Hosted Solutions A Hackers Haven

Hosted Solutions A Hackers Haven

Hosted Solutions Hacking

Human beings are lazy by nature.If there is a choice to be made between a complicated technology solution and an easy technology solution, then nine times out of ten people will choose the easy solution.The problem is that the easy solutions are often riddled with hidden risks and those risks can end up costing the consumer more money in damages then what might be saved by using the easy solution.

The advantages of using a managed hosting provider to host your email, website, telephone systems, etc, are clear.When you outsource critical infrastructure components you save money.The savings are quickly realized because you no longer need to spend money running a full scale IT operation.In many cases, you don’t even need to worry about purchasing hardware, software, or even hiring IT staff to support the infrastructure.

What isn’t clear to most people is the serious risk that outsourcing can introduce to their business.In nearly all cases a business will have a radically lower risk and exposure profile if they keep everything in-house.This is true because of the substantial attack surface that hosting providers have when compared to in-house IT environments.

For example, a web-hosting provider might host 1,000 websites across 50 physical servers.If one of those websites contains a single vulnerability and that vulnerability is exploited by a hacker then the hacker will likely take control of the entire server.At that point the hacker will have successfully compromised and taken control of all 50 websites with a single attack.

In non-hosted environments there might be only one Internet facing website as opposed to the 1000 that exist in a hosted environment.As such the attack surface for this example would be 1000 times greater in a hosted environment than it is in a non-hosted environment.In a hosted environment the risks that other customers introduce to the infrastructure also become your risk.In a non-hosted environment you are only impacted by your own risks.

To make matters worse, many people assume that such a risk isn’t significant because they do not use their hosted systems for any critical transactions.They fail to consider the fact that the hacker can modify the contents of the compromised system.These modifications can involve redirecting online banking portal links, credit card form posting links, or even to spread infectious malware.While this is true for any compromised system, the chances of suffering a compromise in a hosted environment are much greater than in a non-hosted environment.

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Karen Huggins

Chief Financial, HR and Admin Officer
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Karen joined the Netragard team in 2017 and oversees Netragard’s financial, human resources as well as administration functions. She also provides project management support to the operations and overall strategy of Netragard.
 
Prior to joining Netragard, she worked at RBC Investor Services Bank in Luxembourg in the role of Financial Advisor to the Global CIO of Investor Services, as well as several years managing the Financial Risk team to develop and implement new processes in line with regulatory requirements around their supplier services/cost and to minimize the residual risk to the organization.
 
With over 20 years of experience in finance with global organizations, she brings new perspective that will help the organization become more efficient as a team. She received her Bachelor of Finance from The Florida State University in the US and her Master of Business Administration at ESSEC Business School in Paris, France.

Philippe Caturegli

Chief Hacking Officer
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Philippe has over 20 years of experience in information security. Prior to joining Netragard, Philippe was a Senior Manager within the Information & Technology Risk practice at Deloitte Luxembourg where he led a team in charge of Security & Privacy engagements.

Philippe has over 10 years of experience in the banking and financial sector that includes security assessment of large and complex infrastructures and penetration testing of data & voice networks, operating systems, middleware and web applications in Europe, US and Middle East.

Previously, Philippe held roles within the information system security department of a global pharmaceutical company in London. While working with a heterogeneous network of over 100,000 users across the world and strict regulatory requirements, Philippe gained hands-on experience with various security technologies (VPN, Network and Application Firewalls, IDS, IPS, Host Intrusion Prevention, etc.)

Philippe actively participates in the Information Security community. He has discovered and published several security vulnerabilities in leading products such as Cisco, Symantec and Hewlett-Packard.

He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), PCI Qualified Security Assessors (PCI-QSA), OSSTMM Professional Security Analyst (OPSA), OSSTMM Professional Security Tester (OPST), Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC)and Associate Member of the Business Continuity Institute (AMBCI).

Adriel Desautels

Chief Technology Officer
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Adriel T. Desautels, has over 20 years of professional experience in information security. In 1998, Adriel founded Secure Network Operations, Inc. which was home to the SNOsoft Research Team. SNOsoft gained worldwide recognition for its vulnerability research work which played a pivotal role in helping to establish today’s best practices for responsible disclosure. While running SNOsoft, Adriel created the zeroday Exploit Acquisition Program (“EAP”), which was transferred to, and continued to operate under Netragard.
 
In 2006, Adriel founded Netragard on the premise of delivering high-quality Realistic Threat Penetration Testing services, known today as Red Teaming. Adriel continues to act as a primary architect behind Netragard’s services, created and manages Netragard’s 0-day Exploit Acquisition Program and continues to be an advocate for ethical 0-day research, use and sales.
 
Adriel is frequently interviewed as a subject matter expert by media outlets that include, Forbes, The Economist, Bloomberg, Ars Technica, Gizmodo, and The Register. Adriel is often an invited keynote or panelist at events such as Blackhat USA, InfoSec World, VICELAND Cyberwar, BSides, and NAW Billion Dollar CIO Roundtable.