Computer Questions

[TeleMad]

Concerning hacker vs. cracker, I find it easiest just to refer to people as either black hats or white hats.

 

"To address this problem of terminology, you sometimes see the words "black hat" and "white hat" used for two different kinds of attackers. Just like in the old cowboy movies, black hats are the malicious attackers, while white hats are the computer security experts who try to protect systems. A black hat tries to break into systems, while a white hat finds and fixes vulnerabilities." (Ed Skoudis, Counter Hack: A Step-by-Step Guide to Computer Attacks and Effective Defenses, Prentice Hall, 2002, p11)

[alexander]

My home computer was successfully 'hacked' about a year ago ... I had a dial-up connection (no static-IP DSL or cable modem) to AOL. Script kiddies just want to be able to compromise a system, they don't care if it's just little old Telemad.

thats what i was saying, the fact that your ip is different every time you connect to the internet is not real protection against any kind of hacking, scripts scan ranges of ips for certain volnurabilities, if you computer matches it, it will compromise your system no matter the ip when you get on the net the next time... (oh, and if you run AOL anything, it just combines the holes in AOL with already present holes in Windoze making an even less secure system at the end ;) (dont argue this, it is a sorcastic joke, Tele))

[TeleMad]

(oh, and if you run AOL anything, it just combines the holes in AOL with already present holes in Windoze making an even less secure system at the end ;) (dont argue this, it is a sorcastic joke, Tele))

 

I can't argue it. In school, if I mentioned I used AOL I was ridiculed ... "real computer people don't use AOL!". I still use it today for a few reasons.

 

1) I used it yesterday. I used it yesterday because I used it the day before.

 

2) 6 months of AOL came free with my new computer. Free is better than not free.

 

3) AOL has a AOL-only "Homework Help" section where I used to answer tons of biology, physics, astronomy, programming, etc. questions. That was one of the main reasons I stuck with AOL.

[freQ]

Okay, I admit it....I stopped actually reading replies on page 3....so my reply here may end up being redundant. Props to alexander for his input....I didn't find a single thing innacurate in his posts. A few of the original questions that were asked haven't been addressed. So let me take a quick stab.

 

1) IP's come from IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority). There are a limited number of IP's available. They are 32bit numbers consisting of 4 octets seperated by decimal points. The max value of an 8 bit binary number is 255. So the largest value of an IP address is "255.255.255.255" .

 

2) Their purpose lie in the fact that computers can't "read". Architects needed a standardized way to identify network nodes so systems could selectively "talk" to each other. People, on the other hand, find it much easier to remember names as opposed to numeric sequences (in general). So the DNS (Domain Naming System/Service) was developed to be the liason between man and machine (so to speak). When a person enters an internet address ( like http://www.hypography.com ) into their browser...their computer "says" to their ISP's DNS server "hey, this is where I wanna go". That DNS server looks at it's own internal "little black book" of "known nodes" to see if the specified node is on it's own "little corner of the world" called a "subnet". The "little black book" has both names and corresponding IP's for every host on the ISP's subnet. If it finds the requested host on the list....it says "here ya go, this is the number to call". Your pc will then use that number (IP) to "call" the comp you're trying to connect to. If the DNS server doesn't "know" the name of the ste you're after, it turns around and calls up the DNS server for it's own upstream service provider...whose DNS server repeats the process.

 

At the top of the food chain sits four primary DNS servers which serve the entire internet. These 4 servers are located in 4 geographicaly different places and are operated by the Federal Government. They are all redundant to each other. As long as one is running, the internet is available. I've heard that security is so tight that even getting close enough to see the building they are in could get you shot, literally (total hearsay).

 

A few non-technical thoughts.....

1) If your friend was a real hacker, he wouldn't be bragging. He's probably a script kiddie with rudimentary knowledge & skillz. Genuine black hats don't advertise. They don't want to make the FBI's task in locating them easier. They don't trust their own mothers! One reason is that snitches are payed pretty big these days. Can't you just see the title of that episode of Jerry Springer ...."My own mother turned me in for the money!". I won't add names...but I know a big software company that pays 25k per incident to snitches. You're friend probably needs a better way to gain a sense of identity. Find him a girlfriend or something. ;)

 

2) a couple relatively easy questions you could throw at him in some creative way might be pertaining to things that any hacker worth his salt would know and have memorized. Things like:

 

The default "out of the box" IP address for virtually every router known to man.

