Unicode Exploit
One of the most common uses for an ethical hacker is to breach computer systems protected by Unicode encryption. Unicode exploits a vulnerability in computers that use the East Asian character set-which Unicode represents by a picture of a peach (the symbol for Chinese). Unicode contains over 80,000 characters, including full letters, numerals, punctuation, and symbols used in writing systems from around the world. Exploiting a weakness in this format is easy because there are so many possibilities- especially when used by hackers. Unicode characters can be used as codes that bypass security measures, open ports to allow other codes to pass through, delete files, or even spread malware throughout a system. A Unicode exploit is a security vulnerability that takes advantage of how Microsoft’s IIS web server processes Unicode characters to execute malicious code on the victim’s system. Specifically, this vulnerability (in IIS 5.0 and 6.0) allows for the remote execution of programs. This means that a remote attacker can cause a program to be run and thus execute arbitrary code remotely on the victim’s machine under their user account (i.e., login credentials).
Microsoft IIS Unicode Exploits
Unicode is a superset of the Latin, Greek, and other character sets that were previously used on the Internet. Unicode includes more characters than the other character sets, but it also includes unique characters not found in the other character sets. Unicode also includes punctuation, mathematical and text-processing symbols, and identifiers all of which make it a versatile and powerful set of characters. Because Unicode is so useful, hackers use it to perform dangerous cyber attacks.