Dustin Childs can still describe the best demonstration of a winning hack at an international tournament he’s ever seen. It happened almost a decade ago.
The participants had to find a way to break into a Windows workstation that was hardened with firewalls and up-to-date software to make it more secure. One member of a team from China typed an IP address into the Windows browser, he said, "and took their hands off the keyboard, and that was it.”
The address triggered computer code that turned the Chinese team’s access from "guest” to "host,” giving them administrator rights and the ability to install whatever code or software — or malware — they wanted.
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