A="192.168.1.1"

 

Find out what "wardriving" is and ask him questions about it.

 

Any question regarding subnetting (look it up, too lengthy to explain here. But a hacker would understand subnetting in detail.)

 

Ask him what the easiest way to get someones username and password is....if he doesn't answer "Call em up and ask" ....he's an amateur!

 

throw in a comment about "footprinting" , "social enginerring", "packet sniffers", "finger".

 

Tell him you read an article in "2600" that was interesting and ask him if he saw it. lol (p.s. might wanna actually look up 2600 and read an article from it first. In case he's a subscriber)

 

If all else fails, belittle him by saying "A person who does not use his skillz (for good or evil) really doesn't have any advantage over someone who doesn't have those skillz to begin with!" LMAO

 

Ask him if he's ever been to PhreakNIC!

 

Ask if you want more.....end of thesis. ;)

[C1ay]

At the top of the food chain sits four primary DNS servers which serve the entire internet.

 

Are you referring to these? Oh, and which 4 of the 13 are you calling primary since they're all root servers?

[freQ]

LOL (so I am over here wondering how substantially I annoyed C1ay with my elaborate "my butt" math equation in the mathmatics forum... =)

 

I stand corrected on the root DNS server issue. Thank you, C1ay, for the rectifiication. The truth is, to my embarrassment, that I simply took the word of my NET+ instructor who, it turns out, miscommunicated the matter. I should have verified this a long time ago and certainly before stating it as a matter of fact. Presumably, the fact that it is irrelevant to me in the normal order of business facilitated my lack of due diligence. :eek:

 

There were originally four....and now are more.....=)

 

I hope the rest of my input was helpful for OpenMind5. It was intended as an overview and aid in the situation with his friend...not to start a debate. :xx:

[alexander]

Hey, i wonder how many questions we can come up with for beginner to inermediate hackers to find out if they know anything that they are doing. So to add on to FreQs already existant list:

 

Questions to check for

 

(N) - newbie

(I) - intermediate

(S) - script kiddie

 

Cracker types:

 

(N)You can ask what a syn packet is, when you establish a TCP connection to a computer, your computer sends out a syn packet to the other system, if that system acceps your connection, it sends out an ACK packet back to your system and thus the communication starts. (if your friend is a real hacker, he should mention the good old LAND attack, which still works by the way :friday:, you know its sad, in 10 years they cant fix that volnurability in Win, 10 years. Actually he might also mention syn flood, but thats less likely)

 

(I)You can also ask your friend about what stack-smashing is, it is a protection (in the code) that is used to detect the most common buffer overflows by checking that the stack has not been altered when a function returns. The program will return the segmentation fault if it fails.

 

(S)What is netcat, and if the answer is anything but "the Swiss Army Knife for hacking" or "TCP/IP Swiss Army Knife" he is definately a script kiddie!

 

(N)What is nmap, if he's never heard of it, hes a real newbie, and then dependant on how deeply he can go and explain what nmap really is, he can be a Script Kiddie or an intermediate cracker (intermediate crackers would probably use nmap every time they want to scan hosts, they will come up with elaborate tunnels for the scans, so they would not be detected, but it is a very, very useful tool)

 

--got to run to class, will continue when i return--

[C1ay]

Hey, i wonder how many questions we can come up with for beginner to inermediate hackers to find out if they know anything that they are doing. So to add on to FreQs already existant list:

 

Questions to check for

 

(N) - newbie

(I) - intermediate

(S) - script kiddie

 

 

What level would know what a honeypot is? What about knowledge of tools like argus, etherape, cheops, ngrep or cdpr? Then there's cryptcat to go with netcat or shadyshell for tunneling over UDP. Then it would seem that some air tools should be queried as well like airsnort and wellenreiter for wardriving. Of course the levels would depend on knowing what the tools do and HOW to use them....

[alexander]

also tunneling over ssl, ssh, learning apache inside and out, lerning how to do propper buffer overflows in databases, and lastly breaking out of UMLs and runtime environments, propper implementation of rootkitting, exploiting the wrong permissions on harddrive partitions, doing hackback Honeypots, and cracking ipsec as well as other communication protocols, exploiting DHCP amont other things will all be in the intermediate :friday: