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LESSON 1
BEING A HACKER

LESSON 1 – BEING A HACKER

“License for Use” Information
The following lessons and workbooks are open and publicly available under the following
terms and conditions of ISECOM:
All works in the Hacker Highschool project are provided for non-commercial use with
elementary school students, junior high school students, and high school students whether in a
public institution, private institution, or a part of home-schooling
...
The provision of any class, course, training, or camp with
these materials for which a fee is charged is expressly forbidden without a license including
college classes, university classes, trade-school classes, summer or computer camps, and
similar
...
hackerhighschool
...

The HHS Project is a learning tool and as with any learning tool, the instruction is the influence
of the instructor and not the tool
...

The HHS Project is an open community effort and if you find value in this project, we do ask
you support us through the purchase of a license, a donation, or sponsorship
...


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LESSON 1 – BEING A HACKER

Table of Contents
“License for Use” Information
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4
1
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5
1
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6
1
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1 Books
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1
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7
1
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3 Zines and Blogs
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8
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5 Newsgroups
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9
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7 Chat
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11
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LESSON 1 – BEING A HACKER

Contributors
Pete Herzog, ISECOM
Chuck Truett, ISECOM
Marta Barceló, ISECOM
Kim Truett, ISECOM

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LESSON 1 – BEING A HACKER

1
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The core instruction theme is to harness the hacker curiosity
in you and to guide you progressively through your hacker education to help you grow into a
responsible role, capable of determining security and privacy problems and making proper
security decisions for yourself
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As a citizen of most countries, it is not
only your right, but your responsibility, to report security and privacy leaks to the proper
authorities
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You
are helping those who can't help themselves
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This is what
you will learn to do
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1 Resources
This lesson is about how to learn – a critical skill for a hacker
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We can't teach you everything that you
need to know, but we can help you recognize what you need to learn
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What we teach today may not be
relevent tomorrow
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Words and concepts you don't understand in this workbook may require research on the web
or in a library
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Ignoring
it will only make it difficult for you to understand concepts in other workbooks
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This workbook is the only one with a
thorough explanation of how to research built into it, so be sure to spend as much time as you
need to learn how to research using the various resources available to you
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Great hackers are wellrounded and creative
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Hacking skills can
also be applied to other fields, such as Political Science (see The Prince by Machiavelli for an
example)
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Reading books on everything from psychology to science fiction will make you a
much more versatile and functional hacker
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This is how you expose insecurities,
vulnerabilities, and leaks
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1
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Want to know something about the fundamentals of a science, like the hardware
details of your PC? Nothing will help you more than reading a current book on the subject
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The secret is to
learn to see the fundamental structure underneath the thin skin of details
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Security and privacy concerns may have changed in the last 2,500 years,
but The Art of War by Sun Tzu covers fundamental principles that still apply today
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A writer spending a year
writing a book is more likely to check facts than someone who is updating a blog six times a
day
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1
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) But remember – accurate does
not mean unbiased
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Finally, don't look at a book and give up before you even start just because of the size and
complexity
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Think of them as prehistoric web pages
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If you don't understand something, go backward and look for the explanation (or skip
forward to something that does make sense)
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This type of non-linear
reading is often much more interesting and satisfying for hackers, as it's about satisfying
curiosity more than it is about “reading”
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1
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However, magazines are usually short on details and often focus too much on
the zeitgeist of the community
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Another issue you should consider is the topic or theme of the magazine
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The best way to combat these two flaws is by being well and widely read
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Pretend that you believe it, and look for
confirmations, then pretend that you don't believe it, and look for rebuttals
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Search the Web for 3 online magazines regarding Security
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How did you find these magazines?

C
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1
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Zines, like the famous
2600 zine or Phrack Hacking web zine, are written by volunteers and the producers do not
edit the content for non-technical errors
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Zines have a very strong theme and are very opinionated
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Blogs are a modernization of the zine
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Like zines, however, anyone may criticize a story and show an
opposing opinion
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Exercises:
A
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B
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Why do you classify these as zines? Remember, just because they market it as a zine
or put “zine” in the title does not mean it is one
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Search the Web for 3 blogs regarding computer security
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What communities are these associated with?

