Why Hackers choose Linux
Why
Hackers Choose Linux ? However, in terms of hacking, programming or any other
related Geeky stuffs, Linux is at the top a good overview with this is because
Linux use is growing at an amazing rate. This operating system, which has no
public relations department, advertising, or government lobby, is being used
widely in homes and server rooms alike. It’s also free, and 100% open source,
meaning anyone can look at each and every line of code in the Linux kernel.
Linux
is a true multiuser operating system, and has been since the very first
version. It is powerful in it’s simplicity. Linux use is growing at an amazing
rate. This operating system, which has no public relations department,
advertising, or government lobby, is being used widely in homes and server
rooms alike. It’s also free, and 100% open source, meaning anyone can look at
each and every line of code in the Linux kernel. Linux is a true multiuser
operating system, and has been since the very first version. It is powerful in
it’s simplicity. Though there are robust graphical environments and tools, you can
still do everything you could possibly need with just a keyboard and a shell
prompt. Since you have the code, you could even make Linux do things it was
never meant to. That’s one of the things that draws both the gurus and the
attackers alike. When deciding on an operating system to cover in depth, we had
a variety to choose from: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/etc, MacOS, OpenBSD, NetBSD,
FreeBSD, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, IRIX, and many others. So how did Linux win our
favor?
Features
:
·
It’s use is on the
rise.
·
It’s an Open Source
operating system.
·
It’s available to
everyone at a great price — free.
·
It comes in many
flavors (aka distributions.)
·
It is too commonly
broken into due to out of date packages, poor system configuration, and its
ubiquity.
·
Hackers use Linux.
·
We feel that Linux
can be secured.
The
power and flexibility of Linux makes it the hacker’s playground. They use it,
learn it, and understand it intimately. And that means that if there’s an
insecurity, they’re going to find it. The black-hats have thronged to Linux. It
allows them the control they require to do strange and ingenious things. If
they want to experiment with new or invalid network packets, they can do so
easily without relying on undocumented (or non-existant) API support from the
vendor. Millions of lines of code have been written for Linux applications and
libraries, usually in an extremely modular manner, which allows it to be
integrated into widely diverse projects. For example a library that allows you
to sniff the network for proactive performance monitoring could be used as part
of network hijacking code. The power and flexibility of Linux makes it the
hacker’s playground. They use it, learn it, and understand it intimately. And
that means that if there’s an insecurity, they’re going to find it. However the
very reasons the hackers like Linux are the same reasons more folks are
installing it on their own systems today. The ability to look at each and every
line of Linux code, and patch it when problems arise, means that Linux can be
secured not just by a few programmers locked away in some corporate
headquarters, but by any user at any time. However the very reasons the hackers
always like Linux are the same reasons more folks are installing it on their
own systems today. The ability to look at each and every line of Linux code,
and patch it when problems arise, means that Linux can be secured not just by a
few programmers locked away in some corporate headquarters, but by any user at
any time.
Difference Between Hacking and Cracking
The difference between hacking and cracking :
Hacking, and cracking. Two different forms of Internet and computer related
privacy and copyright breaches, usually malicious. I’ll be discussing the
differences between hacking, and cracking. They are two completely different
things, but people usually get confused between the two, they both end with a
similar sound, or ‘acking’ (that’s probably why!) and they’re both malicious
forms of cyber activity.
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Let’s start off by explaining what the words mean,
in computer vocabulary – that is. Hacking, is the act of stealing personal or
private data, without the owner’s knowledge or consent, it could also include
other things like stealing passwords, creating a bot net, or pretty much any
act that breaches someone’s privacy, without their knowledge, or consent.
Now, on to cracking. Cracking is where edit a
program’s source code, or you could create a program, like a key generator
(more commonly known as a ‘keygen’), patch, or some sort of application that
tricks an application in to thinking that a particular process has occurred.
For example, a key generator and a patch for the Adobe Master Collection would
trick the software in to thinking that the key entered is correct, and not let
it verify the key with the Adobe master server. Cracking is pretty much looking
for a back door in software, and exploiting it for malicious use or for a
copyright breaching act.
The difference (if you have not noticed it yet) is
that a hacker is someone that uses their extensive knowledge of computer logic
and code for malicious purposes, while a cracker – looks for back doors in
programs, and exploits those back doors. Cracking is generally less harmful
than hacking. Hackers are usually involved with web related hacking, like MySQL
interception, or phishing, other forms of hacking would include things like
brute force, or password lifting.
