

(not Gmail, Yahoo, AT&T, etc.) and encrypt all of your messages with

PGP. When a cyber-attack is being carried out it is often necessary

to be able to communicate with your accomplices instantaneously.

Since encrypting, sending, receiving, and decrypting messages by hand

takes time, using PGP in time sensitive situations like this is not

feasible. If you have to confer in an IM environment, use a program

like TorChat that uses its own form of asymmetric encryption to send

and receive messages instantly.

* Use strong passwords for all of your online accounts. The best way to

make a strong password is to pick eight or nine random words and

string them together. Passwords like this are easy to remember but

hard to guess.

* Never give away any personal information (such as country, interests,

hobbies, health, etc.) or give insight into your feelings or

emotions. Your fellow hacktivists are not your friends and should

never be talked to as such. Giving away this sort of information will

make tracking you easier.

* When you receive messages, do not retain them, even if they are

encrypted. Read them, make note of any hard to remember details

(like long server passwords for example), and then delete them.

Having a mile long digital paper trail can not lead to anything good.

In some cases deleted messages on email serves can be recovered via

computer forensics, but deleting messages quickly may reduce the odds

that they can be.

* When typing messages, do so in a word processor on your computer.

Never write your message inside of a communication program (such as

an online email client, forum PM box, etc.). People have been known

to accidentally send unencrypted messages before. The effects of such

an error can be devastating.

* If you find yourself writing large swaths of text intended for public

release (like essays or manifestos) use a tool like Anonymouth to

obscure your writing style. Your writing style is as unique as a

finger print and can be used to identify you.

* Never, under any circumstances, execute a file on your computer or on

your server that has been given to you by a fellow hacktivist. You

should never run into a situation where doing this is necessary.

* Do not disclose information about your involvement in previous

hacktivist operations to people who where not also part of the same

operation.

* If one of the people that you are working with gets captured, assume

that the people who have captured them know everything that they do.

Philosophy of Attacking

The hacktivist community, like every community, has its own unique set of

philosophical musings, taboos, and dogmas. While I do not advocate the severe

alteration of the principles and philosophies on which the community was built,

I do wish to point out a number of flaws in certain aspects of their

composition. These flaws serve only to hold back the community and should be

openly discussed.

(1) When hacktivists target an organization, their goal is more often than not

to force said organization to stop functioning permanently, or at least for the

longest time possible, in an effort to stall unjust actions from being carried

out or to seek retribution for unjust actions done in the past. Leaking

databases, DoXing influential individuals, defacing websites, and launching

massive DDoS campaigns, four of the modern hacktivist community's favorite

activities, accomplish this goal - to an extent. Infiltrating a target

organization and sowing discord within its ranks is magnitudes more effective

than leaking credit card numbers or putting a CEO's social security number on

Pastebin, yet it is rarely, if ever, considered to be a viable course of

action. Subtly and silently fostering suspicion and distrust inside of your

target will have a longer lasting impact than simply pointing out that its

security policy has some weak points.

(2) Hacktivists crave publicity, yet they are the most effective when they

operate undetected. Stay hidden. Although it may seem tempting at times, do not

destroy large amounts of information on your target's computers or servers.

Doing so will announce your arrival inside of your target's network rather

loudly. Flashy, public displays of power have no place in the hacktivist

community. Just because you are hiding behind TOR does not mean that you should

not make an effort to cover your tracks. Conceal your attack not to mask your

identity, but to convince your target that no attack was carried out in the

first place.

(3) Once your hacktivist collective has decided to attack an organization,

strike fast and strike hard. Overwhelm your target. A well disciplined and well

organized team of attackers can penetrate most networks within a few hours.

Far too often I have seen hacktivist collectives declare all out war on someone

and then attack them slowly and gain entry into their network days, sometimes

even weeks later. By attacking slowly, you give your target time to react and

strengthen their defenses. Detecting an attack from a large hacktivist

collective is a trivial task, but as history has shown detecting the presence

of one inside of a network, especially a large network, can be tricky.

