Hacking is a methodology, of course. It is nearly a scientific process that starts with a hypothesis that you do your best to disprove. You start with an idea: I bet I can get into that computer network and do such and such.

Then, after formulating a thesis, you should go about disproving it. And that process starts, more often than not, with google. And google can provide everything you would ever need.

Is your thesis that a certain program can be exploited in a certain way? Google can provide you with ready made fresh installs of that program, whether it is passwords (intitle:index.of passwd passwd.bak) or Microsoft Windows 2000 servers (intitle:”Welcome to Windows 2000 Internet Services”).

Sometimes I just despair. I got into the hacker underground to learn how to harden my net, but when you see that people put up passwords and allow google to index them, I may just pat the malicious script kiddie on the back and wish him good luck, because that kind of stupidity should be punishable by law.

Perhaps I’m the wrong person to write this little warning, because I am most certainly not a hacker, nor do I have the ambition to become one. My presence on this blog is merely to write about a sector of computing that I know very little about so that I won’t get hacked. Again. However, I know enough of computing to be able to say what I said above.

If you’ll act stupidly, you will be caught. If you “hack”, you’ll go to jail. If you break into a system, deface a website, of perform a Denial of Service attack on someone, you will be hunted down and dragged out into the light. The legal system will drive a legal stake through your heart, and the crowds will cheer them on.

Why? Because unless you’re very good, and unless you’re at a level way beyond the stage where you have desire to deface a website, you’ll light up the net like a Christmas tree when you try something, and here’s why.

Anonymity on the net is just an illusion. There is always a point where you have to have a connection to your physical self and your exact location, and that point is vulnerable to attack. Even with an SSH connection to some other site, the connection has to go between your real IP and the SSH-account.

Spoofing your IP you say? Well, go ahead and try that, but remember that unless all you desire is to fire off a single indignant email, the internet is about two way communication. If the computer that should send you information doesn’t know your real adresss…? You figure it out.

If you piss of the wrong people, they’ll come after you through the net, and if they’re good enough they’ll find you. You simply can’t hide. If you could hide, you wouldn’t be reading this.

Don’t be stupid.

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Today, you can’t use the iPhone with any other phone company than AT&T, which means the phone won’t work in Europé.

Since the phone was released last Friday, the hunt is on to be the first to hack the phone’s activation process so that you can use it with any gsm/edge phone company.

Around the world people are waiting with baited breaths for news about this. There are websites set up to report the progress.

Why a company like Apple would lock themselves to one phone company is, of course, anybody’s guess. Why people would want to hack a seemingly substandard mobile phone is also anybody’s guess.

I hardly dare suggest it… buy Nokia or Ericsson? At least you won’t let Apple decide which phone company you can use then.

I mean, have you explained to a client how to set up an Ethernet card without explaining it in Windows-speak? It is an adventure fraught with commercial dangers, I can tell you. So, you use Windows. And so, I want to keep Windows on my machine, in this case the new fangled little toy called Windows Vista.

Being fairly computer literate is a danger, just as it is a danger to be intelligent in most respects. The mistakes of intelligent people tend to be much more hurtful, and have much greater consequences, than for the drooling idiots who do not have the confidence to find their way out of a shoebox.

In some circumstances in computing it is then better to be a perfect noob because perfect noobs have a healthy respect for the computer and the disaster that can happen with it, and they do not paint themselves into such difficult corners. Mostly, they do not let their pride get in the way of resolving a difficult situation by drastic and simple measures.

Pride and prejudice got me into the most well dug hole when I thought that Windows Vista would happily coexist in harmony and love and understanding with a version of Linux called Backtrack as well as Windows XP.

For the techno geeks out there (the rest can skip this part) Backtrack is a slackware distro of Linux that focuses on network security (or, if you’re wearing a black hat at the moment, getting around and ripping up network security). Backtrack is the hackers’ flavor of Linux.

By the time you’re reading this I’ve been busy reinstalling Windows XP, Windows Vista and put Backtrack as a sole OS on an entirely different machine. The simple solution I should have followed, had not my pride got in the way telling me that I must solve this problem, and that this problem was probably simple to solve in the first place.

It was neither simple nor easy to solve this problem, as many of you would know, and as many of you would have been able to tell me if I had googled for information about it. I would have come to the conclusion that Windows Vista does not like to compete for space, and while it may tolerate older versions of Windows, it certainly does not have any patience for other operating systems – particularly the rival Linuxes out there.

I do not know if this is by accident or by design on Microsofts part, but the boot loading system of Windows Vista is a nightmare to work in. It used to be such a simple matter to set up a multi-boot system in older Windows-versions, and it was a breeze to add a Linux version. Now, however, with Windows Vista it is all retro and you have to use the command line system and a program called BCDEDIT.exe.

The program works against a data layer and to do anything with the data layer, you need to set aside a year to study the intricacies of the program and how it works with data. And after that year, you will find that it is not really possible to add a non-windows operating system to the Windows Vista boot loader.

By now, if you’ve read this far, your muttering about LILO or GRUB, which are Linux boot loaders, and a very well made muttering point it is! And this goes to my pride because I had decided that it was Windows that would control the booting because, well, Windows was easier to work in! And the worse it got, the stronger my determination was to crack this problem. We’re into the area where intelligent people tend to paint themselves into most difficult corners, and then refuse to backtrack because of their supposed intelligence.

So, now, finally, I’ve done the thing I should have done from the start. I’ve reinstalled Windows XP and Windows Vista on one machine, and Backtrack on another. And to further paint myself into the corner of stupid intransigence I’m convinced that Microsoft has planned it all along, making it impossible to keep Windows and Linux on the same box.

When you enter the hacking areas of the net, you get to hear about something they call ?the black hats? versus ?the white hats?. The white hats are the hackers in the employ of corporate anywhere, and their task is to make sure the black hats can?t do what the white hats are paid to do.

I know, it is a bit confusing. But that?s boys for you. Boys that have spent a lot of time in front of computers in their rooms while their school mates snogged with the pretty girls. I should know about that. Not that I want to snog pretty girls, of course.

Boys like that start to build illusions, and they start to build an ethos that?s going to make them? well superior to the guys that get to snog.

This is actually a nice post, honest. I?m not here to offend. I?m here to write about what I find in the glades where the black hats meet, and in the glades where the white hats meet.

I make no claim what so ever of being any kind of white or black hat. In other words, I?m not a hacker. I just don?t know enough to be one. I didn?t spend that much time in my room in front of the computer in my youth. No, that doesn?t mean I snogged pretty girls either.

Why do it? Well, I got hacked, of course! In the same way a mugging victim becomes somewhat obsessed with personal robbery issues, I’m at present somewhat obsessed with hacking issues. Only, I find them amusing in some way. Particularly when it comes to their choice of team names. There used to be two political parties called hats and caps in Sweden in the 17th century. So, in celebration of the age of freedom, I hereby bestow the name ‘hats’ on the white hats and the name ‘caps’ on the white hats. Caps go so much better with their choice of lifestyle, after all.

And that says all about the name of this blog. This will be a blog about the hats, the caps and their issues. Oh, and I’ll even try to be nice about it, even though it stung to realize I’d had one of the caps as a guest in my net for quite some time before I accidentally discovered him.

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