Hello guys!!
Today i'm going to tell about what does HACKING really means? or who are the HACKERS?
As far as my knowledge is concerned hacking is simply a technical skill set. So understanding how hacking works, understanding how hacking attacks happen or being able to plan hacking attacks etc. is simply a technical skill set. Now you have to understand, if you decide to hacking in the real world (?), you are liable for any legal ramifications for that!! So, if you steal somebody's data that you're not supposed to steal or look at or you slow down the systems or destroy systems etcetera, THAT IS ALL ON YOU!! DO NOT BLAME ME FOR THAT!! (:P) In the upcoming blogs i'm going to tell you how to do hacking based on how malicious hackers would attack. So i'm gonna talk about how you plan attacks, why you do hacking, what you could do with hacking once you're into it, but like i said this is all just for informational purposes, if you decide to hack anything, thats all on you. DO NOT BLAME ME!
Today i'm going to tell about what does HACKING really means? or who are the HACKERS?
As far as my knowledge is concerned hacking is simply a technical skill set. So understanding how hacking works, understanding how hacking attacks happen or being able to plan hacking attacks etc. is simply a technical skill set. Now you have to understand, if you decide to hacking in the real world (?), you are liable for any legal ramifications for that!! So, if you steal somebody's data that you're not supposed to steal or look at or you slow down the systems or destroy systems etcetera, THAT IS ALL ON YOU!! DO NOT BLAME ME FOR THAT!! (:P) In the upcoming blogs i'm going to tell you how to do hacking based on how malicious hackers would attack. So i'm gonna talk about how you plan attacks, why you do hacking, what you could do with hacking once you're into it, but like i said this is all just for informational purposes, if you decide to hack anything, thats all on you. DO NOT BLAME ME!
Who/What are hackers?
So first question we have to answer is what is hacking? and who are hackers?
Basically in the simple words, all type of hacking is a non conventional way to interact or communicate with systems. When a computer operating system is created, the designers of that operating system figure out how they want you to interact with the computer. So you may double click on icons, you may right click, you might run a command etc.,this is a conventional way of interacting with a computer. A non conventional way is the way of interacting with a computer is that trying to interact with the system in a way that the designers did not intend for you to interact with that system. So to give you a hint, if you're trying to open up a file, lets say you're trying to open up a word file on a computer. The conventional way to open up that file is to boot up that operating system, double click on the file and it opens up in word. The non conventional way of opening that file is booting up a linux live cd then going into the computer and then accessing the document using linux live cd operating system. Now why this is important is because if you boot the computer off of the windows oeprating system, windows os has security and has permissions. So while on the operating system you may not have permission to that file. That is, when you try to open up the file, windows will tell you that you do not have permission to open the file. Well, if you boot the system off of a linux live cd, security parameters are not understood by the linux live cd, so even if you're not supposed to have access to that file or folder, you can get into it, because basically live cd does not view or does not care about the permissions. Thats all hacking is!! How do you get at information, how do you get at systems without going through the normal way!!! Lots of programs keep their informations in .ini files or .data files. So the way you normally view those data files is by opening up the application. When you open an application it shows you a window and what all the data is present. Another way you can go is by opening up the dat file in a text editor and see all of the information that is stored there. Thats it for the definition of HACKING.
Now as we talk about hackers, you'll hear something called as "HAT". So you'll hear black hat hackers, white hat hackers and grey hat hackers. Basically black hat hackers are probably the one, you're thinking about. These are the evil hackers!! So black hat hackers are there to destroy systems or steal data.That is, black hat hackers are the bad people as far as computer systems are concerned (and not as a human being!! :P ) They're stealing data, they're stealing credit card information,they're trying to destroy stuff etc. Then you have what are called the white hat hackers. White hat hackers are basically people that are lil' angels of the hacker world. These people don't wanna cause any damage to anybody. Basically., if they're hacking, they're looking to discover security vulnerabilities so they can patch these security vulnerabilities. So they may be try to hack the systems but the sole reason is for hacking the system is always for good or they do it for the right reasons. Then you've the grey hat hackers, where most of us probably 98% of the hacker population falls into. So, what does grey hat means? Grey hat means, is basically it is good or bad depends on the person you're having the argument with. Because , I may think what i'm doing is completely right, if i tell my friend about it, he thinks its completely wrong therefore you have a disagreement whether its good or bad!!! So black hat are the evil ones, white hat are the lil angels or saints (:D) out there and grey hat is basically, where most of us fall, where we understand how the system works so well that sometimes we modify systems to improve how they work for ourselves. Like i said grey hat is where, depending on who you're talking to, you may be a saint or a sinner. Thats why you're grey!! You're kind of sitting there in the middle!!
When you're talking about white hat hackers, you'll hear something called ethical hacking. When you call yourself an Ethical hacker, basically means you're saying that you're one of these white hat hackers. You only hack ethically. But I think its just more a marketing term. But basically ethical hacking means you're one of these white hat hackers, that you only do hacking for the good. So you may hack systems, but you're only looking for security vulnerabilities inside.
