Tuesday, 6 December 2016
Monday, 5 December 2016
Top Five Hackers of all time.
_____________Hackers__________________
That’s right. The term “hacker” originally referred to the second type, which held absolutely no malevolent connotations. Only recently has the term been used to refer primarily to criminal masterminds. There are good hackers and bad hackers. Nowadays, benevolent hackers are often called “white hats” while the more sinister are called “black hats.”
Jonathan James:-
Jonathan James was known as “c0mrade” on the Internet. What is his ticket to fame? He was convicted and sent to prison for hacking in the United States–all while he was still a minor. At only fifteen years of age, he managed to hack into a number of networks, including those belonging to Bell South, Miami-Dade, the U.S. Department of Defense, and NASA.
Yes, James hacked into NASA’s network and downloaded enough source code to learn how the International Space Station worked. The total value of the downloaded assets equaled $1.7 million. To add insult to injury, NASA had to shut down their network for three whole weeks while they investigated the breach, which cost them $41,000.
The story of James has a tragic ending, however. In 2007, a number of high profile companies fell victim to a massive wave of malicious network attacks. Even though James denied any involvement, he was suspected and investigated. In 2008, James committed suicide, believing he would be convicted of crimes that he did not commit.
Kevin Mitnick:-
Kevin Mitnick’s journey as a computer hacker has been so interesting and compelling that the U.S. Department of Justice called him the “most wanted computer criminal in U.S. history.” His story is so wild that it was the basis for two featured films.
What did he do? After serving a year in prison for hacking into the Digital Equipment Corporation’s network, he was let out for 3 years of supervised release. Near the end of that period, however, he fled and went on a 2.5-year hacking spree that involved breaching the national defense warning system and stealing corporate secrets.
Mitnick was eventually caught and convicted, ending with a 5-year prison sentence. After serving those years fully, he became a consultant and public speaker for computer security. He now runs Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC.
Albert Gonzalez:-
Albert Gonzalez paved his way to Internet fame when he collected over 170 million credit card and ATM card numbers over a period of 2 years. Yep. That’s equal to a little over half the population of the United States.
The big bucks wouldn’t come until later, when Gonzalez hacked into the databases of TJX Companies and Heartland Payment Systems for their stored credit card numbers. In 2010, Gonzalez was sentenced to prison for 20 years (2 sentences of 20 years to be served out simultaneously).
Kevin Poulsen:-
He then earned his way onto the FBI’s wanted list when he hacked into federal systems and stole wiretap information. Funny enough, he was later captured in a supermarket and sentenced to 51 months in prison, as well paying $56,000 in restitution.
Gary McKinnon :-
Gary McKinnon was known by his Internet handle, “Solo.” Using that name, he coordinated what would become the largest military computer hack of all time. The allegations are that he, over a 13-month period from February 2001 to March 2002, illegally gained access to 97 computers belonging to the U.S. Armed Forces and NASA. McKinnon claimed that he was only searching for information related to free energy suppression and UFO activity cover-ups. But according to U.S. authorities, he deleted a number of critical files, rendering over 300 computers inoperable and resulting in over $700,000 in damages.
Being of Scottish descent and operating out of the United Kingdom, McKinnon was able to dodge the American government for a time. As of today, he continues to fight against extradition to the United States.
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Types of Hackers
HACKERS TYPES
1. White hat hacker
2. Gray hat hacker
3. Black hat hacker
White Hat and Grey Hat Hacker & What is the Real Difference?
What is worse, the public is not able to understand terms like grey hat, white hat, Linux OS, or cracker.
However, the truth is that the subculture of the hacker world is more complex than we think. Especially if we consider that, these are very intelligent people.
However, the truth is that the subculture of the hacker world is more complex than we think. Especially if we consider that, these are very intelligent people.
So, what is ethical hacking white hat and how does it differentiate from grey hackers? The only way to find out is to submerge ourselves in the world of hackers and understand, at least, the most basic concepts.
What Is A White Hat Hacker?
A hacker can be a wiz kid who spends too much time with computers and suddenly finds himself submerged in the world of cyber-security or criminal conspirators. On the other hand, he can be a master criminal who wants to obtain huge amounts of money for him, or even worse, dominate the world.
