BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO HACKING
The Internet was born in 1969. Almost immediately after the network was established, researchers were confronted with a disturbing fact: The Internet was not secure and could easily be cracked. Today, writers try to minimize this fact, reminding you that the security technologies of the time were primitive. This has little bearing. Today, security technology is quite complex and the Internet is still easily cracked.
We work in the dark
We do what we can
We give what we have
Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task
The rest is the madness of art.
-- Henry James
A hacker is a person intensely interested in the arcane and recondite workings of any computer operating system. Most often, hackers are programmers. As such, hackers obtain advanced knowledge of operating systems and programming languages. They may know of holes within systems and the reasons for such holes. Hackers constantly seek further knowledge, freely share what they have discovered, and never ever intentionally damage data.
A cracker is a person who breaks into or otherwise violates the system integrity of remote machines, with malicious intent. Crackers, having gained unauthorized access, destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, or basically cause problems for their targets. Crackers can easily be identified because their actions are malicious.
Please go through The Jargon File - a great source of trivia, lore, and translations for difficult concepts. The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term �hacker�, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits.
The Hacker Attitude
Basic Hacking Skills
Familiarization with Some Tools
SCANNER: A Scanner is a program that automatically detects security weaknesses in a remote or local host.
PASSWORD CRACKER: A Password Cracker is any program that can decrypt passwords or otherwise disable password protection. Sometimes a dictionary attack is performed.
TROJAN HORSE: A Trojan Horse an unauthorized program contained within a legitimate program. This unauthorized program performs functions unknown (and probably unwanted) by the user.
SNIFFER: A Sniffer is any device, whether software or hardware, that grabs information traveling along a network. That network could be running any protocol: Ethernet, TCP/IP, IPX, or others (or any combination of these). The purpose of the sniffer is to place the network interface into promiscuous mode and by doing so, to capture all network traffic.
The Hackers
Richard Stallman: Stallman joined the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT in 1971. He received the 250K McArthur Genius award for developing software. He ultimately founded the Free Software Foundation, creating hundreds of freely distributable utilities and programs for use on the UNIX platform. He worked on some archaic machines, including the DEC PDP-10 (to which he probably still has access somewhere). He is a brilliant programmer.
Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, and Brian Kernighan: Ritchie, Thompson, and Kernighan are programmers at Bell Labs, and all were instrumental in the development of the UNIX operating system and the C programming language. Take these three individuals out of the picture, and there would likely be no Internet (or if there were, it would be a lot less functional). They still hack today. (For example, Ritchie is busy working on Plan 9 from Bell Labs, a new operating system that will probably supplant UNIX as the industry-standard super-networking operating system.)
The Crackers
Kevin Mitnik: Mitnik, also known as Condor, is probably the world's best-known cracker. Mitnik began his career as a phone phreak. Since those early years, Mitnik has successfully cracked every manner of secure site you can imagine, including but not limited to military sites, financial corporations, software firms, and other technology companies. (When he was still a teen, Mitnik cracked the North American Aerospace Defense Command.)
Kevin Poulsen: Having followed a path quite similar to Mitnik, Poulsen is best known for his uncanny ability to seize control of the Pacific Bell telephone system. (Poulsen once used this talent to win a radio contest where the prize was a Porsche. He manipulated the telephone lines so that his call would be the wining one.) Poulsen has also broken nearly every type of site, but has a special penchant for sites containing defense data. This greatly complicated his last period of incarceration, which lasted five years. (This is the longest period ever served by a hacker in the United States.) Poulsen was released in 1996 and has apparently reformed.
Some Tricks �
If you are using WINDOWS-XP... Open Notepad and type �Bush hid the facts� (without quotes)... Now save it and reopen... What do you see ???
If you are using WINDOWS-98... Open C:\windows\logow.sys through Paint... Just copy paste some other picture here... Now save. The Shut Down image of your machine has been changed.
If you are online you may get details of any website... Log on to a WHOIS server... Enter the website address (any Top Level Domain or Country Level Domain will work, e.g. invotechengineers.com) about which you want to gather information... Press enter.
Write down the code below in your address bar (in your Web Browser) and
press Enter...
javascript:function reverse() { var inp = "dekcah era uoy"; var outp="";for (i = 0; i <= inp.length; i++) { outp =inp.charAt (i) + outp; }alert(outp); }; reverse();
Visit �> http://home.comcast.net/~wolfand
If you don't even have a UNIX installed on your machine yet, get one fast. To be a hacker you need motivation and initiative and the ability to educate yourself. Start now...
Source: Google underground