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  • (January 12, 2023, 01:18:11 AM)

Author Topic: H4X0R  (Read 5914 times)

ivan

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H4X0R
« on: October 20, 2008, 03:38:27 PM »
I beat this dead horse deader than dead over to HackerNetwork, yet lo! now do I feel a resurgent urge to beat it yet more.

Quote

The Meaning of 'Hack'

"The word hack doesn't really have 69 different meanings", according to MIT hacker Phil Agre. "In fact, hack has only one meaning, an extremely subtle and profound one which defies articulation. Which connotation is implied by a given use of the word depends in similarly profound ways on the context. Similar remarks apply to a couple of other hacker words, most notably 'random'."

Hacking might be characterized as 'an appropriate application of ingenuity'. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it.

An important secondary meaning of hack is 'a creative practical joke'. This kind of hack is easier to explain to non-hackers than the programming kind. Of course, some hacks have both natures..."

Read more...

Also:

The Story of Mel, A Real Programmer

(From The New Hacker's Dictionary, Hacker Folklore section. Be sure to read A Story About Magic, too.)

So... anyone care to boast about any recent hacks?


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pbsaurus

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #1 on: October 20, 2008, 06:44:58 PM »
I don't get much opportunity to now that I only do front-end stuff.  I did program some nice Q&D macros in excel for manager reports that they used to copy and paste.  And I did find an excel macro online that will circle the contents of a cell.
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Socrates

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2008, 07:07:14 AM »
I've been working on this game written in VB...
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Dark Shade

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #3 on: October 21, 2008, 05:02:47 PM »
You see, there's this anchor tag...
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MISTER MASSACRE

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #4 on: October 30, 2008, 10:05:08 AM »
I feel more than a little proud of this one:

A few years ago my parents purchased an iMac after my recommendation (and threat that I would blow up their house if I had to fix their stupid Windows box ONE more time) and for the longest time, their computer problems simply...stopped. It was great!

Jump to a few days past and my mom called me a little upset that she could no longer log into her profile. Work was pending! Strangely, my dad had no problems logging into his side. Since they both have admin privileges, I had him reset her password. She typed in a new one and was able to log in to her profile.

Not being satisfied without knowing WHY her password had presumably been changed, I elected to remote in (VNC) and take a look at her side of things. Acting on a sudden suspicion, I asked her to type out the alphabet in Text Edit. Here's essentially what we got:

abcdefghijkmnoqrstuvwxyz

Notice the lack of "l" and "p"? I then asked if anything untoward had happened to the keyboard, and apparently my dad had spilled water on it the day before. Wouldn't you know it: my mom's password had the letter "p" inside it, whereas my dad's had neither "l" nor "p" so he was completely unaffected!

Mystery goddamn solved!
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Joe Sixpack

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #5 on: October 30, 2008, 10:24:03 AM »
If we're extending this to Godlike troubleshooting skills...
Back in the day, when I did phone tech support for a certain GloboCompuMegaCorp, some old timer called in because his printer was printing blank pages.  Technically we weren't supposed to do printer troubleshooting, but it sounded like a challenge.  We went through all the basic connectivity checks, ink level, etc. Still printing blank pages.
It crossed my mind that he was only printing text files.  So I had him print a picture, and lo and behold, it printed fine with the exception of the black.  For some reason his black ink had stopped working but wasn't coming up as empty.
In hindsight, a test page might have worked, but I think this was on Windows 95 and the test page was almost all text as well as I recall.
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"God places cherubim with a flaming sword east of Eden to guard the Tree of Life from the ambitions of man.

Cherubim is plural; Genesis 3:24 specifies one flaming sword. Presumably flaming swords were in short supply."

BizB

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #6 on: October 30, 2008, 12:34:15 PM »
Your dad's password was like Christmas without waterspr0ts!

No-l and No-p.
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12AX7

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #7 on: October 30, 2008, 12:37:58 PM »
Quote from: BizB on October 30, 2008, 12:34:15 PM
Your dad's password was like Christmas without waterspr0ts!

No-l and No-p.

