With all the talk about zero day exploits and sometimes
esoteric vulnerabilities its easy to lose sight of the role of
older, less sophisticated techniques as a mainstay of cracker
activity.
During a hacking debate at InfoSecurity Europe yesterday
[2002-04-25], black hat hacker KP said that when he broke into a
network he did so 90 per cent of the time through an unprotected
modem, often through war dialling.
War dialling involves systematically trying to locate the
numbers associated with corporate modems through testing each
extension of a corporate phone system in turn.
"Intrusion detection systems are no real deterrent for
me because I get in through the back door," he
said. "Many networks are constructed like Baked Alaska
— crunchy on the outside and soft in the
middle."
KP often takes advantage of weak or default passwords to
break into networks…
Take our 
