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Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
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Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#2Are you asking about my personal machine (ie - the laptop that I'm writing this on) or about a server? The answers are slightly different.
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#3Define hacked, what does that mean to you?
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#4Define hacked, what does that mean to you?
Just as important, define "professional".
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#5I use a Chromebook which prevents me from getting 99.9% of viruses or malware. I love the fact that I load it and it loads quick and I know whats running. The thing that probably slows it down the most is that I tend to open a dozen or more tabs, so it does experience crashing when it runs out of memory. That's about it.
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#6You can't.
You can only make sure you limit any potential damage and reduce your attack surface as much as possible.
Limiting damage...
- Regular backups. - Be careful what you store on your hard drive.
Reducing attack surface.
- Latest version of operating system. - Try not to install anything.
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#7The first step you should take is conducting a complex threat assessment.
Question 1: "Am I someone a sophisticated actor (e.g. nation states) would target?"
If the answer is yes, then congratulations—you're probably already compromised and will never know it.
If the answer is no, then you've very little to worry about as long as you practice good security habits.
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#8I'm not going to answer how I go about detecting infestations, because I don't want my techniques to become useless. However, I'll depart some knowledge on how to better protect yourself.
1. Get familiar with your router. - Find it's logs and look for anything weird incoming or outgoing that you know isn't you. - Keep your firmware updated. - Learn how to configure the firewall.
2. Get the most powerful machine you can afford and run a from the metal hyper visor. Make all your everyday OS installs be virtual machines or containers and be vigilant about keeping an eye on what's running on them.
4. On Linux - Learn the "top", "ps", and "netstat" commands. - After initial install of the OS, setup Tripwire. - Pay attention to CERT alerts and try not to be one of the suckers that installs the various honeypot malware. - Be concerned more with patches then Uptime (If the OS tells you it needs to be rebooted when you login, reboot the damn thing ASAP with respect to your maintenance windows).
4- OS X. - Same as Linux, except OS X doesn't really virtualize so great. Apple really hasn't taken the time to stream line their code base when it's being run virtualized. Maybe performance will be okay on the new iMac Pro just as an effect of the Hardware overkill. Your milage may vary.
5- On Windows. Windows is an entirely different level of complexity. However, it does virtualize very well and Microsoft has made many optimizations for it especially if you use Hyper-V. The key here is backups. Seriously. You need to create snapshots after the initial install and if you really need to run some kind of shady freeware application, or scammy application to get your music onto your iPhone without iTunes, spin up a completely new windows VM, install all that crap in there, and when you are finished, trash that VM. - Keep the windows defender updated and run a full scan weekly. - Learn Task Manager - Install SysInternals and learn what is going on in your system. https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.as...
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#9I'm not going to answer how I go about detecting infestations, because I don't want my techniques to become useless. However, I'll depart some knowledge on how to better protect yourself. 1. Get familiar with your router. - Find it's logs and look for anything weird incoming or outgoing that you know isn't you. - Keep your firmware updated. - Learn how to configure the firewall. 2. Get the most powerful machine you c…
Samhain is less well-known but superior to TW, AIDE and OSSEC. (I've deployed both FOSS and commercial TW.)
Re: Professionals: How do you make sure your computer hasn't been hacked?
#10TL;DR Security done this way is expensive, using four physical devices: A gaming desktop, a secure workstation, a NAS, an ESXi server. The hardest part at first was the discipline to use each workstation for its intended purpose and breaking bad habits, IE not browsing the web from the gaming machine etc.
As a pentester, here are some of the things that I use and do to reduce my personal attack surface. I separate out functions by device. Note that, other than the windows 10 section, this isn't cheap and isn't for most people. I've invested a large number of hours into this setup to get it to a place where I feel its "trustworthy enough."
If I were a regular user and had to use Windows 10, most of the following guide would be helpful (https://hackernoon.com/the-2017-pentester-guide-to-windows-1...). I went with a hybrid approach and incorporated elements from Sean Metcalfe's (Trimarc Security) guide on developing a secure baseline (https://adsecurity.org/?p=3299). I've done most of this to my gaming computer. I only play games and use VOIP programs on this machine. Other programs I use on this system (not in the guides) are: glasswire, herdprotect, immunet. I set up win10 to take a full system backup once a week, and this gets auto backed up to a NAS.
I use QubesOS for all non-gaming functions. This can be a painful OS to learn, but I like its "containerization" of information and the workflows for using it. Encrypted, password protected copies of my various VMs are backed up to the NAS.
I log some specific event types from every device on my network, and send it to a SIEM in a VM on a ESXi system. I have custom splunk dashboards to sort through this data and only show me what I think is important.