Posts Tagged ‘lifestyle’

I agree, in part, with Grym on some stances he takes with regards to the ‘white hat’ hacker ethic. However, one can draw a parallel between the saying “All a good man must do for evil to previal, is nothing” (or one of the various other forms, of the same meaning) and the aforementioned, hacker ethic.

What I am getting at is, if you play by the straight – the “White Hat” creed, evil will indeed prevail. I think it is not only right, but also necessary that these same ‘white hats’ do NOT always play by the law. You are indeed right, if the white hat hacker does not stand for himself, no one will..that is exactly my point. You cannot play white hat, bake the cake and eat it too – you must change colors and protect the domain that is yours, the internet. Do not sell out for money, do not give up because the man says you ‘cannot do that’ – learn and prosper, do what it takes. The internet is ours, we must keep it.

Do what is necessary, if you must break a law to bring justice to someone – do it. Law is only a constraint of freedom and one must only give up the freedom that is necessary for their own protection. Must I give up my privacy for my own protection? No!

The root of my rant is that one must not be passive to what is around them, if one is, one has already lost.

Be free, break the law that constrains your freedom for your own ‘protection’ (ahem!) and then prosper!

Your a geek, you stay up late at night, typing away endlessly at code…you get hungry, and thirsty, and tired. So what do you do? Well you register in your laziness functions and facilitate them with your survival mechanisms, add coffee and blend well. At least thats always been my formulae.

The Best shit in the world: the Grilled Cheese!

And not just any grilled cheese but the slightly cold, hard edged, crunchy kind that you may have gotten during school lunch hour or on a barge working for passage over the Atlantic. These things are the best…I get bags of them from a nursing home, bless my wife.

Also on this list of short-time-to-make foods are Ramen noodles, chicken flavor with a pb sandwhich mmm yum…and let me tell you the best soda pop…

Mountain Dew hands down…

Vault is disgusting – cokes deprived “wanna be” just doesnt cut it when you have to chug a lug a gallon of it and not keel over from a heart attack or sugar overdose…

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.

My internal human core clock is corrupted. I’ve been neglecting regular sleeping habits for weeks now, all because I love the things that I do and there just isn’t enough time in the day to do them all. If your going to shutdown your internal clock or set it to an unregular setting take some advice from a guru of the non-sleeping culture.

• Keep a well stocked supply of caffeine ridden products handy, for energy drinks don’t out do it by drinking them one after another, instead pace them out for maximum effect.
• Make sure you have something you need to do, or really like doing…concentrate on whatever it is you enjoy doing.
• A cold shower does not hurt during those peak hours of the heavy eye…
• Masturbation surely is a way to take the edge off, and you might get another hour tops. Don’t over do it though.
• Loud music to keep those other senses rolling, avoid the quiet and looping ambiance sounds (ie fish tanks) I like to always have a movie playing behind me as well as my favorite tunes blaring in my headphones.
• Always make sure to stand and stretch occasionally, sitting in one place for two long can cause slumber.
• Don’t do hardcore drugs, they’ll fuck you up, instead use Stackers etc… the over the counter stuff you can by at the pharma-con, again don’t over due it.

I drink a lot of soda, and energy drinks combined with coffee products and with my state of developments and work I’ve stayed up 2-3 .5 days straight without missing a beat. Some say this is unhealthy, fuck their opinion. I like it. So have fun hacking your sleep timer all you up all nighters, leave me a comment and let me know if I missed something that could have been added to this list…

p.s. yes you do end up starting to hallucinate after to long it can be fun.