TEDxUHasselt is an independently organized TED event by three of my fellow students. In order to extend the local community around it, and attract passionate people, they recently organized TEDxUHasselt Salon. As they state: "TEDxUHasselt Salon is an informal event aimed at building a local community of passionate people". Basically anyone with an interesting idea or passion can register and give a talk of 10 minutes.
I decided to give a talk as well, with as subject something related to computer security. To keep it interesting and relevant for the audience I had chosen to work out a realistic example of how a cyber criminal could attack TEDxUHasselt attendees. For the reader who's familiar with security tools it was essentially a small demo of metasploit and meterpreter, combined with a realistically forged email designed to manipulate the target into clicking a deceptive (spoofed) URL.
The presentation started with a few examples of how cyber criminals are trying to steal money. Then we layout the groundwork for a fictive attack on the TEDxUHasselt attendees. Arguably the most interesting part was a video showing a demonstration of the victim reading the spoofed email and following the link, which results in the victim being hacked. Then we show everything a hacker can do with your computer, including downloading sensitive files, logging all the keys the victim presses, and even recording the microphone of the victim!
The slides of the presentation can be seen here:
The slides of the presentation can be seen here:
The actual execution of the fictive attack has been recorded and you can see it in the youtube video below. As you'll notice it isn't hard to launch the attack and to retrieve sensitive information once you have control of the victim's computer. Note that the video immediately starts at the part that is relevant for all users, the first part of the video consists of the hacker configuring his tools to launch the attack.
The presentation itself was a big success and everyone seemed to like it! People are interested in security, you just have to make it understandable and relevant for "the common man". A thank you goes out to Rutger, Niels, and Bob for organizing TEDxUHasselt Salon!