In the movie Matrix, the concept of hackers changed a bit. Although the agents of the Matrix considered them terrorists, the truth is that they were rebels fighting for the liberty of humanity. Things do not need to reach that extreme, though. We are not at war with intelligent ma chines so that kind of scenario is a bit dramatic.
Therefore, a hacker is an individual who is capable of modifying computer hardware, or software. They made their appearance before the advent of computers, when determined individuals were fascinated with the possibility of modifying machines. For example, entering a determine code in a telephone in order to make free international calls.
When computers appeared, this people found a new realm where they could exploit their skills. Now they were not limited to the constraints of the physical world, instead, they could travel through the virtual world of computers. Before the internet, they used Bulletin Board Systems (BBS) to communicate and exchange information. However, the real explosion occurred when the Internet appeared.
Today, anyone can become a hacker. Within that denomination, there are three types of hackers. The first one is the black hacker, also known as a cracker, someone who uses his computer knowledge in criminal activities in order to obtain personal benefits. A typical example is a person who exploits the weaknesses of the systems of a financial institution for making some money.
On the other side is the white hat hacker. Although white hat hacking can be considered similar to a black hacker, there is an important difference. A white hacker does it with no criminal intention in mind. Companies around the world, who want to test their systems, contract white hackers. They will test how secure are their systems, and point any faults that they may found. If you want to become a hacker with a white hat, Linux, a PC and an internet connection is all you need.
Grey Hat Hackers
A grey hat hacker is someone who is in between these two concepts. He may use his skills for legal or illegal acts, but not for personal gains. Grey hackers use their skills in order to prove themselves that they can accomplish a determined feat, but never do it in order to make money out of it. The moment they cross that boundary, they become black hackers.
For example, they may hack the computer network of a public agency, let us say, NOAA. That is a federal crime.
If the authorities capture them, they will feel the long arm of justice. However, if they only get inside, and post, let us say, their handle, and get out without causing any kind of damage, then they can be considered grey hackers.
If you want to know more about hackers, then you can attend one of their annual conventions. Every year, hackers from all over the US, and from different parts of the world, reunite and meet at DEF CON. These conventions are much concurred. In the last one, 6,600 people attended it.
Every year, DEF CON is celebrated at Las Vegas, Nevada. However, hackers are not the only ones who go to this event. There are also computer journalists, computer security professionals, lawyers, and employees of the federal government. The event is composed by tracks of different kind, all of them related, in some way, to the world of hackers (computer security, worms, viruses, new technologies, coding, etc). Besides the tracks, there are contests that involve hacking computers, l ock picking and even robot related events. Ethical hacking, white hat hacking or whatever names you wish to use, at the end, it has a purpose: to protect the systems of organizations, public or private, around the world. After all, hackers can now be located anywhere, and they can be counted by the millions. Soon, concepts like white hat, linux operating system or grey hat will become common knowledge. A real proof of how much has our society been influenced by technology.
Black Hat Hackers
Black hat hackers have become the iconic image of all hackers around the world. For the majority of computer users, the word hacker has become a synonym for social misfits and criminals. Of course, that is an injustice created by our own interpretation of the mass media, so it is important for us to learn what a hacker is and what a black hacker (or cracker) does. So, let’s learn about black hat techniques and how they make our lives a little more difficult.
Black hat is used to describe a hacker (or, if you prefer, cracker) who breaks into a computer system or network with malicious intent. Unlike a white hat hacker, the black hat hacker takes advantage of the break-in, perhaps destroying files or stealing data for some future purpose. The black hat hacker may also make the exploit known to other hackers and/or the public without notifying the victim. This gives others the opportunity to exploit the vulnerability before the organization is able to secure it.
What Is Black Hat Hacking?
A black hat hacker, also known as a cracker or a dark side hacker (this last definition is a direct reference to the Star Wars movies and the dark side of the force), is someone who uses his skills with a criminal intent. Some examples are: cracking bank accounts in order to make transfernces to their own accounts, stealing information to be sold in the black market, or attacking the computer network of an organization for money.
Some famous cases of black hat hacking include Kevin Mitnick, who used his black hat hackers skills to enter the computers of organizations such as Nokia, Fujitsu, Motorola and Sun Microsystems (it must be mentioned that he is now a white hat hacker); Kevin Poulsen, who took control of all the phone lines in Los Angeles in order to win a radio contest (the prize was a Porsche 944 S2); and Vladimir Levin, which is the handle of the mastermind behind the stealing of $10’000,000 to Citigrou.
