security / hacking video podcasts

Last week, I listed a whole bunch of informative podcasts. Today, I’ll be listing a few of the best ongoing security / hacker video podcasts along with a couple of dead ones that are still worth checking out.

HAK5 – “Put together by a band of IT ninjas, security professionals and hardcore gamers, Hak5 isn’t your typical tech show. We take on hacking in the old-school sense, covering everything from network security, open source and forensics, to DIY modding and the homebrew scene. Then we wrap it all up with a healthy dose of cocktails and geek comedy. Damn the warranties, it’s time to Trust your Technolust.”

Hack Naked TV – Although the last episode was last year, I think it’ll start up again since their audio podcast, PaulDotCom, is still going strong. And no, they aren’t actually naked.

InformIT Podcasts – InformIT has a bunch of audio/video podcasts on all types of subjects like open source, networking, software and security.

Now here’s the couple that have unfortunately ceased to continue:

HackTV – Video podcast that covered subjects like wifi jammers, hacker conferences to urban exploration and airsoft guns.

thebroken – “thebroken is an underground technology show with a hacker mentality that caters to the elite (or wannabe 1337) computer user using a mixture of seriousness and irreverent comedy. If it’s shady or underground, it’s thebroken.”

Do you know of any that I missed? Let me know in the comments below and I’ll be sure to add them.

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Free College Computer Science Education

Did you know that you could get the same college computer science education for free? You won’t get a degree, but it’s still a great education, and knowledge is power! I’ve put together a list of the best courses I could find:

Stanford Computer Science Education Library – This online library collects education CS material from Stanford courses and distributes them for free.

MIT Online Course Material – MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) has put up course materials from it’s classes. Some courses have videos of the actual classes going on from past years.

Intelligentedu.com – Intelligentedu has put together a big list of free Computer Science courses you can find online.

OERCommons.org – Along with individual authors of open materials, the OER Commons Initiative has partnered with many institutions and organizations to provide high-quality content.

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How to hack like in the movies

We’ve all seen the ridiculous attempts made by hollywood to try and portray hacker’s realisticly in their movies. And as I’m sure all of you have concluded, they absolutely….FAIL. For those of you who havn’t seen any, follow this link to see a full list of movies. Some of these will be totally absurd to those of you who know hacking while others will be somewhat realistic.

1. Get lots of computer screens and stack them up to create a sort of shell around you. What you would use them for, I don’t know, but you need them.

2. Type at ridiculous speeds, pressing multiple keys at the same time, and take a while at that same speed to type up short few lettered words.

3. Never use your mouse. Do all your hacking via the keyboard. Once you have gotten through all the “firewalls” and other junk, pause, pick up your pointer finger and slowly drop it on the key,  sit back and…

4. Watch the giant progress bar slowly reach 100% and flash COMPLETED or HACKED to mark the completion of your hacking job.

5. You must be able to break into any computer or government server in ten minutes.

6. The one password you can’t easily get through is going to be the victims birthday or daughters name. You must guess it, and get it correct the second or third attempt.

7. You must create and send a virus that will flash “VIRUS” on the victims server and cause the servers to have mini explosions.

8. Always talk about “firewalls” and “modifying a certain code”.

9. During the hacking process, at some point, you must have random 1’s and 0’s scrolling down your whole screen, or instead of the 1’s and 0’s have random HTML code streaming down your whole screen because you can hack via HTML… right?

If you can think of some more, TELL ME!, so I can add ‘em in.

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Hacker zine list

Today, there are only a few hacker zines left, and of those, only a couple are still by run by the “underground”. Many years ago, especially during the BBS days, hacking related zines were very popular. Hundreds sprung up, but only a select few became popular. In this post, I list a few of the currently run zines along with a list of the many zines that were written many years ago. It is very interesting to read them and see how the hacking community changed and technology evolved over time.

Phrack – This is probably the most known hacker zine today. It’s first issue came out in 1985 and it’s still going strong. Phrack is free and is run on submissions from the “underground”.

Hack This Zine – Hack This Zine is run by the very popular HackThisSite.org .

2600 – 2600 has been running it’s zine since 1984! You can get it in an electronic format or a printed format. It’s not free, but with the cost comes great content. Along with the zine, 2600 hosts a couple radio shows and a popular hacker conference, HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth).

Hackin9 – Hackin9 magazine comes in both the electronic and printed format and like 2600 isn’t free, but has great content. Sign up for their newsletter because they occasionally give an issue away for free.

Free Software Magazine – FSM is dedicated to promoting free software as a whole. Although they recently announced their last issue, they have completed 20+ issues full of great content.

Textfiles.com – Textfiles.com has a list of many zines from the past. Although not every zine in this list is hacking related, a majority of them are.

PacketStorm – PacketStorm hosts a huge collection of hacking zines from the past.

Phreak.org – Phreak.org has a great collection of phreaking and other hacking related underground zines and publications.

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Hack an email account

I constantly get emails of people asking me how to hack hotmail, hack yahoo, and all the other popular email services. Usually it’s for one of the following moronic cover-ups: It’s my password, I just forgot it. , or my boyfriend this or my girlfriend that. I just don’t understand what possesses them to possibly think that I give a hoot.  Nah, I love you guys, I’m just kidding! Everyone seems to think that there’s some hacking trick that will magically get them the password. Too bad you have to actually learn something. Bummer… eh? Below I have briefly described the most common methods.

Phishing - Phishing is by far the most used and easiest method. The attacker simply sets up a page that looks exactly like the real email login page and tricks people into entering their login information.
Update: Check out the new post on how to create your own phishing page here.

Malware - Attackers can infect computers with malware such as Trojan horses that could extract all the saved passwords on a computer or a key logger that will log all the victims typed passwords.

