Hate Hackers But Admire The Skill ? - have a go yourself without hurting any1

Hacker's Virus writers malware authors....
Hate them. They annoy everyone for little or no reason.

However, (with exception of script kiddies) those who do it the hard way,
discovering their own buffer over flow exploits and writing the machine code
to exploit and spawn a command line, you have to admire the amount of knollege and skill that this takes.

If you know anything about *nix (especially Linux) and would like to pit you securety knoledge againsed other's have a look at this....

http://www.linuxense.com/challenge/

Basically, on the 9th of this month, a Linux server will be booted, and its IP address posted on that site, and left running for 96 hours. there will be no firewall, and no tweaks done to it, just a jet to be decided linux distro will be booted, and all default serces allowed to run.

the competition is to....

1) gain root access
2) create a file on / containing some identification (an email or PGP key)
3) dissconect the machine from the internet (shut donw the network card)
4) send an email announcing you have won.

if nobody has hacked the machine within 48 hours, then low access level login passwords will be given out, at which point you will be able to attempt local privilage esculation exploits.

Will anyone here be having a go ???

I know virtually nothing about exploiting services, only how to prevent writing code vunerable to buffer overflows...

but i will definatly have a little play, port scanning, version probing and whatever else i can think of.

(maybe i should just post its IP on slashdot..... thats usually enough to crash most systems !)

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

There are quite a few cyberwar games like that on the net, I actually play in a few LOL. It's not to learn this type of behavior, but it is so I know how to find exploits and thereby having better security on my own sites and machines. There are a few links I would like to share. I do want to stress that each of these links permits the use of exploits for the CHALLENGE, not for illegal intent. They do state this on their pages as well.

http://www.hackthissite.org/
http://www.hellboundhackers.org/news.php
http://www.cyber-war.org/
http://learntohack.org/ (here I completed the first 15 levels was fun )

I am NOT justifying hacking or such activities, I do stress that with permission given and NO malicious intent, it is challenging. It tests your knowledge on computer systems, programming languages, etc.

ALL of the links I just provided actually are GAMES, CHALLENGES to test your knowledge.

---

As reply to the subject, I too hate hackers (the ones that mess up your system) and personally I would love it to see their MB get fried. I feel that if you use your knowledfe of systems, web programming etc for such activities you don't deserve the right to actually have a computer. There are "hackers" (I use this term loosely for this) out there that actually use the knowledge and skill they have to test companies' security etc. That I do applaud... How can you improve your security? By looking at your weaknesses.

I sincerely hope this was not going out of line, if it was, please remove this message, edit or pm me. Please do not take my words as promoting of illegal activities, I strongly object to it. However I do see a good use for this knowledge and these skills when it comes to using them to (WITH PERMISSION) enhance security on servers.

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Some Universitys Offer Computer securety Courses.
You cannot secure your own system without knowing how the bad guys break into your system.
as part of these courses you have to try to break into designated machines.

As for the Cyber-war link... WOW.... i LOVE the ascii art FreeBSD Daemon logo !!!!

I dont know the reasons that the links you posted were setup, But aslong as we are all clear that the content is linked to help users protect themselves , and better understand securety, i see no harm.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Yeah, those hacking "games" are fun... Thanks for the links, as I have already done the hackthissite challenges (failed, so cheated), and am looking for new fun. I think hackers are good, if they don't use their skills to do bad stuff... But, good hackers are like characters in a children's book. Like a magician who does good deeds to save the world. I sound poetish... NOOOO!!!

Heh, actually, I'm "hacking" my way through the Encyclopędia Britannica Online with Google to get an article that requires subscription because it helps me do my homework.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Since we're talking about hacking in here - have any of you played the games, Uplink or Street Hacker ?? Both are real fun and simulate real world hacking upto a fair degree. Uplink is more of a MacOS based hacking game while Street Hacker's commandline and gives you a more authentic sense & feel ... But both are a must try.. Pit your skills and see how far you can go I've completed both without any kind of cheats. I've even got a saved game with full armoury of all the hi-tech gadgets - for Uplink. The game's saved right at the beginning. So any of you who want to start off with my character can pm me and I'll mail it to you...

Uplink: http://www.introversion.co.uk/
Street Hacker: http://www.streethacker.com/

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

There is actually a career to be made out of hacking. There are hackers who trained to become network security specialists and their job is to try to hack into a network in order to make it more secured. I heard the pay's very high.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Street hacker is a nice game, but toooo easy.

I wonder why all those little 10 year olds all want to hack someone's mailbox.

the little pests

I went to some company 2 weeks ago to test their library-security-system (see my tutorial ) for them and got about $ 150 for 4 hours work, nice huh .

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

in my opinion things like this can only benafit peoples knowlage of servers and the way the computers uses data. unfortunatley there are people out there who wish to use this information and abilities to annoy people.

The only good thing is the people who do do this promote good coding and full testing of apps before they are released.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Hmmm... don't like that idea...
Then people will know how to hack linux servers...
That's bad...

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

people already know how to hack unsecure linux servers.
But if I am one of them, i can better protect my sever from those who have less than good intensions.

After reading a tutorial on how to exploit buffer overflows (written by and for those who want to annoy) my code is now slightly more secure.

For example.... i know that the easyesy way to get into a web server, is through badly written CGI scripts.

because i know that i never ever ever use a CGI script i find on the internet without proof reading the code very very carefully.

if i didnt know this, then i maght just carelessly add every free cgi script i find, and assume that apache will protect me.

aslong as your intentions are good, knoledge of evil is never a bad thing
(unless you agree that ignorance is bliss )

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)