(4) Cyber-attacks seldom go as planned. If you are attempting to do anything

that involves the coordination of more than two people, keep this in mind. It

is not uncommon for tools to stop working in the middle of an attack. It is not

uncommon for reverse shells to die unexpectedly. It is not uncommon for

seemingly simple actions to take hours to perform. You must be ready to think

on your feet and quickly adjust your attack plan to accommodate the ever

changing conditions within the network you are attacking. Predefined

contingency plans are mostly useless.

(5) Remember that no system is impenetrable. On more than one occasion I have

seen hacktivists give up on trying to infiltrate a target network because their

Nessus scan did not yield any useful results. As a hacktivist, you are not

bound by the typical constraints of a pentester. If you can not successfully

attack a website, try attacking its hosting provider. Try attacking the

administrator's email account. Try going after random social accounts belonging

to the administrator's family. Try planting iframes in websites you suspect the

administrator frequents in an effort to infect him. If you cause extensive

collateral damage, who cares? It is not your problem. Sometimes the ends

justify the means. Be creative.

(6) Many hacktivists possess unrealistic, self-constructed mental images of the

ideal cyber-attack. In the majority of these movie-induced delusions, the ideal

attack utilizes numerous 0days, an arsenal of home made tools, and highly

advanced, unimaginably complex network intrusion techniques. In reality, this

type of thinking is incredibly dangerous and causes some hacktivists to attempt

to perform convoluted, elaborate attacks to gain the respect of their peers.

When breaking into highly secured networks, such attacks only draw unnecessary

attention. The best attacks are the ones that work. They are usually simple and

take little time to execute. Using sqlmap to spawn a shell on your target's

server by exploiting a flaw in their website's search feature is a viable if

not ideal attack. It allows you to access the inside of your target's network.

Exploiting a vulnerable FTP daemon on one of your target's servers using public

exploit code is a viable if not ideal attack. It allows you to access the

inside of your target's network. Using Metasploit in conjunction with a fresh

Gmail account to launch a phishing campaign against your target's employees is

a viable if not ideal attack. It allows you to access the inside of your

target's network. The media hates it when hacktivists use open source software

to do their work. Whenever a hacker or hacktivist is arrested for doing

something that involved using “someone else's” tools, they are publicly

shammed. “Anyone could have done that” they say. “He's just an unskilled script

kiddie” they say. Claiming that someone is less of a hacker solely because they

partially depend on someone else's code borders on absurd. It amounts to

claiming that Picasso is a bad artist because he did not carve his own brushes,

synthesize his own paints, and weave his own canvas. Do not shy away from using

open source tools and publicly available information to accomplish your goals.

Hacking is an art, and nmap is your brush.

Organization and Formation

Most of the hacker and hacktivist groups I have observed are unorganized and

undisciplined. They claim to perform actions as a collective, yet when it comes

time to actually launch an attack they attempt to infiltrate their targets as

individuals, each member launching attacks of their own without making the

faintest attempt to coordinate their actions with others. Here I shall describe

a schema that could be easily adopted by any hacktivist collective to allow it

to facilitate highly coordinated attacks involving large numbers of attackers

with great ease. It will be presented as a series of steps.

Step One: Organize yourselves into multiple small groups. These groups shall be

referred to as strike teams. The ideal strike team is composed of three parts

attack specialists, two parts social engineering specialists. Attack

specialists should at least be able to identify and competently exploit

potential vulnerabilities in websites and be able to exploit vulnerable or

misconfigured services. Social engineering specialists should have at least

some real world experience before participating in a strike team. Attack

specialists should only concern themselves with launching attacks and social

engineering specialists should only concern themselves with social engineering.

Well-defined roles are the key to a strike team's success. This configuration

will often create an abundance of social engineering specialists, and that is

perfectly acceptable. Having the capability to immediately launch multiple well

planned social engineering campaigns is crucial. The size of a strike team

will be determined by the skill of its members. Highly skilled individuals

should work in very small strike teams (five member teams are acceptable)

whereas unskilled individuals should work in larger strike teams (up to a few

dozen). The organization of strike teams should be coordinated as a collective.

No one person should be given the authority to sort people themselves. Strike

teams should function as “sub collectives” and be autonomous. Hacktivist

collectives are composed of people around the world, most of whom can not be

online all the time. This means that all strike teams should set themselves up

knowing that their members will pop on and offline and that it is possible new

members will have to be annexed at a later time.