Guessing - The attacker could literally guess the password if the victim uses an easy password like his/her name, birthday, favorite something, pets name, or something similar. If the attacker knows the victim well enough this attack won’t be that difficult to carry out.

Social Engineering - The attacker could literally ask for your password by calling up the victim and pretending to be an IT employee of the company. Once the victims trust is gained, the attacker would then make up a story saying something like the victims password is needed to do some updates because the user database is down or some other bogus. The attacker could also use social engineering along with a phishing page. This would be done by sending the victim a n email that looks like it is from the real email provider. In the email would be a link to his phishing page telling the victim that he/she needs to login and update or change some information immediately for whatever reason.

If you would like to see in detail how to excecute every one of these methods, see The Hacker’s Underground Handbook.

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hacker games review

Where can you hack military organizations and massive businesses, empty their bank accounts and infect their systems without ever worrying about getting caught? If you didn’t guess the virtual world of games, then you need to be smacked because it says it in the title! I went out and got some of the many hacker games and wrote up reviews fo’ yu fo’ fwee.

Hacker V1

This game consists of 8 missions that don’t really require any logical thinking. Every mission is pretty much the same thing but different scenario. Once you go through the first mission, you will realize that it’s not worth even attempting the rest. It wasn’t realistic and to repetitive. Not worth downloading but if you still want to here’s the link:

Hacker v1.0 Link

Hacker v3.1

Chen Luu, the author of both this one and v1, greatly improved on this version. In this game, you are hired by a corporation to complete 12 missions. Real tools like ping, DNS, Nmap and Telnet are used in this game. The games shell was created to mimic the Unix shell so you learn some real commands. The process used to go through each mission will give you a pretty good idea of the process a hacker goes through in a real world situation. This game is worth checking out, plus it’s free.

Hacker V3.1 Link

Antivirus Tank

As soon as you download this game, you will realize that it is Da 1337 Sauce. This game turns your desktop icons and labels into spider viruses that try to leech onto you (the tank) and drag you away with their spider webs. You are a tank riding around your desktop and shooting away these spiders before they have a chance to strap their long stringy legs around your tank in a sexual manner. Eventually to beat the game, you need to kill the virus boss that hides behind your desktop screen. If you lack the skills to shoot down the spiders with machine guns and guided missiles, then you can have a friend play along with you. 2 tanks > 1 tank. I highly recommend getting this game!

Antivirus Tank Link

HACK3r PUZZLE

The only hacking parts of this game are the scenarios and tools used. To actually do the hacking, you have to solve childish like puzzles like color matching. To think they want $20 for the game makes me wonder what they are inhaling in their free time. So, unless you like solving color puzzles or guessing games, this is not for you.

Hack3r Puzzle Link

Mindlink 2005 Underground

First thing I noticed when I launched this game was the most annoying sound I have heard in my life. At first I thought it was just for the opening screen and would go away, but no, it was the background music for the game. It’s so bad, I’m wondering if maybe my sound card wasn’t interpreting it right because if I hadn’t found that mute check box, I would have started throwing things. The game uses realistic tools like Proxys, Ip Lookups and Bruteforce attacks but that’s the only few methods I could find. Maybe it’s because I was just running the trial version, but I highly doubt it. At first it wasn’t so bad, until I realized that the first 5 jobs were exactly the same. Get IP, connect to it, crack the PW and empty their bank account. Seriously? When I saw the option to purchase a chat room, I thought that maybe I could talk to some real people while I play the game. I ended up spending all the money that I had finding out that the people weren’t real and only responded with “What?” or “Ummmmmmm…” that’s when I closed the game. To think they actually want money for it too! No.

Mindlink Link

Uplink Hacker Elite

The point of this game is to complete missions and raise up in the ranks while you listen to the pretty shnazzy music in the background. It uses many programs based on real ones, so you will get a sense of some of the real methods used by hackers. The game is mostly point and click not really any command line. There are a good amount of missions that aren’t repetitive like some of the games so it should keep you occupied for a while. I actually found this game fun. I recommend trying it out.

Uplink Hacker Elite Link

Street Hacker

The first thing you notice when you launch the game is the pretty good techno music. This game actually has a real story line unlike the rest of these games. This is the only game that brought up real hacker terms and explained them. You start off on a Windows-like system, but when you get into other systems, they could be Windows or Linux. In the tutorial you are shown a Fedora box with it’s real folder hierarchy. I found this game to be by far one of the most educational ones.

Street Hacker Link

Hacker Evolution 2007

This is my all time favorite one and not only because of its great music. This game is the most realistic. You mainly use the command line which is based on Linux so you are usually using real commands. This game puts you through the most realistic processes and the only one that mentions running exploits to gain access to the system. Usually these games just tell you to run a password cracker or send learn how to a virus.

Hacker Evolution Link

Yiii.

Want to learn how to hack for real!

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Free Hacking Magazine

For those of you that don’t know about Hackin9 – IT Security Magazine , they are giving away their 6/2008 issue for free in return for signing up for their mailing list. You better go get it now because the offer is only valid from now until Feb 3, 2009.

Now, you can check Hakin9 magazine and download a free copy of the 6/2008 issue of Hard Core IT Security magazine. It’s 84 pages, 10.5MB, and requires you to provide an email address. In order to download the free article, please, sign up for hakin9 Newsletter. Hakin9 issue includes articles on Registry Analysis by Harlan Carvey, Client-side Exploits by Anushree Reddy, Simple WiFi Hacking with Eee Pc by Marco Lisci and many more. Register to download your free copy.
Best regards,
Hakin9 team

Source: http://hakin9.org/prt/view/pdf-articles.html

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