Top Computer Viruses of All Time.
1. Melissa
A macro virus named after a Miami stripper, was so effective in 1999 that the tidal wave of email traffic it generated caused the likes of Intel and Microsoft to shut down their email servers. The virus contained a Word document labeled List.DOC as an attachment to an email allowing access to porn sites.
The email was first distributed to a Usenet group but quickly got out of hand. When a user opened the email a message, the infected Word attachment was sent to the first 50 names in the user's address book. The scheme was particularly successful because the email bore the name of someone the recipient knew and referenced a document they had allegedly requested. I recall spending long hours cleaning up after this one.
2. The Anna Kournikova Virus
This computer virus was attributed to a Dutch programmer Jan de Wit on February 11, 2001. The virus was designed to trick a recipient into opening a message by suggesting that it contained a picture of the lovely Anna Kournikova, instead the recipient triggered a malicious program.
This was another virus that exploited a user’s Microsoft Outlook mail contacts. The email subject read: "Hi: Check This!", with what appeared to be a picture file labeled "AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs". Clearly, the attachment was not a JPG, but it was a good bit of social engineering and was an effective transmission mechanism.
3. MyDoom
MyDoom began appearing in inboxes in 2004 and soon became the fastest spreading worm ever to hit the web, exceeding previous records set by the Sobig worm and ILOVEYOU. A side note, though I knew people affected by Sobig and ILOVEYOU, I did not see either of these in the wild.
The reason that MyDoom was effective was that the recipient would receive an email warning of delivery failure – a message we have all seen at one time or another. The message prompted the recipient to investigate thus triggering the worm.
Once the attached file was executed, the worm would send itself to email addresses found in the local address book and also put a copy in a shared folder (KaZaA). Like Klez, MyDoom could spoof email but also had the ability to generate traffic through web searches, which placed a significant load on search engines like Yahoo and Google.
MyDoom was also significant for the second payload that it carried, which was a DDoS attack on the SCO group; albeit not the coordinated sort of attack we would now expect to see with modern bot-nets. The origination of the virus is attributed or suggested to be someone in Russia, but no one was ever able to confirm.
Lastly, MyDoom contained the text “andy; I’m just doing my job, nothing personal, sorry,” which led many to believe that the virus was constructed for a fee for a spammer, though this also was not confirmed. Shot in the dark: if you are the Andy in referenced in MyDoom and are reading this, please comment!
4. Sasser & Netsky
Easily one of the most famous and prolific variants of computer worms, famous for effectiveness and the fact that it was authored by an 18 year-old German, Sven Jaschan, who confessed to having written these and other worms.
Netsky sticks in my mind because it was the first time that a virus insulted other virus authors. Here the authors of both the Bagle and Mydoom worm families were dissed and, in some cases, Netsky included code that removed versions of the competing viruses.
The other reason this one sticks with me was that the author was turned in to authorities by a friend who wanted to collect the $250,000 bounty that Microsoft put up for information about the outbreak. Though obviously, not a really good friend!
5. 2007 Storm Worm
Though I did consider the 1988 Morris worm, regarded as the first worm, I had to go with the 2007 Storm worm as the 5th to include. Known by many names the Storm Worm is a backdoor Trojan that affects Microsoft based computers.
Here, again, we see distribution of payload through email, with the subject reading, “230 dead as storm batters Europe”. The Storm Worm was a Trojan horse that would join the infected computer to a bot-net – a network of remotely-controllable computers. Though it was thought to be a bot-net of millions of computers, the exact numbers were never known.
Hackers VS Crackers
Hackers VS Crackers :-
A Cracker is a person who breaks in to a security system only with a malicious intent. A person who breaks in to a computer system for the purpose of earning profit, finding security loopholes of the system, showing protest or just for the sake of challenge is called a hacker. In recent times the differentiation between the definitions of the two terms has become vague due to the misuse of them by the mass media and the existence of the people belonging to both categories.
What is a Hacker?