Now when you're talking about different skill levels of hackers, there are generally three different skill levels. So whether you're black hat, grey hat or white hat, there are generally three skill levels. The first one is the computer science skill level. These are really very impressive people that really understand how things like networking protocol, operating systems work. I mean the people that can actually program. So they can go in and program operating systems, they can modify an operating system. They can create viruses, malwares, botnets, root kits etc. So, thats the high level of hacking, whatever hat hackers they may be. Then you have a technician class hacker. So hacking is been around a long time now, and so just like word has got easier to use, just like a windows 7 operating system is much easier to use and more robust than the windows NT was , hacking tools are the same way. Every year they come out with better and better versions of hacking tools. Few years back it was all command lines interface, you had to type in commands and you got to know exactly what you're doing and if you dint then everything's gonna blow up. Well now in hacking they've beautiful Graphical User Interfaces(GUI) with nice lil icons and its all really pretty and very easy to use. So these technicians go out and use tools that are already in the market to do hacking. You can use them in non conventional ways but you're not developing virus software, botnets and all that. You're simply using what is out there, what is open source that you can purchase etc. Then you have the lowest level in the hacking, and that is generally called as script kiddies. Basically script kiddies are non technical people that are some how got their hands on scripts like visual basics scripts, malicious codes or malicious programs etc. and they decide try to use that for their own betterment or for the determent of other people. This may be 10 year old kids get really angry at their teacher at school, so they go home download some nasty virus and when their teacher isn't looking, they upload it on the computer and fires the computer or it may also be the parent that is trying to be good and make sure that their kids are not doing what is not supposed to do. So he installs a software on his kids computer that stores all the instant messages, emails and all the stuff. So it may be a parent that is trying to spy his kids or it may be kid itself. Basically, these are the lowest level people, these are like consumer people. They dont understand how does computer works, frankly they just dont understand what they're doing. They just got their hands on the scripts or these programs to use it against someone.
Now finally, we've talked about the interactions with the systems in a non conventional ways, so the question is why do people hack? Well. the first reason people hack is to acquire data, for good or for bad. So if a customer came to me and their operating system on the computer was dead and they needed to do data recovery, i will be hacking that computer to recover their data. This is their data, so that is hacking to acquire data for good reason. On the bad side, you may be hacking to acquire credit card information, to do something niferious with that in the future. You may be hacking in to get passwords, or to get contact information from a company. For example if you have a company that is your competitor and you want to market their clients, you may try to hack that company to acquire all of their contact information so you can go after their client. The next reason for hacking is to impersonate somebody.
To be continued.....
Basically in the simple words, all type of hacking is a non conventional way to interact or communicate with systems. When a computer operating system is created, the designers of that operating system figure out how they want you to interact with the computer. So you may double click on icons, you may right click, you might run a command etc.,this is a conventional way of interacting with a computer. A non conventional way is the way of interacting with a computer is that trying to interact with the system in a way that the designers did not intend for you to interact with that system. So to give you a hint, if you're trying to open up a file, lets say you're trying to open up a word file on a computer. The conventional way to open up that file is to boot up that operating system, double click on the file and it opens up in word. The non conventional way of opening that file is booting up a linux live cd then going into the computer and then accessing the document using linux live cd operating system. Now why this is important is because if you boot the computer off of the windows oeprating system, windows os has security and has permissions. So while on the operating system you may not have permission to that file. That is, when you try to open up the file, windows will tell you that you do not have permission to open the file. Well, if you boot the system off of a linux live cd, security parameters are not understood by the linux live cd, so even if you're not supposed to have access to that file or folder, you can get into it, because basically live cd does not view or does not care about the permissions. Thats all hacking is!! How do you get at information, how do you get at systems without going through the normal way!!! Lots of programs keep their informations in .ini files or .data files. So the way you normally view those data files is by opening up the application. When you open an application it shows you a window and what all the data is present. Another way you can go is by opening up the dat file in a text editor and see all of the information that is stored there. Thats it for the definition of HACKING.
When you're talking about white hat hackers, you'll hear something called ethical hacking. When you call yourself an Ethical hacker, basically means you're saying that you're one of these white hat hackers. You only hack ethically. But I think its just more a marketing term. But basically ethical hacking means you're one of these white hat hackers, that you only do hacking for the good. So you may hack systems, but you're only looking for security vulnerabilities inside.
Now finally, we've talked about the interactions with the systems in a non conventional ways, so the question is why do people hack? Well. the first reason people hack is to acquire data, for good or for bad. So if a customer came to me and their operating system on the computer was dead and they needed to do data recovery, i will be hacking that computer to recover their data. This is their data, so that is hacking to acquire data for good reason. On the bad side, you may be hacking to acquire credit card information, to do something niferious with that in the future. You may be hacking in to get passwords, or to get contact information from a company. For example if you have a company that is your competitor and you want to market their clients, you may try to hack that company to acquire all of their contact information so you can go after their client. The next reason for hacking is to impersonate somebody.
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