Step Two: Within each strike team, agree upon a stratagem; a broad, realistic,

nonspecific plan of action that aims to accomplishes one, very specific goal.

Strike teams should only execute one stratagem at a time. Multiple strike teams

within the same hacktivist collective can execute different stratagems at the

same time in an effort to accomplish some sort of final goal (perhaps to

destabilize an organization or to acquire trade secrets). The next section of

this essay is devoted solely to exploring the concept of stratagems and how to

best form and use them. Strike teams should be allowed to do what they want,

but their initial stratagem should be approved by the collective so that no two

strike teams attempt to do the same thing at the same time.

Step Three: As a strike team, map your target's attack surface. If multiple

strike teams are all attacking the same network, they should share information

very closely in this step. It is very possible that multiple strike teams

working together to accomplish the same goal could actually be attacking

different networks, in which case mapping should be done within individual

strike teams. Each member of a given strike team should attempt to map the

target network themselves, and then members should compare information. It is

very unlikely that anything will be overlooked by every single member of the

team.

Step Four: Divide your target network up into manageable chunks and assign

certain individuals within your team to each one of those chunks. Efficient

devision of labor is key to launching speedy attacks. Here is an example

involving a network composed of four servers (two SQL servers, a DNS server,

and a web server hosting a feature rich corporate site) and a strike team

composed of six attack specialists and four social engineering specialists:

* Have one attack specialist attack the SQL and DNS servers.

* Have one attack specialist attack the website's multistage user

registration mechanism and login mechanism.

* Have one attack specialist attack the contact and session management

mechanism.

* Have one attack specialist attack any forms not assigned to other

attack specialists as well as any other potentially exploitable

scripts, pages, or mechanisms.

* Have one attack specialist and two social engineering specialists

attempt to launch some sort of phishing champaign against the

company's employees.

* Have one attack specialist and two social engineering specialists

attempt to convince the company's hosting provider that they are the

rightful owners of the company's four servers and have been locked

out of their email account.

Step Five: Drill yourselves. This step is optional but highly recommended.

Procure a server with a large amount of RAM and multiple processors. Have one

member of your strike team set up a virtual network on it that, to the best of

your knowledge, mimics the network you are planning to attack. This one team

member should not participate in the drills themselves, and they should not

give other team members details pertaining to the virtual network. If you are

planning on attacking a large cooperation, set up the virtual network like a

large cooperate network with a labyrinth of firewalls, routers, switches, and

domain controllers. If you are planning on attacking a small cooperation or

home business, set up your network accordingly. You should never have to

visualize more than 12 workstations, even if your team is doing a complex

pivoting exercise. As a group, attempt to break into your virtual network and

execute your stratagem. The virtual network should be deliberately

misconfigured so that there is a way for your team to infiltrate it and

accomplish their simulated goal, but the misconfigurations should be extremely

subtle. The team should have to work very hard to find them. Run multiple

drills. After each drill, the misconfigurations in the network, and potentially

the layout of the network itself, should be altered to force your team to

attack it in a different way or to exercise a different skill. The purpose of

these drills are two fold. Firstly, they allow your team members to get

accustomed to working together. Secondly, they will prepare your team for the

day when they actually go up against your real target network.

Step Six: Execute your stratagem on your target network. Your strike team

should attack methodically and silently. Every member should know what they

need to do and how they need to do it. No mistakes should be made. Every tool

you use should be well honed and function flawlessly. Not a second should be

wasted. Use time to your advantage. Your target organization will be the most

unprepared for an attack in the middle of the night when all of its IT staff

are at home sound asleep. If your stratagem calls for being embedded in your

target network for a long period of time, tread very lightly once you

infiltrate it.

Interlocking Stratagems in Theory

In this section I will give multiple examples of stratagems that an actual

strike team could make use of. You should combine multiple stratagems to

accomplish your ultimate goal. Individual stratagems are like pieces of a

jigsaw puzzle, and are intended to be pieced together. A strike team should

execute multiple stratagems in succession, possibly in cooperation with other

strike teams in an effort to accomplish a common goal. This section is not

intended to be a play book. I encourage you to build off of my stratagems or,

better yet, devise your own. Some stratagems are:

(1) Collect information on individuals within the target organization. Mount a

phishing campaign against the organization and gain access to as many

workstations as possible. Once you have breached its network, do not pivot.

