The Internet was born in 1969. Almost immediately after the network was established, researchers were confronted with a disturbing fact: The Internet was not secure and could easily be cracked. Today, writers try to minimize this fact, reminding you that the security technologies of the time were primitive. This has little bearing. Today, security technology is quite complex and the Internet is still easily cracked.
A hacker is a person intensely interested in the arcane and recondite workings of any computer operating system. Most often, hackers are programmers. As such, hackers obtain advanced knowledge of operating systems and programming languages. They may know of holes within systems and the reasons for such holes. Hackers constantly seek further knowledge, freely share what they have discovered, and never ever intentionally damage data.
A cracker is a person who breaks into or otherwise violates the system integrity of remote machines, with malicious intent. Crackers, having gained unauthorized access, destroy vital data, deny legitimate users service, or basically cause problems for their targets. Crackers can easily be identified because their actions are malicious.
Please go through The Jargon File - a great source of trivia, lore, and translations for difficult concepts. The Jargon File contains a bunch of definitions of the term �hacker�, most having to do with technical adeptness and a delight in solving problems and overcoming limits.
The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
No problem should ever have to be solved twice.
Boredom and drudgery are evil.
Attitude is no substitute for competence.
Get one of the open-source UNIX and learn to use and run it.
Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write HTML.
If you don't have functional English, learn it.
SCANNER: A Scanner is a program that automatically detects security weaknesses in a remote or local host.
PASSWORD CRACKER: A Password Cracker is any program that can decrypt passwords or otherwise disable password protection. Sometimes a dictionary attack is performed.
TROJAN HORSE: A Trojan Horse an unauthorized program contained within a legitimate program. This unauthorized program performs functions unknown (and probably unwanted) by the user.
SNIFFER: A Sniffer is any device, whether software or hardware, that grabs information traveling along a network. That network could be running any protocol: Ethernet, TCP/IP, IPX, or others (or any combination of these). The purpose of the sniffer is to place the network interface into promiscuous mode and by doing so, to capture all network traffic.
Richard Stallman: Stallman joined the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT in 1971. He received the 250K McArthur Genius award for developing software. He ultimately founded the Free Software Foundation, creating hundreds of freely distributable utilities and programs for use on the UNIX platform. He worked on some archaic machines, including the DEC PDP-10 (to which he probably still has access somewhere). He is a brilliant programmer.
Kevin Poulsen: Having followed a path quite similar to Mitnik, Poulsen is best known for his uncanny ability to seize control of the Pacific Bell telephone system. (Poulsen once used this talent to win a radio contest where the prize was a Porsche. He manipulated the telephone lines so that his call would be the wining one.) Poulsen has also broken nearly every type of site, but has a special penchant for sites containing defense data. This greatly complicated his last period of incarceration, which lasted five years. (This is the longest period ever served by a hacker in the United States.) Poulsen was released in 1996 and has apparently reformed.
If you are using WINDOWS-XP... Open Notepad and type �Bush hid the facts� (without quotes)... Now save it and reopen... What do you see ???
If you are using WINDOWS-98... Open C:\windows\logow.sys through Paint... Just copy paste some other picture here... Now save. The Shut Down image of your machine has been changed.
If you are online you may get details of any website... Log on to a WHOIS server... Enter the website address (any Top Level Domain or Country Level Domain will work, e.g. invotechengineers.com) about which you want to gather information... Press enter.