Sharjah, Tuesday, May 31, 2011-- The Fundamentals of Telecoms and Internet Technologies class at the Department of Management Information Systems at American University of Sharjah (AUS), recently held an event to raise awareness about how hackers think, and the tools available to hack a computer or network.
The semester-long project entitled "Thinking like a Hacker: The Methods They Use," was carried out by eight different groups. Each group was assigned to study and demonstrate one of the tools which included nmap, wireshark, aircrack, Cain and Abel, and tcpdump.
"These tools are used by hackers as a first step to gather knowledge about a website, computer, or a network before they develop their method of attack. One means of an attack is to steal customer information," said Munir Majdalawieh, Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems, at the School of Business and Management. "This is what happened just last month when hackers stole approximately 24.6 million Sony Online Entertainment LLC customers account information, including credit card details," he added.
Sniffing a network is the first step that hackers usually use to study a network and to get any information on the network connections before they attack a victim's computer or system. One of the goals of this event was to create security awareness about the wide spectrum of tools available to hackers and the ease with which they can sniff a computer or network.
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© Press Release 2011
