Be Excellent To Each Other

So,

On the way home, I got to thinking about hacking on TV and in film, and how some spy, police officer, or villian or whatever will be able to hack into pretty much any computer in a minute of minutes if not seconds. I suspect this is not quite as prevalent as they're making out.

Consider the following scenario. I set out a computer connected to a webcam and point it at something in a locked room, the webcam software is not running. The computer is a big named branded one (Dell, HP, Acer etc) connected to a bog standard isp provided router.

If all you had was the physical address and postcode (ie 44 Johnson House, Cundy Street, London, SW1W9JZ) how easy would it be to find out what the webcam was pointing at.

You're not allowed to break into the house in question, you're only allowed to attack through cyberspace...

Malc

Call fire brigade to the location, and listen into their chatter through their network.

Can I torture the person who installed the webcam?

Other than that, nigh on impossible without an IP address, which you wouldn't be able to get with just a physical address, unless you knew what ISP they used and had someone on the inside willing to break the law to provide that info to you.
If you had the IP address, then it is dependant on the OS of the machine and the firmware on the router, could be relatively easy, could be impossible.

Or, if I have the address, go visit and look in the window...

Mock up a header for court order, fax it to a baliff's company, get the inventory of the house. The answer is in the room with the webcam.

Employ an asbestos removal company to sort the ceilings out. Everything will end up in a nice list.

It's a sealed room, you're only allowed to hack through the internet, you don't really want them to know you're doing it.

Lets say you are a member of Mi5 or something.

Malc

Don't forget that you have to do it in an-otherwise dark room, use a graphics, sound and pop up intensive email client, and a large HD quality font.

Have you been to Decca's optician?

Sunglasses. And a bikini.

In the latest episode of 'The Event', the hacker character logs into some CIA server (or some shit) remotely, but has to spoof a Pentagon 'PI address' as they don't allow remote logins (or whatever).

I'm no expert, but something didn't seem quite right there.

Uplink. It taught me everything I know about computers.

Fifteen years of TV and film has taught me that all you need to hack into any website/server is one fat guy with curly hair, one Asian guy and a skinny guy with glasses.

Malc's scenario is all but impossible, on several levels.

Global Thermo Nuclear War

I'd PM you and ask.

Set up a filthy, sex-obsessed livejournal account with lots of fake private and 'friends only' entries (set up a filter that nobody can actually see, but will still count towards your post count), and profiles on every less than reputable (but not completely bullshit) dating and/or sex website you can find.

Promote yourself as a 19 year old 'bi curious' girl who's "looking for experience" and list a broad but quite specific range of sexual activities/services. Hang around a variety of skuzzy chatrooms and sites. Make it clear that you'll fuck basically anyone, but make everyone you talk to think that you're only interested in them (this will be very easy, if the various mentals I and a few peope I know have collected over the years are anything to go by). Use the livejournal account carefully here.

Arrange to meet up with everyone you talk to via this profile. The older and more obviously, alarmingly serious, the better. Give them all the address, and tell them that they must give the person who answers the livejournal address, or leave a piece of paper with it on if nobody's in.

Enable IP logging of comments on the livejournal account. Wait.

Someone from MI5 would be able to get the IP address of the WAN port of the router from the ISP I'd imagine, but that's only the very start of what you'd need. To be able to control that webcam, you'd need remote control of the PC and unless there was already some kind of remote access software running that you knew the login details of, you're screwed right away.

So I concur with DocG's 'nigh on impossible' viewpoint.

Hmm - chance of router admin details being the default: about 90%. You know the address, so park up nearby and you're on the network running packet sniffers. A couple of days and some hard slog going through logs and you've got some passwords, chances are you'll be able to get onto the PC in question at that point.

But of it's a home PC without RDP or any kind of remote software? I mean you'd be able to look at files, but still not access the webcam.

It's an out of the box pc and router, so everything is default.

If the pc prompted to setup a password it would be one that the user used for other services (facebook, twitter etc) otherwise it would be blank.

I think the best way would be craster's suggestion so far. If you can get on the lan via wireless and have an admin password to the pc, you can start either the remote desktop service or at the worst the telnet service (which you could use to install some remote control software for gui fun), and then you can get control of the pc.

But, when you start adding in any form of decent security, with non standard passwords etc it becomes next to impossible, especially if the computer is hardwired to the router and there is no wireless network to get into!

Malc

Have you tried logging on to a newly installed PC, which, as it's new, has Windows 7 Home Premium installed, using either RDP or Telnet? Considering neither service is installed by default?

If it's a WEP secured router MI5 could probably get in and listen to the traffic within about an hour, but that might not be too useful. I don't know how much file sharing is turned on by default with Windows, but it there is any you could get on the network and access it that way nice and easily.

I would do as Craster said, but reconfigure the router so that all traffic is sent to your website first, which scrapes the content of the destination website, and displays that, but with some "Live Webcam Chat" adverts built in.

If your user wasn't too bright, you could mock up a Facebook login page that insisted they allow access to their webcam.

You'd social engineer it. From the address, find who lives there. Google them to find their email address. In an email, get them to click on a link, which goes to your server. Then, hax.

I, er...
What?

[edit]Oh right - I get it now.
Screw getting to chappie's webcam, I'd be far more interested in watching all the Internet pervs turn up at this house!

I'd send them a letter and ask them to email me their IP address.

No, but if you have just one account which has admin rights, and you know the password you can remotely turn those services on.

Malc

I'm not sure you can turn them on - you can install a Telent client remotely, but I'm not sure you could fire it up.

[edit]Although this would probably do the trick: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysi ... s/bb897553

*spluf*

I assume once you have got your hot neighbours webcam recording, you'll upload the videos for us to see too?

That's Cundy street flats, not Johnson house (which is across the road from there)

I also haven't lived there since 1998

Malc

*Exactly*

you can't see my old flat from there!

Malc

Not *your* old flat, no.

Aye, neither service is even installed by default. Plus the Windows Firewall is set up and running by default nowadays.

I'm not experienced enough in hacky hacky ways, since all I need to do here is tell my customers to get LogMeIn installed. I still think Grim...'s phishing scam idea would be the way to go, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.

I'd take out one of those mobile phone deals advertised in The Sun, one that would net them a 'free' PS3.

Oh wait no I'd track down Young Rae, my Korean friend from junior school. He came over to my house and hacked into a bank with my Amiga 500 while I went to the kitchen to get some lemonade and crisps. The password was 'moneymoneymoney', but he couldn't do it again when I came back because he'd inadvertently alerted their security while he was hacking.

He was an excellent hacker, as my A500 wasn't connected to anything other than the mains and my 14" portable TV. It did have the trapdoor expansion though.

Nanobots.

Actually, this would probably work. Or even just turn up and give them some chocolate or something.

Mmmmm, chocolate...

Yeah, but so what?
I know the IP address of everyone that visits this site - and? It doesn't relate to the PC they're using, unless you can bribe the ISP to give up the information somehow.

If you know the IP of the router and the login is default, it makes things a lot easier.

The IP of the router has nothing to do with the IP you log online.
Otherwise every other IP on the web would be 192.168.0.1.

HOW DO YOU KNOW MY ROUTER IP!!!!!!111!!!11ELEVENTYONE

True, but a lot of routers have remote administration switched on.

And... I changed my router IP

They do?

No. Some do, and some more have vulnerabilities that let you turn it on remotely. Most are secure.

That was kind of my point

It doesn't matter anyway, you've got the physical address, so you can just wardrive and hope the default password hasn't been changed.