Cyber security (hypothetical) questions.

[simon the viking]

Got a few cyber security questions for a novel I'm writing, thought I'd ask cycle chatters as I know there is wide spread of talents on here before I join a computer forum so here goes.

Would a software writer/coder back his work up to a cloud?

if so would it be the general ones that are free/just a few quid a month or is there a higher security version for IT professionals costing a fortune a month £50 to £110 quid a month (or more)

Could a checksum (or other added to the vault/cloud that could indicate if it had been hacked and copied but not altered or deleted.

Thanks in advance

 

[ColinJ]

I would encrypt the backups so in theory it would not matter if the whole world had taken copies! Obviously, the degree of security would depend on the encryption method and password chosen.

I'm assuming that the software engineer in your novel is going to notice some kind of security breach?

It would be easy to make it safe but it might be a problem to explain in a novel why somebody had NOT! Complacency perhaps?

 

[simon the viking]

I would encrypt the backups so in theory it would not matter if the whole world had taken copies! Obviously, the degree of security would depend on the encryption method and password chosen.

I'm assuming that the software engineer in your novel is going to notice some kind of security breach?

It would be easy to make it safe but it might be a problem to explain in a novel why somebody had NOT! Complacency perhaps?

He thinks he's the best but is going to be hacked by someone better. I want his half written app stolen and used in a different app. but he's got to know its been copied without the hacker knowing that he knows.... hope thats not too confusing

 

[Alex321]

First, I assume here you are talking about a freelance software writer. A salaried one backs up t9o whatever his company does, and is unlikely to take separate backups of their own.

They might backup to the cloud, but more likely to put it on a USB stick.

If freelance, they most likely wouldn't use paid cloud storage, there is enough free stuff around for the sort of data volumes we would be talking about.

There is nothing which could indicate if it had been hacked & copied. Certainly no checksum could do that, because a checksum only indicates if the file has changed. Some cloud storage offers may include details such as when the file(s) have been accessed, but those are going to be paid for offerings.

 

[simon the viking]

First, I assume here you are talking about a freelance software writer. A salaried one backs up t9o whatever his company does, and is unlikely to take separate backups of their own.

They might backup to the cloud, but more likely to put it on a USB stick.

If freelance, they most likely wouldn't use paid cloud storage, there is enough free stuff around for the sort of data volumes we would be talking about.

There is nothing which could indicate if it had been hacked & copied. Certainly no checksum could do that, because a checksum only indicates if the file has changed. Some cloud storage offers may include details such as when the file(s) have been accessed, but those are going to be paid for offerings.

thanks the access times might work then, so there are no high security offerings costing mega money. he is a freelancer

 

[Alex321]

He thinks he's the best but is going to be hacked by someone better. I want his half written app stolen and used in a different app. but he's got to know its been copied without the hacker knowing that he knows.... hope thats not too confusing

Sorry, but this is just as unrealistic as things like "Digital Fortress" by Dan Brown. And any IT person who has read it will tell you just how absurd that is.

Firstly, the whole concept of stealing a half written app and using it somewhere else is pretty well a non starter, unless it is a small and specialised field. There just isn't enough commonality of function for that to be a reasonable thing to do, and anyhow, somebody good enough to do that will have written their own, more quickly than converting a half-written one of somebody else's.

Secondly, copying a file just doesn't normally leave traces that the copier would not know about.

 

[Alex321]

thanks the access times might work then, so there are no high security offerings costing mega money. he is a freelancer

The hacker would undoubtedly know about those though. There is no way the coder will know it has been copied without the hacker being well aware they might know.

 

[simon the viking]

Thanks @Alex321 I read Digital Fortress and even I called Bull **** on a lot of it! including a glaring error about the enigma machine, which I forget now and would have to reread it to remember... something I never want to do lol.

will have to rethink this aspect then, the book is a modern day sci-fi/fantasy (a popular genre now) but anything that is a real thing has to factually correct.

 

[simon the viking]

What about a physical break in, could I copy the contents of an external hard drive to a laptop would the owner know if he wasn't present when it was done?

 

[Alex321]

What about a physical break in, could I copy the contents of an external hard drive to a laptop would the owner know if he wasn't present when it was done?

That is a lot more possible.

And then you can have hidden security cameras so that the owner could tell there had been a break in with his laptop being accessed, which the burglar might not know about.

 

[alpine fenlander]

Got a few cyber security questions for a novel I'm writing, thought I'd ask cycle chatters as I know there is wide spread of talents on here before I join a computer forum so here goes.

Would a software writer/coder back his work up to a cloud?

Yes, pretty much standard nowadays. Github, Gitlab or Bitbucket would be the three major ones.
You can have public and private repositories. Private are only visible/accessible by invitation.

