OpSec Cheatsheet

A general term for fradulent attempts to obtain sensitive information or data such as usernames, passwords, account details and so on. The term phishing has roots in the word phreaking

Online deception that involces getting to know someone closely in order to extract sensitive information or data from them

Malicious emails that targets an individual or a multitude of people. Often contains a link to a malicious webpage or a piece of malware such as ransomware

Highly targeted phishing

A relatively new attack vector. Essentially the same as smishing but constrained to Social Media platforms

Phone phishing

In line with vishing. Textual phishing. Can be either SMS or any other textual communication type such as Telegram, Messenger etc

Term used to describe phishing against high-profile (business) targets

A woman (most often) initiating sexual contact over a webcam or similar while screencapturing the sexual acts and using the material to extort the target

A type of malware gaining traction in recent years. Works by holding your data ransom until you pay for a de-cryption key. Sometimes you get to have your data back, other times you do not

A password manager helps you manage logins and enables the use of complex random passwords for all your logins as you do not have to rely on memory

Reusing the same password makes cracking possible if you happend to ever fall victim to a databreach

Sensitive information such as password hashes being leaked because of a security hole

Attempting to crack a password hash from a target whose data was leaked in a databreach

A phone "phreaker". A type of social engineerer that gains entrance into telecommunication networks by use of social engineering tactics. Kevin Mitnick (formerly FBIs most wanted hacker) is well known for phreaking

2-Factor Authentication. People have lost their life savings because of weak 2FA such as SMSs which can be either intercepted or in the case of social engineering redirected to a new cellphone own by the social engineer

One time passwords through SMS; susceptible to SIM-swapping fraud.

One time codes through apps like Google Authenticator for example.

Hardware authentication device like a YubiKey for example.

Biometric IDs can sometimes be bypassed by a printed image. Your camera can be exploited. GPS location can be obtained by webpages.

Internet of things-devices are known for their weak, hardcoded or guessable passwords, insecure default settings, lack of secure update mechanisms and a lot more.

Computers are exceptionally prone to malware if used by people that have no clue about common security practices

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) comes with a lot risks. Data-theft, lost devices and malware infiltration are perhaps the most significant.

The (I)nvisible (I)nternet (P)roject. A fully encrypted private network layer.

A peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication and publishing

The Onion Router. Perhaps the most well known darknet

If an SSH fingerprint changes it either means the machine you are connecting to has changed their public key or that you are connecting to a different machine than what you think.

Can be used to anonymize your computer through a VPS container whereby you can run a "clean slate"-browser session

Be aware if your provider saves logfiles or not (they might have their hand forced at some point if they do), or just assume all communication is secretly tapped.

Tool for encrypting portable media devices. You should use full-disk encryption on your PC. Veracrypt also has a neat feature for creating hidden encrypted volumes

A tool for storing unique user-password combinations so that you do not have to rely on memory

A technique for encrypting a harddrive. For windows use Bitlocker. For Linux there are LUKS and Dm-cryot. It can be done on Android as well

Formed in the 1940s between UK-USA. New Zealand, Canada and Australia later joined

An expansion of the 5-eyes alliance. Cooperation is less intense. The Netherlands, France, Denmark and Norway are part of this alliance as well as the rest of the 5-eye countries

An expansion of the 9-eyes alliance. Cooperation is less intense than the 9-eyes alliance. Countries added are Belgium, Italy, Germany, Spain and Sweden

An IRC hostmask cloak replaces your IP address or hostname with a cloak.

An encrypted thumbdrive bootable OS with security features that runs TOR by default.

Security focused operating system that relies on compartmentalization (security by isolation); effectively spinning up isolated instances of VMs for each application.

Another security-focused Linux distribution with some neat features like keystroke anonymization, kernel modules for overwriting TCP ISNs, hardening the OS and more.

OS hardening is a process of reducing the attack surface by various means such as closing down ports, containerization/virtualization of applications, IPS/IDS, relevant kernel modules and much more.

Multiple services exists to create one-time email addresses. Beware these are not usable by other people aswell. You can setup forwarding to an intermediate email address which then forwards to your regular email address

Creation of email messages with forged headers that results in a forged sender address

All transactions on Bitcoin for example are stored on public ledgers and can thus be traced easily. Some cryptocurrencies have made attempts to curcumvent this feature (e.g. Monero)

A vulnerability that allows hackers to read texts, listen to calls and track their locations. This vulerability have been used against populations and army-staff aswell as political targets

A bitcoin wallet that is online and connected

An offline wallet that is stored on a hardware device

A nasty set of techniques to identify, track and collect information on users without their consent.

A small piece of data stored on an end-users computer by a web browser. Used to remember stateful information and exploited by advertising companies to track and identify users.

A cookie that is automatically recreated after being deleted. Accomplished by storing the cookies content in multiple locations client-side as well as server-side.