I have noticed that nobody has made their review of this site yet. It is maybe the name of this site that confuses people, makes them think "is this legal?". The answer is yes. This site is one of the few sites that deal with hacking subject without actually encouraging or, in some way, promoting hacking. Actually, it isn't so bad to encourage hacking, it is bad to encourage cracking. This is how wikipedia defines a hacker:



Anyway, back to the site.

It can be accessed from this address: www.hackthissite.org

The main purpose of this site is to introduce hacker wannabes (again, talking about computer experts) to to complexity of Internet and the variety of options available to a ordinary user.

First of all, there are many challenges.
The easiest are the Basic Web challenges. I have finished them all myself, but with a little help from the forums, since I had no knowledge of different types of injections. After finishing these missions, I know more about javascript injections, UNIX commands and <form> tags.
Next, there are so call Realistic Missions. These are harder to finish, because there are some realistic elements. It is a lot harder to hack (this time I mean hack) a real system than a one which is meant to be hacked. Here you can learn about SQL Injections and other ways to fool the server.
Furthermore, there are Encryption, Programming, Permanent Programming and Application Challenges. I have nothing to say about them, because I haven't tried them yet.

When we move further on, we can see that there are a lot of useful articles, that can help you increase you knowledge. They vary from mission tutorials to complicated techniques.

I haven't mentioned it, but in order to play these challenges, you must register first. This is good, because for every solved challenge you get a certain amount of points. This is where the fun starts. They even give you point to hack their site! I think only two people managed to do this, but there is still time for you to join them

Next, there are a few ways of communication with other players. There is a forum, where you can find hints, but not solutions, for all of the challenges, and also talk to other people about other things. Also, you can talk to them by using IRC chat, which might be even more useful if you want to ask for help.

To sum up, the site is great! Challenges get harder all the time, you can learn really much, and that is not all you can do. There are some really nice people out there to talk to. Negative stuff - well, someone can become a really evil hacker by using this site.

My opinion: 9/10

but but hacking is bad :-o

Not neccessarily. As you can see, hacking should be treated as finding security holes in order to fix them. Cracking is bad - that way you endanger someone, and by being a hacker you endanger nobody and you benefit from the knowledge that you posses.

I agree that hacker is not a such bad person as usually is being thought, I can use my knowledge of programming, which is an easy thing for something, which other might think is bad, like to "hack" a site which you know how is made and know the holes, which other person won't even think of, like if you know apache code very well, you can make something bad too.

Hackers of course can harm, usually the sick ones which does not know what to do just to make others some bad days, but usually hacker does something for purpose and a need, a good hacker and all those kids who knows a little more want to be "cool" and damage something.

A hacker with his knowledge can be a cracker too, and a lot of whom likes crackers, especially the good ones which makes the software available for them for free, in this way making the company a lot of damage and they loose a lot of income, that is why the software costs so much, that the pirates could use the software for free, but the ones who pay, pays a lot.. A cracker usually has a good knowledge of asm programming, but "evil" crackers makes the cracks to be bad by adding viruses and etc. to them and ruin your day. I heard that Windows Vista will be very safe from crackers, but oh well, we will see.

Oh by the way, I browsed the site, but it is not my cup of tea, but what I have found and some articles I went through were quite interesting.

Hacking isn't BAD by any means - except that some people carry it out for bad purposes to earn $$$. That's what has tarnished the name. How the heck do you think would all the security holes be discovered if it wasn't for hacking ?? Without that you'd have to gulp down whatever one of the software giants stuffs down your throat.. hacking in the first place brings out their flaws and forces them to seal them.. far quicker than if it was left to them to figure out in due time.

This site seems to be really nice. I will give it a try. For now I can only speak about the design of the site that is poor but I thing the most important is the content.

Thanks for tell us about this...

lol, m^e, would that also mean those underground hackers that hide from Microsoft developing viruses as a way to get Microsoft to fix security? It seems to be the only thing that works... the "bad" hackers find and exploit security holes verses a letter to them stating what they have found (of course, knowing MS, they'd send the cops out after them because they cracked open the shell of information)

Anyway, if it wasn't for "hackers", things would be pretty dull too... Such as Window Blinds and Firefox just to name some examples...

[N]F

I thought this was going to be another cahllenge type thing haha. I remember once on a tv show they set up a machine and gave the ip and offered a prize to whoever hacked it first. No one won though since they needed to kill the competition because of server overloads and lawyers having heart attacks haha.

But yes, to the site, I'm glad this site exists. They need more sites promoting the original concepts of hacking rather then the media version (....crap! mental images of the movie hackers....). Exploring software isn't a bad thing, and when you explore if their are security risks you are bound to find them. Whether you go out in search of them or not is irrelevant. What matters is how you handle the information. Ethics is a big issue in technology now because of its prevalence in our society. The "bad hackers" have more power then when the phrase was coined. Hopefully we'll see less of the evil ones and more of the good ones showing up as time progresses... I have fears that wont happen... but we can hope.

Ahahaa. I love these challenges. I think I dropped by this site before, but I didn't have time to play it, so I left. And forgot about it. Right now, I actually don't have time to play it either, given the fact that I still have homework (which I really should be finishing at this moment), but I'll make sure I drop by when I have time.

And of course, I agree with everyone: hacking isn't bad! It's just that we've sort of redefined the terms through the years, and now it seems to be bad. But really, all a hacker is is just a computer expert who's really good with programming and such. Now, if only we could redefine this word to its original meaning...

Serena

It is a fun site. I got through quite a few of the challenges, but I haven't been on the site in about a year. Maybe I should try it out again since I am a little more proficient in unix commands now (still not very). I learned quite a bit from the site.

Like others have said hacking isn't band. It is a neutral activity in of itself. Just because there are malicious hackers out there doesn't mean that they are all malicious.