A hacker would need to guess your password and get around the 2FA. Couple of topical ideas you could use:
Hacker tries to brute force the password or uses a pw database:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/21/nca_finds_255m_fresh_stolen_passwords/
(The systems would probably block the hacker after a few tries (at least I hope they would)
Then use some phishing toolkit to get the 2FA code:
https://therecord.media/more-than-1...ble-of-intercepting-2fa-detected-in-the-wild/

if so would it be the general ones that are free/just a few quid a month or is there a higher security version for IT professionals costing a fortune a month £50 to £110 quid a month (or more)

I don't think that would make much sense for security purposes. If you're worried about security you keep it off the web.
More likely would be to run your own Git (or other backup) server. This you could run on any PC in your own home or business. So a hacker would need access to your network first to get to the data.
Can't imagine your average app dev being that worried about their code... (as we do have usually a few projects on the go and most never see the light of day anyway)

Could a checksum (or other added to the vault/cloud that could indicate if it had been hacked and copied but not altered or deleted.

Thanks in advance

The checksum would only change if the file changes.

To track access/ downloads you'd need to set-up something custom - which would probably take longer than writing an app - so seems unlikely.
On your home server you'd have default access logging - but those would be easy to temper with for any decent hacker. You might get lucky and find some trace on your router/ network access point, but that's pretty specialised stuff and your average software/ app dev wouldn't know their way around.

 

[classic33]

What about a physical break in, could I copy the contents of an external hard drive to a laptop would the owner know if he wasn't present when it was done?

If using windows, there's the event viewer
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/security-event-log

 

[simon the viking]

Thanks for all the great answers, think I've got enough to work with, probably go for a physical break in and an external hard drive copied to to the thiefs laptop. not sure when I want the owner to know! perhaps quite late in the book. it is going to a strange/weird book but has to be real stuff needs to be grounded in fact (a bit)

 

[IanSmithCSE]

Good morning,

He thinks he's the best but is going to be hacked by someone better. I want his half written app stolen and used in a different app. but he's got to know its been copied without the hacker knowing that he knows.... hope thats not too confusing

Given this requirement my preferred route would be the bad guy somehow installing some form of program, either through your suggested break in or possibly through a web site that both the characters visit.

The installed program would then intercept all calls to the O/S functions that read and write to disc or possibly the network, pass them on to the intended O/S function but also write the data to separate files that could be transferred in the background across the internet to the bad guy.

Sure this method would see some unwanted files copied but any backup software would read all the source files and this would allow the bad guy to have the latest versions and as the data is being intercepted at the O/S file read level it would be at the point that it is being transferred to the application so it would unencrypted even if it was encrypted on the disc with something like Bitlocker.

If the good guy realises what is happening, he would have a date when he realised and if he left the program in place the bad guy would probably assume that he has not been noticed.

I know that in reality this would be quite difficult but it would be easy for a general audience to understand and feel comfortable with and not make too many people roll their eyes in despair. It is not all uncommon to see users "who know what they are doing" log in with admin privileges all the time and sign in with a password of 1234 and your guy could easily be one of these.

I would be cautious with the external USB disc route, any non trivial program is going to consist of a lot of source files, hundreds or thousands and as USB drives are slow nobody would use them as the working copies. The USB drive would only hold backups which are quite likely to password protected and encrypted or compressed.

To put the above into context I have a program that I sell under my own name which is about 120,000 lines of C++ code, that is roughly 10-12 paperback novels. The source files are even bigger then this may sound as they contain comments and blank lines and other bits and pieces.

As for stealing the app I agree with the others, but if you look up Windows DLLs, all other OSs have similar functionality, it may be that these would make sense for your story. The idea is that they are a self contained functionality, that can be used in other programs without the calling program understanding how they work.

Bye

Ian

 

[Ming the Merciless]

A checksum is an encrypted hash of the software developers output. It’s applied to the application you install, not the source code. The source code is often under flux most of the time and generating checksums would be a right pain. I’d say it’s unlikely the developer has bothered creating checksums for their source. Tampering with it, you’d probably get away with it, as long as the change was subtle. But if you changed the application that’s installed the checksum would fail and you’d be alerted to tampering. Something like Github you have checksums for checked in code, but as long as you fiddled around in the depths of the app the developer might not notice.

All servers where the code is stored will log access , including to files. The Internet facing network edge servers will also log ingress. As will servers between the network edge and the core. But unless they are your own servers or it’s a significant breach , that unauthorised access may not get picked up and investigated.

Assuming the layers of security are setup and configured correctly you’d have to assume the hacker exploits a vulnerability on the servers which has not been patched. Then escalates their privilege to the point where they gain access to the server(s) where the source code is stored. Assuming the hacker doesn’t just guess the developer’s password.

The cloud just means using someone else’s servers, accessible over the Internet. It’s just someone else’s remote servers. I hate the term cloud ☁, designed to make it seem fluffy and friendly to the general public.

Servers are being breached all the time, so it’s quite possible. But the hacker would need to know where the source code for this application is stored. The application would also need to have a high commercial value to make it worth it. For instance, it would be meaningless with open source code, which by definition exposes the source publicly. No need to hack anything.

Stealing Lotus 123 source in the 1980s would have been a highly profitable endeavour. Stealing MySQL now, not a jot, as it’s open source and free.