1
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4 Forums and Mailing Lists
Forums and mailing lists are communally developed media, much like a recording of a series
of conversations at a party
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Forums and mailing lists
are similar, because there are many ways for people to contribute inaccurate information –
sometimes intentionally – and there are also ways for people to contribute anonymously
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You can find forums on almost any topic and many online magazines and newspapers offer
forums for readers to write opinions regarding published articles
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Many mailing lists exist on special topics, but these are hard to find
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For a hacker, what is most important to know is that many forums and mailing lists are not
searchable through major search engines
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This
information is called “the invisible web” as it contains information and data that is invisible to
many since a very specific search is needed, often through meta-search engines or only
directly on the website of the forum
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Find 3 computer security forums
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How did you find these forums?

C
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Do the topics in the forums reflect the theme of the website hosting them?

E
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F
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On which list would you expect the information to be more factual and less
opinionated and why?

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5 Newsgroups
Newsgroups have been around a long time
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Google purchased the entire archive of newsgroups and put them online at
http://groups
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com
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This archive is
important for finding who is the original owner of an idea or a product
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Newsgroups are not used less today than they were years ago, before the web became the
mainstream for sharing information
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Exercises:
A
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B
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How many newsgroups can you find that talk about computer hacking?

1
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6 Websites
The de facto standard for sharing information is currently through a web browser
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If you check e-mail using a web browser, you are using a web service
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This means you need a login name and password to gain
access
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Hacking
into a website to allow you to change the page may be having access, but since it is not your
legal right to do so, it is not privileged access
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As you find this, you should get into the habit of
reporting this to the website owner
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It's even possible to
make your own search engine, if you have the time and hard drive space
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Sometimes it is in the form of
cache
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If you click on the link that says cached,
instead of the actual link, then you will see a single page that shows what the search engine
found during its search
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One of the most useful public caches is at http://www
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org
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One final note on websites, do not assume you can trust the content of the websites you visit
just because they appear in a search engine
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You can safeguard yourself by not
downloading programs from untrusted websites and by making sure the browser you use is
up-to-date on security patches
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Using a search engine, find sites that may have mistakenly given privileged access to
everyone
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To do this, we will go to http://www
...
com and enter
this into the search box:
allintitle:

"index of"
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This type of searching is also known as Google Hacking
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Can you find other types of documents in this way using Google? Find 3 more directory
listings which contain
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avi files
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There are many search engines out there besides Google
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Some websites specialize in tracking search engines, such as
http://www
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com
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There is even a search engine for “the invisible web”
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D
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E
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Are they different?
F
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In exercise
D, you searched for a phrase
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To do this, you need to think
about what you want and how you want to find it
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If you enter online resource of magazines for
ethical hacking into a search engine, you will get a number of opinions about the topic
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Instead, you need to think, “If I
was to make such a resource, what information would be in there and what key words could I
pick from that information?” Put the following words and phrases into a search engine and
find out which provides the best results for your search:
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list of ethical hacking magazines
3
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ethical hacking magazine
5
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Find the oldest website from Mozilla in the Internet Archive
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mozilla
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archive
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H
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Using search engines and the Internet Archives, see if you can locate and
download version 1 (but don't install it)
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1
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As a research source, chat is extremely inconsistent, because you will be dealing with
individuals in real time
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Some will be harmless
pranksters, but some will be malicious liars
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It can be
difficult to know which is which
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Eventually you will be able to learn the very newest security
information (also known as zero day, which implies that it was just discovered) and advance
your own knowledge
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Find 3 chat programs to use for instant messaging
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Find out what IRC is and how you can connect to it
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isecom
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C
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Can you enter these channels? Are there people talking or
are they “bots”?

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8 P2P
Peer to Peer, also known as P2P, is a network inside the Internet
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Most people associate
P2P with the downloading of mp3s and pirated movies, however, many other P2P networks
exist – both for the purposes of exchanging a wide variety of information and as a means to
conduct research on distributed information sharing
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org, is based on the premise that information should be free
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The problem with P2P networks is that, while you can find information on just about anything
on them, some of that information is on the network illegally
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Remember: there
is nothing illegal about P2P networks – there are a lot of files that are available to be freely
distributed under a wide variety of licenses – but there are also a lot of files on these networks
that shouldn't be there
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1
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The better you get at it, the more
information you can find quickly, and the faster you will learn

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