Well, the difference is simple. One is more
malicious than the other, crackers usually have an extensive knowledge in code
related to Python and .NET (Visual Basic, C, C++, C#) and Objective C (Mac),
while hackers are fluent in different forms of web code, like PHP, MySQL, Java
Script , Ajax, and HTML and CSS. I hope, after reading this, we all have got
what the difference between hacking, and cracking are. Basically, it’s just
what they do, that’s the difference.
TOP 10 BLACK HAT HACKERS
Top 10 Black
Hat Hackers
A “black hat” hacker is a hacker who violates
computer security for little reason beyond maliciousness or for personal gain.
Black hat hackers form the stereotypical, illegal hacking groups often
portrayed in popular culture, and are the epitome of all that the public fears
in a computer criminal. Black hat hackers break into secure networks to destroy
data or make the network unusable for those who are authorized to use the
network. A black-hat is a term in computing for someone who compromises the
security of a system without permission from an authorized party, usually with
the intent of accessing computers connected to the network. To accompany the
technological advancements of the computer world and the constant changing definition
of a hacker, we thought it was time to look back at ten of the most notorious
black hat hackers and the legendary hacks that earned them such a title.
Here are top
10 black hat hackers.
10.
Vladimir Levin
Vladimir Levin is a Russian-born Jewish individual
famed for his involvement in the attempt to fraudulently transfer US$10.7
million via Citibank’s computers. However, his career as a hacker was only
short lived, with a capture, imprisonment and recovery of all but $400,000 of
the original $10 million. During Levin’s 1997 trial in the United States, he
was said to have coordinated the first ever internet bank raid. The truth is
Levin’s ability to transfer Citibank client funds to his own accounts was
possible through stolen account numbers and PINs. Levin’s scam was a simple
interception of clients’ calls while recording the punched in account numbers.
9.
Albert Gonzalez
he was arrested, authorities seized $1.6 million in
cash including $1.1 million Albert Gonzalez is a computer hacker and computer
criminal who is accused of masterminding the combined credit card theft and
subsequent reselling of more than 170 million card and ATM numbers from 2005
through 2007—the biggest such fraud in history. Gonzalez’s team used SQL
injection techniques to create malware backdoors on several corporate systems
in order to launch packet-sniffing (specifically, ARP Spoofing) attacks,
allowing him to steal computer data from internal corporate networks. When found
in plastic bags placed in a three-foot drum which had been buried in his
parents’ backyard. On March 25, 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to 20 years in
federal prison.
8.
Kevin Poulsen
The notorious ’80s black hat hacker, Kevin Poulsen,
also known as Dark Dante, gained recognition for his hack of LA radio’s KIIS-FM
phone lines, which earned him a brand new Porsche, among other items. Law
enforcement dubbed him “the Hannibal Lecter of computer crime.”
Authorities
began to pursue Poulsen after he hacked into a federal investigation database.
During this pursuit, he further drew the ire of the FBI by hacking into federal
computers for wiretap information. His hacking specialty, however, revolved
around telephones. Poulsen’s most famous hack, KIIS-FM, was accomplished by
taking over all of the station’s phone lines. In a related feat, Poulsen also
“reactivated old Yellow Page escort telephone numbers for an acquaintance who
then ran a virtual escort agency.” Later, when his photo came up on the show
Unsolved Mysteries, 1-800 phone lines for the program crashed. Ultimately,
Poulsen was captured in a supermarket and served a sentence of five years,
which was the longest sentence ever given for hacking at the time. However,
since serving time, Poulsen has worked as a journalist and is now a senior
editor for Wired News. Poulsen’s most note-worthy article details his work on
identifying 744 sex offenders with MySpace profiles.
7.
Robert Tappan Morris
Robert Tappan Morris is
an American computer scientist, best known for creating the Morris Worm in
1988. That was considered the first computer worm on the Internet. Also he was
the first person convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Morris created the worm
while he was a graduate student at Cornell University. He released the worm
from MIT to conceal the fact that it actually originated from Cornell. The worm
took down one-tenth of the Internet, crippling 6,000 plus computer systems. It
didn’t take long for the police to track him down. Due in part to the need for
social acceptance that seems to be common among many young hackers, Morris made
the fault of chatting about his worm for months before its release on the
Internet. Morris claimed it was just a stunt, and added that he truly regretted
causing $15 million worth of damage: the estimated amount of carnage his worm left
behind.
