Videos

Behind the Hack – Ransomware

How do you go in the space of just one minute, from running a busy, thriving and rewarding business to the utter despair and panic that comes with an I.T. breech that compromises your vital systems?

We’re about to show you right now…

What you’re about to see is rarely captured on video. An actual real-life hack that could devastate any business.

How would it feel to see this on your computer: every single file on your machine encrypted, locking you and all other users on your network out of every single file and system?  This is the result of “ransomware” sent via email.

Most of us would say we’re quite savvy when it comes to email security.  If a dodgy email hasn’t already been automatically sent to the spam folder, we can usually tell when somebody’s trying to exploit us over email but what about this one sent from HMRC?
It’s the kind of email you’d normally expect from them. The address sending it looks legitimate, but wait, although it’s very similar that’s not their real address – this email is actually fake sent from our hacker, asking you to do something quite normal; download a PDF guide; we click the link, the PDF opens, the URL hosting the PDF seems legitimate, there’s even a padlock indicating the site is secure, but now we can see things from the hackers point of view.

They’ve used some special hacking software to send this fake email and monitor the ransomware attack. The moment you click the link in that email and open the PDF, the hacker was given full access to your computer, inviting them to launch a business crippling attack with a single click.

Back on your machine, you happily close the PDF, minimizing your browser to show your desktop and there it is; you see for the first time something isn’t right.  Now when you try to open any file there’s nothing there. Every single file on your machine has been encrypted, locking you out, but not just on your machine, even affecting others on your network, plus connected cloud accounts like Dropbox and other people you share your files with. 

This is a very real threat and you’ve just seen first-hand the deployment of an actual ransomware attack that brings businesses and organisations to their knees every day.

Behind the Hack – EternalBlue – Time to Update

We’re all guilty of not updating our devices, systems and software.

When we’re busy working hard in the business, it’s easier and quicker to just ‘put it off’, but right now we can exclusively reveal, thanks to our ethical hacker, the devastating effect using out of date and non-updated technology can have on your business.

It happens every day…we’re made aware of available updates but even if it’s labelled “critical” we think: ‘what’s the worse that can happen?’ Well, we can show you from our hackers’ point of view.

Even in today’s modern world, as soon as a new system, service or piece of software is created, there are people looking for ways to hack it.  Right now you’re looking at ‘EternalBlue’, developed to exploit a vulnerability in some versions of Microsoft products. 
The updates your computer tells you about contains vital patches to secure these vulnerabilities as soon as they’re discovered. 
In this case here’s an older version of a Windows server that hasn’t yet been updated.  Our hacker uses some special monitoring software to identify the target machine, establish a connection by linking IP addresses and ports, then with a simple command, view all the private credentials used to access the network

Our hacker can then do whatever they want; launch a further attack, steal and lock your data, run some code to monitor your screen, even detect keystrokes or spy on you and your staff with your webcam.

All businesses rely so much on technology these days, so talk to us about how you can be better protected without having to do the work yourself.