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War Tools: Scan, Sniff, Spoof and Hijack The one thing that defines a hacker is curiosity: a blinding, insatiable hunger for more, more, more information. If your objective is to fight those who attack your computers, your curiosity will be your greatest asset. This chapter covers some powerful war tools that can satisfy your curiosity in a legal and constructive way -- and shows how to use them to battle computer criminals. There has been a lot of material discussing viruses proliferating across the Internet. A great many of these viruses are transmitted through email attachments. There is only one sure way to stop your computer from getting infected with a virus: Don't open potentially harmful attachments. Hacker Wars: Fighting the Cybernazis There is a war underway in cyberspace. It is a war between the forces of repression and those of us who treasure freedom. On the side of repression are governments who fear the untrammeled freedom of speech that is today's Internet -- and several bands of computer criminals who have the nerve to call themselves hackers. How to Fight Back when Computer Criminals Strike When computer criminals strike, there are easy, legal ways to take care of them, heh, heh. You can even turn the chore of keeping your computer safe into adrenaline-filled fun. A denial-of-service (DoS) attack is any of certain forms of malicious damage to computer systems. The aim of such an attack is to prevent legitimate users from accessing their services. A DoS attack is generated in a number of ways. There are three basic areas of attack - the consumption of limited resources, such as bandwidth, disk space or CPU time; alterations to configuration information, such as routing information or registry entries; and the physical disruption of networking components. The Magical Mystical Crypto-Primer - Cryptography as a security tool Okay, some of you out there know generally what cryptography is supposed to do, how it is used, and what its limitations are. A lot of you probably even have a really good grasp of the mathematics involved. This primer won't tell you people anything you don't already know. Basically, I'm writing this for the cipher-newbies out there that have never used cryptography, or "crypto," and have no idea how it works, and like the idea of starting at the bottom. Quick and Easy Ways to Keep Hackers out of your Home Computer How do Internet ports work? It’s like saying "Hola" to a stranger. If she responds with "Buenos dias," you can communicate in Spanish. If you try all languages and get no response, it’s a good bet she knows not to talk to strangers. Knowing a higher level language such as Basic, Pascal, or C++ will help crackers somewhat. But it really doesn't matter what language a program was written in in order to crack it, because all programs do the same thing. And that is issue commands to the microprocessor. And all programs when broken down to their simplest form are nothing more than a collection of 80XXX instructions and program specific data. This is the level of assembly language. In assembly they have total control of the system. This is also the level that the debugger operates. This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate. The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an intentional culture less than 40 years old. How to Set up a Home Windows Hacker Lab You will learn:
A hacker is anyone who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations, primarily in their fields of interest, namely programming or electrical engineering. As will be discussed below, there is a trend in the popular press to use the term to describe computer criminals, and others whose motivations are less pure than the traditional hacker, which trend greatly annoys many of those old-school computer/technology enthusiasts. There is a very basic step that must first be taken, and that is to define what is meant by "hacking." We'll start with what hacking is
not...it's not denial of service (DoS) attacks, nuking, mail
bombing, IRC, or ICQ. Anyone can run a program, but a hacker learns
how things work, and tries to push them to their limits. Exposing
vulnerabilities is only part of what a hacker does, and when he
finds them, the hacker has the maturity and sense of responsibility
to not use the vulnerability for his own gain.
"You mean you can hack without breaking the law?" That was the voice of a high school freshman. He had me on the phone because his father had just taken away his computer. His offense? Cracking into my Internet account. The boy had hoped to impress me with how "kewl" he was. But before I realized he had gotten in, a sysadmin at my ISP had spotted the kid's harmless explorations and had alerted the parents. Now the boy wanted my help in getting back on line. The simplest way to get in trouble is to accidentally give control of your IRC channel to an impostor whose goal is to kick you and your friends off. The first person to start up a channel on an IRC server is automatically the operator (OP). The operator has the power to kick people off or invite people in. Also, if the operator wants to, he or she may pass operator status on to someone else. Ideally, when you leave the channel you would pass this status on to a friend your trust. This test was conceived and written by Felix Lee, John Hayes and Angela Thomas at the end of the spring semester, 1989. It has gone through many revisions prior to this initial release, and will undoubtedly go through many more. Phreaking is a slang term for the action of making a telephone system do something that it normally should not allow. It is an illegal activity, but one formerly pursued by a large number of computer and electronics hobbyists out of curiosity. Other reasons why many people attempted (or succeeded in) phone phreaking during the 1960s and 1970s included the (then) very high cost of long-distance telephone service, and a desire to rebel against the AT&T telephone monopoly. "Where do I type that command?" People ask that all the time when they read my early Guides to (mostly) Harmless Hacking. Telnet is a protocol that is most commonly used to log into a remote computer. It also is the single most powerful hacking tool on the planet. With just a telnet client program, you can:
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