Morris was one of the
first to be tried and convicted under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act . In
December, 1990, was sentenced to three years of probation, 400 hours of
community service, a fine of $10,050, and the costs of his supervision.
6.
Michael Calce
A high school student from West Island, Michael
Demon Calce best known as “MafiaBoy”. He launched a series of widely known
denial-of-service attacks against large commercial websites, including Yahoo!,
Amazon.com, Dell, eBay, and CNN. He hacked Yahoo! when it was still the web’s
leading search engine and caused it to shutdown for about an hour. Like many
hackers, Calce exploited websites primarily for pride and establishing
dominance for himself and his cybergroup, TNT. In 2001, the Montreal Youth
Court sentenced Calce to eight months of open custody, one year of probation,
restricted use of the Internet, and a minimal fine.
5.
Kevin Mitnick
A
self-proclaimed “hacker poster boy,” Mitnick went through a highly publicized
pursuit by authorities. His mischief was hyped by the media but his actual
offenses may be less notable than his notoriety suggests. The Department of
Justice describes him as “the most wanted computer criminal in United States
history.” His exploits were detailed in two movies: Freedom Downtime and
Takedown.
Mitnick
gained unauthorized access to his first computer network in 1979, at 16, when a
friend gave him the phone number for the Ark, the computer system Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) used for developing their RSTS/E operating system
software. He broke into DEC’s computer network and copied their software, a
crime he was charged with and convicted of in 1988. According to the U.S.
Department of Justice, Mitnick gained unauthorized access to dozens of computer
networks while he was a fugitive. He used cloned cellular phones to hide his
location and, among other things, copied valuable proprietary software from
some of the country’s largest cellular telephone and computer companies.
Mitnick also intercepted and stole computer passwords, altered computer
networks, and broke into and read private e-mail.
4.
George Hotz
George
Francis Hotz, alias geohot, or simply mil, is an American hacker known for
unlocking the iPhone, allowing the phone to be used with other wireless carriers,
contrary to AT&T and Apple’s intent. Additionally, he developed the
limera1n jailbreak tool, which used his limera1n bootrom exploit.
In
June, 2007, Hotz became the first person to carrier unlock an iPhone. According
to Hotz’s blog, he traded his 2nd unlocked 8 GB iPhone to Terry Daidone, the
founder of Certicell, for a Nissan 350Z and three 8 GB iPhones. Hotz said he
wanted to give the iPhones to the other members of the team who created the
hack with him. His name will forever be associated with the April 2011
PlayStation breach. Being one of the first hackers ever to jailbreak the Sony
PlayStation 3, Hotz found himself in the midst of a very relentless, public and
messy court battle with Sony – perhaps worsened by Hotz’s public release of his
jail breaking methods. In a stated retaliation to Sony’s gap of the unstated
rules of jail breaking – never prosecute – the hacker group Anonymous attacked
Sony in what would be the dubbed as the most costly security break of all time
to date.
At
the end of April 2011, Hackers broke into the PlayStation Network and stole
personal information of some 77 million users. However, Hotz denied any
responsibility for the attack, and added “Running homebrew and exploring
security on your devices is cool; hacking into someone else’s server and
stealing databases of user info. is not cool.”
3.
Adrian Lamo
Adrian
Lamo is a Colombian-American threat analyst and hacker. He used coffee shops,
libraries and internet cafés as his locations for hacking. Apart from being the
homeless hacker, Lamo is widely-known for breaking into a series of
high-profile computer networks, which include The New York Times, Microsoft,
Yahoo!, and MCI WorldCom. In 2002, he added his name to the The New York Times’
internal database of expert sources and utilized LexisNexis account to conduct
research on high-profile subjects.
For
his intrusion at The New York Times, Lamo was ordered to pay approximately
$65,000 in damages and was sentenced to six months house arrest at his parents’
home, with an additional two years of probation. In June 2010, Lamo disclosed
the name of Bradley Manning to U.S. Army authorities as the source of the July
12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video leak to Wikileaks. Lamo is presently working
as a threat analyst and donates his time and skills to a Sacramento-based
nonprofit organization.
