.png){kind=small}
Security, in all its forms, is crucial to the safety of a business and its people, and with that in mind, companies are willing to spend even millions of dollars for their security not to be breached.
However, when focusing on the bigger picture, businesses tend to neglect some basic or not-so-obvious security protocols that often become the means of greater exploitation in the future. Here are a few simple ways in which your business’s security could be sabotaged.
1. Cloned RFID keycards and FOBS:
RFID cards are often used to access secured doors. However, such doors are not as secure as you would expect them to be. Cloning RFID keycards does not require you to know the fundamentals of hacking. All you need to do is order a cloning device from AliExpress or any other online store for a couple of bucks.
One press of a button can copy all of the card’s data, and with another press, you can transfer the information to blank cards that come with the device.
All low-frequency keycards can be duplicated in this manner. And if you do not wish to buy a cloner, there are also many stores and companies you can hire to do the job for you.
2. Cloned Security Badges:
Security badges mostly have high-frequency encryptions. However, that too does not ensure their security against modern cloning devices. Made up of a high-frequency antenna attached to a mini-computer, the device only needs to be in close proximity with the badge to copy its credentials.
Something as simple as walking past someone or asking them a question provides enough time for them to read the card. And to take things a step further, people even use modified garage readers to copy the credentials. With such readers, even a distance of three to six feet is more than enough to access the information on the card.
3. Deceiving Migration Readers:
Since switching from low-frequency to high-frequency encryption is not instantaneously possible for large-scale companies, most of them often switch to migration readers that can read both low and high-frequency cards as they phase-out low-frequency cards.
While this might seem like the most reasonable solution, it leaves a significant flaw in your security. Although you are now only using high-frequency cards, your reader can read both formats.
A perpetrator can use a format downgrade attack to take advantage of the situation. In such an attack, they read the card from the same company’s reader, save the data and transfer it to an older format card. Since the company’s reader is a migration reader, it does not raise an alarm when the low frequency format is used.
4. Deceiving Rex (Request to Exit) Sensors with Air Spray:
Rex motion sensors are often used to simplify exits from secured paths. These sensors prompt the door controller to open up as a person approaches it using infrared and microwave detection.
The problem is that these devices need to be highly sensitive to not cause problems for the people leaving. This sensitivity is manipulated by the infiltrators to bypass the door security.
By spraying compressed air through the gap between doors, the sensor can be tricked into detecting it as motion by a person, and thus the door can open even without a card prompt. Air is not the only effective means for Rex manipulation - Funneling whisky through the gap has also been shown to work.
5. Camera Phishing:
Sharing a YouTube link with a person is not an uncommon thing to do. But this innocent act can also be used to gain live access to a device’s camera. Even if your company’s security is tight, the same cannot be said of your employees’ phones if hacked in this manner.
For such sabotage, only simple software, such as CamPhish for example, is required. A malicious link can be generated by choosing the “Live YouTube TV” option and inserting the video link to be modified.
Once this link is clicked by the person, up to ten live snapshots are taken from the person’s device while watching the video, unaware of what is happening in the background.
In this manner, a malicious user can access your company’s internal environment and information without arousing suspicion.
6. Hacking Android Devices:
When concerned about the security of our systems, we often mainly focus on our PCs and Macs, neglecting the dangerous potential Android phones hold. With trivial malicious code, a hacker can access all the information on a device. All it takes is to stumble upon a webpage the hackers have attacked or download an unsecured app.
The hackers can get backdoor access to your device: Files, webcam footage, live streaming footage, GPS location, microphone recordings, and much more, while on the other side of the world.
So if your employees’ mobile devices contain sensitive information, it would be best to keep it encrypted as a security measure.
7. Hacking CCTV Footage:
While CCTVs are primarily used to secure parameters, they can often have the opposite impact due to their lack of basic security, i.e., account blocking/throttling. After multiple unsuccessful password entries, blocking access attempts is quite a common feature in modern devices. However, most IoT devices have not yet adopted this formula.
Hackers can efficiently run a thousand passwords per second and thus access the camera whenever they hit the right one. Once gaining access to the camera, the hacker connects to it using server mode, taking control of the device and getting a live feed.
Even more disturbing is that most installers do not even change the password and keep it running in its default configuration. More than 540,000 CCTVs worldwide are running in this format right now. A petrol station in Malaysia, a school in the U.S, and God knows where else such neglect is common.
If Microsoft or Apple were to display such obviously broken security measures, they would be dragged through the mud, but these devices are making their way into our homes and workplaces are completely overlooked and given a pass.
8. Hacking Through Social Engineering:
In the face of malicious social engineering and manipulation, even the most sophisticated security systems can prove ineffective. This is because human characteristics and cognitive bias can be effectively exploited if the perpetrator knows what they are doing.
Spoofing, following people, tailgating, and all such skills do not require much technical knowledge and instead are focused on manipulating the human psyche and characteristics to gain unauthorized access to buildings, data, and information.
70-95% of all cybercrimes are facilitated by mistake or manipulation. Someone has to click on the link, give information, partake in a conversation, and create an opportunity for the criminal to take advantage of.
Educating your people and ensuring they know the common techniques that can be used on them will complement the technical side of your security systems.
You Too Are Prone to Hacking:
If you have not been alerted of a breach in your security yet, it does not necessarily mean that you are safe. From the methods discussed above, you must know by now that there are more than ample ways to bypass security and gain unauthorized access with no one the wiser
According to statistics, a hacker attack happens every 39 seconds. Considering that there are 2,200 cyberattacks per day, it equates to about 800,000 attempts a year.
And it’s not just small- or medium-size companies that are prone to such hacks, even high-security jails and tech giants are susceptible to such events. In August this year, Iran’s Evin Prison’s security footage was hacked and made public. In March, 222 cameras in Tesla’s warehouse were hacked. In another incident, the footage of a hospital in Florida was captured.
All these events and statistics point out that our security systems are still too weak compared to the advancements and basic countermeasures intruders have come up with.
It is crucial to revise how we approach security to address these discrepancies. We need a secure platform that gives us security and controlled access anytime and anywhere.
This is exactly what Keer provides, with many other features too. Allowing you to update, audit, and efficiently protect your physical areas, we help you save time and money while your security increases.
With end-to-end protection to any system connecting to our platform, we enable you to optimize your security without needing to change your existing infrastructure.
If you are interested in enhancing the quality of protection your company has, get in touch today to ensure a more secure future for your business.