Posts Tagged ‘hack’

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btUh–1xbls&eurl=http://hackaday.com/2008/12/19/parallax-christmas-light-show/&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

yea its that cool.

check out –> this link http://hackaday.com/2008/12/19/parallax-christmas-light-show/ to read more about this guys project.

I have read many a discussion in forums where one would ask, “How do I become a hacker?” What would normally follow is a long discussion of programming languages that one would need to learn to become such a hacker.
What a lot of newbies do not realize or may not be aware is what exactly is the definition of a hacker. The term, “hacker” may have nothing to do with penetrating firewalls, defacing websites, and the such. To some one it may just mean getting the comuter to do what you want it to do.

Now I do not believe that every newbie out there is thinking of becoming such a hacker. I do not belive that what they are asking is how to become a nerd with no life who is going to spend the rest of his or her life behind computers working for as a computer security analist at some company.

One does not really need directions on how to become a geek. All you need to do is to sit all day in your room and sit behind the comp.

I can understand the real hackers. They are only explaining what the person is aksing for but that is not what he or she wants to hear.

So here in this article I am going to explain on how one becomes a hacker…er cracker. It is very important that we do not confuse the two words.

I am going to assume that the reader already knows the difference between the two. So I am not going to explain what it means to be a hacker or a cracker. Google is there to help you with that!

I am writing this article in order to educate others as well to express my oppinion. The later of which I am going to do towards the end.

Like I have said one of the things that have prompted me to write this was the some times tedious disscussions on hacker boards on how to become a hacker. What I believe these newbies should be asking is how to become a cracker. The term it sels has a bit of negative conotations. The word hacker is which is widely misused has more of a possitive meaning as opposed to the word hacker. So I believe people rather use the last with out really understanding its meaning.

Of course you do not want to come to a forum and ask people on how to become a criminal. No one is really going to help you out with that. Unless you know for sure there are load unethical people on that board. Because a cracker in essence is a criminal. A cyber criminal but a criminal never theles.
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Recently, while waiting to go to trig class, I stood wearing a shirt that identified me as a hacker.  Being a white hat, this has never bothered me.  Some other student asked me, “Are you a Hacker?” Shrugging, I said yes.  He told me about his friends that had nice stereo systems that they had gotten from hacking.  Trying not to talk about the ethics about hackings (or throw Schmooballs), I told him that I’d never gotten money from hacking.  He looked at me like I must be a n00b.This got me to thinking about how there just may be no place for White Hats in this Brave New World of ours.  Being the Senior Administrator at Cheer10s.com, I read about Crackers and Black Hats every day.  I’m not sure sometimes if there are no good guys anymore or if they just don’t make good press.  I do my best to only use the word ‘Hacker’ in a good light.  And I will continue to do that as long as I feel it is the right thing to do.

Before Notacon 5, a friend of mine got a one word response from a bystander for the word ‘Hacker’. The response: ‘dirtbag’.  My friend asked the publisher of a well known hacker magazine what he thought about this when trying to get an interview with this publisher.  The publisher thought enough of it to say “we’ll have to change that” but not enough of it to grant an interview (and interrupt a drinking competition with an empty wine bottle).

The point is, if the White Hats won’t stand for themselves, no one else will.

Q: How long will it take me to learn to hack?

A: That depends on how talented you are and how hard you work at it. Most people who try can acquire a respectable skill set in eighteen months to two years, if they concentrate. Don’t think it ends there, though; in hacking (as in many other fields) it takes about ten years to achieve mastery. And if you are a real hacker, you will spend the rest of your life learning and perfecting your craft.

Eric Steven Raymond

I have been learning to hack now for about two years give or take a few months. There was about half a year period in between where I did not do any thing in relation to hacking. So you could say that I did not exactly spend two years hacking and that is O.K. with me. Still during the last two years I had been actively engaged to learn hacking. So I can say with a lot of confidence that I have learned quite a lot during this time and that sure does not make me a hacker or even a script-kiddie but I can definitely say for my self that I am some one who understands much more about computer now than some average Joe.

So what have I learned in these two years and can I actually deface a website or take down a web server? Well I am have not actually attempted some thing like that and even if I would I probably would not know how to. Still given the knowledge that I now posses I would be able to do so in a relatively short period of time had I really wanted to. So the next thing that you may ask is why have not I learned how to do so if that is my sole objective?

Many people take a year off and travel the world. Some people hitch-hike and work for there food. Basically with nothing in there pockets other than a map and a passport. I guess for many that is a thrill to see if they can make it with absolutely nothing but there wits. Well I wanted to do some thing similar. I wanted to see if I could become a hacker with only my wits. I was not going to pay any one to teach me or to buy hacker tools are not freely available. I am not interested in that. Sure it could be easy if I decided to throw a thousand dollars or more into this game but it is not really an adventure if you sleep in hotels as opposed to under the stars with nothing but the camp fire to keep you warm and safe.

So what did I learn in the past two years? Well the most important thing would be that I learned how to use linux. I am not no more a slave to windows OS. Of course during the last two years I have learned countlles and valuable things that are going to come handy to me in the future no matter what I do in life.

Because for me this was sort of like a big experiment and the fact that I did not know much about computers when I first decided to learn hacking were all major factors in slowing me down in actually becoming a hacker. However, I know that if I continue on this path I would eventually become a hacker because now I can concentrate on this field with out being distracted by hardware upgrades of my computer and other similar stuff.

I guess I have to write another paragraph to conclude this. I never expected to become a hacker in two years in the two years but if I was honest I expected this to be a bit faster. However, I understand the odds that I am up against. My lack of knowledge of computers would be the main obstacle. Of course there are many people in the community that are not sure whether you are genuinlly interested in hacking or if you are a cop trying to nail them for some thing. So the two years were some times filed with frustrations and at other times with joy but because I have very modest expectations I could say that these two years were quite rewarding.

To get it out there, every damn forum, IRC channel or medium that is dedicated to the hacking and hacker universe has at least recieved this question once in it’s lifetime.

“How do I Hack?”

Look familiar? Well sure it does, because at one point in time we all have asked either ourselves or someone else this very question. Now the difference is how each of us turned out and learned along the way to the answer. I’m going to assume that this question is forged for hacking computer systems and bypassing security. For anyone looking to go out and ask this question to people they don’t know, let me give you some advice so save yourself some hassle and even from getting flamed.

• Read. You want to know as much as you can about the way the internet works and the technology that drives it. Specifically I would start with some old school texts from textfiles.com. Also reading this is a great start, albeit one of the best. Get books, sometimes reading a computer screen for so long can get nostalgic or boring, pick up a book and read it.
• Get Linux and get away from Windows. Learn it.Period.
• Start teaching yourself a programming language. Assembly is a start, even C++ or Java are good ones. Web languages are great to start with as well, because they are fast to learn, and can push you into understanding basic concepts around the higher-end languages.
• Get in with a good forum or group of people that will help you. I recommend suck-o.com, not because I frequent it myself, but because it is a place with people who are willing to teach you as much as they know themselves.
• Setup your own testing environment, either virtually (ie VMware) or a 2 computer isolated network.
• Start applying and testing the things that you’ve learned to your test environment, and make notes of your progress.

Now Hacking is a broad term, and I hate to have this post seem as if hacking only applies to computer systems, because it doesn’t. It can apply to almost every facet of life we experience daily, all it takes is some ingenuity and a will to hack something.