2.
Gary McKinnon
In
2002, an exceptionally odd message appeared on a US Army computer screen: “Your
security system is crap,” it read. “I am Solo. I will continue to disrupt at
the highest levels.” It was later identified as the work of Scottish systems
administrator, Gary McKinnon, who was accused of perpetrating the “biggest
military computer hack of all time”. He is accused of hacking into 97 United
States military and NASA computers over a 13-month period between, using the
name ‘Solo’.
The
US authorities claim he deleted critical files from operating systems, which shut
down the United States Army’s Military District of Washington network of 2,000
computers for 24 hours. After the September 11 attacks in 2001, he deleted
weapons logs at the Earle Naval Weapons Station, rendering its network of 300
computers inoperable and paralyzing munitions supply deliveries for the US
Navy’s Atlantic Fleet. He is also accused of copying data, account files and
passwords onto his own computer.
In
November 2002, McKinnon was indicted by a federal grand jury in the Eastern
District of Virginia. The indictment contained seven counts of computer-related
crime, each of which carried a potential ten-year jail sentence. The court had
recommended that McKinnon be apprehended to the United States to face charges
of illegally accessing 97 computers, causing a total of $700,000 in damage.
Even more interesting are McKinnon’s motives for the large scale hackings,
which he claims were in search of information on UFOs. He believed the US
government was hiding such information in its military computers.
1.
Jonathan James
16-year-old
black hat hacker Jonathan James, became the first juvenile imprisoned for
cybercrime. James gained his notoriety by implementing a series of successful
intrusions into various systems. In an anonymous PBS interview, he professes,
“I was just looking around, playing around. What was fun for me was a challenge
to see what I could pull off.”
James’
major intrusions targeted high-profile organizations such as NASA and the
Department of Defense. He cracked into NASA computers, stealing software worth
approximately $1.7 million. He also hacked into the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency and intercepted over 3,000 highly secretive messages passing to and from
the DTRA employees, while collecting many usernames and passwords.
Also
known as “c0mrade,” James committed suicide using a gun, On May 18, 2008, at
the age of 25. His suicide was apparently motivated by the belief that he would
be prosecuted for crimes he had not committed. “I honestly, honestly had
nothing to do with TJX,” James wrote in his suicide note, “I have no faith in
the ‘justice’ system. Perhaps my actions today, and this letter, will send a
stronger message to the public. Either way, I have lost control over this
situation, and this is my only way to regain control.”
Internet Protocol version 6
IPv6
(Internet Protocol version 6) is a set of specifications from the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) that's essentially an upgrade of IP version 4
(IPv4). The basics of IPv6 are similar to those of IPv4 -- devices can use IPv6
as source and destination addresses to pass packets over a network, and tools
like ping work for network testing as they do in IPv4, with some slight
variations.
The
most obvious improvement in IPv6 over IPv4 is that IP addresses are lengthened
from 32 bits to 128 bits. This extension anticipates considerable future growth
of the Internet and provides relief for what was perceived as an impending
shortage of network addresses. IPv6 also supports auto-configuration to help
correct most of the shortcomings in version 4, and it has integrated security
and mobility features.
IPv6 features include:
§ Supports source and destination addresses that are
128 bits (16 bytes) long.
§ Requires IPSec support.
§ Uses Flow Label field to identify packet flow for
QoS handling by router.
§ Allows the host to send fragments packets but not
routers.
§ Doesn't include a checksum in the header.
§ Uses a link-local scope all-nodes multicast address.
§ Does not require manual configuration or DHCP.
§ Uses host address (AAAA) resource records in DNS to
map host names to IPv6 addresses.
§ Uses pointer (PTR) resource records in the IP6.ARPA
DNS domain to map IPv6 addresses to host names.
§ Supports a 1280-byte packet size (without
fragmentation).
§ Moves optional data to IPv6 extension headers.
§ Uses Multicast Neighbor Solicitation messages to
resolve IP addresses to link-layer addresses.
§ Uses Multicast Listener Discovery (MLD) messages to
manage membership in local subnet groups.
§ Uses ICMPv6 Router Solicitation and Router
Advertisement messages to determine the IP address of the best default gateway.
HOW TO RECOVER DELETED FILES
HOW TO RECOVER DELETED
FILES – TOP 8 DATA RECOVERY SOFTWARES
Hello
readers, today I'm going to discuss an important topic for computer geeks. We may
lose our important data or files from the computer hard disk, due to virus
attack or we may delete them by
mistakenly. Once we delete those important data from hard disk, there is only
one option available to get back the file, that’s via Recycle Bin. But this is
not a possible way to recover the files all the time, because if the file size
is too large, it won't go to Recycle Bin, so recovering the deleted files is
always a challenge.
There
are hundreds of free and paid data recovery tools available in the internet to
recover your deleted data from hard disk or USB pen drive. When people try to
recover their deleted data from HDD using this kind of recovery tool, most of
the users' feedback about the tool is 'this stupid software doesn't work properly'.
Actually the truth behind this is, they don't follow the proper rules to
recover the data after the loss.
Rules to Consider Before
Going for Data Recovery
Stop
using the particular hard drive and avoid copying new files to the hard disk
drive, where you are going to perform data recovery process. For example if you
are going to recover something from local drive C on your PC, completely avoid
using local drive C. Because any copy-paste activity on particular drive might
increase the chances to overwrite new copied files over deleted files.
And
another important rule is, don't download or install the data recovery tool in
the hard disk drive where you are going to perform data recovery process.
If you
follow all the above given rules before going for data recovery, you can easily
recover deleted files with given below powerful free data recovery tools. All
these tools are free of cost and it has the ability to recover any deleted
files from your hard disk.
Powerful
8 Data Recovery Tools for Windows
Computer
·
Recuva
·
Undelete
360
·
Wise
Data Recovery
·
Pandora
Recovery
·
Tokiwa
Data Recovery
·
Glary
Undelete
·
Mini
Tool Power Data Recovery
·
Free
Undelete
Keylogger
A keylogger, sometimes called a
keystroke logger, key logger, or system monitor, is a hardware device or small
program that monitors each keystroke a user types on a specific computer's
keyboard. As a hardware device, a keylogger is a small battery-sized plug that
serves as a connector between the user's keyboard and computer. Because the
device resembles an ordinary keyboard plug, it is relatively easy for someone
who wants to monitor a user's behavior to physically hide such a device
"in plain sight." (It also helps that most workstation keyboards plug
into the back of the computer.) As the user types, the device collects each
keystroke and saves it as text in its own miniature hard drive. At a later
point in time, the person who installed the keylogger must return and
physically remove the device in order to access the information the device has
gathered.
A keylogger program does not
require physical access to the user's computer. It can be downloaded on purpose
by someone who wants to monitor activity on a particular computer or it can be
downloaded unwittingly as spyware and executed as part of a rootkit or remote
administration (RAT) Trojan horse. A keylogger program typically consists of
two files that get installed in the same directory: a dynamic link library
(DLL) file (which does all the recording) and an executable file (.EXE) that
installs the DLL file and triggers it to work. The keylogger program records
each keystroke the user types and uploads the information over the Internet
periodically to whoever installed the program.
Although keylogger programs are
promoted for benign purposes like allowing parents to monitor their children's
whereabouts on the Internet, most privacy advocates agree that the potential
for abuse is so great that legislation should be enacted to clearly make the
unauthorized use of keyloggers a criminal offense.
CISCO SECURITY
Take Advantage of the
Cisco Technology Migration Program
Get 15 percent credit for trading in
competitive web security products. the Cisco Web Security Competitive
Technology Migration Program today.
Today's enterprise needs to use the power of the web without undermining business agility or security. Securing every device that crosses the enterprise network means implementing an architecture that is adaptive and responsive to today’s security attacks.
Improve your web security posture and take advantage of this migration program to experience:
Today's enterprise needs to use the power of the web without undermining business agility or security. Securing every device that crosses the enterprise network means implementing an architecture that is adaptive and responsive to today’s security attacks.
Improve your web security posture and take advantage of this migration program to experience:
·
Simplified deployment to protect users and customers
·
Exceptional web security, optimized for all users in any
location
·
Excellent visibility, reporting, and control
·
Reduced costs and an extended value of the existing
infrastructure
·
Flexible and effective policy controls
Understand more about web security for today's
business environment and learn how to improve your security posture.
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Security