Phoenix Network Forums

goliat wrote:I don`t understand anything about hacking and i`m not against hacking but to place a trojan to someone is not real heroic.

Those are not hackers. Just like adware and spyware programmers are not hackers.

Anyway, regarding the subject, I think hacking is fine. I mean, retrieving someone's password (or cracking it if you are more brute force) is wrong, but finding exploits and fixing them or reporting it to someone who is eligible (or capable) is good and needed.

My main goal is improvement--of myself, my code, and the world.

First, myself. Hacking gives me the opportunity to improve my skills and to enhance my programming. Like other people, I learn from doing, so by hacking something, I learn how it works.

Secondly, I use this knowledge to improve my code. I want to make more secure code, more efficient code, easier to understand code, etc. For example, I used to try to code everything in one piece, I now try to do as little as possible as a base and then work up from there. For example, I figured out that any program or driver can be created on my OS with the ~10 system calls I created--basically enough to output on the screen, get input from the keyboard, input and output to ports and block devices, and process and memory management. Further filesystem drivers, for example, can be created from this. The end result is that more code is in userspace, where it is more secure.

Third, I want to improve the world. I want to help out the people that try to keep their websites etc. up all the time. I try to find vulnerabilities etc. so that everyone can be more secure. I also do the same morally...if I defaced a website, I would deface an immoral website and try to encourage productivity and living for oneself and for everyone--not just conforming to societal norms.

Hacking into my friend's computer so I can play with his sound volume levels and play jokes on him - that's the morally accepted hacking for me. :)

P.S.: Never done it actually, just an opinion.

I like how noble everyone is in this thread :D

I'd like to know, how many of you have actually done any 'hacking' (not phpbb deface or planting trojans). Then explain "the morals of your hacking".

Narf wrote:Hacking into my friend's computer so I can play with his sound volume levels and play jokes on him - that's the morally accepted hacking for me.

P.S.: Never done it actually, just an opinion.

I did something similar once with the computer next to the one a friend of mine was using...SSH'd into it, wrote a quick and dirty C program to make the computer beep, then started running it to the beat of the William Tell Overture. A "shutdown -k now" on the computer someone's using via terminal can be funny, too, but it's more likely to make someone get angry instead of laugh.

All that debate, just about the moral of cutting wood.

I am not into hacking at all. I am kinda guy, keep ur four walls strong & tall enough not be penertrated & leave the rest of the world in peace.

I guess i go buy the old days.
Hacking as in programing, BE of a system to know if you could do it.
Cracking, Hacking for finacial gane, programing for destructive purposus ie Microsoft sorry could not stop myself

I love to break into programs to see how they work and muck around with wargame sites like hackthissite.org. Morally i'm a legal hacker so i don't have much to worry about/think about

I also love cryptanalisis and programming new ciphers

Shanks wrote:I also love cryptanalisis and programming new ciphers

Hehehe... reminds me of something my friends and I came up with once.
Three of us were having breakfast at IHOP one day, and the subject of encryption came up. After discussing it for awhile, we came up with this ridiculous idea of using images for passwords... basically take a picture, and to get access to whatever's being encrypted you need to recreate the same picture pixel by pixel. Of course it'd never actually work, but it was rather interesting to talk about.

Bugs42 wrote:basically take a picture, and to get access to whatever's being encrypted you need to recreate the same picture pixel by pixel. Of course it'd never actually work, but it was rather interesting to talk about.

It would work, it would just be really unreasonable to expect someone to be able to do it manually and it would be something that a computer would have no trouble bruteforcing, though the larger the image the harder it'd be

...then again, if the user was expected to recreate the image manually it wouldn't be very big now would it?

I hack because i like the chalenge and it gives me a sense of pride when i achieve one of my goals however i do not agree with doing it to cause damage in any way

nagual wrote:Hacking to me is mostly for the learning, and also bettering of code. A good hacker would not only exploit bad code, but find ways to fix it. At least this is the way I look at it. Although it is good for the occasional bragging rights. Anyone who is seriously interested in hacking should check out kevin mitnicks book, and also the movie about him, "Operation: Takedown"

dante wrote:Hacking, for me, is very much just for the thrill. The challenge of finding a hole to exploit, the rush you get when you gain another level of access...and the fact that at the end, you've learned a lot more then you would from coding "Hello world" examples out of dry programming textbooks.

I agree with those two posts. For the learning and the thrill.

Its fun.. the thrill, the intelectual persuit.

Hacking computers are allowed at the lans i goto so it also fun to compromise a computer so you dont get owned in unreal.

i see hacking as an object. it's all depend on the eye of the beholder.

if you are a bad person who oftenly intend to do bad thing then you will see hacking as a chance for you to exploit other people's good for your own benefit.

if you are a good person, which not many of us are, you will see any hacking opportunities as a learning experiences. you will handle it in an educational way with legal thoughts in your mind.

both sides of the hacking group have their strong and weak points. one might argue that his side is better but at the end, it is my believe to say.....good guys who hack proceed his path with a stable income but stay in low profile as a hacker/programmer while the bad guys who hack tend the make an explode amount of money but that is like 5% or less bad guy hackers out there. people who use his skills for wrongful purposes tend to dig deeper into the hacking world than good people since it is much easier to be "bad" than be "good".