Attempt to locate any useful information on the workstations you have

compromised, and then remain in the network for as long as possible doing

nothing more than idly gathering intelligence.

(2) Take complete or partial control over the target organization's main means

of communication (usually email). Review a few of their messages and learn how

they are structured and formatted. Then, send a number of blatantly false

messages to one or more members of the organization using the credentials of

another member of the organization. Multiple false messages should be sent over

some period of time. When members of the organization begin to receive false

messages from their colleagues, distrust will begin to take root.

(3) Take complete or partial control over the target organization's main means

of communication (usually email). Review a few of their messages and learn how

they are structured and formatted. Then, devise some way to intercept and

inspect or modify messages in transit within the target organization

(essentially, perform a man in the middle attack). Every once in awhile, alter

a message in a subtle but disruptive way. Perhaps change a date or a time so

certain individuals do not arrive at their meetings on time or do not arrive at

all. Once you have reason to believe that your modifications have taken their

toll (i.e. the person you targeted missed their meeting), undo the changes you

made to the message you intercepted so upon audit it appears as though the

message was never tampered with. Doing this is usually hard to detect and will

slowly cause the target organization to destabilize itself as tensions between

individuals within it begin to rise and their employees begin to question their

own sanity.

(4) Take complete or partial control over the target organization's main means

of communication (usually email). Review a few of their messages and learn how

they are structured and formatted. Use the credentials of a high ranking

individual within the target organization to distribute a message that appears

to be from them that claims a terrible tragedy has occurred that warrants an

immediate, brash, resource intensive response from the rest of the

organization. You will most likely not be able to pull this off more than once.

This stratagem works especially well against militant groups with poorly

defined command structures but has other applications as well.

(5) Once inside of the target organization's network, acquire a small amount of

classified data intended for the eyes of high ranking personnel only.

Strategically plant the data on the computer of one or more lower ranking

individuals. Make it look like an espionage attempt. If many key individuals

within the target organization are accused of trying to siphon out its secrets,

it will be forced to suspend a large portion of its operations while an

investigation is done.

(6) Use a DDoS attack to disrupt the target organization's communications for a

short period of time when they are most in need of it. For a corporation, this

could be during an important international Skype call. For a government, this

could be immediately following a devastating attack from an insurgency group.

Doing this will cause panic, which will make the target organization

temporarily more susceptible to other kinds of attacks.

(7) Pose as a legitimate company selling legitimate software and befriend the

target organization. Create a piece of software with a very hard to detect

security flaw in it and sell it to them. The flaw could be as simple as a

poorly implemented encryption library or as complex as an insecure multistage

parsing algorithm. It must be incredibly subtle. So subtle that if it is

detected you will be able to write it off as unintentional. It should be

plausibly deniable. Once the target organization installs the vulnerable

software on their machines, leverage it to perform targeted attacks on key

individuals within it. Do not use it to infect entire subnets, as that will

draw to much attention.

(8) Locate a small software provider your target organization already does

business with and infiltrate their network by using other stratagems. Modify

their source code slightly so that their software becomes vulnerable to remote

attack. Do not modify just any code you come across, study the software

provider's development process and target code that has already been checked

for bugs and is days away from being released to customers. When the target

organization installs the latest version of software from the company that you

have infiltrated, they will become vulnerable. Leverage this vulnerability to

perform targeted attacks on key individuals within the target organization. Do

not use it to infect entire subnets, as that will draw to much attention.

(9) Locate a small software provider your target organization already does

business with and infiltrate their network by using other stratagems. Most

software companies offer rewards to security researchers who find

vulnerabilities in their products. Determine how reported vulnerabilities are

managed by the company you have infiltrated and devise a way to monitor them

in real time. As soon as a security researcher reports a major vulnerability

in a product your target organization uses, use it to perform targeted attacks

on key individuals within it. Do not use it to infect entire subnets, as that

will draw to much attention.

(10) Using other stratagems, infiltrate the computers of a number of influential

individuals within the target organization. Monitor their activity constantly

and closely. If possible, listen to them through their computer's microphone.

When you believe that one of them has left their computer, undo things they

have just done. Delete the last sentence they wrote. Hit the back button on

their web browser. Close the program they just opened. Over time, this will

lead them to question their sanity.

(11) Using other stratagems, infiltrate the computers of a number of influential

individuals within the target organization. Most modern governments and

corporations are at least partially corrupt. Find evidence of this corruption

and use it to compel one or more of these influential individuals to aid your

cause. If you are unable to find any evidence of corruption, do not be afraid

to bluff. If you make a mysterious window pop up on, say, a CFO's computer that

alludes to some sort of dirty secret, it is very possible that the CFO will

assume that the hacker who caused the widow to appear knows something about

them that they actually do not. A lot of powerful people have skeletons in the

closet. The media has instilled a fear of hackers into the general populace,

and this fear can be used to your advantage. Most normal people, upon being

confronted by a hacker that has gained complete control of their computer, will

be inclined to believe plausible sounding white lies. Having an “inside man”

within your target organization can be extremely useful.

Interlocking Stratagems in Practice

In this section I shell present an example of a plausible situation that could

warrant the involvement of hacktivists and a corresponding attack loosely built

upon the stratagems from the last section. I have tried to make the situation

realistic, but it is very likely that if you use my writing to plan and execute

your own attack it will play out nothing like the attack depicted below. Most

actual attacks are far more complex than the one presented here. The purpose

of this example is to demonstrate the way in which multiple strike teams should

work together. Notice how at all times each team has one or more specific

goals.

Situation: A hacktivist collective has decided to attack the terrorist

organization Bina Al-ar-mal after they captured and executed a tourist in

Syria. Bina Al-ar-mal is believed to consist of over 40,000 people, has

hundreds of public Twitter feeds and Facebook accounts, and runs a small

terrorist news site hosted on a Russian server. It has three known leaders, who

we shall refer to as Head Terrorist 1, Head Terrorist 2, and Head Terrorist 3.

Twenty-seven hacktivists have joined the effort. They have been split into

three teams: team 1 consists of five of the most highly skilled hacktivists,

team 2 consists of seven moderately skilled hacktivists, and team 3 consists of

fifteen amateur hacktivists.

Time Line:

(Day 1, Hour 1) Team 1 is initially tasked by the collective with infiltrating

as many terrorist Twitter and Facebook accounts as possible. The team starts

enumerating the accounts immediately. They decide that no drill will be

executed, as breaking into Facebook and Twitter accounts is a trivial task.

(Day 1, Hour 1) Team 2 is initially tasked by the collective with infiltrating

the web hosting provider hosting the terrorist group's website. They begin

reconnaissance.

(Day 1, Hour 1) Team 3 is initially tasked by the collective with attacking

Bina Al-ar-mal's website directly. They begin to map the website.

(Day 1, Hour 2) Team 1 finishes enumerating the terrorist Facebook and Twitter

accounts. They begin attempting to break into them.

(Day 1, Hour 2) Team 3 finishes mapping Bina Al-ar-mal's website and begins to

attack.

(Day 1, Hour 3) Team 1 has breached a few terrorist Facebook and Twitter

accounts. After examining their contents they determine that the terrorists

are using SpookyMail email service to communicate off of social media. A few

terrorist email accounts are identified and the team begins to try to break

into those as well.

(Day 1, Hour 3) Team 3 gains read/write access to a limited portion of the

server Bina Al-ar-mal's website is hosted on. The other teams are alerted.

They set up a simple php based IP logger script to capture the IP addresses of

Bina Al-ar-mal members attempting to check their organization's news feed.

(Day 1, Hour 6) Team 2's reconnaissance ends. They have located the web hosting

provider and gathered information on said provider's website and servers. They

begin attacking them.

(Day 1, Hour 7) Team 1 breaches their first few terrorist email accounts.

(Day 1, Hour 9) Team 2 locates a vulnerability in the the terrorist's web

hosting provider's website. They are not able to fully compromise any of their

servers, but they are able to get a list of customer names, domain names, and

billing addresses by exploiting a flaw in the website's shopping cart feature.

Upon inspecting the list, they discover that the person paying Bina Al-ar-mal's

hosting bill has a British billing address. The other teams are alerted and

Scotland Yard is notified of the terrorist threat immediately.

