User:Garett769/sandbox/Hacking

"Hacking has been around ever since the 1950's with the first use of computers in university and high level institutions. Since then, the user base for computers has exponentially grown and so has people's interest to understand and create things with computers. Hacking has become associated with theft, identity theft, phishing, and other illegal actions. Hacking though is a subculture not solely defined by malicious events, but by ideals and values that drive these very people."Hacking first began in the 1950's with the MIT railroad club, where they learned programming on basic computers, and relied on ideals such as equality, freedom of ideas, anarchism, and the pursuit of knowledge. Ideas focused around these were soon known as the "Hacker Ethic", a system of ethics that is based upon those very ideals. Hacking grew up in a very tiny environment, as only top universities and top students could have access to computers. These people sought to learn everything they could about these machines, share the information with each other that they learned, and let anyone join them that could help.

According to https://www.campusactivism.org/html-resource/hackers/section4.html the hacker ethic follows these basic guidelines: 1. Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On imperative!

2. All information should be free.

3. Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.

4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.

5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.

6. Computers can change your life for the better. Although hacking is a culture about finding answers to the problem no matter the cost, and seeking unlimited information, that is only one side of it.

Of course there is another side, malicious hacking, where people exploit computer systems, with the intent to do harm to others.

There is also hacking to find weaknesses in one's own systems, and to find better ways to structure their computer systems.

Though hacking is loosely based around those ideas, individuals may have many different motives and ideals.

Background
Ever since computers entered into the public market, around 1974, with the invention of the Altair, computers have been an ever growing part of our daily lives. Since it's invention, computers or "processors" grew quickly in the commercial sector and made great strides in helping with mathematics, communication, and plenty of other areas. Even though the first practical computer first introduced to homes in 1974, the first exploitation of modern computers and their networks only followed over a decade later.

Exploitation and Cyber crime
The modern exploitation of computers and their networks first occurred in 1988, with the first "computer worm". In 1988, Robert T. Morris, a grad. student at Cornell University, released the first "worm" on a earlier version of the internet. The worm then spread between the computers while replicating itself. This worm stopped up the networks between the computers and even caused their systems to crash.

The Job Market
The job market has been struggling lately in the cyber security sector. While the internet is expanding exponentially and more cloud services, and devices are being added daily, the protection of these systems has been far behind its development. Cyber security lacks millions of workers and companies are paying through the roof to try to scramble for these people.

Hacking
Hacking has been in the spotlight many times in the news the past few years. From hacking North Korea, to millions of Target customers being hacked, to the latest election, hacking has been a very hot topic.

Groups like Anonymous, and other hacktivist groups have also been causing trouble around the world, grouping together and exploiting systems to reach certain social goals.

Hacking will be an ever expanding problem with the advancement of technology, and possibly could be a major factor in any future wars to occur.

Exploits
Some methods in which hackers exploit systems: "- This method records what you type on your keyboard and can be accessed by the user to find personal information, passwords, and more." "- Denial of service attacks is used to take down sites and servers by overwhelming them with traffic, which results in the servers and sites being unable to process it all, causing them to crash." "- This method is where the hacker targets a heavily accessed physical location, like libraries or cafeterias, and accesses your computer or other systems through the networks or through their own pseudo-networks." "- Some hackers can create a fake wireless access point. Then when it is associated with a physical location, and people connect, they can access your information." "- This method is almost what it sounds like. Unlike the other methods this method isn't a direct attack or exploit of any system. With eavesdropping the hacker simply monitors computer systems and networks to obtain information. The main purpose is to avoid being identified." "- Usually thought of when it comes to spam emails, phishing is when the hacker replicates and popular site and steals the information when users try to login" "- These are programs installed in the users system and then can send the users information back to the hacker" "- An attack in which the user thinks they're clicking on one thing, but when they do it performs malicious functions in the background meant to exploit the user" "- A method in which the hacker tries to gain access to your personal information through cookies on your browser. Then the hacker can disguise himself as you in the browser." "- The method is where the user installs a malicious program on their computer, and when run, the hacker has access to the computer."
 * Keylogging
 * DoS (Denial of Service)
 * Waterhole Attacks
 * Fake WAP
 * Eavesdropping
 * Phishing
 * Virus
 * ClickJacking Attacks (UI Redress)
 * Cookie Theft
 * Bait and Switch

Linux
Linux is a very popular open-sourced platform, for operating systems, and has many useful tools for hacking. Linux is very popular tool when it comes to hacking though, because of the tools it provides, its open-sourced community, and because of how easily it can be customized.

Linux is open-sourced, which means the software is free to anyone to use or to modify, which is very important to the ideology of hacking. Since it is open-sourced, and because it is a very large community, people across the world are creating better versions of linux everyday, and are even making better tools on it too. This means there are a plethora of options when it comes to configuring your operating system, and when it comes to choosing the tools used to exploit other computer systems.

Linux Tools
The tools used by malicious hackers are usually the following: "- typically used to get WiFi" "- This tool typically discovers other devices on a network, and maps the network. The tool can also give specific details about the devices on the network. The tool gives this information to the user and can also gather further information for the malicious hacker."
 * Password Crackers
 * Network Scanners

"- This tool can detect vulnerabilities in a system to exploit, can obtain simple passwords, can detect configuration issues, or even help perform DOS (denial of service) attacks."
 * Vulnerability Scanners

Communities
In short, most of the excitement of hacking is not in the methods in which hackers exploit systems, but in the knowledge and in the ways hackers have to think to exploit security of systems.
 * Hackers can exploit computers on their own or connect and form groups to exploit computer systems together
 * These communities, hidden in the dark forum chats, and unseen Reddit pages, can link hackers together which can be a tool for larger attacks