 His dad's IP was working fine. It was the ketbr04rd.
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Novice

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #8 on: October 30, 2008, 02:49:32 PM »
A hack that we use sometimes around here is when customers want to use two ISPs on their firewall. One for HTTP and HTTPS traffic and the other for everything else (like FTP, etc.).

We take the general form of a static NAT statement:

static (local_interface,global_interface) <gloabl_ip> <local_ip> netmask <mask>

Then we switch it around to "translate" all inside traffic destined for port 80 (HTTP) or 443 (HTTPS) and force is out the 2nd ISP interface using some tcp and port keywords.

static (2nd_Global_interface,local_interface) tcp 0.0.0.0 [80 / 443] 0.0.0.0 [80 / 443] netmask 0.0.0.0



Pretty sneaky if you have any idea what I just said.
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Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?

Socrates

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #9 on: October 30, 2008, 05:24:54 PM »
Quote from: Joe Sixpack on October 30, 2008, 10:24:03 AM
a test page might have worked, but I think this was on Windows 95 and the test page was almost all text as well as I recall.

The windows logo was usually in color.
</geek>
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MISTER MASSACRE

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #10 on: October 31, 2008, 07:54:34 AM »
Here's another one:

I was using Windows in Parallels (virtualization on my Macbook) and the durned thing locked up my GUI entirely. Because people who are used to *NIX systems hate rebooting with a passion, I instead used my phone to SSH into my laptop, and a quick "kill (PID)" later, the GUI was responsive and buying me dinner!
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Demosthenes

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #11 on: October 31, 2008, 09:20:54 AM »
I've done similar to that on my Linux machines on my home network at times when one of them had l0xx0r3d up, but never from a phone.  That's good thinkin'.   8-)
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ivan

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #12 on: July 25, 2010, 11:27:32 AM »
Quote from: TheJudge on July 25, 2010, 06:04:14 AM
Hi Welcome! Here's a story for you: When I was in high school, there was one computer course where we would learn to program in basic. Not VB, just basic - in DOS. AH... you're just 17, do you even know DOS???? Anyway... I happened to have the Basic manual at home so I didn't follow the boring school program. I explored my options and decided I would programed music. I took songs I knew how to play on my guitar, transposed your standard guitar tablature into Basic code for notes, and programed a few songs ranging from classical to heavy metal. Of course, this was coming out of the PC speaker as a series of beeps. It was kinda of cool, but could get annoying after a while. So I kept making more and more complex songs and I would program multiple computers and try to start them in sync so that each would play a different part. Long story short, the prof got feed up and unplugged the internal speaker from all the machines in the class. lol!
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"I TYPE 120 WORDS PER MINUTE, BUT IT'S IN MY OWN LANGUAGE!"  -Detta

xolik: WHERE IS OBAMA'S GIFT CERTIFICATE?
Demosthenes: Is that from the gifters movement?

Detta: Crappy old shorts and a tank top.  This is how I dress for work. Because my job is to get puked on.
Demosthenes: So is mine.  I work in IT.

bananaskittles: The world is 4chan and God is a troll.

12AX7

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #13 on: July 25, 2010, 11:44:35 AM »
concur








Nice memory, btw. Did you actually remember this thread and go find it; or just happen to come across it and had the presence of mind to apply it currently?  :lol:
 
 
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ivan

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #14 on: July 25, 2010, 12:12:32 PM »
I remembered it. One of these days I'll post some of my own.
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"I TYPE 120 WORDS PER MINUTE, BUT IT'S IN MY OWN LANGUAGE!"  -Detta

xolik: WHERE IS OBAMA'S GIFT CERTIFICATE?
Demosthenes: Is that from the gifters movement?

Detta: Crappy old shorts and a tank top.  This is how I dress for work. Because my job is to get puked on.
Demosthenes: So is mine.  I work in IT.

bananaskittles: The world is 4chan and God is a troll.

TheJudge

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Re: H4X0R
« Reply #15 on: July 26, 2010, 08:33:09 AM »
And he shall now and forever be know as the big white elephant!
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