(Day 1, Hour 23) Team 1 is able to get Head Terrorist 1's email address off of

the “contact” pane of one of the hacked terrorist email accounts. They make

ready for a spear phishing attack against him, but decide to wait some time to

launch it, as it is currently the middle of the night where Head Terrorist 1 is

believed to be.

(Day 2, Hour 3) Team 3 has gathered over seven thousand IP addresses of people

viewing Bina Al-ar-mal's news feed and tries to attack them all using known

router vulnerabilities. When all is said and done they have infected

thirty-seven routers and forty-six workstations. They determine that

thirty-four of these work stations belong to active members of Bina Al-ar-mal.

They observe these workstations passively, hoping to gather information. The

other two teams are briefed on their success.

(Day 2, Hour 8) Team 1 launched a spear phishing attack against Head Terrorist

1 using the hacked email account of another terrorist.

(Day 2, Hour 9) Team 1's spear phishing attack against Head Terrorist 1 is a

success. They now have full control over his Windows XP laptop and inform the

other two teams of their success. After searching the laptop's hard drive and

downloading a half gigabyte of confidential documents and IM logs, the team

decides to plant a PDF of the Christian Bible on it along with some real

looking fake papers from the CIA. After gleaning Head Terrorist 2's and Head

Terrorist 3's email addresses from the stolen IM logs, the team sends them both

emails from the hacked email account of a lower level terrorist claiming that

Head Terrorist 1 is dirty.

(Day 2, Hour 9) Team 3 decides to take the sensitive information stolen from

Head Terrorist 1's computer stolen by Team 1 along with other fake CIA

documents and place it on all thirty-four of the terrorist workstations they

control. They use a hacked email account belonging to an uninvolved terrorist

to inform Head Terrorist 2 and Head Terrorist 3 that Head Terrorist 1 is a

traitor an he has at least thirty-four moles inside of their organization, all

of whom they mention by name.

(Day 2, Hour 10) Head Terrorist 1's laptop is searched by security forces under

the control of Terrorist 2. Head Terrorist 1 is determined to be part of the

CIA and is placed into a cell to be used as leverage against the United States.

(Day 2, Hour 17) Head Terrorist 2 and Head Terrorist 3 raid all thirty-four of

the suspected moles and find the planted documents. They begin to interrogate

all thirty-four of them in order to find out how deep the CIA has penetrated

their organization. None of them know anything but most of them make up real

sounding false information to make the interrogations end.

(Day 3, Hour 3) Team 1 determines that most remaining Facebook and Twitter

accounts can not be breached. Several team members leave and a few stick around

to try and finish off the remaining accounts.

(Day 6, Hour 17) Scotland Yard arrests the person allegedly paying for Bina

Al-ar-mal's web hosting. It is later determined that the person is actually

part of a London-based Bina Al-ar-mal cell.

(Day 6, hour 20) Team 2 destroys Bina Al-ar-mal's web site after catching word

of the Scotland Yard raid.

End Result: One of three head terrorists is being held by their own

organization as a traitor and thirty-four unrelated terrorists are being held

by their own organization and brutally interrogated about actions they did not

commit. One terrorist is in the custody of the Scotland Yard, and a British

terror cell has been exposed. Bina Al-ar-mal's entire communication network is

compromised (but they do not know that yet), and their website has been taken

offline permanently. All members of Bina Al-ar-mal are now becoming

increasingly suspicious of their fellow members and the hacktivist collective

is now in a position to launch further attacks on Bina Al-ar-mal (using the

compromised email and social media accounts) at a later time. This has all been

accomplished in under a week.

________________________________________________________________________________

My public key is available here:

http://pastebin.com/VhW0bmAt

https://paste.ee/p/C5M3U

http://tny.cz/c9b82da0

http://hastebin.com/jikebijifu.hs

http://chopapp.com/#w04dkx06

SHA1: cb36db996bb684e569663ca7b0d93177ecc561be

Grab it while you still can.

________________________________________________________________________________

Disclaimer: All information provided in this document is for educational

purposes only. The ideas presented here are solely academic and should never be

acted upon or put into practice. The author of this document will not be held

responsible in the event any criminal or civil charges be brought against any

individuals misusing the information in this document to break the law.

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