A person who breaks in to a computer system for the purpose of finding security loopholes, earning profit, showing protest or just for the sake of challenge is called a hacker. This is the meaning of hacker, which comes up in the computer security. There are several types of hackers identified as white hat hackers, black hat hacker, grey hat hacker, elite hacker, script kiddie, neophyte, blue hat and hactivist. A white hat (ethical) hacker breaks in to systems without any harmful intentions. Their task is to test the security level of a certain system. A black hat hacker is a true computer criminal who has malicious intentions. Their aim is the destruction of data and making the system not accessible to the authorized user of the system. A grey hat hacker has the characteristics of both the white hat hackers and black hat hackers. Elite hackers are the most skilled hackers who usually discover the newest opportunities unknown to the community. Script kiddie is not an expert hacker, but merely breaks in to systems using automated tools developed by others. Neophyte is a novice hacker without any sort of hacking knowledge or experience. A blue hat hacker (who does not belong to a certain security firm) will check for security vulnerabilities before launching a system. Hacktivist is an activist who uses hacking to announce a major event or a cause.
What is a Cracker?
A Cracker is a person who breaks in to a security system only with a malicious intent. They are very similar to black hat hackers. In other words, there cannot be crackers who break in for reasons other than harmful ones (unlike some types of hackers such as white and blue hat hackers). His only intension is to violate the integrity of the system and most probably harm data or make the system inaccessible to the authorized users.
What is the difference between Cracker and Hacker?
Generally, both hackers and crackers are people who break in to computer systems. Those who do it only with malicious intent are identified as crackers or black hat hackers. Other types of hackers such as white hat hackers do not have purely malicious intent. But, there is a long running dispute about the real meanings of these terms (cracker and hacker). According to the general public (thanks to the misuse of terms by mass media for a prolonged period of time) a hacker is known as a person who breaks in to computer system with harmful intentions (almost exactly similar to a cracker). However, this is not true according to the technical community. According to them, a hacker should be identified as a positive persona (who is highly talented in dealing with computers – a very clever programmer), while a cracker is actually the person who always commits criminal acts with regard to computer security.
Female Programmers make less than Male Programmers
This is not the way to get more women in tech.
Not only does Silicon Valley have a notable lack of women, but many of the women who do have job titles like computer programmer and software architect make far less than the men with those jobs, according to a new analysis by career review site Glassdoor.
The analysis, which was based on 505,000 salaries shared by full-time U.S. employees on the site, reveals that the adjusted pay gap for women in tech can range as high as 28.3%, far larger than the average adjusted gender pay gap for all workers, which Glassdoor found to be 5.9%.
The adjusted pay gap is what’s left over after controlling for statistical variables other than gender—including age, education, experience, occupation, industry, location, company, and job title. In other words, even when a woman and a man are pretty much identical in every way except gender, the male worker makes 5.9% more.
Yet despite the demand, the problem of attracting women to computer science remains.
In 1984, 37% of computer science majors in the U.S. were women. Today, that figure is just 18%. If things continue at the current rate, women will hold only one in five computing jobs in the U.S. by 2025, according to research by Accenture and Girls Who Code.
Top 5 Programming Contest
1. Google Code Jam contest
Google Code Jam is an annual programming competition sponsored and supported by Google itself. Google Code Jam is an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google.The competition began in 2003 as means to identify top engineering talent for potential employment at Google.
The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors may use any programming language and development environment to obtain their solutions.
Here, professional and student programmers provided complex algorithmic challenges to solve using the programming language of their choice in a limited amount of time.
2. CodeChef
CodeChef is a non-commercial organization operated by DirectI, an Indian software company based in Mumbai, India.It is a global programming community which hosts online contests, trainings and events for programmers from around the world.
3. Microsoft Imagine Cup
Imagine Cup is an annual competition sponsored and hosted by Microsoft Corp. which brings together young technologists worldwide to help resolve some of the world’s toughest challenges.
The Imagine Cup comprises five major technology competitions, including Software Design, and four challenges (although the challenge number is updated annually).
4. Facebook Puzzles
As the name suggests this small set of programming problems is conducted by Facebook to evaluate potential hires. One can submit their solutions in a variety of languages like C++, C, Haskell, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby.
5. ACM-IPC :- International Collegiate Programming Contest
This contest is sponsored by IBM. ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (abbreviated as ACM-ICPC or just ICPC) is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world.
ACM – ICPC is one of the world’s largest programming contest conducted annually. The contests majorly involves algorithmic programming problems. Regional contests lead to World level Finals. Supports only two languages i.e. C/C++ and Java.
